How to Make Residual Income with Instructional Blogs!
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Last year when Palm Pre the smartphone came out to the market, I happened to be one of the first to get it, also I registered PalmPre-Hacks.com. Well, for me, making blogs is fun but also it’s a way to make “residual income”.
Making money with blogs is hardly a new concept for me but while making the Palm Pre Hacks blog, I’ve begun to realize something, that is you can make very easy residual income with instructional blogs.
What I did basically with the Palm Pre Hacks blog is to write-up very detailed instructions on how to use your Palm Pre as a WiFi router by installing an aftermarket WiFi app.
But the instructions weren’t mine, I basically followed someone else’s instructions, which is also linked on my blog post with credits to the right people. What is different with my blog post versus the instructions I used to make the blog post is that I’ve added “step-by-step” directions so even a 4th grader can understand, plus I uploaded a bunch of videos outlining the highlights of the instructions. (You can also read up on viral YouTube videos, how to drive YouTube traffic to blogs, and see my viral Palm Pre Hacks video here.)
After making couple blog posts about the Palm Pre, the “viralness” was pretty amazing as people/bloggers linked to many of the blog posts I wrote, even Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress, linked to my post about how to install a Wordpress on your Palm Pre. That kind of links were unexpected but of course, I was exhilarated. The weirdest thing happened also, I actually met Matt for the first time couple months later by random at San Francisco airport!
Anyways, the point is that there’s a ton of instructional blogs you can make including about home loans, credit repair, home repair, plumbing, and a whole lot more.
The key is to write great “step-by-step” instructions that actually work and people can follow it.
If you can do that, you won’t have to worry so much about SEO. I find that somehow people find your content through Google and other search engines.
Another thing I’ve realized is that once you make this instructional blog with about a dozen great articles, you don’t need to keep making more blog post, the web traffic levels grow by themselves because you have so much (great) content. Plus, when you write such a “focused niche” articles, your Adsense earnings tend to be higher because your content is so targetted.
They key is that if you can make a bunch of these types of blogs, you could possibly making enough residual income to quit your job or earn extra money to buy a new car or a home.
I am sure everyone is an “expert” on something, I don’t care what it is, you should make some blogs and earn residual income on it. Of course, the point of this blog post is that even if you are not an “expert” on something, you can still make instructional blogs by actually learning something new yourself.
How can you apply this to Affiliate Marketing or Clickbank?
You can probably find a TON of items that you can use as affiliate links on your instructional blogs. For example, I put some Amazon widgets up on the Palm Pre blog, which converts amazingly well.
OR, you can write a instructional blog that teaches you how to get a second mortgage on your house. Then at the end, you can “refer” bunch of more great Clickbank Mortgage HOWTO E-books. (The main point is that you give out the information for free, don’t sell it. After that, you can refer other items that people can purchase. If people try your instructions and they like it, the viralness and word-of-mouth marketing is explosive than you can ever imagine, and why I am making a blog post about it now.
The possibilities are endless.
Recently, I have also made Nexus One Hacks Blog, which is similar to the Palm Pre Hacks blog. Not as successful as the Palm Pre blog but still growing by itself since day one.
No money is spent on SEO, PPC marketing, but just your time for writing-up a “dummie’s guide” on a topic is required.
I like these kind of projects because they are relatively low-risk. If you do well, it’s 99% profit, if you don’t do well, you can try another topic.
Even this blog itself, is probably instructional. I didn’t really give you step-by-steps though, maybe I will if enough people want it, leave comments!
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March 30th, 2010 at 5:26 am
I like your “residual” ideas..Now I realized if we have creative mind like yours, any thing is possible.
July 25th, 2010 at 4:47 am
Hey interesting video & article,
especially as I myself had recently reached the opposite conclusion ! I have a couple of instructional blogs, one focussed on blogging, the other on computer repairs. The computer repair blog being about 18 months old & the other about 10 months. Now although both sites are growing steadily I have found that no matter what I seem to put in the sidebar to try and tempt a click or a sale, it does not seem to be effective. Obviously I gave this some considerable thought & then after a couple of days I hit upon the notion that perhaps people that search for information & are therebye landing on & using instructional blogs, are not doing so clutching a wad of cash or fist full of credit cards ! This would explain why I seem to experience minimum sales from these two sites.
If you think about it, a person looking for the best place to buy a cheap camera etc is very likely in the frame of mind to buy, but the person looking solely for information usually is not expecting to have to pay for it.
Be intereted to hear your thoughts on this ..?
Regards Steve
July 30th, 2010 at 12:27 am
Well, I think you just need to spend more time to think of a good affiliate product. For example, I sell a ton of screen protectors on my HTCEvoHacks.com, where I write instructional blog posts on how to hack the phone.
For computer repair, I would “test” the waters with a bunch of products from Amazon first, if you find one that works, go find another affiliate program that pays you more than 10% commission. You also need to stick with real products, not gimmicky products. People won’t buy products you probably wouldn’t want to buy. Just be honest, find a good product, and also find one that pays you higher commissions.
Also traffic is concern, you would need to bring at least 1000 uniques to your blog. Anything less is hard to sell plus you don’t get enough data. Hope that helps.