Anyone Had Luck Monetising Tumblr?

16 replies
So there's a Tumblr blog that I've had for a few years now, which mainly reblogs funny and interesting posts. In this time, I've managed to amass 30K followers and I think it's time to try making a bit of money from it. Does anyone have any experience monetising a blog?

I've tried using Amazon affiliate links, with not much luck. About a thousand clicks before I gave up, with not a single sale. Have I been impatient? What are some better ways to make money with Tumblr, that won't get me banned?
#affiliate #luck #monetising #tumblr
  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    Instead of monetizing directly from tumblr you can send the traffic to a squeeze page or blog.

    Start building a list from the traffic. Move people from tumblr followers to list members.

    A lot depends on how focused and targeted your tumblr blog is, the niche, how easy it is to monetize, how active the followers are, how hungry for solutions/products, etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author shafiqrifat
      Originally Posted by onSubie View Post

      Instead of monetizing directly from tumblr you can send the traffic to a squeeze page or blog.

      Start building a list from the traffic. Move people from tumblr followers to list members.

      A lot depends on how focused and targeted your tumblr blog is, the niche, how easy it is to monetize, how active the followers are, how hungry for solutions/products, etc.
      Yeah that is right and it will be effective work for your sites purposes
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  • Profile picture of the author ThorsDor
    What sort of a squeeze page can be targeted at people who are interested in funny things? They're not targeted at anything else, and things like weight loss won't go down well on Tumblr
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  • Profile picture of the author MonicaD54
    It's harder to get referral traffic from Tumblr than from any other social sites. I have an account with 5,000+ followers and it hasn't produced a ton of business results (a thousand or so in revenue). It's also not easy to grow unless your content is the best of the best
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    Tumblr is actually great if you are an adult web master.

    Adult sites tend to do well on Tumblr because Tumblr by definition does not really allow people to just put all their content on one page.

    This produces a teaser kind of environment that drives a lot of traffic.

    However, if you are not in adult marketing, Tumblr is still useful for sharing content in niches that are very graphics friendly.

    I am, of course, talking about E-commerce product catalogs.

    It all depends on how you find followers.

    You have to find Tumblr accounts that are specializing in the niche that you are marketing to.

    Once you find those accounts, you would get a list of people following those accounts.

    Pay attention to these followers.

    If they consistently follow a particular niche, you need to follow them so they can follow you back.

    Of course, regardless of what you do on Tumblr, make sure that all your posts are on point.

    Make sure that everything fits your niche; otherwise, you are going to be sending mixed signals and you will be confusing people.

    Confused consumers predictably end up doing nothing.
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  • Profile picture of the author ThorsDor
    How did you manage to get a thousand in revenue from 5000 followers, and how long did it take?

    I must be newer to this than I thought, but I've never heard of e-commerce product catalogues! Can you tell me more about them?
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  • Profile picture of the author BranTheMan
    Be careful posting affiliate links directly to Tumblr... People with hundreds of thousands of followers have been banned for that.

    Start with AdSense for starters. I've had that on my Tumblr blog for years and was making pretty good beer money from it until AdSense banned my account a few months ago... (Wasn't because of Tumblr, but a different stupid decision I made)

    I would take the advice from the first post. Send them to a squeeze page and get their emails. Just posting affiliate links may make you a few sales here and there, but it wont amount to anything to long-term. Better to get their emails and market to them through that.

    All the best,
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    Buyral Media Web Marketing Services.
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  • Profile picture of the author ThorsDor
    I've looked in the terms though, and it's only against the rules for a blog to be "entirely for the purpose of affiliate marketing", were these big blogs posting other content mainly?
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    • People usually don't talk much about Tumbl'r when compared to Twitter, Facebook And Instagram I reckon.
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  • Profile picture of the author TeamSocial
    I'm doing tumblr right now, my first 3 accounts got banned but now I've got a pretty good formula and consistent followers coming in on roughly 15 accounts. I set it up and left for a couple days and now some of my accounts are hitting 200 mark in followers. I'm using it to promote a brand product I'm creating but I'm sure it could be used just as well for affiliate marketing.
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    • Profile picture of the author BranTheMan
      Originally Posted by ThorsDor View Post

      I've looked in the terms though, and it's only against the rules for a blog to be "entirely for the purpose of affiliate marketing", were these big blogs posting other content mainly?
      Well not entirely. They were doing roughly a 50/50 split, but posting and reblogging up to 50 posts per day. 50% being fresh unique content to keep the account alive and relevant. The other 50% being the affiliate link promotion.

      Originally Posted by TeamSocial View Post

      I'm doing tumblr right now, my first 3 accounts got banned but now I've got a pretty good formula and consistent followers coming in on roughly 15 accounts. I set it up and left for a couple days and now some of my accounts are hitting 200 mark in followers. I'm using it to promote a brand product I'm creating but I'm sure it could be used just as well for affiliate marketing.
      Are you using separate proxies for each account? I've been using FollowLiker for about a year with Tumblr now which auto assigns my proxies to each account before it starts posting and following and whatnot. But before that I had 4 accounts that were all created on my home IP address...Then out of the blue one of them got banned one day, then just a few hours later the other 3 got banned
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      Buyral Media Web Marketing Services.
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  • Profile picture of the author JackLK
    I would highly recommend uploading infographics (or other forms of visual content) on tumblr to drive traffic to your site rather than marketing from tumblr directly.
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    • Profile picture of the author txholdem
      I made up to $7000 in a month on tumblr, and averaged $5000 a month for over a year. i used adsense and chacha. i am not doing it anymore, so i now sell the details as a fiverr gig. you have to really know how to use tumblr. tumblr is the only social media site that i have had success with.
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  • Profile picture of the author austria
    Banned
    the best would be to move your visitors from tumblr towards twitter
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  • Profile picture of the author ThorsDor
    Why is twitter better?
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    • Profile picture of the author txholdem
      not to me. not even close.
      there are a lot of things one cannot do on twitter because of the 140 limit.
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