If you want to make money with your relationship blog then you need effective marketing strategies and techniques plus the right mix of internet marketing tools.
Ultimately, you will need to find what internet marketing tools work best for you.
On this page, I will show you what I use and explain why I like these tools.
These internet marketing tools make my life easier.
Running a blog by yourself is extremely time-consuming.
It can take several hours to write, edit and publish just one post (including creating graphics and “content upgrade” lead magnets).
Premium tools that you pay for can cut down on the time it takes to do takes manually step-by-step.
The free version of some internet marketing tools will suffice.
Or at least give you a chance to play around with them to learn what they can do for you before you decide to upgrade and pay for their premium versions.
My best advice is that you determine what works best for you.
Don’t feel pressured to take my advice or some millionaire guru’s advice just because it works for us.
Affiliate Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that pay a commission if purchase made.
I will first start off by saying that, in my opinion, focusing too much on ranking in search engines should not be your highest priority.
You do not have control over how you rank, and even when you do rank high it could change later.
Instead, continue to place sales funnels as your highest priority.
(That’s my honest opinion, but you must choose on your own how to structure the monetization of your site.)
If the path that you guide your visitor clearly presents a solution to their problem and then to the recommended tool to help them solve then you’ve done your job.
The rest you can fix much more easily.
You can buy traffic.
You can build your list of subscribers.
And besides, I have a secret weapon for traffic (more on that further down).
However, with that said, ALWAYS keep search engine optimization in mind.
I’d rather rank than not rank if I can.
And therefore, I find that an easy-to-use keyword search tool is one of the most essential internet marketing tools to make your life easier as a relationship blogger.
You must know two main things with SEO (to keep it simple):
1. Current traffic looking for keyword phrases
2. Competition of other sites with content vying for ranking with those phrases.
And how do you find that out?
You guessed it.
With a keyword research tool.
Jaaxy.com
If you have not used a keyword research tool before then I’d start with Google Keyword Planner Tool, which currently you can access within the Google Ads dashboard.
Anyone can use it, even without creating an ad.
At the minimum, it achieves the two things mentioned in the previous section.
Just in a bare-bones way.
That’s why I prefer to pay for my own tool.
The one I’ve used for years now is Jaaxy.com, which is Wealthy Affiliate’s proprietary tool.
For me, Jaaxy just makes things simpler and faster to get the information I need to optimize my blog posts with the right keywords that give me a fighting chance to rank.
With Jaaxy’s help I’ve ranked for several phrases at the number spot in Google, others in the first page and with some of the more competitive ones in the first two or three pages.
Jaaxy set itself apart from the other keyword research tools to me because they make it obvious which phrases I should use.
How?
With the use of color schemes (Green– high chance of ranking), (Yellow– medium chance), (Red– low probability).
And then Jaaxy combines the color schemes with the percentage chance of ranking for even more precise measurement.
For example, when I wanted to create a product review of the text message training eBook Text Chemistry by Amy North I researched the keyword phrase “text chemistry review”.
Jaaxy came back with the results Green – 86%.
The higher the percentage means the better chance to rank in any search engine.
Therefore, this score is good.
Not as good as, say, Green – 97%, but still good.
==>Try out Jaaxy.com (30 FREE Keyword Searches)
The data does not just focus on Google, the search engine used most universally by all people using the internet.
Instead, it provides you an estimate of your chances to rank in any of the three big ones (Google, Bing, Yahoo), no particular one.
Because of this you don’t know what your chances of ranking in Google are.
And, by default, I end up ranking on page one more in Bing than Google.
Here are some other free keyword research tools that work well with finding longtail keyword phrases (the ones you have a better chance to rank for) to get you started:
You can also conduct 30 free keyword searches with Jaaxy here.
Other keyword research tools that I know other bloggers and internet marketers choose are:
I might give Longtail Pro a shot in the future, the other tools are pricey but offer unique features that set them apart from the rest.
It’s a must to know which blog posts get the most clicks and which links that lead to landing pages (affiliate sales pages, your own sales pages) get clicked the most.
You can start free with Google Analytics.
If you have recently launched a blog or in the process of doing it, then I would use Google Analytics.
You will get all the information you need.
I cannot stress how important it is to focus on money-making tasks and steps.
Do not waste energy on the things that do not matter as much.
Later you can look into using a web analytics tool with a more user-friendly interface.
No matter which one you choose, the free Google Analytics tool or a paid-for one, a website analytics tool is another one of the most essential internet marketing tools that you need to gain any success with your relationship blog.
I use Clicky.com
If you already have a blog up and running for a while now and have grown tired of Google Analytics then check out Clicky.com
I discovered them through other bloggers reviews who use the service.
You could start with them from free here.
==>Try out Clicky.com’s Free Version
A few features stand out to me that I find useful.
Learning the best way to analyze your data can get overwhelming.
I’m still learning myself.
But when you’re ready I’d at least recommend using a user-friendly website analytics tool.
Pinterest brings most of my traffic.
Creating useful lead magnets and bonuses that solve your audience’s issues are the two most important ingredients to grow your email subscriber list and convert affiliate sales.
Quality images that tell stories make that all happen.
I get quality royalty-free images for my relationship blog at:
But you can also get some at:
However, many of the images are the same on all of these sites.
And you and all other relationship bloggers will use them.
Meaning, they won’t stand out.
That why I decided to purchase a membership to Storyblocks.com
Unlimited royalty-free images.
Many image bank sites limit you on how many you can upload a month and charge a lot.
Storyblocks.com gave me a deal of $100 for the first 12 months and then $150 for renewing.
My Pinterest Pins stand out because most of the other Pinners do not have access to them.
And my lead magnet, video and bonus graphic covers stand out too.
You’ll need to edit the images with text and graphics for that you need to choose a graphic editor.
More on that next.
Too many staged images.
There are plenty of goods ones I’ve chosen to download and use.
But sometimes it requires me to sift through several dozen to find the one that works.
When I don’t find it, I look at Pexels.com or right in Canva.com, my graphic editor.
Other places I’ve considered getting unique royalty-free images are:
Both are pricey and limited on how many images you can use a month.
They give you up to 30 images per month for $29/mo and unused images roll over to the next month.
It’s still more than Storyblocks.com
If I ever changed, or added, Depositphotos.com it be because they have images that I feel I must have that I can’t get elsewhere.
Now let’s look at what I use to add graphics and text.
The image by itself does not tell a story.
It doesn’t convince someone to click through my Pin that leads to my blog posts.
Nor does it convince someone to opt-in to my email list or make my bonuses look appealing.
Text tells the viewer the benefit of taking the next step.
The colors and fonts help tell the story by creating the mood of the topic.
Find the graphic editor that you feel most comfortable with that does the tasks that you need.
Whichever one you choose, a graphic editor is one of the internet marketing tools that will help your relationship blog content stand out and either increase opt-in rates for your newsletters, help you sell more products (eBooks, video courses) and help bring in more social media traffic.
Canva.com
Quick and easy.
That’s what matters most in the relationship blogging world because everything takes so much time to complete even at the fastest pace.
And then even after all that time invested, what you want to accomplish may not work.
If you want to just have fun and run a blog as a hobby, it won’t matter.
But if you want to make consistent money it does.
A lot.
You’ve got to save time.
You can start with Canva.com’s free version and it will be good enough.
I, however, pay for the Pro version.
It gives me more fonts to choose from which help tell the story just as much as the colors.
The Pro version offers more options that the free one doesn’t like the ability to resize the graphics for use on an eBook or video cover.
It also gives me more templates, graphic elements and images (when I use them).
Again, fast and easy to use.
I can duplicate Pinterest Pins and change up elements quickly, resize them and have access to plenty of editing options.
When I want to use an eBook cover or Pinterest template I can simply just change out the image and text and in minutes finish the task.
The image size for any project is automatically done for you.
Need an Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest graphic done?
Just click and the canvass appears, then start editing.
Canva seems to be the #1 choice for most serious relationship bloggers.
But it’s not perfect.
I’d like more graphic elements (borders, lines, boxes, circles, etc.) and an easier way to find the perfect font.
Plus, I would like more text effects.
That’s where Pic Monkey comes in handy.
They offer more text effects and more graphic editing options overall.
But I find Canva more than good enough and it’s super easy.
Getting my relationship blog content shared is where I get most of my traffic.
If people like your content then they will share it.
And here are the three current internet marketing tools that I use to make that happen.
You might have or find your own ways to grow traffic, therefore, I do not want you to think that I suggest that you must use any of the following internet marketing tools.
The only thing I currently use SumoMe for is for their share buttons.
All themes come with a share button feature.
But the difference between a theme’s share buttons and SumoMe’s is their location on your blog posts.
SumoMe puts theirs on the side and they remain there no matter where your visitor scrolls.
This increases the probability that they will share.
The total number of shares appears on the button.
So, if I get 100 shares on Pinterest, it will show on the Pinterest share button.
Obviously, this creates instant social proof.
A visitor deducts that if other people shared the blog post that it must be good.
Pinterest makes it even easier to share.
Pinners (Pinterest users) can share your content without ever leaving Pinterest.
Yes, that means that they may not even read your post, but regardless, it still improves your social proof.
To get SumoMe click “add new” in your Plugin page within your WordPress dashboard.
Most of my traffic comes from Pinterest.
Pinterest works as both a search engine and a social media platform.
Most likely you found me via Pinterest, so I won’t spend much time discussing it here.
But in the case that you came here another way I will give you some insight.
It’s a visual platform like Instagram, but much easier to get clicks with.
You create a graphic with some text like this:
Upload it to Pinterest and save it to a Board, much like pinning a flyer to a poster board at the office.
The poster is called a Pin.
Your Pin gets seen three different ways:
Non-blogger Pinners interested in improving their relationship or finding a new partner want good answers to their questions.
When relationship bloggers pool their content together on a Group Board, everyone wins because the non-bloggers have access to high-quality content contained in one spot and the bloggers receive more traffic as a result.
Creating the Pins is one step (I’ll show you the tool I use for that in a moment).
Saving them to your Boards is another.
Getting other Pinners to save your Pins on their boards is yet another step.
In the beginning, you will manually “pin” their Pins on your Boards (one by one) and follow their profiles.
Many will return the favor.
You will actively have to do this for a few weeks, most likely a few months to start seeing eye-popping traffic numbers.
After a while, it will get too time-consuming to manually “repin” other people’s Pins.
This is when you’ll want to use Tailwind (an official Pinterest partner) to “schedule” your Pins (place them in a virtual queue to be saved for you).
No more need to manually Pin.
I can schedule a whole week of Pins in 30 minutes or less.
I won’t get into the how-to steps here nor the strategies.
But know that Tailwind combined with Pinterest will increase your traffic at least by double, for most of us 4x up to 6x the traffic we used to get by just depending on SEO.
Until you have a lot of Pins, followers and are a contributor on many Group Boards (you must approved by a Group Board administrator) keep pinning manually to save money.
These are not backed by data, just rough numbers from experience.
Please note that I do NOT think that Tailwind is one of the essential internet marketing tools you need (especially in the beginning before you get at least 100 unique daily visitors), but it will make your life easier.
Try Tailwind FREE (opens in a new tab)”>==>Try Tailwind FREE (schedule 100 Pinterest Pins/30 Instagram Posts)
Landing pages are one of the biggest money-making pages on your site along with product review posts.
For me it is one of the most essential internet marketing tools to help you add subscribers to your list, to convert affiliate sales or sell your own products.
The main difference is that they are designed for single-action calls-to-action (CTAs).
Basically, you ask your visitor to take an action:
It really could be any action:
And because you want your visitor to take one action, and nothing else, you must keep it simple.
Delete all distractions:
Because if they have more than one possible action to take, they will.
Or they will leave without doing anything out of confusion.
This means that you don’t want to create a landing page with your website builder (WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Blogspot).
Why?
Because your header and menu bar will appear at the top. (Sometimes it won’t make sense to add your header and it rarely makes sense to add your menu bar).
Of course, your theme or theme editor plugin could include the option to create landing pages free of headers and menu bars.
Then you wouldn’t need to pay for an additional tool.
But they come with limitations- fewer features, fewer design elements and templates.
This means that you cannot customize as much as you could with a designated landing page creator.
And fewer features, design elements and ready-to-go templates mean lower conversions.
For example, with Leadpages you can create pop-ups that keep your visitor on the same page without redirecting them.
There’s a risk when redirecting away to another page that they will leave while waiting for it to load.
This feature becomes valuable when the action you want them to take requires more than one step, such as, upselling, or visiting an affiliate sales page on your newsletter opt-in thank you page.
Or better yet, on your bonus offer page to collect their purchase order information.
Furthermore, pop-ups are an efficient and fast way to add landing pages on your blog, especially if you have more than one blog.
All you do is copy and paste the code.
Leadpages
I personally wouldn’t use any other landing page creator other then Leadpages, unless you focus heavily on marketing and selling your own products, especially high-end one-on-one or group coaching packages.
(For that, I’d look at Clickfunnels, which can do the same thing Leadpages does but offer all-in-one sales funnels functions including shopping carts.)
One thing that stands out for me is how easy it is to create opt-in pages and pop-ups with Leadpages.
Plus, you can create exit pop-ups (when a visitor leaves a blog post) or timed pop-ups (delayed pop-up after a page loads).
Once you find a layout that works you can duplicate it and quickly customize it for a different lead magnet (the free gift you give away in exchange for the visitor’s email).
I especially find it useful to duplicate and adjust.
It saves so much time.
This comes in handy will sales pages and pre-sell pages (bonus offer pages, brief reviews, money-making thank you pages)
You don’t want to start over.
Leadpages offers a variety of templates to choose from so that you don’t have to create all of them from scratch (although you can and I do on some occasions).
Try out Leadpages for FREE (opens in a new tab)”>==>Try out Leadpages for FREE
Not enough ways to organize your landing pages.
At the time of writing this post, you can only label each page.
I’d prefer a folder system like Canva uses, or something like Microsoft Office products.
After you create many pages it gets confusing to look at a long list.
Sometimes you can’t remember the name of the page you want to duplicate or make adjustments to.
Then you lose time trying to find it.
But there are many good landing page creators that other relationship bloggers use:
The most complete system is Clickfunnels, but you won’t need that until you create a lot of your own content to sell.
And if you only want to create pop up opt-ins then try these:
You can also create opt-in landing pages with some email service providers like Mailchimp, but with limitations.
If you’re serious about growing your email list (which we’ll cover in a second) and converting affiliate sales then I suggest you use a landing page creator.
On the other hand, if you don’t have any plans of creating a newsletter for your relationship blog, nor do you plan on selling your own products then a landing page creator is not one of the essential internet marketing tools you need right now.
I recommend Leadpages.
It’s what a vast number of relationship bloggers and internet marketers alike choose.
It’s much easier to convert affiliate sales through an email newsletter.
Your affiliate product review posts will convert sales (if done right) from SEO traffic.
But many of your sales will come from return visitors.
And they won’t buy unless you make it easier for them to.
This happens after you earn their trust by:
This becomes much easier if you send them multiple messages at different times.
Mailchimp
It’s easier to convert sales when you can market to their specific needs.
And it’s easier to set up when you can do it on autopilot.
If you don’t have an email service provider then you can start for free for up to the first 2,000 subscribers (that’s a lot), but you won’t be able to send an automated series of emails after visitors opt-in.
You need that.
Even still, their paid-for monthly plans are super inexpensive.
For everything I don’t like about Mailchimp Converkit has.
But Converkit, last I tried them, doesn’t offer segmentation.
You could build more than one list but visitors could opt-in to multiple which will add to your subscriber count and then you’ll pay more.
I found Convertkit so much easier to map all the emails out than Mailchimp when I did a trial run.
But without segmentation, you won’t convert affiliate sales as easily.
I’ve also tried Aweber in the past and liked them.
But with the chance to get the first 2,000 subscribers free, it was hard to pass up. Even without automation emails in the free account, at least you can get comfortable using the service first.
I do believe that a newsletter will help you increase affiliate sales and to sell your own products with your relationship blog.
Therefore, I do feel that an email service provider is one of the most important internet marketing tools to add to your repertoire.
I’ve read positive things about user’s experiences with these email service providers too:
Here’s the Number One lesson I can teach you about how to make money with your relationship blog.
Save time.
Avoid headaches.
Take blogging courses.
Here are the ones I’ve taken so far.
I’ve paid as much as $250 and it was worth it.
Do you know what my only regret was?
I wish I had taken them sooner instead of worrying about spending the money to take them.
But I lost a lot of time trying to figure out how to go from having a website with interesting content to one with interesting content that solved problems.
Solving visitors’ problems and recommending solutions makes money.
The only free course that I have personally taken that made me money was:
With their free course, I took 10 lessons that took me step-by-step to create a trustworthy, PROs and CONs review of eBooks and courses.
The content is taught via videos with recorded screenshots.
This makes it more interesting to learn and easier to pay attention to.
(Now Wealthy Affiliate offers two free courses: Online Entrepreneur Certification- 50 lessons; Affiliate Bootcamp- 70 lessons)
==>Click here to register for your free account and free training.
I took the course, then created a product review on my blog.
At that time, I didn’t have an email list and only got around 100 visitors per day.
I reviewed an eBook by dating coach Evan Marc Katz that offered dating tips for business, independent, middle-aged women who mostly meet men online.
This did not even relate directly to my specific relationship niche (catch cheaters and affair recovery), but based on my Google Analytics I could see my readers were interested in this content.
I gave it a shot even though I didn’t think I could rank high enough in Google and had no one to email to.
A few short months later I ranked number one in Google for a few phrases- I couldn’t believe my eyes!
Then I checked my affiliate dashboard and had already made 5 sales!
Yes, sales from a product that did not even directly relate to my main niche.
Up to that point my blog had been live for over two years and only produced one sale- that’s it!
And with the help of the free training from Wealthy Affiliate, I started making money every month as I produced more reviews.
The techniques from wealthy affiliate’s showed me one way to consistently convert affiliate sales.
This next course showed me how to blow up my traffic in order to ramp up on the affiliate sales conversions.
This high-value, complete course is free.
I still cannot understand why because they could easily charge for it and get paid.
Of course, there is a premium, upgraded version too.
It’s designed for beginners.
If you already have had a dating and relationship blog for a while now, I’d recommend Wealthy Affiliate’s free course instead.
But I highly recommend starting with the free one to take advantage of the strategies to get you started off correctly to build a money-making foundation.
Check out Affilorama’s FREE Lessons. (opens in a new tab)”>==>Check out Affilorama’s FREE Lessons.