I want to make a recipes blog with a strong focus on chocolate, but I am not sure if people who look for recipes even want to buy anything. Please do not recommend me Adsense. I know a bunch of people who make a good living from affiliated marketing and selling their own product, but not one soul who is successful with Banner Advertising. A rough summary of my plan: 1. Make a compelling optin to get the emails of my visitors. My question: When people are looking for recipes what could I offer to persuade them to give me their email address? Please do not say: a free ebook. Yeah, I know that much, but what should be the topic of the ebook? It cannot be recipes, because of obvious reasons. Tutorial videos sound good too, but many blogs have them without asking for an email. Whats your idea? 2. Creating a relationship with the potential customer and gain his trust. Sending him the newest recipes, exclusive content, tricks and tips, something like that. 3. Offer him products through affiliated marketing and my ebooks. Now the question: What could me potential customers be interested in? What physical product which I can offer them through affiliated marketing could people who like to make chocolate/desserts like or need? What kind of eBooks or informational products could I sell them? 4. The more one customer buys the more expensive my offers get. So what do you think? Is there a solid foundation? What is your experience with recipes site? How do they make money? Do you have any good sources?
Have you checked out what sites like cooks.com are doing? Minimal ads It's Amazon store User interaction via comments and submitting their own recipes Explore what the others are doing, see what people like/dislike about them, and work from there.
You can sell books related to recipe on Amazon or eBay. Both are good option to get started. However Adsense will be also a good option for you to get started.
I am totally into cooking my own food now from places like Blue Apron, Sunbasket, HelloFresh, Plated, etc. The send you all the ingredients in the mail with their recipes. I would put links to these places. For me, cooking is hard because I have to go to the store to buy ingredients every time I want to cook something fresh. All these companies all offer links that you can use in emails or on your website to get yourself free meals and good deals for your fans. I know that you want to monetize things, but getting free food and awesome recipes in the mail for yourself and your friends saves you money. It also stimulates ideas for new recipes, for me anyway. Who knows maybe someday you will start a company like this and send people ingredients in the mail?
I would agree with you that adsense is not always the right solution. If it was me I would create cookbook related to what I was doing in your case it sounds like you are focusing mostly on recipes using chocolate. I would offer it for sale on my website and through Amazon. I would also looked for related items such as books, cooking items and so on that I could promote either for sale through my own site or through Amazon. The one thing I would do though is make sure that the items I offered were not common everyday items found in any store. Make your site a destination for people to come for your products and services because they are unable to find them anywhere else.
I would believe that Amazon and Google Adsense would work combined. (there are other networks that have to be tested as well). Meanwhile focus on bringing some traffic and think about monetization later on. Do some split testing, always test, test, test..
Hi: As mentioned before your Adsense should work with your site. Also consider putting affiliate banners on your site from manufacturers or other companies that link to your affiliate ID so when they click on your banner you can get paid if they purchase something through your link. There are other advertisers out there so if Adsense doesn't work you can try one of those. Dan
Yes, I´m agree with unlimitedoptions4us There is sense to try Adsense and Affiliate Networks too.. Because some formats are compatible. But you can get better profit with Affiliates, just select them carefully