Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable ways of making legit money on blogs, but it is worth noting that the saying “Rome was not built in a day” applies so much to affiliate marketing on blogs because you need to give yourself some time to see the success you need.
One of the greatest challenges and means of achieving success with affiliate marketing on blogs is to get lots of traffic, especially organic traffic because most affiliate programs will reject your application if they find out that your blog does not have that much traffic.
For instance, Amazon affiliates are required to have at least 3 sales after 180 days they have signed up for their program. Failure to do so will have your Amazon affiliate account disabled.
And the only way you can sell the 3 products within 180 days is to have enough traffic on the blog you will be using to promote your affiliate link.
This is why I always urge bloggers who want to achieve success with affiliate marketing to pursue getting lots of traffic to their blogs at all costs, and the best way to do so is with content marketing.
In this article, therefore, I am going to walk through how to start earning with affiliate marketing on blogs, and if you read to the end I promise you will get all the information that will put you on the road to achieving success with affiliate marketing on your blog.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission when you refer a visitor to your blog to buy a product or service from a digital platform via an affiliate link.
How to start earning with affiliate marketing on blogs.
To start earning with affiliate marketing on blogs, you have to figure out the kind of affiliate program that will work best for you and use the result to choose a niche and adopt a content strategy that will bring visitors who will click on your affiliate links.
The majority of affiliate programs are going to reject your request to join when they discover that your blog is not getting so much traffic. This happens because affiliate programs are on the lookout for blogs that will be able to recommend lots of people who are going to patronize their services or buy their products.
At this point, let me show you the step-by-step process you are going to follow in order to start earning with affiliate marketing on your blog:
- Figure out the kind of affiliate programs you should join.
- Choose a niche.
- Build a blog if you have none.
- Set up a content strategy.
- Build a community for your audience.
- Sign up for affiliate programs.
- Know the right places to place your affiliate links.
- Check your analytics to see what’s working and optimize for more.
Figure out the kind of affiliate programs you should join.
Some of the articles you will find online about how to make money with affiliate marketing will usually begin by telling you to choose a niche, but what if you choose a niche and afterward discover that the affiliate programs available in that niche will not enable you to make the kind of money you want?
Well, that will definitely force you to go back to choose another niche and start all over again.
For example, I’ve been struggling so much with making money from affiliate marketing on one of my blogs webflex.com.ng because most of the affiliate programs available are referring people to get web hosting on web hosting companies.
And it took me some while to realize that the reason I am struggling with making money from affiliate marketing on that blog is that not many people are getting web hosting every day because a few people who are building websites or blogs are web designers who already have their preferable hosts.
So when figuring out the kind of affiliate programs you should join, you must put the following points into consideration:
- Ensure the kind of affiliate product you want to join is in high demand. I always recommend product sales because you will be able to find lots of products that people are using on a daily basis
- Make sure the kind of affiliate program you want to join has high affiliate commissions. For example, if you are using Jvzoo to refer people to products, you will be able to see the price of the product and how much you will earn if someone purchases it.
Choose a niche.
Choosing a niche will now be easier because you already know the kind of product or service you want to promote and earn a commission.
Some articles online will advise you to choose a profitable niche, but what if a niche is profitable and the affiliate programs are less profitable or not that much available?
So when choosing a niche, I always recommend you choose a niche that has lots of traffic no matter how competitive it might be, because so long as you will be able to create original and helpful content consistently you will soon start to step up your SERP and get the needed traffic that will help you to earn from affiliate marketing on your blog.
Set up a content strategy.
Setting up a content strategy will actually involve doing keyword research and determining how often you are going to publish articles on your blog.
Now let’s treat these two points side by side.
- Keyword research: Since you have already been able to figure out the kind of affiliate program you are going to use on your blog, you need to gather the keywords relating to the services they offer or products they sell and type them into Google search engine to see the queries they are going to return. Go ahead and formulate your articles around those queries, and make sure your articles are original and helpful as well as add much value to your readers.
- How often you should publish content: Well, publishing content is going to depend on whether you are a full-time or part-time blogger. You can however gather your keywords and hire writers to create the articles for you. And as for how often you should post on your blog to succeed in affiliate marketing, I recommend you try and start with at least 4 to 5 posts every week.
Build a community for your audience.
Once the traffic starts flowing into your blog, your next target should be to turn your readers and visitors into devotees and to do so you have to build a community for them.
And below are some of the ways you can do so:
- Add a members area where your visitors can sign up in order to gain access to in-depth articles, audiobooks, ebooks, courses, etc. This will keep them coming back every now and then to check for new stuff and moreover, you will collect their emails during registration and use it to alert them of those new stuff whenever you drop them.
- Add a forum where members can sign up and interact with you and other members by asking and answering questions on the forum etc.
- Add an email subscription adding an email subscription will enable your visitors to subscribe to your mailing list where you will collect their emails and send them alerts every time you drop a new article or other resources on your blog.
Sign up for affiliate programs.
Signing up for affiliate programs is no longer going to be a big deal because you have already figured them out right from the very start.
Moreover, since you are already getting traffic to your blog, you will not be rejected by any affiliate program you will apply to join.
So go ahead and sign up for those affiliate programs you selected and gather the affiliate links for the next step.
Know the right places to place your affiliate links.
Knowing the right places to place affiliate links on your blog is very crucial for your success in affiliate marketing, and I bet you don’t want to throw those links about and distract your readers from getting the information they were looking for on your blog.
The right places you can place your affiliate links are to get them as banners and place them on the header, footer, or sidebar of your blog, you can also conduct a product review or compare various services and add the links as a call-to-action for you visitors to follow and check them out.
You can scroll down to this article and read the subheading: How to use affiliate links as a blogger, to get more information on this point.
Check your analytics to see what’s working and optimize for more.
Make sure you keep track of your statistics by checking your analytics every now and then to see the posts that are bringing traffic to your blog and optimize for more by creating more articles around the subject and adding your affiliate links to them.
How to use affiliate links as a blogger.
To use affiliate links as a blogger, you can place them as a banner on the header, footer, or sidebar of your blog. You can also conduct product reviews or compare various services and add their affiliate links at where you recommend your visitors to go and check them out.
- Banners: Get the right size of your affiliate links as banners and place them in strategic places in your blog. It could be on the sidebar, footer, or header but make sure you are not placing them in a way that will distract your reader’s attention.
- Conduct product reviews: Another way to use affiliate links as a blogger is to conduct product reviews for your affiliate products and add those links as a recommendation for your readers or visitors to go and check them out. To conduct an effective product review, make sure you purchase and use the product to know how it works so you can relate accurate information to your readers.
- Compare different affiliate services: You can also compare different affiliate services to help your readers understand the experiences you had when using them and at the end make sure you recommend the one that worked best for you. And lest I forget, make sure you use those services for some time to study how they work before you read an article to compare them.
Which blog is best for affiliate marketing?
Any blog is best for affiliate marketing so long as it has lots of traffic that will increase the chances of visitors clicking on those affiliate links and purchasing a product or service for the blog to earn a commission.
