Spreadshirt: My Newest Passive Income Stream & How You Can Earn Too!

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Spreadshirt: My Newest Passive Income Stream & How You Can Earn Too! Posted: 15 Nov 2014 11:51 AM PST Have you ever heard of print on demand (P.O.D.) affiliate programs? You create a free store, upload images, add them to shirts, buttons, hats, and other merchandise. You set your own markups and that becomes your commission when products are sold. The companies do all the printing and shipping, you just collect your commissions. Well, I just switched from Zazzle to Spreadshirt and increased my earnings by about 300%. My average commission per shirt sold is between $7 and $9.  You can see my store here. There are four reasons this payment excites me… First of all, it reminds me of the opportunities available online and I wanted to do this podcast to help give you ideas — especially those of you who are in niches where there are not a lot of monetization options. People LOVE wearing shirts that allow them to express themselves. (Not to mention the selfies they may take, which can mean even more promotion for you!) The key is the sayings and designs.  You really have to know what your audience would like. I’ve found people like shirts that… promote social awareness display pride are comedic or fun include a play on words or well-known phrases have a good design It’s a lot of trial and error.  Some shirts are instant hits for me, others are straight up bombs! The second reason I’m pumped about this is I’m not much of a designer. So the fact that someone like me can open up Photoshop, take my basic knowledge of the program and create a design that sells makes me feel good.  I create some designs myself and outsource others. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to know Photoshop or any graphics program to make money.  I’ll be talking about five other options. But if you want to learn, my course will make it easier than you’ve ever imagined.) Third, it’s fun! There’s something incredibly rewarding about knowing I can have an idea for a shirt, create something in 10 minutes and put it up for sale immediately.  Gotta love the convenience of the Internet! And last but not least…when you have a site with traffic, the income can be very passive. The only direct promotion I’ve done for my shirts was putting a few out on Pinterest.  Other than that,  I am driving all the traffic to my store from links and images on my site and forum. About 70% of the sales were generated from my direct referrals from the site. The other 30% came from the Spreadshirt marketplace. So people can sell my designs from their stores, and I get to set my own commission. (This is optional if you don’t want others to sell your shirts.) Imagine if I had used social media more (other than Pinterest).  I probably would sell a lot more.  I admittedly slack in that area, and because of that, my following is not very engaged.   So I haven’t really tested anything beyond Pinterest. But if you do have an engaged social following, there’s a lot of opportunity there. In the podcast, I discuss a YouTube channel I follow and how the owner uses social media to generate more sales for his Spreadshirt store. Check out the podcast below. Here’s the transcript. In This Episode Why I’m earning so much more from Spreadshirt than I did with Zazzle How you can earn money from the Spreadshirt marketplace without direct sales to your store 5 different ways to get designs/images for your store (no graphics program needed) How to get a discount on my new Photoshop course that includes a video on how to create images for the shirts How I got scammed by a designer from 99Designs and a warning about outsourcing The trick to maximizing your commission per shirt Why I’m OK (for now) with using P.O.D. affiliate stores instead of selling shirts directly without the middleman A clever way a YouTube duo is using social media to get more sales for their store Teespring – another P.O.D. alternative that has caught on Show Notes: My Spreadshirt Store My Photoshop course that includes one video on how to create the shirts (text and shapes only) in Photoshop Honest and educational article about a woman who made money with Teespring in the nursing niche Read the transcript You May Also Enjoy... ClickBank: I Make Nothing, So it Must Be a Scam Popular URL Shorteners For Redirecting & Tracking Affiliate Links 6 Noteworthy Lessons I’ve Learned as a Full-Time Affiliate Marketer A Cool Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin Why Some Blogs Don’t Convert With Affiliate Marketing

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7 Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Next Blog Post

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7 Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Next Blog Post Posted: 03 Nov 2014 04:00 AM PST 1) Turn Shareworthy Quotes Into Images This is a way to capitalize on the fact that people love to share quotes. Every now and then I check what images people are sharing from my sites.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, you simply log in to Pinterest and go to… yourdomain.com/source/yoursite.com Anyway, I just noticed the post I did over the summer called 21 Truths About Earning Online People Ignore got a lot more shares and traffic from Pinterest than most posts do here. So what did I do differently? Glad you asked! I used the image quote strategy.  This is where you take a key point or quote in your post and turn it into an image.   Here’s a screenshot of all the quotes that were shared on Pinterest… You can use sites like ShareAsImage, Quozio or ReciteThis. To be honest, I didn’t really have Pinterest traffic in mind when I was creating the images. (Even though I should have!) I was just trying to break up an insanely long post by using more visuals! In this particular example, many of the quotes weren’t directly related to my business.  Some were just inspirational.  So to make this even more effective, you would tie the quotes to your site’s topic. Maybe you have a post that discusses 15 ways to incorporate more veggies into your diet. Each item would have a small image with a tip or quote that summed up the tip. 2) Use ClicktoTweet ClickToTweet lets you set up a “tweet-able” text link with ease. I used this tool when I gave away an ebook and it worked really well — even better than the regular Twitter button on the page! I like the way Nathalie used it in her email strategies post titled Writing Emails That Get Results. She took a key quote from her post and used that for her clicktotweet link… One reason I believe this works well is there’s a call-to-action that reminds people to share. The other key is to make sure the text is something that is shareworthy. 3) Display Data in Interesting Ways Darren, one of my loyal forum members, shared this link not too long ago.  And thanks to him, I wound up spending waaaaay too much time digging up some of my favorite show episodes, both old and new.  (Thanks, Darren!) The site lets you look up ANY TV show listed in IMDB to view how popular the episodes are in relation to one another.  And you can hover over the dots to see what episode is represented. The seasons are color-coded so you can easily tell them apart. As you can see below, the Cosby show really fell off the radar in the 8th season.  Little Rudy was no longer little and I guess people didn’t find Cousin Pam as interesting.   Anyway, my point is I love how the site found a way to display data in a more interesting way. Obviously this is an advanced example that requires some database work, but you can do this on a much smaller scale too. Here’s another example of a blog that lists 74 clever titles that get attention.  The visual representation of the headline ideas is much more appealing than a text post with 74 titles written down the page.  I guarantee more people shared that post because of the image. 4) Write More Odd-Numbered List Posts! It never fails.  Every time I write a list post that starts with a number, the open and click-thrus are always higher than average. And if you follow me on social media, you may remember my “odd tip” from a few months ago.  Studies show that when you create a list post, use an odd number instead of a round number like 10 or 20. This article explains that odd numbers suggest the items in the list have been carefully selected by value instead of just adding trivial items to round the article out to 10 or 20 items. We’ve all been there where we’re trying to add one or two more items on a list just to make it to 10 or 20, right?  Well forget it.  Just play the odds. 5) Weigh In on a Hot or Controversial Topic Did a major player in your niche just make a big move?  Is there controversy brewing over something going on? Write a blog post with your response.  People love to weigh in on big news items, especially if there is controversy or shock involved. A recent example would be Copyblogger’s decision to completely DELETE their Facebook page.  So many bloggers decided to weigh in with their own opinions and they really did get people talking in the blogosphere! Here are a couple of my favorite articles… Copyblogger Deletes Its Facebook Page, Darren Rowse Creates a Second (What Does This Mean For You?) What Copyblogger Could Have Done With Its Facebook Page  6) Use a Proven Headline Strategy I really love studying the psychology of marketing.  I find it fascinating. Courtney Sieter shares 8 headline strategies and explains why they work. I’ve used most of them and agree with her points. She also mentions another reason why the number strategy works well.  It has to do with setting expectations, and I’d never heard that explanation before.  Makes sense though! Click here to be enlightened by her article. 7) Mention & Tag This is a popular strategy utilized throughout social media, especially in the blogging space.  It’s where you  mention certain people in a blog post and then tag them when you share the content on social media so they are notified. Often times those you mention will share the post with their followers too. This is a good strategy, but make sure your post is actually shareworthy — especially if you’re mentioning people with large followings. Someone like Chris Brogan is not just going to share every post he gets mentioned in. But if you put some thought into what write and come up with a good headline or response to something they’ve written, you never know what could happen.  Also, having a genuine relationship with that person helps too. It’s always obvious when someone is trying to capitalize on your following, but if you genuinely connect with people regularly, they’re more likely to pay attention to your mentions. Relationships are the backlinks of today! You May Also Enjoy... “Why is it So Dang Hard to Make Money Online Today?” How to Use Contests to Build Traffic and Relationships How Interviews Quadrupled David’s Traffic Quick Tip for Frustrated Newbies Lisa’s Website Traffic “Secret” [Video]

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