How Gutenberg Made it Easy to Monetize My Site
I am thrilled with how simple it was to create Reusable Blocks in Gutenberg to easily monetize my Heartwood Art woodworking site with affiliate links.
See how I did it and how you can make use of Reusable Blocks over and over for your offers, optins, affiliate links, and more.
Enjoying this series?
It’s all about how I’m turning a hobby site into a money-making blog.
Most Powerful Feature of Gutenberg
Like you, I wasn’t too impressed with Gutenberg features when it first came out in Dec 2018.
But, when they added Reusable Blocks, I immediately saw this as the most powerful feature for bloggers ever.
We all need to put some block of content on every post.
That could be an optin or CTA or our affiliate links.
And Reusable Blocks make that a super simple thing to do.
What is a Reusable Block?
With Gutenberg, you can use any block, including complex nested blocks, and assign it as a Reusable Block.
Then you can simply call that Reusable Block into any post or page. All of that content suddenly appears on the post or page.
And if you need to change it later, you just change the one Reusable Block and it updates everywhere its in use.
Cool, right?
We used to need a widget area or shortcode to do this and that made us reliant on the theme or a plugin to do it.
But Reusable Blocks are entirely independent of the theme or plugins.
You’re in total control of them and they travel with you if you ever change your theme, just like the rest of your content does.
And boy, what a time saver they are!
How I’m Making My Affiliate Links
Naturally, the affiliate links I want to place on my Heartwood Art site are for all of the tools and supplies I use in my woodworking.
I’ve started out with Amazon affiliate links because I was already a qualified affiliate.
But these days, Home Depot is making a real push to compete with Amazon by encouraging folks to order online and then either pick up at the store later or getting same/next day delivery – and all without a paid membership.
So, I wanted to ensure I had an easy way to add those Home Depot links once I qualified for the affiliate program that includes them as a vendor, along with other big box hardware stores like Lowes.
For that reason, I also decided to take my own pictures of my tools and supplies.
And then it would just be a matter of linking those images to my Shop Tools page.
And that page is where I have my affiliate links for all of my tools.
I created groups of tools and used jump links on the headings.
That way I could link to those sections at the top of the Shop Tools page and from any post.
So, folks would go right to the section with that tool.
Want to Know How to Create Jump Links?
In my Gutenberg Ninja course I show you step-by-step how to create my Shop Tools page, including the jump links. Plus, you’ll see how to create all of the reusable blocks I used on Heartwood Art.
How I Used Reusable Blocks
For the actual posts, I wanted to include a visual display of all the tools and supplies you would need for that project.
You can see an example of that layout on Part 1 of my Workbench Build series of posts.
Each tool row is a highly stylized Gutenberg Reusable Block.
It includes:
- a background color for the section
- A heading for the tool type
- Row of the tool images
- A nice border and background color for the row
- A link below the images to that section on the Shop Tools page
- And each image is also linked to that section
And each one of them is a Reusable Block.
So many projects require the same basic tools.
By making them as Reusable Blocks, I can call in that set of tools easily and quickly on any post.
And I can place it anywhere in the post it works best for me.
There’s another Reusable Block on that page for the link to the whole series on this workbench build.
And then another Reusable Block for subscribing to the Heartwood Art YouTube channel.
Considering that most every post on the site also has a video, that comes in super handy!
What a Time Saver!
Plus, if I want to change a tool image on one of them, then I only have to update the one Reusable Block and it updates everywhere that it is in use!
With 4-5 tool rows per post, this is an amazing time saver for me too.
I don’t have to recreate each row for each post.
Gift Pages
Gutenberg also made it quick and easy for me to do a gift post.
You can see an example of the Starter Tools for DIY Woodworkers post.
Each type of tool is featured in its own section with the Amazon affiliate link.
And I can easily add the Home Depot affiliate link later too.
Now, while these are not Reusable Blocks, they are close to the styling I used for the Shop Tools page.
And Gutenberg made that a quick thing to do!!!
Plus, there is a Reusable Block on that post. It’s my Amazon affiliate disclosure.
I Love Gutenberg
The more I work with Gute on my Heartwood Art site, the harder it is to work with the Classic Editor on all of my other sites.
I can’t wait to flip them to Gutenberg!
And in the Gutenberg Ninja course, I show you how to easily clone your site so you can try Gute with your existing theme, widgets, and content.
That way you can play and change things up and get your hair blown back by all of the new styling and layout options you have without disturbing your live site.
That’s exactly what I did with Heartwood Art and will be doing soon with all of my other sites too.
I’m hooked on Gutenberg and how easy it makes it for me to create great looking posts.
And I’m thrilled with how easy it was to monetize Heartwood Art in a way that will make it a breeze to keep current and add even more affiliate network links.
