5 Ways to Make Money With Less Than 1 Week Until Xmas

It’s less than one week until Christmas Eve and you’ve already gift guided your audience to death.  You don’t want to kill your newsletter list, bore your readers and if you’ve already “sugar coated” your site with a million cookie and eggnog recipes, what else is there to do to make money?

Simple, go with what adds value, brings in new traffic and can also work within the timelines left for the holiday.

This post will go through 5 ways to continue to make money while sharing something new with your audience and helping them with a solution instead of a “buy a product from this gift guide” (ok some of them are like that, but number 5 is a great solution for day of monetization).

1. Other People’s Infographics

Find some infographics that will entertain your readers and also attract bloggers, contributors and media outlets.  It is important for SEO to have external backlinks (yes do follow (google it and you’ll find why others think this is important too)) to authoritative, trustworthy and CONTENT RELEVANT sites.  This is a great way to give some natural backlinks while growing your own audience.  Just make sure the infographic you use is RELEVANT.

A good and relevant infographic can:

• Drive backlinks to the page on your site where you have the infographic (even if you don’t host it on your own domain)
• Bring in new visitors that can subscribe to your newsletter
• Send social signals to show you have something awesome on your pages for the search engines to notice
• Have some external do follow links to make Google happy (this is you giving a backlink)
• Stick to the topic of your website or the category it is in
• Entertain and engage your audience so they in turn want to share it
• Help you increase pageviews and impressions for CPM ads to get your site more money!

If you need help finding one or two or want to know what makes a quality infographic, use the contact form on this blog and I’ll help you find one (if there is time).

2. Pickup In Store

Some affiliate programs will commission sales where the consumer shops AND PAYS online, but then picks up their purchase in the store.  Some programs do not offer this, or if the payment occurs in the store, it might not track back to your account so double check first or make a test purchase to see if the sale tracks.

If there’s a product that is in-demand, in-stock and it is too late for reasonably priced shipping, you can help your readers find them by telling them to prepay online (and reserve the product) with local locations for pickup.  Now you have helped them to find the products they want and how to get them on time (while also earning a commission).  This adds value to them and can help you earn money and as long as the retailer pays commissions for in-store pickups.

3. Giftcards

Yes, they are spammy and not always the best to put in front of your audience.  But if your audience is asking about last minute gift ideas, find a few merchants that you know do well with your audience and see if gift cards are commissionable.  If they are, this can become a great tweet or newsletter drop for people shopping last minute.

4. Software/Downloads/Tools/Virtual Products

Think about items that are virtual.  You have everything from tools that can help people bring their business online or sell prints to earn money (my client SmugMug’s affiliate program is great for this).  There are virtual games with in app purchases, apps and accessories that people want but don’t always buy.  You also have ebooks, movies and tv shows that you can treat people too.

If you want to take it a step further, give your audience a few craft ideas to present the card in as a surprise.  If you’re giving a TV series as a gift, print out a photo of the cast and place it in a frame.  Then hide the code somewhere on the photo to see if the person notices it.  Next wrap the frame and pretend it’s the gift.

Now your audience has a solution for last minute gifts and a few cool ways to give the gift.  If your crafts are really good, the presentation ideas could generate more traffic from social media sites and the search engines.

5. Recipes, Crafts and Day of Projects

Now take the presentation idea from above and think of things people look for on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Ways to surprise their kids, solutions for picky house guests, ways to plate food or last minute recipes.  By providing these same day solutions that can be done at home and having them rank in the search engines or social media sites like Pinterest, you can now start to drive same day traffic giving you more pageviews and impressions for CPM ads and possible clicks on CPC.