What is Affiliate Marketing and How can you make money from it?
Becoming a part of an affiliate network is an excellent strategy for bloggers looking to up their current income or even just to begin actually making money from their blog. There are several options when it comes to affiliate marketing as well as strategies for making affiliate marketing work for you. Below I will teach you what is affiliate marketing, examples of affiliate marketing in blogging, affiliate strategies and some of the top affiliate networks to join.
So, What Is Affiliate Marketing All About?
A simple definition for affiliate marketing is:
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways people make money online and for some it can be a passive income once established. It is a strategy where an individual partners with a business (mainly an ecommerce sites ) in order to make a commission by referring readers or visitors to a business’s particular product or service. But that really is quite a simple explanation. To be really successful at making money with affiliate marketing there is a little more to it.
In the case of blogging, a blogger will become an affiliate of a selected company via an affiliate network or directly from the ecommerce business, and make money from being an affiliate by placing a link, button or banner within a blog post that will lead the readers to that affiliate products or services.
A good blogger and affiliate will utilize a number of different marketing channels to promote content.
Affiliate Marketing Examples and Strategies
What does affiliate marketing look like when you’re a blogger? An example of this could be blatantly creating a post that is actually about the company you are affiliated with or you could deftly weave the product or service into a post that is on a related topic.
An example of going the blatant root? Let’s say you are a food blogger and one of the companies you are an affiliate of sells food processors. You can write an entire post about that food processor including:
- Benefits
- Capabilities
- Recipes where the food processor could be utilized
- Cost
- Care instructions and more
Then you could include a button, link or banner ad that would take the reader directly to that product on an ecommerce site or platform, and they could order it based on your recommendations. Your job is to send potential customers to your affiliate program’s offer.
If you would like to take a more subtle approach, include a product or service from your company that relates into your blog post. For example, let’s say that you are a wine connoisseur and that is what your blog is based around. In any post that is enticing your readers to open up a good bottle of Merlot or what have you, it would be wise to embed an ad for a quality, easy-to-use wine opener, wine glasses or stoppers that keep the wine fresh.
Examples of Websites Using Affiliate Marketing
Sometimes it’s a good idea to actually see some success stories within affiliate marketing to truly understand the concept of “affiliate marketing”. Below I have included some real examples of websites that earn thousands of dollars per month / day, with affiliate marketing.
HuffingtonPost.com
Many bloggers also happen to have published more traditional collections of their writings, which allows for some affiliate marketing opportunities within any of their online pieces. Specifically, affiliate links to online retailers can be included as part of an author’s articles or blog posts.
TopTenSelect.com
This popular product review site reviews different types of Amazon products and compiles them into comparison tables and top 10 lists. The site appears to be mainly funded by the affiliate marketing program, Amazon Associates, and only looks to gain traffic from one marketing channel (Google). The content on the site is comprehensive and gives the user great advice on what products are worth the money.
Dodoburd
Another insanely popular gift review site, dodoburd not only gains traffic organically from Google but they also have a strong Pinterest game. All their posts are optimized to be used on Pinterest and the content is comprehensive and well written. A great example of content marketing that fuels huge affiliate revenue growth.
Things to Avoid with Affiliate Marketing
With affiliate marketing it is best to approach content creation like you are trying to explain something to a friend or family member. Don’t write like a salesperson when featuring a product or service from a company you are an affiliate of or change the tone your readers are used to.
Yes, you are in fact selling something, but your blog doesn’t suddenly have to turn into a commercial or take on a voice that may be off putting to your readers. Often, bloggers will talk about how the product or service was beneficial to them while it relates to the blog’s topic.
Another thing to avoid would be to display a banner or button in the post in a way that doesn’t make sense or that doesn’t seem to relate to the post. Give some sort of introduction to the product or a lead that particularly relates to the service so that its appearance on your blog will flow seamlessly.
I have pages on this site that only has one mention of a particular product with just one small anchor text link, and that generates well over $1000 a month.
Always Disclose Your Affiliation
It’s important to note that as an affiliate marketer by law you need to have an affiliate disclosure statement on all pages that contain affiliate links. This is a requirement by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). You can check their guidelines here.
Making Money As An Affiliate Marketer
How exactly does an affiliate make money? Well believe it or not, an affiliate marketing business is probably one of the most profitable you’d likely to come across. Set up correctly, it can be very lucrative. An affiliate’s payment is based off of affiliate commission from the company they are an affiliate of or are paid via an affiliate marketing program or network such as Shareasale or Awin. The buttons, links or banners of the products you are trying to sell contain your unique user ID when you embed the HTML code into your blog that makes the ad appear.
When the user clicks that ad / link / image and chooses to buy the product, the company will be alerted that you were the affiliate that led them to that purchase. As such, you will receive a commission from the company for being responsible in driving traffic and new customers to their website.
How Do You Get Traffic To The Products Or Services You Are Trying To Sell?
One of the main reasons why most newbie affiliate marketers give up after 3 months is the fact that they can’t build up traffic to their affiliate website. It’s a thorn in most marketers’ sides, but one that can be easily resolved if you put the effort in. Below I have covered a few areas that will get you good targeted traffic to your affiliate deals.
Create great content
Easier said than done you might say. It’s true. Creating something truly amazing and resourceful takes time, effort and dedication to the project. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Have a look at these great content ideas that you could use for blog.
Make your posts engaging and offer a lead that will capture readers attention and make them want to read on and learn more about the product or service.
Practice effective SEO techniques
Just as with any blog post, utilising good SEO strategies and driving traffic from search engines can be a good source of quality traffic.
The skyscraping technique is a great way to not only rank for loads more keywords naturally, but also to generate links to your content by becoming the best and most comprehensive resource on the web. It’s a common tactic used in online marketing for building organic traffic.
Skyscraping is when you find the best content for a particular keyword and then create your own version, but make it even better than the original. This can be done by covering areas that might be missing from your competitors piece or expanding on those topics, and become the ultimate resource for that subject.
Paid Traffic
The majority of affiliate marketers pay for their traffic via platforms like Facebook, Google Adwords and other ad networks. For me I’d rather gain traffic for free via search engines and social media. Be careful when promoting your affiliate links on social networks as most of them will not entertain the idea of you publishing direct links to your affiliate offers. It’s always best to send social traffic to your own landing page on your site.
Email List
They say the money is in the list. Building up a solid email list of subscribers is one sure fire way to generate income from affiliate marketing and online marketing. Good email marketing is key. To do this you need to action some email list building ideas in order to attract people to signing up. Ideas like creating a giveaway such as a free ebook in exchange for their email works really well. Once you’ve built up trust with your audience, they will be more inclined to buy from your suggestions to them. This is where the money comes rolling in from affiliate sales. I can’t stress enough how important it is to get onboard with email marketing, as it gives you the edge over other affiliate marketers in your niche.
Upsell
Upselling is a sales technique where the salesperson encourages a more expensive purchase by a customer by persuading them to get an upgraded version of an item or to purchase add-ons. Remember our food processor example? That food processor could probably be best used with a book of recipes, which also can be purchased at the same company’s website. Upselling is an affiliate marketers’ secret weapon to gaining extra affiliate sales.
Promote products you would buy
Do you have zero interest in an expensive mountain bike the company you are an affiliate of sells? Well, you probably don’t want to feature it on your blog, as it is extremely difficult to persuade readers (or anyone for that matter) that they should buy something you wouldn’t be caught spending a single penny on. When you are passionate about a product or–at the very least–interested in learning more about it, this will come through to your readers, engage them and better coax them to buy
Examples Of Affiliate Networks
There are several options when it comes to joining an affiliate network. It would be also be wise to join several, so that you have a variety of products and/or services at your disposal to write about and a wealth of affiliate commission.
Here are just a few that have been of great benefit to me over the years:
Amazon Associates
One of the oldest affiliate networks on the web, Amazon associates is one of the main reasons why Amazon has become the monster it is today. For me, it’s been the easiest way to earn affiliate income. I have built countless Amazon niche sites where I have earned money through reviewing products that appear on Amazon.com or .co.uk
You can become an Amazon affiliate really easily. Click here to find out more.
If you’re interested in learning more about these affiliate networks then you might want to check out my in-depth comparison of the top affiliate programs.
Further Resources On Affiliate Marketing
- Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing – An easy to follow, step-by-step online course that teaches you the ins and outs of affiliate marketing. It’s written by Michelle Schroder who makes $100K+ a month from her blog. A genuine super affiliate that shares her success stories and affiliate marketing techniques with her community both on her private Facebook group and on her blog. Sign up here.
- How Affiliate Marketing Works – Rae Hoffman (SugarRae) has a great visual explanation for how the affiliate marketing process works, from the initial signup to getting paid.
- Passive Income Ideas A whole long detailed list of passive income ideas that you can easily set up in just a matter of months.
- Affiliate Marketing 101: Learning the Lingo – This glossary by Affiliorama gives a good rundown of the jargon you’ll come across in the affiliate marketing industry.
- What to Do When “All of the Good Ideas are Already Taken” – Pat Flynn from SPI has some great insights into a common frustration for affiliates
- The Rise of Dr. Ngo – This multi-part series from Charles Ngo is one of the most honest, in-depth accounting of an affiliate marketer’s successes and failures. Getting through all eight parts will take you a while, but is absolutely worth your time.
- Affiliate Marketing 101 – Ahmad Ben is documenting his journey from the 9-5 to becoming a full time internet marketer. His post on Affiliate marketing is a great primer for beginners.
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Jamie
My name is Jamie Spencer and I have spent the past 5 years building money making blogs. After growing tired of the 9-5, commuting and never seeing my family I decided that I wanted to make some changes and launched my first blog. Since then I have launched lots of successful niche blogs and after selling my survivalist blog I decided to teach other people how to do the same.
