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When you’ve been running a blog for a little while, you can use it to help boost your income in other ways. Lots of bloggers make money from ads, writing sponsored content, affiliate links and selling courses related to their expertise. If you’re not keen on taking this route (or perhaps you are already doing these things and looking for an additional income stream), you can use your creativity to sell tangible and digital products,
One way of using your blog to help get your products seen, is to let your audience know you’re branching out. Regular readers who have an interest in your site and what you do might want to support you by buying your products.
Having an audience isn’t the only way your blog can help you sell creative products. The knowledge you’ve gained from promoting your blog is easily transferable to promoting your products. Social media and Pinterest marketing are great ways to drive sales for creative products, you just need to think about what you’ve like to sell.
Creative Products Your Blog Could Help You Sell
Once you’ve decided to branch out into selling products, it’s time to think about exactly what it is you might like to sell. Would you want to make something yourself at home? Would you prefer to sell a digital product? Perhaps your blog has a community around it and creating merch would do well. Whatever you choose to sell, do your research first.
Sell Homeware
If your blog has a lifestyle element, then homeware might be a great selling option for you. Consider what sort of things your audience would respond best to. Would your readers buy classy plates, or would they prefer a funny slogan on a mug?
If you choose to create something like a mug, you’ll want to display it in the best way possible. A mock up photo is a great way to show what your product should look like, without having to invest in lots of different permutations of the product. Mock up photos can display your product in a ‘real life’ situation.
For example, a coffee cup can be displayed next to a plate of pastries. This way of displaying products has a great impact. It makes them look like they are in use and allows potential customers to think about what the product might look like if it was part of their life.
Consider Blog Merch
If your blog has a community surrounding it, merch might be worth looking into. People like to feel like they’re part of something, so if you have a well-known blog that has a group or movement as part of it, selling blog merchandise is the next natural step.
The obvious place to start is with T-shirts, and if they go down well, consider branching out into hoodies, bags and accessories.
You might want to create a mockup logo for your merch so members of you community can spot is easily and recognise other supporters.
Make and Sell Handmade Items
If you’re a little bit crafty, it seems a shame to waste your talents. Why not look at making products to sell? You could list them in a ‘shop’ section of your website or an online handmade marketplace. Showing ‘behind the scenes’ types of articles about how you make the products you sell could also bring extra traffic to your site.
Sell Digital Illustration Products
Selling digital products such as illustrations or digital prints can be very lucrative. They don’t require you to store stock anywhere and they can be sold over and over again. You only have to create the product once, and it can be purchased and downloaded an infinite number of times. This can be a very lucrative passive income, providing your products get seen by the right people.
Your can feature your products on your blog, and even offer a bespoke service for customers. Do a little research around what sort of digital illustrations sell well and whether your style of drawing is popular.
If you choose to sell on marketplace-type websites, make it clear the art is just for download and they will need to print it themselves. It might work to your advantage if you research how to use SEO effectively for that selling platform. Each selling platform will work using a different algorithm and it;s important for sales to get your work seen. SEO (search engine optimisation) will help you make your listing ‘friendly’ for the internal search engine that platform uses to bring up search results. The words you use to describe your listing play an important part in making sales.
You could try selling a few different things before settling on what is most profitable for your business. It’s important to pay attention to what turns your readers into customers before investing a lot of time on something that won’t.