How to Make Money From Your Website While Trying to Build Trust

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Majority of people I met online, started their websites with the intention to make money from them. However, a lot of them also have this wrong idea that it is very easy to do it and that putting up a few pages online are going to make them rich.

That can not be further from the truth, because even behind some of the fast successes online is hard work. Learning to monetize a website and doing it the right way is not easy.

I believe that the most important strategy in making money online is getting people to trust you. So if you are new and no one knows you – no one will trust you, hence you will have a hard time to make any money.

That means your main goal at the beginning should be building trust not chasing money. When you get to the point that people trust you, the money will come.

So how can you make this process easier for you and start making money from the get go?

Pre-selling To Stand Out

Let’s say you are going to focus on the most common way of making money for bloggers – affiliate marketing. And let’s say you will promote the same products everyone else promotes, like some “Social media product XYZ”. How are you going to get people to buy it from you and not someone who has been online much longer than you?

Pre-selling is your key here. Instead of putting ads in your sidebar and affiliate links everywhere, remove all ads and focus on preseling the product.

Step one would be to buy the product you want to promote. You can not promote a product if you don’t know it in and out. Once you bought it, dig deep into it so you can know all the details, how to use it, how to get the most of it, what are its faults and so on.

When you know the product almost better than the creator, write a detailed review. By detailed I mean realy, really detailed. What did the sales letter promise, did it deliver the promisses, how did you put the advice to use, what results did you get and so on. Make this review a page on your blog (rather than a post) and add affiliate links to the product.

If your review ends up to be a negative one because the product isn’t good or doesn’t bring the promissed results, say that too. There are many people pushing the same products just because they have good affiliate commissions. But in reaality, the products are not good. Telling it as it is will get people to trust you because you are not pushing the same story as everyone else.

Just BE Honest

I had this happen to me with a product everyone was raving about so I bought it and it was a piece of cr*p. I wrote a post about it, how I ran into bugs while working with the software, how some of the promises weren’t delivered, how parts of the sales page were just a hype and so on. People loved it (except for the creators of the products and a few of their bigger affiliates) and that is all that matters. I saved a lot of those people money they would waste on the product and they could see I was an honest person that was not after their hard earned cash – win-win for everyone.

What if you like the product? Tell people how much you like it, how did you implement the tips, how great the results were for you and so on.

Bottom line, what ever you think about the product, know it well and tell the truth.

But this isn’t all. This is just the start. Now it is time to actually start promoting the product.

Instead of writing your own version of their sales letter, write tutorials on how to use the product, how did you implement the tips in some inovative ways to get even better results, and so on. Just keep writing about your experiences with the product.

Of course, this is the time where you are going to start selling. And this is the time when your detailed review is going to start working for you.

Every time you write a post related to the product instead of linking to the product with your affiliate links you will link to – the review post. So this is how it would look:

This way you are almost making a sales funnel for the affiliate offer.

How Does This Relate to Building Trust?

Number one is – you aren’t pushing the product into anyone’s face. You are helping people with tips on how to use the product and get the most out of it.

Then you aren’t linking directly to the affiliate offer (that yells BUY, BUY, BUY) but to your review that helps more!

That is so much information on a product, that if people are ready to buy they will buy through your link because we tend to feel “obligated” to say thanks to those who help us. Well, I guess I do at least

Another benefit of this approach is that every time you are linking to the review post, you are building links to it, so you will eventually rank the review page on Google and get more people to it. When a new person lands on such a detailed post, they may just go ahead and buy it right there, since you were so helpful.

Conclusion

This approach is working smarter and not harder. And once you write that detailed review, you don’t have much to do, just a post on the product from time to time. Multiply this with a few selected products you want to promote and you can have  great results from the very beginning.

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32 Comments

1. 

   Nadia Barbara

   January 28, 2013 at 8:51 am

   Being honest to your website visitors and target clients helps you build credibility on the web. Trust is a very important factor in growing any form enterprise on the web.
   Nadia Barbara recently posted..SEO Tip: Google Analytics

   Reply
2. 

   kelly

   December 21, 2012 at 12:14 pm

   This is a very informative post. Making money online is not as easy as it’s thought. You have to have patience, work hard, and think of it very well.

   Reply
3. 

   Veronica

   December 21, 2012 at 10:58 am

   I agree that trust is the very thing we should never take for granted. Sure, readers do not see us but they matter and contribute a lot to the very essence of what we do. Thank you for reminding this to us. Thanks a lot! Great post!

   Reply
4. 

   Kristine

   December 20, 2012 at 2:00 pm

   I totally agree with your point that you should be honest with your posts and your website. That’s one way to gain trust and more traffic from your audience as well.

   Reply
5. 

   Chitra Lekha

   December 15, 2012 at 11:32 am

   Really great post, it is 100% true. First don’t start a blog or website to make money. You should start because you love to write and share with others, eventually the money will come, but it takes awhile before you start earning.
   Thank you for posting this useful article.
   Chitra Lekha recently posted..Review of Swagbucks

   Reply
   • 

     mitz

     December 15, 2012 at 10:50 pm

     This can be true if you are lucky..but making money from writing also takes skill..I had great content from the minute I started my blog, I made sure of that, but the money didn’t come until I worked out how to get it.. What to promote, where to promote and when..

     Reply
     • 

       Chitra Lekha

       December 28, 2012 at 4:14 am

       thank you for your reply. its true, well said. To make money good content not only enough, where to and how to promote also very important!
       Chitra Lekha recently posted..How to avoid Money Transfer Scams

       Reply
6. 

   Fardeen

   December 14, 2012 at 2:24 am

   Nice piece of information Brankica. I think patience plays an important role here as no one can start make money from their new blogs.
   Fardeen recently posted..Totally Bonkers Memory Sticks

   Reply
7. 

   Chris

   December 5, 2012 at 3:05 pm

   Brankica, I think part of the solution is patience. Don’t try to sell to people straight away, get them to join a marketing list and then slowly introduce them to products, maybe after giving away some free tips or suggestions.
   Chris recently posted..How To Make A Great CV (dofollow)

   Reply
8. 

   Brenda Macalino

   December 5, 2012 at 4:14 am

   Hi there that was really cool information, I love to see this in here and to be honest I got something info in here..
   Brenda Macalino recently posted..דמיון מודרך

   Reply
9. 

   Juliana Lewis

   December 4, 2012 at 10:46 pm

   It is a good idea but somtimes getting the attention from people is always a problem.
   Juliana Lewis recently posted..HTC to Unvail Her 5-inch HTC Deluxe Smartphone

   Reply
10. 

    Fatima

    December 4, 2012 at 5:43 pm

    Honesty is the best policy in businesses and relationships. Credibility is earned with honesty. Great share.

    Reply
11. 

    Logan May

    December 4, 2012 at 5:47 am

    I am a newbie in online marketing, but I do understand the principles of online trust. Thank yuo for the article. When I write a review of someone else’s product, I give an honest opinion. What results I received from the product and how I used it. I expect the same reviews for my product.
    Logan May recently posted..Auction Buying

    Reply
12. 

    mich

    December 3, 2012 at 2:17 pm

    It’s a good idea to develop your understanding of your future reader and ideal customer first. That will help you write a more targeted ebook, and market it more effectively, too. It’s the right place to start!
    mich recently posted..Minka kelly Spandex

    Reply
13. 

    Richa

    December 3, 2012 at 2:05 pm

    Hey Brankica
    These are some excellent points you have shared here. Honesty always pays in business, this has been my personal experience. Loved your post. Thanks for the share.

    Reply
14. 

    Sienna Newman

    December 3, 2012 at 11:03 am

    I can highly agree to this article. Online reputation is essential to start making money from it. Forcing people to review your product is crazy. If your product was good enough to be talked about, then it will be talked about.

    Reply
15. 

    Maja

    December 3, 2012 at 3:07 am

    Online earning is not easy as the people consider. Many people round the world has left their jobs with the intention to earn online but soon they were back to 9 to 5 jobs as a lot of patience and consistency is required in this regard.
    Maja recently posted..Reasons for Short Haircuts

    Reply
16. 

    Brian

    December 2, 2012 at 4:08 pm

    I really like that last idea – “Why is [x] better than [y].” It helps a lot with SEO. You may have trouble ranking for a basic term like “[x] review,” but by comparing two products you create some long tail keywords that people are searching for. That’s what I did when I wrote about photography – the posts comparing two products or cameras were the most successful.
    Brian recently posted..National Survey Data on Tech Usage in Schools

    Reply
17. 

    D. Dixon

    December 1, 2012 at 5:37 pm

    You have made some great points and I have to admit, I’m working text links in my posts because I want to try monetizing. These are affiliate links from products I use and just LOVE or are liked by trusted advisors so I’m not just putting anything and everything on there. But I like your plan of guiding people through the process to a review site and then an affiliate. I’m actually planning a niche site around a program I use religiously and love (but have some issues with which I will raise) so this is helpful. Great post, Brankica!
    D. Dixon recently posted..How Reachli Helps You Monetize Your Pinterest Pins

    Reply
18. 

    Santosh

    December 1, 2012 at 5:39 am

    Excellent post. we use Adfly for advertising in experiments but never used it as a publisher. After reading this and your other post we shall be looking into it and running a few more experiments.

    Reply
19. 

    Jon

    November 30, 2012 at 7:00 pm

    Bang on correct. I love this model and it works for me. Killer review based on using and liking a product. Write tons of articles that lead to the review. Dead-simple and works like a charm.

    I’ll add that if you can, really demonstrate the product and how you use it. This way people get a real sense of it. Of course your feeder articles can do this as well, but the review itself should be a comprehensive resource.

    If you promote several products this way on your blog, you can consider creating different sidebars for each “product section” so that you can set up different navigation menus that provide links to key resources for each product. I’m doing this on one blog and it works really well.
    Jon recently posted..Themeforest Review Reveals Why This Customer Keeps Returning

    Reply
20. 

    Larry

    November 30, 2012 at 1:59 pm

    Brankica, this idea of preselling interesting. I’ve heard of review posts, but doing multiple approaches like you suggest, that sounds powerful. Are you a super affiliate?
    Larry recently posted..Passion Flower Tea

    Reply
21. 

    Steven Jude

    November 30, 2012 at 12:20 pm

    Pre-selling has been a very powerful concept used especially by sitebuildit users who follow the CPAM doctrine. It works like magic.Thanks for this post Brankica.
    Steven Jude recently posted..More Website Traffic from Higher Page Rank + Treatment for Anxiety Attacks

    Reply
22. 

    April

    November 30, 2012 at 12:49 am

    If you want to your readers to trust you, you need to be honest, especially in doing product reviews. I tried out a product from a review that I read months ago. It turned out to be very bad. Now, I don\\\’t read or believe anything that he writes again.
    April recently posted..REO Recruitment Website Copywriting

    Reply
23. 

    Andre Daniel

    November 29, 2012 at 9:20 pm

    Right on! There are so many mistakes newbie marketers make while trying their hand at internet/affiliate marketing because they think they have to take the approach as a sales person. People like to read something unbaised and or honest. It is so obvious, even to the visitor/customer when you are trying to sell them something and that is a turn off for sure. I always say approach your websites with the aim of being genuine. Aim to help, because the people who will eventually reach your page and read it are people just like you, who, when you’re not working on your website, are looking for information too. You are no different. The same way you feel when you are being a “visitor” on someone else’s website is how your own visitors feel. Don’t waste their time and be honest with them.

    Reply
24. 

    Adam

    November 29, 2012 at 6:10 pm

    I’m going to try to write a review post. I’ll see what that does. I’ve never written one before. Thanks for this great article.
    Adam recently posted..How to find a girlfriend

    Reply
25. 

    Sanjay

    November 29, 2012 at 10:07 am

    Another way of selling is giving away tutorials and techniques of using the software / product, show them the secret settings you uncover and link that to your review post. Thanks for the sales funnel method, I never thought to doing that
    Sanjay recently posted..20+ Free Responsive Themes Collection

    Reply
26. 

    Aasma

    November 29, 2012 at 6:05 am

    It’s true, by writing honest review about any product and service you’ll not only build trust and reputation for yourself but can also encourage people to buy good product/service from your site, which helps you to make money.
    Aasma recently posted..MLM Software Delhi Noida Gurgaon (dofollow)

    Reply
27. 

    sameer

    November 29, 2012 at 5:05 am

    Building trust is the most important and tedious task but once you are at that place people will follow you and will take whatever you put in their hands (product, product review etc).
    sameer recently posted..Zensar Weekend Drive for ASP.NET (4.0) Professionals on 8th December-2012

    Reply
    • 

      Steven Jude

      December 13, 2012 at 10:46 am

      What you say is so true. Once trust has been built, your readers are more willing to buy from you.
      Steven Jude recently posted..Moving PLR Articles 411

      Reply
28. 

    Tony Nguyen

    November 28, 2012 at 6:11 pm

    OMG! Brankica, you totally delight me a lot by this single post. I’m in stuck with how to do a better review page, and suddenly found this post. There’s a thunder pushing in my mind after reading it.
    I’m curious to apply my new ideas now.

    Thanks very much for your post!
    Tony Nguyen recently posted..Blogging with John Chow Review

    Reply
29. 

    Elena

    November 28, 2012 at 5:17 pm

    Building trust is extremely important when you are trying to establish a long-term business. I really like your idea of pre-selling: writing a review of the product you know very well. That is a good way to build trust with your readers and potential buyers of your product. I should try this idea on my site. Thanks for sharing!
    Elena recently posted..Discover Exciting Careers in Radiography

    Reply

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