Sponsored content is one of the most effective ways of making money from your blog. It involves companies and individuals paying you to promote their product or service. While this could take the form of a heavily promotional ad piece, sponsored content doesn’t always have to be this obvious. By exploring more sly forms of sponsored content, you can get paid without putting off readers. Below are a few examples of some of the best forms of sponsored content.
Product reviews
There are companies out there that will pay you to write reviews of their product. If you already review products on your blog, a sponsored product review is unlikely to look out of place. Just be certain to consider your integrity and the wishes of the sponsor. Do they want you to write a glowing review with no criticisms? Could this affect your reputation as a serious reviewer? To maintain a balance of honesty and client satisfaction, consider only accepting sponsored reviews of products that you’re certain you and your audience will like.
Listicles
Another form of sponsored content to consider could be a listicle. For example, this could be a listicle of the best pink matte lipsticks – this could feature several pink matte lipstick brands including one that is sponsored. The sponsor may want you to include certain competitor products, or they may ask you to choose other products to feature in the listicle. Such listicles can come across as less obvious forms of promotion because you’re also promoting other products. Just make sure that when discussing other products, these don’t outshine the sponsored product.
How-to guides
Another form of sponsored content to consider could be a how-to guide. For example, this could be a guide on how to clean bathroom tiles. This guide could revolve around a sponsored product. Such content can be made to look informational rather than promotional. Just make sure to choose sponsors that are relevant to your blog’s theme.
Brand mentions
Some companies will pay you simply for mentioning their brand in a post. The post could be about anything so long as the brand is mentioned. Of course, the brand should be mentioned in a positive light. In some cases, a sponsor may also ask that you provide a link. These are often some of the most flexible and non-obvious forms of sponsored content.
Affiliate links
Affiliate marketing works differently to regular sponsorship. Instead of being paid a flat fee to mention a brand, affiliate sponsors instead only pay you for every client that your post generates. This usually involves publishing a post containing a link to a webpage in which readers can buy a sponsored product – the sponsor is then able to use web analytics to determine every visitor that arrives via that link. There are variants of this such as this payday loan affiliate program in which you must embed a form directly into a post and you are then paid for every client this form generates. This pay could be a flat fee or a commission percentage of the sale (which can make affiliate links to high value products like cars or vacation packages very profitable)
Infographics
Some sponsors may pay you simply for featuring an infographic in one of your posts. This infographic will have been created by the sponsor and will usually need to be published with some form of credit – the intention being to help build credibility for the sponsor. You will usually have the freedom to write the post about whatever topic you like providing that it relates to the infographic. And of course, you should try to make sure the infographic is relevant to the rest of the content featured on your blog.
Videos
Finally, you may find some sponsors out there that are willing to pay you to embed a video in a blog post. Such videos are typically created by the sponsor. Paying you to feature this video could be a way of helping to generate some extra views. It could be up to you as to what kind of article you feature this video in, but it must be relevant to the video in some way. And of course, the video must relate to your blog in some way (don’t try to feature a video on how to lay laminate flooring on a travel blog).
