Filling Your Blogging Basket: Adding an Online Store

*This is a guest post 

When you are planning a blog, and making sure that it’s a formidable way to earn some form of income, you may want to start incorporating components that will prop up your blog and help you earn. The world of blogging is unpredictable. Traffic can go up and down, sometimes affiliate links won’t convert as we would want, and attempting to acquire sponsored opportunities results in a dead-end. When you are attempting to diversify your income, an online shop can be a great way to build a relationship with your followers while selling a product. Creating multiple income streams is not easy, but adding an online shop to your blog can be a perfect way to sell physical or digital products to readers of your blog. But how do we do this effectively?

Understand Your Audience

Whether you have an idea of what you are going to be selling or not, it all depends on who your readers are. You may think that it’s best to diversify your efforts by choosing a wide variety of products, but the cardinal sin of marketing in this respect is you are hedging your bets on so many different outcomes that it will not earn you any kudos from your audience. You’ve got to understand your audience inherently. You need to figure out their buying habits and the things that they are interested in. But above all, you’ve got to make sure that it is tied in with your blog.

When you are promoting something, it can be incredibly spammy if you are focused on health and lifestyle but tech or business products are what you sell. And you may very well be working with a supplier of certain products because you need the money, but you’ve got to ask yourself if you are chasing the money or the readership? Bloggers need to be transparent upfront about if they earn a commission from any affiliate links. But as someone who is promoting a product on your website, does it align with your beliefs?

But more importantly, does it align with your audience’s beliefs? If someone doesn’t like what you’re doing, they will soon click away. Understand who your audience is and if they are your type of people. It’s simple, but when we become all about the money, a lot of this can go out the window.

Focus on Customer Service and Relationships

Customer service is a term that can seem somewhat stuffy. But the great thing is if you are running a blog where you are in charge of the products that go out to your readership but you are also looking after the content, you have complete control over the situation. Therefore, customer service doesn’t necessarily have to be about soft skills and selling tactics that are stereotypically associated with running a business. Incorporating an online store means having a whole host of other responsibilities.

The difference between an online store and affiliate sales is you are getting a passive income with affiliate marketing. When you incorporate a store, there are so many things that you can add to your website to automate to make life easier, such as a chatbot. But customer service is something you cannot skimp on. There are so many things you can incorporate onto your website to make life easier, and click4assistance shows how to add a chatbot to your website, as well as other website builders that can show you how to create a consistent brand that links in with your blog. But if you are lax in your customer service, it becomes personal. Your readership will begin to have a lesser opinion of you. And this can be painful when we are working hard to put out good quality content.

The best thing you can do is to get into the right habits of keeping your customers happy, but that’s not to say you need to cater to their every whim. While it is an oft-used expression that the customer is always right, if you are putting so much effort into pleasing one customer, you’ve got to learn where to draw the line. Part of this comes with experience, but also there are numerous guides online to help you know when to walk away from a customer that is bringing you down. Ultimately, if you learn how to keep your customers happy without compromising your beliefs and just checking your messages regularly, you will be doing enough.

Learning the Best Ways to Drive Traffic

Blogs are a wonderful way to naturally promote products. And when you have a blog with an online store, you may have already built up a sizable following on social media due to your content. When your online store is set up, you’ve got to create some buzz on social media. If you’ve already chosen the theme correctly and given thought to the audience and branding, there will be people already interested. This would be your existing audience, and you can generate “warm traffic” because you already have a connection with them. But if you want to start diversifying your efforts, choosing social media wisely in conjunction with the appropriate promotional tactics suitable for your products and brands is vital.

You may very well be able to get a good amount of blog traffic from Facebook, but now you may have seen the figures tapering off. In which case, is it now time to go towards Instagram? There’s a lot to be said for generating followers through Instagram. While it’s not as widely used as Facebook, it is still within the top 3 social media marketing tools. But when it comes to promoting products, have you given thought to Pinterest? As stores and e-commerce are all about images of products, Pinterest pages lend themselves far better to general promotion.

Have Other Streams of Income

It is important to remember that when you set up an online store, it can take some time to generate consistent revenue. As a blogger, it is so important to have a wide variety of income streams. You shouldn’t throw affiliate marketing out just yet! The best approach is to set up an additional online venture, but only when your online store is fully functional. When you create an online store, you need to consider what else you can run alongside it. When you are promoting a certain type of product on your blog and you are running a very niche type of blog, such as health and fitness, this is when you can start to reach out to other fitness and health-oriented brands. This works in your favour when you start to build up your influence.

It’s vital to start researching the brands that you could reach out to. It all depends on your influencer stance, especially on Instagram. There are numerous types of influencers, and it’s important to know what your stance is right now. This means that you won’t be overreaching your capabilities. As your online store begins to gain traction in conjunction with your blog, you can start to tailor the content accordingly. In this respect, you’re killing two birds with one stone. If you have a specialty in creating health-oriented content, it works so well when you start to work with a provider of a product that is exclusively catering to that type of audience. For example, for people who are approaching middle-age and are concerned about their own health, a very natural product for you to incorporate would be something like glucosamine, MSM, and chondroitin, which isn’t necessarily a widespread product in the real world, but can pique the interests of an individual who is looking to gain control over their bone health.

It can take time to consolidate brand, blog, product, and online store, but you have to be consistent in your overall message. If you have a fervent passion for something, this is what will help you in the long run. Having numerous revenue streams is not easy, but it is the best way to generate real profit and expand your online influence. Many people are now embracing the “slash” way of life, where they are not just working one job, but are embracing a wide variety of duties in order to keep financially afloat. And a store tied in with your blog is a great starting point.

If you are looking to build a relationship with your audience and make an income at the same time, an online store is an essential component. Many bloggers have started to do this as a way to earn extra money. But it’s important that when you are building a relationship with an audience that it’s not a one-sided thing. You need to put in the effort. You will soon realise that when you incorporate an online store, it’s way beyond the passive approach of affiliate marketing that you genuinely have to build up a rapport with your readership because they are your customers as well as your readership. It’s not enough to have a blog with a large readership anymore. Every blogger is now having to become more business-minded. Setting up a store is the natural evolution of the blogging world, and it’s time for you to begin.