Blogging and How it Influences E-Commerce
Blogging is a method of giving your opinion in writing about something. Most add a blog to their website regularly, at least twice per month. Until your e-commerce brand or company becomes a household name everyone is familiar with, you need to advertise. You cannot sit back and expect significant traffic to come to your site just because you have a great product.
Successful blogs include links to high authority websites to add validity to your point of view (POV). By adding a clickable link to another high authority website, you are showing the reader that “experts” agree with your POV. Plus, the more high authority links you have to and from your websites the higher your page will rank on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engine results pages (SERPS). SERPs are what comes up when you type in a search parameter into a search engine, such as Google.
Let’s say you want to know how you can get great delivery pizza close to the hotel you are staying in. You type in “where can I get pizza delivered near me?” When you click enter, a page comes up with a list of places. The first few on the page with a little green box with the word Ad in it are Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or paid ads.
Every item on the list after that are free “organic” or SEO ads. After Google or another search engine ranks a website for search engine optimization (SEO), it places those businesses on the SERPs based on relevancy. The more relevant the ad is to your search, based on keywords, backlinks, and several other algorithms, the higher it is placed on the SERP.
Some people, without the knowledge or time to do all the steps it takes to manage a website, hire a digital marketing agency to handle SEO. After all, how many of us are SEO specialists, Amazon specialists, backlink creators, YouTube specialists, and all the other specialists necessary to get attention on social media?
What Is E-Commerce?
E-commerce is buying and selling products and services on the Internet. Personal e-commerce is setting up a website to sell products and services through a method known as drop shipping.
“Drop shipping” is a method of selling products that are not yours. You advertise the product on your website and provide a link to the product where the reader can click and buy the product, such as from Amazon, though there are other companies who provide drop shipping. Amazon does all the shipping and customer service relations between the seller and the buyer, arranges the shipment, and collects the payment and taxes where necessary.
Amazon then gives the e-commerce site owner a predetermined percentage of the selling price as a commission. This method is convenient for anyone to sell online without having to buy products, store inventory, or even arrange shipping. Therefore, with a small initial expense, you can start an online business.
Product Reviews & Affiliate Marketing
A brilliant method of blogging about your products is by writing reviews and comparing your e-commerce product to others. Before buying a product, many people check reviews of the product. Usually, if a large number of people are satisfied with the product, shipping, and customer service received, it will make the product more appealing to new buyers.
Plus, affiliate marketing is an excellent way to make money from your blog. You sign up as an affiliate with various companies who give you a portion of the sale. Then place ads in the sidebar of your blog, which can net you a percentage of the purchase of your readers. In many cases, you won’t even need to make a sale, as some companies pay you based on the number of visitors from your site.
Realistically, blogging and affiliate marketing will normally not make a significant amount of money for its creator. Scott Rosenberg, author of the book Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters stated in a NY Times article, Ad Shift Throws Blogs a Business Lifeline, “Outside of a few examples, I think people way overestimated the amount of ad revenue that was there for the taking for blogging as a business.”
Despite that, the combination of blogging, e-commerce, and affiliate marketing can help dedicated small business owners make money online with an e-commerce store but without a substantial initial outlay for inventory and storage.
