Explorking

A 3-part series on how to make money online by partnering with brands. Including how to become a high-ranking affiliate, structuring successful brand partnerships, and how to make a media kit. Today’s post is focused on an introduction to the concept of making money online outside of selling your own products and services.

Watch part 2 on affiliate marketing and brand partnerships and then part 3 which focuses on how to structure brand partnerships.

When we started our first blog, Healthful Pursuit, it wasn’t setup to be a “real business”. I (Leanne) just wanted to share recipes and healthy living tips while maintaining a full-time job (which I slowly started hating as I fell more and more in love with blogging).

It wasn’t until I made my first affiliate dollar, off a coconut flour sale on Amazon, that I realized there was more to blogging then, well, blogging, and that I could actually supplement my income entirely from my blog.

As a blogger or online personality, there are multiple ways to make money online including selling digital products, physical products, affiliate sales, consulting, brand partnerships, digital advertising (running ads on your site), selling customer data (not advised… ever).

Today, we’re going to introduce you to the concept of partnering with brands to build your online income.

BRAND PARTNERSHIP EXAMPLES

What does it look like to partner with a brand? Check out these examples:

• Recipe Blog Post: Thai Salami Pizza with Bob’s Red Mill
• Recipe Video: Keto “Popcorn” with Perfect Keto
• Informational Video: The Best Fats to Eat with various preferred brands
• Podcast Post: The Keto Diet Podcast with paleovalley, Thrive Market, and Wolfe Clinic

In each of these examples, Healthful Pursuit was either paid in the form of monetary payment upfront, or via affiliate income (when a product is purchased, we receive a portion of the sale), or in exchange for product.

VERY IMPORTANT!

Two very important things you NEED to know:

Partnering with brands requires that you LOVE the brands you’re working with. If you don’t LOVE it, the quality of your promotions will be garbage. If you don’t love it, your community will see through it and this WILL affect you overall presence, readership, trustworthiness and more. While you can make money sharing brands, it’s important that you think of your reputation above all else.

Partnering with brands requires that you DITCH the shame you may feel about asking people for money.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT

What you can expect from a brand partnership:

• Create passive income
• Build a stronger brand for yourself
• Develop a loyal following
• Save money on your favorite products
• Develop your marketing skills
• Build marketing strategy for your business
• Create lasting relationships
• Boost content for your business

There are a couple of ways that you can partner with a brand, either by receiving free product (you do awesome things, you get free product), being an affiliate for the brand, or receiving compensation for sharing the brand.

Next week, we’ll go through how to be an affiliate, what that means, and where we’ve found success with it.