How Sergei Bellos grew and monetised the Livin3 website

4 years ago, Livin3.com was a failing website. Now, under the ownership of Sergei Bellos, the website is gaining huge numbers of visitors and turning a substantial profit. So how did he do it?

The first thing Sergei did was to build up the site as a lifestyle blog. He started writing (and finding other people to write) regular articles about food, fitness and general health, and managed to share them over social media and through other channels to build up an audience. Once he had an audience that trusted his expertise, he started to monetise the website.

Sergei turned Livin3.com into an Amazon affiliate, meaning he would get commission from every person who followed one of his links to a product on Amazon and bought the product. He then started to build in links to lifestyle products in his blog, and explicitly recommend some to his followers. This meant that he started to gain an income through his posts.

Becoming an Amazon affiliate is not an uncommon thing for websites to try to do, but the vast majority fail because they go about it the wrong way. To make money through recommending products to your audience, you need to have a sizable readership first – otherwise you won’t generate enough referrals to bring in the sales you need!

It is also counter-productive to indiscriminately recommend products, or to recommend things with no justification given. It is important for the blog to retain its trustworthiness in the eyes of readers, which means that faulty equipment or products that do not provide good value for money cannot be recommended.

Sergei also doesn’t just recommend products and leave it at that. He also continues to publish blogs and tips with no recommended products, so that his readers can avoid sales pitches if they want. This again helps to build up the trust between Sergei and his readers, which means that people are prepared to trust his recommendations and keep reading his website.

The recommendations also have to be good, otherwise people would stop trusting Sergei and his Amazon affiliate links would become largely worthless. He doesn’t just push one product when he writes an article, but rather compares different options so that people can decide for themselves what to get (if they get anything). He also explains how to use the different equipment or take the supplements he provides links to.

These techniques have helped Sergei to grow and to monetise the website, and it continues to provide him with a steady stream of income.

Christian Woods
Christian Woods
Christian is a morning reporter and technology columnist for Best in Australia. Christian has worked in the media since 2000, in a range of locations. He joined Best in Australia in 2018, and began working in Melbourne in 2019.
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