Yesterday, I talked about how your business blog can help you create profitable online partnerships. Today, let’s look specifically at some of those partnership opportunities. This list is not meant to be comprehensive. These opportunities are just some of the common ones I’ve seen.
Link Exchange
Link exchanges are link swaps. A blogger will email another blogger and basically say, “I’ll link to you if you link to me”. The links usually get placed on the sidebar or a links page. This tactic is usually done for SEO purposes but you might get some traffic if the blog your partner with is popular. I just wrote about this partnership opportunity so check out “How to Deal With Link Exchange Requests” for more info.
Guest Post
A guest post is a post which doesn’t go on your blog. Instead, it’s published on another blog. At the end of your guest post, you talk briefly about your blog and link back to it.
Basically, you send a blogger your guest post and ask them to publish it on their blog. This benefits them because they get free content while you get some traffic and SEO benefit because of your link.
Compared to a link exchange, you’ll usually get more traffic because your link is in the content part of the blog. Also, your link will provide more SEO benefit because search engines give more weight to content-based links over sidebar links or links on a links page.
Affiliate Program
An affiliate program involves two different partners. One is the merchant and the other is the affiliate. The merchant lets the affiliate sell his product. Whenever the affiliate sells the product, he gets a percentage of the revenue.
An affiliate program benefits the merchant because he gets free traffic while the affiliate pitching the product gets an opportunity to make money without buying or creating the product.
Collaborating on Content
Sometimes it’s better to co-write a blog post than write it yourself. If you can write 1000 words on a topic and then find another blogger to add 1000 more words from their unique perspective, with a little bit of editing, you could combine both blog posts into one killer blog post. Add a little bit of marketing and that one post could get popular through word of mouth and be known as a top resource in your industry.
This blog post was co-written by two bloggers. It received a ton of traffic and links. Also, it brought both of them many new clients and sales.
Collaborating on a Product/Service
You’ll often see this partnership with two people with different skill sets. For example, a web designer will work with a web programmer and create a package deal for their clients that want both design and programming services.
For information products, it often makes sense to partner with another blogger to add value to your existing product. For example, a blogger that sells an ebook might work with a video blogger to create a video product based on his ebook.
Over to You
What have you done to partner with other bloggers?
