How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
The most effective way to earn money with affiliate marketing is to advertise your links in a subtle but effective manner. Tell your audience why you like the product and why they should buy it too. Your readers should know exactly where your link is taking them. The products you promote should be quality products that are worth the time and money. Because you want to build credibility in your online community.
To some, affiliate marketing may seem like the great unknown. Look no further because I will break down the highs and lows of affiliate marketing, how to make money doing it and how you should make the most of your affiliate links.
This website has affiliate links that I earn a commission from without any extra cost you. This means that if you click on a link and purchase something, I might make a little money. You will not be charged extra, and some of the affiliate links I use have discounts so stay tuned!
What Are Affiliates Programs?
Simply put affiliate marketing is when you promote a product for a commission. The commission you get from any product does not affect the customer whatsoever.
For example, if a smartphone you promote costs 300$, it will cost the same amount of money if the buyer bought it from the company website. In most cases, some affiliates offer a unique discount link for you to promote. Bluehost has a discount in all the affiliate links given to its affiliate partners.
Affiliate marketing programs are also known as associate programs. For this reason, Amazon’s affiliates program is called “Amazon Associates.”
Where to advertise your affiliate links
The most common way in which you can use affiliate links is on a website. There are two ways in which you can go about this. Make a website to make a store like home page with pictures of the products you are promoting. Each image should have the related affiliate link to redirect the buyer onto the product purchase page. It may sound like a feat, but I assure you this is a simple and effective way in which you can promote affiliate links.
Setting up a storefront styled page is secure because unlike with WooComerce, you do not need a cart system. Buyers will make their purchases on the website; your affiliate links redirect them to. For success with this method, a niche is vital. If you are promoting a garden light, then set up your homepage accordingly.
Here is a picture from amazon you can make your product page in a similar way. You will most probably not get traffic from Google for a long time. The best way to get people to purchase any product you are promoting is by using Instagram and Pinterest.
Because the majority of users on Pinterest are women it is important to remember that you will be more successful putting up links to home decor rather than firearms.
The other way in which you can use affiliate links is in your blogging. Today perhaps 80-90% of searches you make on google direct you to blog posts. Mostly you are reading someone’s blog when you search “how to…” If you want to write and make some money too, this is your best solution.
You could write about anything, but you should write about things that interest you because you will be writing about it often. Again pick a niche. If you write about computer programming, then do not write blogs about your favourite book, and what you did last weekend as well.
Everyone online is looking for a specific answer to a problem they have. Extra information will make them veer off to the next blog for a more unambiguous explanation. You want them to find valuable information on your site that will keep them reading and coming back for more.
Another way in which you can promote affiliate links is with YouTube. If website building and writing is not your thing, then make a YouTube channel, and in the description below, put up your links. It is free, but you will again need a niche and a popular topic or a topic that people want to watch on YouTube videos, but no one has made them yet. Again ask yourself if you can make a hundred YouTube videos on a single niche-related topic. As with all good things, this will take time, patience and work.
How to do affiliate marketing that gets clicks
When you write a blog do not be that blogger who will highlight part of their text in hopes of getting someone to click and buy their link. Here are two examples and you will be able to clearly see the difference:
- I recommend Bluehost as a beginner hosting service because they offer a free domain name. They are amazingly cheap at $2.95 per month and they have 24/7 support. This is an ideal hosting company for beginners because WordPress is a learning curve for most people, and they make it all seem easy with their 1-click WordPress install. I frequently have a chat with their support to make updates for me, and if I make an exceptional mess of my site I can just make a call, and ask them to give me a back-up of my site as it was yesterday. Unlike other, more costly, hosting providers Bluehost provides a free SSL certificate as well. However, if you are not happy with their service you have a 30-day money-back guarantee so go to Bluehost to find the perfect domain name for your website!
- For a great website, you will need a good hosting provider that you can find at Bluehost.
If you were my reader for a hosting company which link would you be more likely to click on? I am sure you understand the difference now. Because I have used Bluehost I know what the service is like and most people want to know the opinion of someone who has actually used the product.
Make sure to tell your readers why you think the product you promote is a great purchase. Tell them how much it costs and why it is better than another company’s product. people want to know that they are spending their money in the right place. Furthermore, many people are absolute beginners and they may not have too much money to spend.
Website Building And Hosting
Make your website with WordPress! Why? Well, WordPress is a free open source software that makes up over a third of the internet. It is search engine friendly unlike Wix, which has a coding overload due to multiple page add-ons. Wix is user friendly but search engine unfriendly. Honestly, it is better that you figure out WordPress because you have an objective in mind, but Google will see a website made by Wix as a problem and just overlook it for something better.
You can get web hosting at less than three dollars a month and an entire hosting package at less than sixty dollars a year with Bluehost. It is WordPress compatible, and the 24/7 support is my favourite feature of Bluehost. Furthermore, if your site breaks or you need a PHP update, Bluehost support will do it for you!
Making a website may seem scary, but you can do it! WordPress has made website building easier then it has ever been. You will not need to code anything because there are over 50,000 free plugins for anything and everything you need on a website. If you are new to the world of website building, then check out my post on the Top 10 Essential Plugins For Beginners On WordPress.
Still do not know where to start then read How To Start A Website With Hosting.
The Importance Of A Niche With Affiliate Marketing
Your niche defines you! Without a niche, your advice on unrelated topics is useless to anyone online. Pick a niche before you start your website. At first, it will seem as though you are just writing to help other’s for no gain at all. It will take six months or a year before you start making money from your blogs or YouTube channel.
If you make a blog/YouTube channel about random topics your viewers will not know why they should return. So try to be a teacher online and teach your audience something. Then you will have people come back for more. If you use Pinterest remember to make your entire Pinterest account about one topic only.
How to find where you should start when you’re clueless
Here are three free applications that you can use to find keywords and top trends.
Google ads have a keyword planner that you can use to generate your own keyword hit list. All you have to do is make an account with Google Ads then follow this step-by-step tutorial.
If you haven’t got the time to watch the video just take a look at the following pictures to get started.
Here is your Google Ads homepage.
Click on the tools button.
Now click on ‘ Keyword Planner’ button.
Click on discover new keywords.
Now enter some keywords or just one.
I entered affiliate marketing. Now click on get results.
Here are your results. You can collect the keyword data for later but remember to go for keywords that have ‘medium’ results. The ‘high’ results will be too competitive and ‘low’ results are just not good.
With the keywords, you collect you can find out what is trending and promote those products. If you run a blog in a specific niche it will be easy to find affiliate products to match your blog. Alternatively, if you use Pinterest as your promotion platform then finding products in a specific niche should be simple too.
Affiliate Programmes You Can Apply To (Free)
- ShareASale, only for US and Canadian residents. They have over 40,000 platforms to choose from. Easy to use site and you can easily search for your niche products. The only downside is that sometimes people complain about an affiliate link being closed without the promoters being notified.
- Awin, partnered with ShareASale for a worldwide reach. This is a great site with over 15,000 brands across all sectors. I highly recommend this website for affiliate links!
- Amazon Associates, worldwide but incredibly low commissions. The site used to give an 8-10% commission to its associates but it has since been lowered. This happened after the pandemic leaving affiliate marketers justifiably furious.
- ClickBank, worldwide, multilingual and the commission rates are fantastic. The downside is that it is hard to find great products to promote.
The Importance Of Quality And Consistent Content
Think about it, if you write a blog post three times a week that twelve articles a month. The more you write, the more affiliate links you put up. In a perfect world, this would seem logical, but you must have well-written blogs that promote your products. If a buyer lands on your page with your random thoughts haphazardly written in them, you will not only lose page views; you will not make money. So be consistent and make your blogs or videos the best quality they can be.
Imagine you are a possible customer would you just buy a random object that has been badly advertised? Do you read badly written blogs? We all save or bookmark a greatly informative video or article. So make that blog that is well written, researched, informative but not “fluffy.”
An ideal blog length is 2000 words per blog. This may seem too much, and there are times when I want to run from writing too, but high-quality blogs full of information at 2000 words rank highest on all search engines.
Whether you use Instagram or Pinterest to direct your traffic to your website be consistent with your pins.
How To Use Social media For Affiliate Marketing
In the beginning, before man, there was Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook. These social media outlets used to let you put up direct affiliate links, but now you must have your own blog to redirect people there; in hopes that they too are interested in what you write about.
Do not worry! It is an extremely effective method of driving traffic to your site. Many people get more traffic from Social media rather than organic traffic from Google.
Use Canva to design your pins or posts. be creative and have a theme that you always use. Your social media accounts should mirror your selected topic. Be business-like on all fronts.
For affiliate marketing Pinterest is the best place to start. Pinterest has made it incredibly easy to create pins and with Tailwind you can easily re-pin your pins. Make sure to use only one social media platform to promote your affiliate blog page. All the affiliate self appointed gurus may be on all social media platforms today but they also started with just one platform too.
Here is the catch! Pinterest used to allow or overlook affiliate links with just a pin image uploaded to the platform. This practice will now get you banned from Pinterest. The only way to promote your links is through your website. So it is up to you what type of website you want to build for your affiliate links.
If blogging is not something you want to get into then try making a YouTube channel. It is free to make and you can make videos with your smartphone. YouTube does permit users to add affiliate links in the description of the videos. You have to have over 4000 watch hours and 1000 subscribers before you can put up ads on your channel.
Now many of you are thinking my life is not interesting and what could I possibly make YouTube videos about? The truth is that making a successful YouTube channel is easier than building a successful blog. You may think that a thousand subscribers are an impossible number that you will never reach, well just stop right there!
Firstly you can still promote your affiliates links with just a hundred subscribers or less.
Secondly, you can make a YouTube channel that teaches people something you are passionate and knowledgeable about. YouTube videos about your daily life are not what people want to see anyway, and to be successful you need to have a really interesting life.
4000 watch hours means that people will have to have watched your videos for that much time. They could watch the same video repeatedly, and this does not mean you need to make 4000 hours worth of videos!
The best way to be successful with YouTube is consistency, quality and a content dump to kick-start your channel. Here is what you should do to get started:
- make 20-40 small videos and upload them on YouTube (this is a content dump so that the platform has some of your stuff to do user testing with)
- after you have published these videos consistently upload two videos every week at the same time on the same days
- make your videos as high quality as possible, which means your lighting and audio should be the best you can make them
The only down side to YouTube videos is the comments. No matter what your channel is about someone is going make negative criticisms about something on your channel. Just ignore it and continue. Your subscribers will defend you most of the time.
The social media platforms that you should use for affiliate links
Here is a list of social media platforms that are harder to use for promoting your blog and affiliates.
The only platform you can branch out to later in Instagram, but in the beginning of your online income route concentrate on only one platform. To stay up to date with these platforms is a daily activity and when you have to make videos/blogs constantly it will be impossible.
Focus on one project at a time espesially if you are working on it alone.
Affiliate Marketing Course You Should Consider
There is an ocean of resources and courses online to teach you “how to do affiliate marketing.” I recommend ClickBank University. They have an online course which is just over $200 that you can take to learn the inside scoop on affiliate marketing.
If you have $500 dollars then you should think about Project 24 as an affiliate course. The program will teach you affiliate marketing, link building, SEO, and everything you need to know about how to build your own income online. The course is called Project 24 because it will show you how to replace your income with an income online within 24 months.
I recommend this course because I have learnt some things from their YouTube channel too. They are definitely legit and what I like most is that they keep updating the course with more information. Google makes algorithm updates every year and with rules changing it can be hard to keep up with trends and what works online. They stay up to date on all things Google as I do and the course is full of different courses you will have full access to.
It is true that anyone and everyone can do affiliate marketing, but guidance and a step by step course will set you on the right track from the beginning of your online money making journey.
Final Thoughts
I repeatedly say this to all my reader’s. Just do it! Stop thinking about whether or not, you can do it, or will you be successful. Some of you may not have a pro-family that believes in you. Maybe they think affiliate marketing is not really a lucrative avenue for money-making. Stop having doubts and just start. What do you have to lose? At an investment cost of fifty dollars, you can afford to start your online business tomorrow.