The official definition is anyone with 1,000 to 100,000. followers. So if you are even somewhat active on any social media platform chances are you probably qualify as a “Micro” influencer. So even if you don’t spend all of your time on your phone and live your life through your posts the posts that you do make people probably pay attention to. More and more companies are finding that influencers with smaller audiences are more closely connected to their audience and are much more likely to follow your recommendations on pretty much anything.
Everyone has a passion for something and it is really easy to turn that passion into an income stream by sharing your knowledge on social media. Once you have built up an audience it is very simple to monetize it. In fact you probably already have a general audience you can monetize. In order to turn your casual social media posts into income all you have to do is follow a few easy steps.
1). Pick your platform and stick with it
In order to become an influencer you need to pick a platform for your voice. It is important that the platform you choose be able to accommodate the information you want to share. The most popular platform right now is no doubt Instagram. However if you don’t already know this Instagram has some pretty strict rules about publishing links to outside destinations. There are ways around this of course. You can publish one link in your bio and you can setup a swipe up action to reveal a link that relates to your post. However Instagram is primarily a visual social media site. So if you want to really share information on something you are passionate about you may want to choose a format that isn’t so restricted. By far the most flexible format is a blog site. The drawbacks to creating your own blog site are that you will have to learn how to drive traffic to the site. Otherwise you won’t be able to build your audience and spread your message. However with some really easy basic tools you can spread the news about your blog easily. Blogs allow complete flexibility. You can post images, videos, purchase links, product placements, etc. The world is your oyster so to speak.
2) Pick a topic and stick to it?
It doesn’t really matter what your blog is about, just pick one general topic and try to stick to that general subject. The biggest mistake new bloggers make is they skip around topics so when people subscribe and think they are going to get information on say sneakers and one week they get a blogpost ranting about bad service at the Olive Garden that blogger will most likely loose his subscriber base. Unless he can somehow tie his experience back into the core meaning of the blog.
3) What could I possibly know enough about to write a blog?
Everyone and I mean everyone is passionate about at least one thing in their life. Blogs can be about anything from knitting, collecting sneakers, cooking, restaurants, programming, robotics, gardening, price shopping, car repair, even purchase research. For example whenever I buy ANYTHING I do a lot of research and attempt to find other bloggers who are not simply doing a cut and paste review and listing an Affiliate link where they get a percentage of the sale. It has become more and more difficult to find real reviews about products because people have started blogs where they simply take the top selling products and list them as the best products simply bc they pay an Affiliate commission. The internet has way too many of these bullshit bloggers… try not to be one. Yes these sites may make a few bucks but they don’t help consumers, they don’t do anything but help sell products. I’ll get to monitoring your blog soon but lets put that off for later. To start your blog just start writing what you are passionate about and the knowledge you have that others may not. People will always search and follow your blog if you offer even a summary of truthful knowledge about products, projects, sports, crafts… anything.
4) Sign up for an Affiliate Program
So in summary pick something that you are constantly thinking about and constantly researching. It can be part of what you do for work or for a hobby. Just find something you enjoy researching and you already do in your everyday life. Now all you have to do is blog a summary about what you know and people will follow you. Once you hit a thousand followers you can start looking for products that you would normally recommend and sign up for their Affiliate program.
5) Find the offer for the product you want to list in your blog
Once you have signed up for an Affiliate program you will log on to the Partner/Affilaite site and go to a tab that says something like “Offers” page through the offers tab and see what the offers are. Find the offer that is associated with the product you want to include in your blog. Next you will find photos of the product you are blogging about, insert them into your blog. Finally you will take the link that is listed in the Affiliate program and insert it into your blog. Publish it and anytime anyone clicks on that link and makes a purchase you will get a commission. Its that simple.