By Janette Crawford, Beth Giles, Mackenzie Horan & Piper Toth.

When we started planning our Blog to Shop panel for Alt, we had no idea how much we would learn just from each other. We had such a great time sharing what we’ve learned over the years, and the audience seemed to love it as well. Here are our main points, as well as a few top tips from the panel:

1) Sell without selling out

• Start by selling products you’re passionate about – your passion will come through in the way you talk about them, which will feel natural 
• Find a balance between what you love and what sells 
• Don’t sell something just because it’s popular 
• Let go of what you love, if no one else does 
• Talk about your product in an authentic and organic way — how the product plays into your lifestyle 
• Promote other people’s products that are a complement, not competition, to your own 
• Feature the brands/makers on your blog 
• Talk to your audience like they’re your best friends; your recommendations feel like word of mouth

By Jenner Brown.

When you begin making videos to enhance your blog, you are adding a unique dimension to your online persona. It’s a valuable medium that offers a great way to re-introduce yourself to your readers; those who have followed your blog for a while will learn new things about you. It’s an exciting prospect really. Suddenly your speaking and making jaunty crafts and dancing outlandishly (looking at you Girls With Glasses). Utilizing video gives you new opportunities to grow your following.

You shouldn’t be afraid to make the leap to video, even if you are a hopeless introvert like me. It’s time to hop on the video bandwagon! Remembering the first rule of blogging with video will keep you out of trouble: Be yourself! Trite, I know – and probably cliché – but it’s absolutely the truth. The best video bloggers keep it real.

By Melanie Blodgett. Photography by Simple Desks.

When I share that a majority of my income comes from contributing to other sites the two questions I get asked the most are:

1. How did you get your contributing positions?
2. How do you come up with content for several sites?

In this post I’ll address the latter.

I get it, coming up with fresh content five days a week (or however often you blog) is a lot of work and nobody is immune to the blogger blocks. We’ve all sat staring blankly at a screen searching for anything to post about. If you’re contributing to other sites where you’re accountable to your employer to publish content, how do you avoid the block? And how do you avoid giving up the best content that you want to save for your blog? My advice is to:

1) Seek out contributor positions where you can blog about topics that interest you, but ones that you aren’t currently covering on your own blog

By Melanie Blodgett. Photography by Jimmy Marble.

I’ve shared here before, that the key to making money online (especially if your blog isn’t huge) is to diversify and make money from numerous sources. Personally, over half of my income comes from contributing to other sites. If you feel that landing contributing gigs is what you’d like to do next, then pay attention as I detail the first step today.

The first step to landing a contributor position is to polish your own blog. In the blogging world, the traditional paper resume that you perfected in college is obsolete: your blog your resume. That means, in order to land that dream position, it’s got to look polished. And since we all want to land a dream position – let’s get to work!

These 5 steps will put you on the right track:

1. Imagine being a potential employer and seeing your site for the first time. Go in with fresh eyes and only look at it for a very short time. What’s the impression that you get? Are there blaring mistakes that need to be fixed right away? Would you get a sense of your personality and blogging style right away?
2. Have a few friends do the same exercise listed above and provide constructive criticism.
3. Make the suggested changes that you believe will make your site better. Whether that means hiring a designer to make it more aesthetically pleasing, hiring a programmer to clean up the backend, or purchasing your own domain–you may have to spend some money to make some money.