#Affiliate marketing is the easiest #blog #monetization method to get started with
First off, what is affiliate marketing?
In simple terms, affiliate marketing is the process of promoting other people’s products in exchange for a commission whenever your recommendation leads directly to a sale.
This is all made possible and tracked via affiliate links. Here’s what a link like that might look like:
http://SOMEPRODUCT.com/?affid=1234
Basically it’s a standard link, only with the affid=1234 part added at the end. This is what allows your recommendation to be tracked and then ultimately be tied to a specific sale when it happens.
Commissions are usually in the range of 5%-75% of the sticker price. If it’s physical products we’re talking about, it’s nearer the 5% mark. For digital stuff, even 100% commissions are possible.
The most important part here from the buyer’s perspective is that they still pay the standard sticker price, so none of your commission is funded by the buyer.
Now, there are two main puzzle pieces that you need to put in place if you want to monetize your blog through affiliate marketing:
🗃 which affiliate products you’re going to promote,
📈 how you’re going to promote them.
Therefore, the first order of business, how to find products to promote?
Every niche and market have its own common practices when it comes to the affiliate realm, but generally speaking, if a product has an affiliate program available, it’s going to be mentioned somewhere on the company’s website. Likely in the footer, or even the main menu.
Affiliate puzzle
Here are three golden rules of how to monetize a blog with affiliate marketing:
🏅 only promote products that you use yourself, believe in, and know are great
🏅 only promote products that you wouldn’t be ashamed to promote
🏅 only promote products that your audience will enjoy and/or benefit from
Though this might sound simple enough, this can get tricky and especially if your blog is in a niche like personal finance or fitness. There’s more than enough products in those niches that lure affiliates in with big payouts, despite being of relatively poor quality. That’s why the “personally believe in” and “audience will benefit from” factors are so important here.
An example of what we promote on this very blog as part of our affiliate marketing monetization model:
Since this blog is about all things WordPress it makes sense that some of our readers will be interested in WordPress themes. It just so happens that most premium theme stores have their affiliate programs. Therefore, whenever we mention themes in our posts, we can use our affiliate links to do so.
Here’s an example from one such post:
What can you reasonably expect from affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing can be a great source of income when learning how to start a blog and make money, but it all depends on two factors:
the size of your traffic
how responsive your audience is and/or how effective you are when promoting affiliate products
With time, your traffic will grow, so let’s not worry about this aspect for now. Basically, the sooner you get started with affiliate marketing the sooner you’ll see any kind of results coming your way.
effective promotion
When it comes to effective promotion, here are some of the possible ways to go about it. How to monetize a blog:
review the products you’re promoting and use your affiliate links in the reviews; example: Elementor vs Divi Builder vs Beaver Builder
publish compilation posts (lists), where you discuss a number of products that achieve a certain goal; example: 5 Best Contact Form Plugins for WordPress Compared
recommend products in how-to posts (of course, only if they help the cause); example: How to Create a Local Search Directory Like Yelp on WordPress
Though affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the most effective monetization technique that you can use, the devil is in the details of how exactly you run your affiliate promotions.
The core difference between this and, say, putting some AdSense ads on your site is that, with affiliate marketing, it’s only you who’s responsible for targeting and making sure that the product fits the audience. With standard ads (via AdSense or otherwise), you’re basically just renting out the space on your site, and it’s the advertisers who need to figure out what to promote, to whom, and how.
What I’m getting at is that placing a random affiliate offer on your site won’t work that well. This is why we’re using targeted reviews, compilation posts and make those direct product recommendations if and when they fit the topic of a specific tutorial on the blog.
How to monetize a blog by executing a good affiliate marketing strategy
With the above in mind, let’s get into specifics and see how affiliate marketing can be integrated into your blog. Let’s imagine that the topic of your blog is wedding planning.
Example article #1: “10 Tips on How to Cope With Pre-Wedding Depression”
[wedding depression]
The person reading an article like that probably already has almost everything about their wedding planned out, or at least the key things. For instance, it doesn’t really make sense to try to sell them on a wedding location (via an affiliate offer). They already have that.
What does make sense is maybe mentioning that preparing for a dream honeymoon can help cope with the feeling. While the advice given in the post needs to be of high quality and provide value in itself, you can also recommend specific trips or travel bureaus and get a cut of the sale if the reader buys anything.
Example article #2: “How Much Does a Wedding Cost?”
[wedding cost]
This type of article presents both a huge opportunity but also a huge challenge in terms of monetizing it via affiliate marketing.
First off, the person reading probably doesn’t have anything booked/purchased yet, and they perhaps even expect the author to recommend some solutions.
The challenge is that the person isn’t ready to buy anything either.
They’re just window shopping. So, how to monetize a blog in this scenario? Promoting wedding locations, honeymoon destinations or anything related will not likely work. The author’s best bet is just to recommend further reading on topics like:
“Why Getting a Jaw-Dropping Dress Is Important (How to Save on Price)”
“How to Negotiate Service Prices for Your Wedding”
“How to Save Money on Your Honeymoon Destination”
What you do know now is that the reader is price-conscious, otherwise they wouldn’t be looking up the topic of wedding cost, so you can try to educate them and offer genuine help instead of trying to monetize right away.
You can leave monetization for your other articles – ones where the reader’s intent is more towards buying. For example, a post titled “How to Save Money on Your Honeymoon” can promote a special early-bird deal for a trip.
Apart from looking into how to start a blog and make money by monetizing individual blog posts, you should also aim to get the reader onto your email list and then build a relationship with them through that medium. You can also start building up a marketing automation funnel to make sure that you time your messages just right based on the recipient’s former activity with your newsletter. Though, this is a bit on the advanced monetization side of things.
Even though you’re promoting other people’s products here, understanding the customer journey and intent can help you structure your content better and come up with niche article ideas that might get very few visitors, but can generate big returns.
For example, if you publish a post like, “Bali or Thailand for the Honeymoon,” the reader is likely ready to book a trip, but wants to make sure they’ve picked the right destination. If you publish an informative review/resource on the topic and recommend some good hotels along the way, you can earn a sizable affiliate share no matter what the reader chooses.
#Mistake bloggers make with #affiliate #marketing is not thinking user first
The main mistake that bloggers make with affiliate marketing (and classic ads as well) is that they work more for their advertisers than for their readers.
Working for your readers first is the only way to build trust and then make money as a byproduct later down the road. At least this is our approach.
What you really need to do in order to make your affiliate marketing strategy successful is spend time doing research, creating top educational content, and building trust, while only recommending affiliate products where it makes sense and where it actually brings value to the reader. This is how to monetize a blog with affiliate marketing. There are no shortcuts that would work long term.
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