Becoming a Book Blogger - All About the Benjamins

Happy Friday, everyone! Today's post will conclude the series. I bet you're all excited, huh? You have your new book review blog, and you're off to the races! Well, you have one more thing to consider, and that's money. Yes, I said money. You know, the cash flow from your blog. Beware, there are some things you must keep in mind, but I'm gonna walk you through all that. Ready? Grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

Here are the posts in this series (in case you're late to the game):

• Choosing a Name and Review Policy
• Branding Yourself With Imagery
• Picking a Platform for Publishing
• Design Considerations
• Structuring Your Rating System
• Building an Audience - Social Media Crazy
• Writing Reviews
• Money, You Say? (you're there now)

Okay, I kinda lied! Today isn't only about the money, though we'll go into that in a few minutes. I'm also going to discuss where you need to post those reviews you've written (besides your blog), and we'll talk for a moment about ethics.

Yes, ethics. It's a hot button for me.

Where to post your reviews:

• Amazon.com
• Barnesandnoble.com
• Goodreads.com

You can copy and paste your reviews from your blog to those sites.

Ethics:
Don't ever accept money for writing a review. It's frowned upon, because a lot of people (myself included) believe the exchange of money taints the reviewer's opinion. You'd be more inclined to give five stars to an author's book if they paid you $250, right? Yeah. So, just don't do it.

Don't create more than one account and leave a bunch of reviews on the same book. This also is frowned upon (and can get you banned from a lot of the review sites out there). Plus, it's just wrong on so many levels.

*steps off the soapbox*

Now, down to money matters! Yeah, I know you've been waiting for this one. Since you're not accepting payment for writing reviews, how do you make money with your new found love?

There are two easy ways I know of:
Become an Amazon Affiliate - When you post the review, add your affiliate code to the link (Amazon will show you how to do this).
Monetize Your Blog with AdWords - This is set up through Google. They'll display ads on your blog, and they'll be more than happy to pay you when someone clicks on a link.

IF you choose to become an Amazon affiliate, be sure you put on your blog the following disclaimer: Purchase links help to support this blog.

So people will know you're using affiliate links.

Again, you run into ethical things when you use those kinds of links, but most people don't care as long as you're honest in your reviews (if you aren't, they'll come back and blast you for it). Why would it be a problem? Because, if you give a book that deserves two stars five stars, throw an affiliate link in there, and the person buys it only to find out the book is terrible, you've just made money on your lie. Bad practice.

Well, that concludes my little series on becoming a book blogger. I hope you all enjoyed it, and you end up with fabulous, healthy, popular review blogs that get a ton of traffic.

Did you follow along? Create a book blog? Share your links below!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo