By Adam Ward
Most people are passionate about something. Call it a hobby, or an addiction, or whatever. But it is something they spend a lot of time, energy and money on. Think about your passion for a minute. Now wouldn’t it be nice for you to actually make a little money from your passion, to offset what you spend on it? Maybe you could even develop it into a full-time career. Although it will take a lot of work, there has never been a better time to make money from your passion, thanks to the abundance of free, easy-to-use tools on the Internet. Here are three steps to get you started.
First, start blogging about your passion. Think about it—where do you currently get information about your hobby? Probably the Internet. How many blogs do you read where you think, “I know more about this than the blogger does.”? Starting a blog is as easy as creating an account on Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. You’ll want to make sure you have the flexibility of putting ads on your blog, though, so I suggest buying a domain (e.g. unicycleexpertadvice.com) and a hosting account from GoDaddy (less than $10 a month), and then installing Wordpress from within GoDaddy (it is free and easy to do).
Second, once you’ve got some posts on your blog, put up some ads. This is easier than it sounds. Think about the companies that sell products you use, would recommend, or might be blogging about. Go to their websites and search for “affiliate.” A lot of times you’ll see a link at the bottom of the page called Affiliate Program. That refers to you joining their affiliate marketing program (i.e. you become their affiliate), which is just a funny way of saying you’ll run their ads on your blog. If they run an “in-house” program, you’ll need to submit your blog information with them so they can accept you into the program. If they run their program through an affiliate network, such as Commission Junction or Share a Sale, they’ll require you to submit your blog information to those networks. Either way, there will be no cost to you. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be given some html code that you have to copy to your blog. That places the ad on your blog, and includes a script that tracks people clicking through your ad. Whether in-house or via a network, the program will track click-throughs and sales, so you get credit for (and paid a commission on) those sales.
Third, use CRM software to manage your efforts. CRM stands for customer relationship management, and is useful for recording contact information of people you are (or would like to be) doing business with, logging communications you have with them, and scheduling your tasks and follow-ups. There are a lot of CRM companies out there, but a few have a free tier, including freecrm.com, sugarcrm.com and esilverbullet.com, which is designed specifically for online publishers.
Before my dad retired, he sold pet food for his living. He once told me he knew more about dog food than anyone in our state. Had he been a blogger, you can imagine how useful his blog would have been for all the dog owners out there. And you can imagine how eager the dog-food companies would have been to place their ads on his blog. If you know more about something than most people do, you could create the same situation for yourself by blogging about it and placing relevant ads on your site.
