If making money from your blog is a goal of yours, then you’re most likely utilizing affiliate links in some form or another. Are you using them in a way that will help you maximize earnings? If you look around top-earning bloggers’ sites, you’ll notice that they use their affiliate links very strategically and for good reason — it’s a (sometimes) big chunk their income! You can also learn a lot from browsing other sites to see how they’re working in more affiliate links to make more money and try a few of those things! Just remember, that what works for one blogger, may not work for you, so keep trying new things, testing and tweaking until you find a sweet spot.

Here’s a few tips on using affiliate links more strategically throughout your site so that you can maximize your earnings!

1. List All Products in One Place

This could be towards the top of the page, or at the very bottom, but it’s smart to have a designated place to put all product links from the post in one place. Keep it consistent each time you post so that readers know where to look for them and are more likely to shop! I always add my links to the bottom of the post because that’s how I shop. I read through the story, look at all the pictures and by the end, I’ve made the decision whether or not I want to get more information on a product or actually buy it. Having them at the bottom is easier than having to scroll all the way back up to the top to find what you’re looking for. This works really well for style or editorial posts, product round-ups, or other posts where you’re showing off a variety of products in the images.

2. Link Within Your Copy

This seems like a no-brainer, but I actually used to forget to do this. Linking to the products within the copy while you’re talking about them just gives readers another opportunity to easily click through and purchase. You can also link to other products within the copy that aren’t directly related, but still relevant. For example, ‘I love this outfit and I’d also wear this skirt with boots like these!’ and link to a pair of boots you’d wear them with too.

3. Link to Product Categories

Did you know that with RewardStyle and ShopSense you can do this? Rather than linking to one product specifically, you can link to a category of products like ‘skinny jeans’ or ‘winter coats’. I mention random articles of clothing like this frequently and love using links like these! You have to link to a category within a specific retailer though, so know what converts well for you and select that retailer!

4. Link to Retailers’ Homepage

You can also link directly to a retailer! This is great for in-copy links as well as a sidebar item where you list out your favorite places to shop. Do note that it’s better to keep this list shorter than to list every single place. Readers are more likely to click when there are less options!

5. Use Widgets

Some people like to read and some people like to look. Utilizing widgets from affiliate networks that pull in images into carousels (I use these) is a great way to satisfy your more visual readers. It’s smart to have both so that you don’t miss out on any potential sales! You can also use widgets in the sidebar or footer of your site to highlight specific products.

You may have noticed the latest addition to The Fox & She — a category called List15. I use the same format each week to share 15 products. They’re not all affiliate links, but I’ve seen a lot of success with this! How else do you use affiliate links within your site? I’d love to hear!

Have you ever installed a new plugin that pulls thumbnails from posts and after making it go live, noticed that all the images are squished ? Or maybe you’ve installed a new theme that pulls your featured images and the images are now showing up distorted.

It can be incredibly frustrating when you’ve added some cool functionality to your site and it doesn’t work like you thought. The good news is, there’s an easy way to fix these images and works almost every time!

Go to Plugins > Add New and search for the plugin called ‘Regenerate Thumbnails‘ and install and activate it. Once installed, you can go to ‘Tools’ > ‘Regenerate Thumbnails’ to pull up the panel. Click the button that says ‘Regenerate All Thumbnails’ and wait on this page until all are done. Depending on how long you’ve been blogging or how many images you have, this can be a quick process or a long one. I typically wait until the end of the day to do this and let it run overnight.

Refresh your blog after it’s done and those images should be fixed. If not, try clearing your browser history and cache and relaunching it. If you’re still seeing problems, it might be a theme or plugin issue and you’ll need to then contact the creator of the theme or plugin for more help.

Hope the helps solve some problems for ya!

A few years ago I had someone ask me to send them a media kit. I responded with ‘sure thing!’ then whipped up a pretty crappy one. Since then, I’ve redesigned it into a one-pager that’s more informative and gives brands a quick overview of what my site is all about!

If you don’t already have a media kit, it’s time to build one. Thankfully they’re pretty easy to put together, it’s just a matter of knowing what to include in there. There’s no set formula because every site is different and has different things they’ll want to show off, but here’s a few things to definitely include in your blog’s media kit!

1. Names and URL

You’d be surprised, but a lot of times people forget to put their name or their URL on there. Make sure you have not only the name of your blog, but also your name — it makes it more personal. And please, please don’t forget your url!

2. About Section

Tell brands a little bit about you and your blog. Including things like where you live, your target audience, your posting habits and topics are all great.

3. The Numbers

Include your monthly page views and unique visitors based off of your Google Analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics installed, go do that immediately! If you have any other unique statistics, feel free to include them. A few examples would be a unique target audience, global readership or a mostly female/male audience.

Include your social media numbers as well. If you have a few that you’re not super proud of, you can always give a growth percentage. This is especially great if you’re a new or small blogger. It can show brands that you’re growing quickly and there’s potential with that!

4. Past Partnerships

Listing out past partnerships or sponsored collaborations is a great way for brands to get an idea of what you can do for them.

5. Ways to Work Together

Sometimes it’s easier to list out a few different ways that you like to work with brands so narrow things down and make the conversations easier. You can also include pricing here if you want to avoid those awkward money conversations.

I build my media kit in Adobe’s InDesign, but if you don’t have that, a good ole Word Doc will work just fine! Making your media kit linkable is also helpful! You can do this with a Word Doc or PDF and makes it easy for brands to see your site, social platforms and any past work you’ve done.

What else do you include in your media kit that makes you stand out?

A few weeks ago I talked about nine different ways to get more sponsored posts for your blog, and today we’re talking about yet another way! If you have a big social media audience on Instagram, you should probably consider taking advantage of it. Instagram is exploding and has been a great way for brands to get in front of huge audiences in a way that’s very authentic.

So how do you come up with a rate for Instagram? Navigating the world of fees and rates is a confusing one, but here’s an easy way to calculate your rate for an Instagram post that’s based off facts and a big thanks to my friend Jenn for breaking down what the heck CPM means!

CPM means the cost to reach one thousand people. An average CPM for a sponsored post is anywhere from $5 to $10. On average, I’d say that asking for about $7 is a good place to start. If you have really high engagement, you could probably justify a higher CPM, or if you’re smaller or working with a brand that doesn’t have a big budget, explaining that they can reach 1,000 people for $5 can definitely give you more leverage and help you get more sponsorships.

Let’s break it down with an example. To make things easy, let’s say you have 10,000 followers on Instagram. Divide that by 1,000 and multiply that number by either 5, 7, or 10 to get your rate.

• $50 per post at a $5/CPM
• $70 per post at $7/CPM
• $100 per post at $10/CPM

It might seem lower than you were hoping for, but it at least gives you a realistic idea of what to expect and what brands may be expecting to pay. As you grow, you can definitely change your rates to fit your audience size and reach. Hope that helps!

P.S. You can also use this formula for coming up with your blog post rate. Just add your social following and monthly unique visitors (not page views). Take that number and divide it by 1,000 and multiply it by the CPM rate you decide on (5, 7, or 10).

As bloggers, all of us are always aiming to boost our blog’s traffic, pageviews and uniques visitors. If you don’t already have Google Analytics installed, stop reading this and go do it now. If you need a tutorial, I did one a while back that’s easy to follow and will get you set up. Then come back to this post in a week or so because the rest of this post has to do with analyzing the data that’s been collecting over a few weeks, months or even years.

So if you do have it installed, let’s talk about how you can use it to your advantage!
You probably already know that it tracks your page views and unique visitors, and these are two of the most important things! Brand and PR companies will often inquire about these two numbers, but do you know what mean?

Pageviews refers to the number of pages that were seen in a month, while uniques refers to how many individual, unique people came to your site. Think about it in simple terms. Let’s say 100 different people visit your site each month, and they each click through and view 10 pages. Your unique visits would be 100 and your pageviews would be 1,000. Make sense?

So how can you use the data from Google Analytics to boost your traffic?! The answer is lots of ways! If you start poking around on different items on the tab, you’ll find some interesting stuff. If you click on Attribution > Referrals you can see where the majority of your traffic is currently coming in from. For me, the majority of my referrals come from Pinterest. So I make sure to spend extra time on Pinterest knowing that I get a lot of visits from there. I can also see other areas that are brining in traffic and change up my social strategy to better utilize those. I get a fair amount of traffic from Facebook and Twitter, but I don’t have a huge following on either of them, so lately, I’ve been focusing on growing those. You might also notice that things you’ve been really working hard at aren’t bringing in the traffic you hoped for and if that’s the case, it might be time to change your strategy a bit!

If you look under Page Breakdown you can see which posts and pages are getting hit the most.I think this is particularly cool to see because I’m always surprised by which posts are the most popular or have the longest life. I used to assume that my outfit posts were the favorites, but it’s actually my content that’s more personal or provides readers with something useful, so I’ve been trying to work in more of that type of content. If you can figure out what your audience wants and give it to them, you’re traffic will start to grow!

Don’t be scared to try out new types of content and different strategies. Thankfully with a blog, nothing is set in stone! You can always go back to what you were doing before or try more new things. It’s all about learning what your audience wants and catering to them.

It can be a bit of a process and can involve some trial and error, but I’ve found that it pays off in the long run! How do you use your statistics and data from Google Analytics to tailor your blogging strategy?

image via