I just returned a couple of weeks ago from another successful ShareaSale Think Tank event in Charlotte, NC. What do I mean by successful? I got to see many long time friends and colleagues, met several new bloggers from various backgrounds and topics, and came away with a few new tidbits of knowledge to help my team heading into the holiday season.

The conference these past two years has had one theme, bridge the gap between affiliate marketing and bloggers.

The ShareaSale team has done an excellent job of attending various blogger conferences, in an effort to get them to Think Tank and further educate them on why Affiliate Marketing is a must for their blog. The attendance was up, and so was the enthusiasm from most of the bloggers.

Here is my takeaway:

I don’t need to discuss how to read and write. Bloggers know what they want to write and obviously do an incredible job since they have built up a following of repeat readers and have a healthy stream of followers through social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.

What I would like to do is give three examples of bloggers who attended last year’s Think Tank in Denver and tell you what we discussed and the outcome for each.

1. I told each blogger to review recent analytics and locate their top 5 most visited “archived” posts from the last 90 days. It didn’t matter if it was two months old or two years old.

2. Browse various affiliate networks such as ShareaSale and find a merchant that fits the theme of those 5 posts.

3. Integrate a couple of text links into the content, as well as, a product link with image to give visual affect.

4. Keep an eye on analytics and statistics through the network to see if sales occur.

Here was the outcome from each:

One blogger said that in those five posts, over the span of three months, they generated $280 in commissions. A second blogger made $572 in commissions and the third blogger made $922 in commissions!

I do want to say that these posts were updated with links for November and December 2013 and January 2014, so the numbers were definitely higher due to holiday traffic. Does it matter though? They made money!

Now, go back to the original post date. What did they get paid to create the post? $50? $100? Product cost waived?

Let’s say those bloggers who made money on old posts had integrated affiliate links into those posts from the beginning. Just imagine the recurring commissions on posts, even after they were archived.

I had conversations with a few more in Charlotte regarding these and other optimization tips and can’t wait to hear the results come the New Year.

Are you ready to make some money now?! Can we get past the idea that getting paid up front is the only option to optimizing your blog? Let’s talk affiliate marketing! I’m available anytime to chat. Now is the time with the holiday shopping season on our door step.