If you’re looking to start monetizing your blog, you might have heard that affiliate marketing is a great option.
That’s because affiliate marketing is one of the most effective ways to create an income from your blog. It’s relatively easy to implement, and it doesn’t require too much salesmanship on your part.
There are so many opportunities in the affiliate marketing industry because so many businesses rely on affiliates to spread the word about their products and services.
In this guide, I’ll go over what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and how to start making money with your own blog, fast!
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a method of earning money by promoting other people’s products. As a blogger and affiliate marketer, your job is to recommend and promote products, for which you will then get a cut (or a commission), of the earnings when someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase. The best part is, you don’t have to own any physical products.
How does Affiliate Marketing work?
Two parties are involved in affiliate marketing:
- The merchant
- The affiliate (you)
The program that offers the product or service is known as the merchant. Their goal is to connect with new clients and increase sales, therefore they’ll pay affiliates (you) a commission for every sale that they lead back to the merchant.
Each affiliate is provided a personal URL by the merchant so that they can trace who is accountable for a sale. When an individual clicks on that link, their device saves a little file known as a ‘cookie’. The affiliate cookie assists the business in crediting the sale to the correct customer. It also has an expiration date, which means that you’ll get paid even if the customer doesn’t buy the thing right away.
So let’s say someone visits your blog and clicks on your affiliate link. Even if they don’t make a purchase right away, you can still earn a commission if they decide to purchase the product or service a few days later because the cookie lets the merchant know that you initially sent the visitor over to their product.
Affiliates are paid a commission for each conversion, which is usually a direct sale. This might be a one-time fee ($50 per sign-up) or a percentage of sales. Affiliates are sometimes only compensated for the initial sale, but in other circumstances, they may be paid for all of a customer’s transactions within a year or indefinitely. This money can definitely add up.
Although it may appear deceitful when affiliate marketing is done correctly, customers profit as well. They’re exposed to items and services that are a good fit for them that they might not have discovered otherwise.
How much money can a blogger make with Affiliate Marketing?
Well, a quick reply to this question is that as a blogger, the amount of earnings you can generate through affiliate marketing is limitless. It all relies on your market segment and the amount of time and effort spent working on your blog. Successful affiliate marketers can make anywhere between $1000 and $1,000,000 each month. I know what you’re thinking, it sounds ridiculous.
If you want to check out more realistic earnings, ThrivingAffiliates has a great round-up post of affiliate marketing income reports from various bloggers.
But just have it at the back of your mind that if you’re new to the world of affiliate marketing, your earnings may appear to be small at first, but as you start to drive more traffic to your blog, you’ll be able to earn much more.
How do you earn with Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an evident lure for anyone trying to boost their online income and might be the easiest way without having any of your own products.
This is done by signing up for affiliate networks and then recommending and promoting their products, services, online courses, etc., as well as writing product reviews within your content.
So how can an affiliate be compensated for bringing together merchants and buyers?
In some cases, the visitors aren’t necessarily expected to buy a product in order to earn a commission. Depending on the plan, the blogger’s assistance to the seller’s deals is computed variably.
A variety of incentives are available to affiliates through different programs.
Here are 3 ways to earn a commission through affiliate marketing:
1. Pay per click
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an affiliate marketing strategy in which an advertiser pays the blogger whenever someone clicks on the ad.
2. Pay per sale
Pay-per-sale (PPS) is when the blogger gets paid any time someone purchases as a result of their digital marketing efforts. This is how affiliate marketing works in most cases.
3. Pay per lead
Pay-per-lead is (PPL) when affiliates are paid based on the number of leads they generate for the merchant. The blogger’s goal is to send their visitors to the seller’s website and complete the required actions, such as filling out an inquiry form, registering to try the product, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading software or manuals.
7 Steps to get started with Affiliate Marketing
Step 1: Search and go for a suitable platform for yourself
The first step to earning an affiliate income with your blog is, as you would imagine, would be to first have a blog. This can be done by heading over to Hostinger where you can get a premium hosting plan for only $3.49 a month. Your 1-year subscription also includes a free domain name and lifetime SSL (which is an SEO must-have).
Step 2: Choose your niche
Whatever blogging niche you’re passionate about, that’s the one I say get into. There will always be a lot of competition when you first start blogging. And every day, the number of new bloggers around the globe grows. Who cares! The more you enjoy the topic that you’re blogging about, the better your odds of success.
However, you should narrow down your niche to boost your chances of success. Select a topic that is narrowly focused on a single category. Instead of talking about dance as a whole, you may talk about a specific type of dancing.
For example, you want to learn how to make money by investing in crypto. You have two friends that already invest. One friend invests in stocks, real estate, crypto, bonds, and forex. The other friend ONLY invests in crypto. Which friend would you likely seek out advice from? Probably the friend that focuses solely on crypto, right? That’s why it’s important to become an authority in a more niche topic first.
You can gain more readers and rank higher on search engines if you focus on a more niche topic first. You can then move on to other topics once you’ve covered most of the topic and boosted traffic to these pages.
It’s critical to remember that to be a successful content creator, you must choose what you enjoy doing. Often affiliate websites fail due to a lack of continuity. When the going gets rough, it will be a lot easier for you to find your way around if you are passionate about the subject.
Step 3: Look for affiliate programs to join
Joining an affiliate program or network grants you access to a variety of products to promote so you can start making money with your blog.
There are three different types of affiliate programs:
Low-paying, high-volume affiliate programs
This is an affiliate program for a product that is generally appealing yet unprofitable. Take, for example, a PlayStation4 game. Many individuals use the PlayStation 4, but games cost roughly $50 on average, and membership fees are frequently in the single digits. That means you could make $ 2-3 on each sale with a little luck.
The benefit of low-paying, high-volume affiliate programs is that it leads to many sales. Amazon has a great affiliate program that’s definitely worth checking out. On pretty much every sale on Amazon, you can expect to earn a 10% commission rate.
Another plus is that you often get commissions on all purchases, not just the affiliate products you recommend. Even if someone clicks on your Amazon affiliate link and doesn’t buy the product, you can still make money if the visitor decides to purchase something else.
It might take some traffic to make these affiliate programs profitable, but that’s the blogging game for you. Just keep growing your blog, and results will follow.
High-paying, low-volume affiliate programs
These are high-priced affiliate programs for specialized products. For example, you can join an affiliate network that pays approximately $500 per month if you refer 60 customers to a company. However, because CRM software is supplied to small business owners, the market is limited.
For programs with large fees, there is also more competition. It’s difficult to make a lot of money when you’re just starting because you’re competing for large sums of money with experienced marketers.
High-paying, high-volume affiliate programs
These are affiliate programs that pay out a lot of money for products that have a lot of people interested in them.
Let’s take a look at a bank card as an example. Everyone needs a credit card, and the majority of clients remain loyal to the company for years, if not decades.
Such products have the drawback of attracting only affiliates with a lot of experience and a lot of money. Some people utilize spam tactics as well, and you won’t be able to compete with them.
For now, don’t worry about the nitty-gritty and just get started. Taking action leads to clarity and success.
Step 4: Create great content
As soon as your blog is up and running, you can increase its Google ranking by optimizing your content for search engines with SEO (search engine optimization). The next step is to add relevant affiliate links to your blog posts wherever they may be applicable.
Don’t just go with one of Amazon’s best-selling products. Make an effort to solve the visitor’s problem with the products you promote.
And if you’re writing a review, buy the product and put it to the test. This is exactly what great affiliate marketers are doing and it’s why they are successful.
You can always start with what you have at home if you don’t have enough money to buy everything. If you run a tech blog, for example, you could write reviews on the different products you possess; laptops, headphones, keyboards, speakers, etc.
Step 5: Drive traffic to your blog
After you create your content, the next stage is to increase the number of visitors who read it and click on your affiliate links.
Consider the following techniques of getting traffic on your blog:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – The practice of optimizing pages to rank highly in search engines such as Google is known as SEO. This is done by targeting high-volume, low competition keywords and creating a blog post or piece of content around it. Other SEO factors include writing enticing headlines, word count, alt text, and meta descriptions.
You’ll be able to drive constant and passive traffic as long as you can rank high in the search engines for your target keywords.
Paid Traffic – This is where you pay for website traffic. You can achieve this with pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements.
The benefit of sponsored traffic is that you get traffic as soon as you start paying.
If your affiliate commissions are higher than your ad cost, this could be a great way to start earning money while growing your blog.
Email Marketing – You can get your readers at any time using email lists.
If you have an email list, use it to promote new blog posts and encourage them to return to your site for more. As a result, you’ll have increased clicks and affiliate sales. You can also include affiliate links in your email message just like you would in a blog post.
If you haven’t created an email list yet, you can start by enticing your visitors to sign up by giving them something of value, free-of-charge. This is typically something small, but helpful such as a checklist, a quick guide, or more content that helps solve your target audience’s problems.
Pinterest – Pinterest is your best option if you’re wanting to get traffic to your blog right away without spending money or waiting for your articles to rank in the search engines.
To see just how much blog traffic you can, check out the massive results bloggers are getting using Pinterest.
Step 6: Get clicks on your affiliate links
People aren’t going to click on your affiliate links just because you insert them throughout your blog post.
So, what are the best ways to persuade people to click on your affiliate link?
These are a couple of things you should take note of:
Context – Always double-check that your link isn’t spammy or out of context.
Callout – Using callouts like buttons, tables, and boxes can assist draw attention to your content and make it easier to scan.
Link placement – Clicks will be few and far between if your affiliate links are located near the bottom of the page, where visitors rarely scroll.
On the other hand, making every other word a link in your introduction will make your material appear spammy. You must strike a balance between link placement and the other variables mentioned.
Step 7: Convert clicks to sales
Making money in the affiliate industry involves two metrics:
Click-through rate (CTR) – measures the number of people that visit your website or landing page.
Conversion rate – measures how many visitors complete an action (makes a purchase, signs up for a free trial, registers, etc.)
To make the most out of affiliate marketing, focus on constantly improving these numbers.
Popular Affiliate Networks & Affiliate Programs
In order to start earning money from your blog, you’ll need to join an affiliate network. Here are some of the best and most popular ones to join.
- Amazon Associates
- Ultimate Bundles
- Skimlinks
- Creative Market
- Shareasale
- Bluehost
- CJ Affiliate
- SendOwl
- Awin
- Impact Radius
- Clickbank
There are many out there. To find networks that best suit you, try doing a quick Google search for “YOUR NICHE Affiliate Networks”.
Frequently Asked Questions
The last thing you need to know about Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an excellent way for bloggers to make money online. Especially if it’s your first time monetizing a website.
If you’ve written articles that are optimized for affiliate marketing, you should be able to start earning in a relatively short amount of time. Remember, the more traffic to your blog posts, the more opportunity you will have for people to click on your product links.
If you’re interested in getting more traffic to your blog to make more sales, be sure to take a look at the post: SEO for Bloggers: The Ultimate Guide to Google Traffic.
Have any experience with affiliate marketing? I’d love to hear your opinion.
How long did it take before you made your first dollar? Feel free to post any other affiliate marketing tips that you found helpful.
Even if you haven’t started with affiliate marketing yet but still have some questions, ask away!
Leave a comment below! I’d love to hear from you.
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