Blog Your Store

Monetize Your eCommerce Blog

Let’s start by saying blogging is imperative. There are many good reasons to blog ; search engine optimization, helping your customers get to know you, explaining more about your products, etc.

Basically - blogging for your eCommerce store expands your audience, your brand, and your personal connection with your customer base – three things that can grow your business exponentially. If you run an online store and still don’t have a blog, what are you waiting for?
Get one going ! Your inner SEO expert and sales person will thank you.

As with newsletters many eCommerce storeowners don’t know what to write about on their blogs. There is a bit of fear for most people when it comes to writing things other than sales copy.

The first thing I suggest to quell this fear is to choose a voice for your blog. By this I mean a storeowner should decide how they feel most comfortable writing. Do you speak as you the storeowner, do you personify your store and speak as the store itself, or do you speak as the company? Decide this based on your personal favorite (whatever feels the most natural) writing style. My rule for writing is if it feels forced as you write, that will come through in the post and end up being even less fun to read than it was to write.

Once you decide on your voice think about what your posts will be about primarily. This isn’t set in stone. If at first you decide to post mostly about products and you find your blog isn’t being received as well as you would like...you can always just start posting about something else!

But it’s a good idea to have an idea of what you’re going for ahead of time so you don’t struggle with every single post. Specific topics will of course vary with different industries but a few basic starter ideas are: products, events, anecdotes, and sales.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what I mean . I'll start with products. When new products are added to the store I do a "product announcement" post that includes pictures, a short feature / benefit statement, and links to the products if there are only a few or to categories if a lot of new items have been added. This is not a "sales" post; it’s just a simple showcase of your new products.

Next year I intend to get a booth at the Renaissance Fair for my medieval tapestries and armory products. I’m going to blog about my preparations, what types of products will be on display, where my booth will be located, and the dates it is all going to happen during the lead up to it. These I consider "event" posts, they are not "sales"posts either (although I’m going to throw in a link to a printable coupon blog readers can bring with them.) Mostly they will include links to my store and relevant links for Fair information.

I currently have a guest blogger writing for me once or twice a month. He writes goofy stories about the origins of the products I have for sale. The idea is to create some fun content that readers will enjoy and pass onto their friends. I also occasionally just write a quick post about what’s going on at what I refer to in the posts as “headquarters”. I consider this type of post anecdotal; in the last one of these I posted some pictures of myself in my pirate Halloween costume. These help give the blog and my store a unique, personal identity that my readers seem to like.

One or more of these three types may not be applicable to your business, they are suggestions based on what gets readers to frequent my blogs. You will probably talk about a variety of things over time, you don’t have limit yourself to your primary posting plan, do what comes naturally. The more you mix it up the better but that’s something you should work into as it can be overwhelming at first.

You must also keep in mind that you want to use your blog for search engine optimization as well as communication and sales. As with sales copy, your blog post SEO should come across as natural speech with keyword rich anchor text leading back to pages in your store.

But my focus with this article is not about search engine rankings, it’s about sales. There are a lot of storeowners out there who are not taking full advantage of their store blogs. Most that I see are blogging for SEO only, basically blogging because they have to. That’s what I used to do when I first started blogging for my stores; it was boring but good for rankings so I did it. My posts were geared for spiders only; I didn’t think any humans would be reading them.

One day I was writing a lame post about a new product line and I decided to toss a discount code in out of curiosity. I put it in the middle of the post so only someone who was actually reading the words would see it. I didn’t think anything would come of it, but I was wrong. The response wasn’t overwhelming but four customers used the code that week. So I posted another code, this time making it more prominent. That one was used twelve times the following week. I was shocked.

I now write every post for humans and spiders alike and have increased sales in my two main stores by roughly ten percent. That’s a huge return for a small time investment. The techniques I use should be applicable to just about any product you can sell online.


Not enough eCommerce storeowners run specials or sales for their blog readers!Most do what I used to do which was blogging with spiders in mind instead of sales. Some run promotions for sales going on in their store but that’s one step short of what I’m talking about here. I would prefer to see them running “blog reader specials”.

“Blog reader specials” (this is my own made up-term) are not advertised in the store, instead they are designed for blog readers only. This may sound silly but singling out a group of people and telling them they get something special because they do something not everyone else does makes them feel, well, special. And what’s better than making a potential customer feel good?
There are a lot of ways to go about this and ,as always, testing is key. Your customers may not respond to the same things my customers do...so experiment to see what gets you the best results. My two main tactics are a simple blog reader discount and a "featured "blog reader special product.

The blog reader discount is just a coupon code good for a percentage off any order. I usually work it in at the end of a post. Something like: "Don’t forget, blog readers get a special 10% storewide discount, any size order, simply enter the coupon code: "armorblog" during checkout to receive your discount. " I also make the coupon code bold to make it stand out and catch the reader’s eye.

Since it’s a blanket discount for anything from the store, I try to make sure customers know it. I’ll usually attach one of these to the end of regular posts; I don’t make special posts just for the open discount. I make it its own paragraph for separation from the body of the post and do not mention any products specifically in the offer text.

I provide no guarantees of specific products being in stock and no delivery information. This is because I want my blog readers to know instantly that the discount is not tied to the products mentioned in the post but to all the products in the store. They may not be interested in the products the rest of the post talks about and I don’t want to lose them because I wasn’t clear enough about the nature of the discount.

I do not add the discount text to the bottom of every post because I don’t want my readers to get used to seeing it and unconsciously tune it out. I add it to every fourth or fifth post so it usually appears on my blog’s home page twice – near the top and bottom, this way I have a couple chances to catch the eye of skimmers and scrollers.

The "product special" is basically the complete opposite of the blanket discount; it is a blog only discount on a single item or product line. If my previous post was related to flintlock pistols my product special would specifically feature one of my bestselling replica flintlocks. The post would describe the product a bit but put equal focus on the blog-only nature of the special. I add a nice big picture of the product, another coupon code, and a link back to the product.


So before I run one of these specials, I check stock with my vendor on the product I intend to promote, you don’t want to go all out on a product you have only a few of. I also make a unique coupon code for the product. For example if I was promoting my English Flintlock pistol I would make the code englishflintblog. I run these once or twice a month. They’re a great way to get product images on your blog, links to product pages on your site, and to run sales based on items of which you have a good amount of stock.

I’ve had success with "theme post" sales as well. These are a lot like the featured product sales but they are a little bit more of a showcase of several similar products or a product line. Depending which store I’m writing for I create coupon codes for those particular items I’m featuring or I go with a code for a storewide discount. My armory readers prefer specific product discounts but my tapestry readers like the storewide better. You’ll need to test what works best for your readers.

I have found that coupon codes with the word blog in them get used more often than regular coupon codes. I think it’s just another affirmation that the blog reader is indeed getting something others are not. I have also found that blog featured products that sell well, also sell well to my newsletter list. So I use my blogs as a gauge on what I should feature in my mailings.

I don’t make all my posts sales offers. I break it up to make sure I have enough information and fun stuff to keep my readers interested and coming back. A pure sales blog doesn’t work for me but it might work well for your store so I suggest testing the ratio of sales to informational posts to see what your readers like the best. You should be able to tell based on your traffic and sales analytics.

I have used some of the successes I’ve had with products on my blogs to expand other areas of my marketing. If a new product or product line is received well on the blog I’ll promote it through some of my social marketing sites like Facebook. I’ve found it helps to have an indicator as to the interest in a product before promoting it socially. That crowd is far more sensitive to advertising and will unfriend, unfollow, or otherwise block you if you send them things in which they have no interest.

I also use my blogs to test new product ideas. By this I mean products I have at my disposal but haven’t added for sale yet. For example, one of my vendors had a new Old West cowboy and Indian wine bottle holder set. I thought it was cool and would be fun to add to the armory but it’s so different from my other products I wasn’t sure.

So I mentioned it as a "coming soon" product on the blog and asked my readers what they thought to see if it would spark any interest. I got a bunch of emails expressing enthusiasm so I added it and wrote a new product announcement post. I sold six the first week.

The blog is an incredibly useful tool that goes unused by many eCommerce storeowners. But its power can be tapped into very easily. Blogging is an integral part of my business that I recommend every storeowner get comfortable with so it can be utilized to its full potential.

eCommerce Blogging Checklist

- If you don’t already have one, get a blog going for your store.
- Find your most natural writing voice,
- Decide what type of posts you want to concentrate on,
- Start working "Blog Only Special" codes into your posts,
- Check stock on some of your popular items.
- Try running a few "Blog Only Featured Product" Sales.
- If you have a popular product line run a few "Theme Blog Only" Sales
- Test your sales to information post ratio to find your readers’ sweet spot.
- Use your blogs to test new product interest and apply that to your other areas of marketing.
- Keep on blogging!