If you want to know how I make money outsourcing sponsored posts for my favorite brands, then you might want to keep reading!
They are several ways to make money blogging, but I enjoy working with brands the most, which is why I love sponsored post opportunities.
With a niche like mine, brands are constantly wanting to collaborate with me in any way possible so that they can market their businesses.
I make the majority of my income with my wedding blog using sponsored blog posts.
Even if you are in a small niche, working with brands can be a great way to make money with your blog. The best way to land work with brands is to be extremely productive and to put yourself out there as much as you can.
In this article, we’ll go over:
- What are sponsored posts?
- How I make money outsourcing sponsored posts
- 6 ways I use virtual assistants to make me money
Let’s get started!
What are Sponsored Posts?
Sponsored posts are blog posts that companies pay you to write!
Or, as fellow blogger Tracie Fobes puts it in her article…
A sponsored post is a balance of a regular blog post as well as an advertisement.
It’s influencer marketing at its finest and companies use bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, and other influencers to advertise their company and spread the word.
You don’t need a large social following to begin working with brands, though. Micro-influencers, which are influencers with smaller, more engaged audiences, are big with brands!
How to Work With Brands to Land Sponsored Posts
If you are in a niche that is capable of attracting brands, then it will be easier for you to find and land paid partnerships.
Sponsored posts are the best way to increase your revenue as well as to build lasting partnerships with these brands that can then become recurring income in the future.
By building strong relationships, these brands will continue to come back to you when they need you to market their new products or services.
I have become a brand ambassador for a lot of these companies and this means they seek me out when they want to promote something.
It takes a lot of work as well as time to find quality companies to work with, write the sponsored posts, and that is why I have come to rely heavily on outsourcing the writing piece.
How I Make Money Outsourcing Sponsored Posts
They are several things I have done to attract brands and this is mostly because of the quality content I write on my wedding blog.
By writing quality content, I can establish a loyal following in my niche, which brands love to see.
Once I started receiving more than three requests per month, I knew outsourcing this work would be my next step as the money was amazing, but the amount of work…not so much.
Because of how long it takes to secure a contract, write the sponsored posts and create the graphics, I decided to outsource a team of three wonderful writers that help me with this process.
Working with a virtual assistant is the best thing I have ever done for my growing business.
This frees up a lot of my time and it really allows me to work in other areas of my other businesses that need me the most.
How Virtual Assistants Help Me Make Money
A virtual assistant (VA) is an independent contractor that provides administrative services to other businesses, typically from a remote location. Freelance writers technically count as VAs, but they prefer to be called freelance writers.
I hired one writer a few years ago to write on my wedding blog and she is now a frequent contributor.
I added two more writers and they have done an amazing job of capturing my voice and writing creative posts, especially when it comes to weddings.
When I opened up my blog to sponsored posts about a year and a half ago, it made sense to have them write these posts.
Having multiple requests for sponsored posts meant that I would have very little time to work on my actual businesses.
6 Ways I Use Virtual Assistants to Make Me Money
Because my niche makes it easy to land sponsored posts, I knew if I wanted to make more money, I would need to find help.
Simply put, I did not have the time to constantly write posts and ensure that I met all the deadlines required by brands.
I decided to have a meeting with my team of virtual assistants to see how it would all work out.
I really wanted to establish a working routine that will allow me to leverage more sponsored post opportunities with little work required from me.
This is how we started to make more money working with brands:
- Sourcing and finding potential brands to work with
- Writing content that promotes my clients
- Having a solid media kit and signing up with a brand network
- Nurturing the relationships with my brands
- Determining how much work I could handle
- Understanding what to consider when outsourcing sponsored posts
Let’s explore these concepts a little more!
1. Sourcing and Finding Potential Brands to Work With
My virtual assistants were responsible for finding and connecting with potential brands that aligned with our business.
This involved a three-step process:
- Looking at our competition
- Finding out what brands they worked with
- Reaching out to them for potential collaboration opportunities
One of my assistants is responsible for this.
She sends out about 10 promotional emails over a two-week span and if we get a response with interest, I take over to finalize the details.
Once I get the contract and details down, my other VAs gets to work with coming up with the final products.
2. Writing Content That Promotes My Clients
Once I have confirmation with the brand, including angles of the posts as well as a working title, my writers will start to creating the content and adding any graphics and pins.
I will then go through the post to ensure it is well optimized for SEO purposes and the product is up to standard with what our brand wanted.
Once everything is complete, we then proceed to post the links; we send the final products to our client and we are typically paid within 2-3 business days.
What I like about this process is that I can have about 4-5 sponsored posts going at any given time and I have a strong team that can whip up the product in no time.
3. Have a Solid Media Kit and Signing Up With a Brand Network
I normally do not work with a media kit, as my field requires me to be extremely flexible with what I offer my clients.
However, it does not hurt to have a media kit in place that can easily sell your business to potential brands.
Once I finalized my media kit, my VA was then responsible for signing up with a variety of brand network websites that we felt were a good fit.
This required them to create a profile and upload the information required such as my social media presence, blog stats, and previous work examples.
This is a task that I find takes up a lot of time, and having my VA deal with it makes it easy for me.
They are also responsible for staying up to date with the platform and pitching to brands when opportunities arise.
I have been able to secure 1-2 sponsored posts this way.
However, you have to be active and having a team that is active on the platform makes it much easier especially if you have no time.
The more active you are, the more chances you have of landing quality sponsored clients.
4. Nurturing the Relationships With My Brands
Another way my VAs have been able to make money for my online business is by nurturing the current relationships we have with our brands.
This is one is huge and because of it, we have been able to land repeat working contracts with our current brands instead of constantly chasing new relationships.
We do this in several ways:
- Tweeting or retweeting our favorite brand’s work when applicable
- Creating additional blog posts and linking to the brand’s sponsored posts to send them additional traffic
- Shouting them out on Instagram when applicable
Doing this keeps our clients thinking of us and makes it easier for them to reconnect with us in the future should they need to.
Your job is to nurture your relationships as much as possible.
I have a brand client that I work with all year round.
My contract with them was made in such a way that I was to create one post each month for the next 12 months, promoting their different products.
This means I am guaranteed to receive payments from them each month for a year!
My VA looks after them quite nicely 🙂
5. Determining How Much Work I Could Handle
We wanted to make over $3,500 in profit from working with sponsored posts.
This number made it worthwhile for me to outsource and continue this venture of making money by collaborating with brands.
By knowing this, I made a conscious plan to outsource my work and find help from people that would actually go out and get me the business.
After training them, they were able to go out on their own to find and land sponsored posts for my wedding business.
This might not work for every niche but if you are in the mom, travel, parenting, lifestyle and wedding niches, I find it much easier to land sponsored posts.
I am sure they are other niches that make money with sponsored posts but it takes work and effort.
In addition, if you are in one of these niches that can easily land sponsored work, try outsourcing the work in order to increase your monthly revenue.
By having one or two people doing the work of finding brands for you, you can focus on other aspects of keeping your business running.
6. Understanding What to Consider When Outsourcing Sponsored Posts
Here are some things to consider when working with brands, especially when outsourcing:
- When charging your clients, be sure to incorporate any additional fees you may have such as outsourcing a VA into to your final pricing
- Make sure that you have a long-lasting relationship with your VA and trust that they can produce quality content
- Do not take on more than you can handle otherwise you will be stuck doing all the work if something does not pan out
- Only outsource if you typically get a lot of sponsored posts per month
- Have a good system in place with your VA so nothing falls through the cracks. This means you outline who is responsible for what when it comes to your clients
- Reevaluate your system every six months to see what can be done to make it better (there is always room for improvement)
Do not be afraid of outsourcing your work by scaling your business — you will be able to get a lot more done as you will have a team working on other aspects of your business.
I was afraid to outsource because I felt that my VAs would not be able to capture my voice when writing.
However, by tweaking the posts they wrote and having them look over it, gave them the confidence they needed to write the perfect posts for me.
Conclusion: Can You Make Money Outsourcing Sponsored Posts?
To conclude, yes you can make money by outsourcing tasks that may take a while to do and I found sponsored posts was one area that took up a lot of time.
If you’re on a budget, you can start small by getting someone to source out potential businesses that you can pitch to.
This way, you will have a list going and you can block off time just to pitch.
As you start landing more clients, instead of turning the opportunity down or extending your due dates, simply hire someone to write the post for you.
Then move on to the next pitch!
I started with making $500 a month, then $1,000, and now I make anywhere between $4,700 to $6,000 per month in sponsored posts.
From here, I can deduct all the expenses required for outsourcing.
Did I answer all your questions? Let me know in the comments below if you’re ready to begin outsourcing sponsored posts.
And, if you need any help with sponsored posts, make sure you check out Tracie’s course, Sponsored Success! It’s amazing 🙂
