Affiliate marketing has been on the rise in the past decade. More than 100 affiliate networks are rewarding bloggers and influencers for endorsing or reviewing products in various niches. Simply put, affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy where you pay commissions to content creators who mention your products in their posts, thus driving up your traffic and sales.
Even if you haven’t heard of any affiliate programs, you must know about Amazon Associates, one of the biggest and most profitable affiliate networks. If you are also looking to refer affiliate products and earn a commission, you can very easily begin your journey.
Entering the affiliate marketing spectrum isn’t difficult. You can start by creating your own blog, Facebook page, YouTube channel, or even an Instagram account. Next, you have to build up your following before you can apply for any affiliate program. Promoting affiliate links is at the heart of any affiliate marketing strategy.
Let’s look at ways on how to promote affiliate marketing links among your followers and drive a good commission out of them.
How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a highly profitable business, and there are more than 100 affiliate programs that deal in different niches and industries. Each niche has a different commission structure, and all programs also have varying levels of payouts they give to their affiliates.
Basically, when you join an affiliate program, you start getting affiliate links that you can plug into your content. The link has a unique ID that lets the affiliate program managers know that you have made the sale or directed traffic to their website. Once your viewers click on the link, there is a specific duration they have to make a purchase, which is known as the cookie duration.
If the customer makes a purchase during the specified time, you get a commission out of it. Most programs also pay you just for getting the customer onto their platform. Moreover, affiliate merchants like Amazon will reward you for bringing the customer onto their website and giving you a commission on ‘whatever’ the customer buys, even if it isn’t the product you advertised. Amazon also has a high cookie duration of 24 hours, making it one of the most profitable affiliate programs.
1. Decide on a Platform
The first step is to choose which of the many platforms you want to start with. You can start with a blogging website, a Facebook or Instagram page, or a YouTube channel. It can also be a combination of two or three platforms, or all of them if you can manage easily.
2. Choose Your Niche
Choosing your niche is as important as choosing the right platform for beginning as an affiliate. There is a lot of competition in each category, which is why a suitable strategy is to make your niche as specific as possible. For instance, if you plan to start a blog about vehicle parts, narrow it down between cars and motorcycles. Then, you can narrow it down even further by choosing between engine parts, car accessories, performance parts, etc. You can even drip down further if the competition in your sub-niche is too high.
There are roughly 30 million bloggers in the US alone, so you can imagine how competitive each niche can be. But the more competitive a niche is, the more percentage commission it offers.
3. Choose the Affiliate Program
Now comes the most important part: choosing the right affiliate program. Once you have selected your niche, your choices will be narrowed down based on which programs operate in your niche. There are two different types of programs: high-paying, low-volume affiliate programs and low-paying, high-volume programs. There is a third one, which is harder to navigate: high-paying, high-volume affiliate programs.
Choosing a program between these three depends on your niche and level of expertise. Naturally, high-paying, high-volume programs will have a lot of grueling competition, and you would need to up your content game a lot. It is best to start with a low-paying, high-volume option so that you can get a feel of the platform before moving on to more advanced platforms.
Once you have nailed the above three methods, all that remains is creating excellent content and driving more and more traffic to your website, page, or channel. We will talk about driving traffic and promoting your affiliate marketing links in the next section.
6 Ways to Spread Affiliate Links to the Maximum Number of People
Here are different ways for how to promote affiliate marketing links to the maximum number of people possible. This will help you drive up your chances of generating leads and getting higher commissions from your affiliate programs.
1. Write Affiliate Reviews
One of the most effective strategies to get your affiliate links out to higher traffic is by writing reviews for the affiliate programs or products that you are promoting. Ensure to write honest reviews about each product and let your readers or viewers know how you actually found the product. Before you do this, conduct keyword research and add them all over your content, especially in the headings, as people search for these terms the most.
You can write detailed and comprehensive reviews about the affiliate products you are promoting, such as a guide to installing and using the product, the pros and cons of using it, genuine reviews by other customers and experts, and helpful tips on how to use it. This should drive many users towards your content and result in more clicks on your affiliate links.
2. Create Product Tutorials
You can also create tutorials for the products you are promoting. This will show your command and authority over the niche and make people believe that you have used every product, thus giving an honest view of your page, website, or channel.
Your content should be focused on the ‘how to’ more than the pros and cons of the product. For instance, if your niche is tech gadgets, you will be able to do this quickly, especially if you know everything about the niche.
3. Design Affiliate Banners
Another effective way of promoting your affiliate links is to design affiliate banners, i.e., banners that include a clickable affiliate link that can be placed on the sidebar, header, or ad space. These banners will be visible to your viewers when they navigate your website or read a blog that you have posted.
You can do the same for social media networks or YouTube by designing affiliate posters instead of banners. Although they won’t be clickable in the same way, you can add the affiliate link in their caption or in your bio when you upload these banners. Similarly, you can add the link in the description underneath the YouTube video.
4. Use Automated Emails
As an affiliate marketing blogger, the success of your efforts depends on how many subscribers or readers you have on your blog. You should always be focused on bringing more people to read your content, click on the embedded links, and then go straight to the website or online store of the affiliate program. Email marketing is an effective tool to get the word out to people faster.
Through your blog's dashboard, you will be able to collect the email addresses of people who have subscribed to your blog, and you can generate an automated email to welcome them to your blog. Even in the email itself, you can link some of your latest blogs, or you can add some affiliate links that you think your readers may be interested in checking out. This way, you can get your product links out to your subscribers, even if they don’t visit your website or read your blog.
You can also use email marketing to notify your subscribers about every new blog or product review that you post. Similarly, you can add the names of the top products, along with their affiliate links, in the email and send it to them. This way, if you have 50,000 subscribers and only 5,000 of them read your new blog, at least 10,000 of them will have seen the links in the email. Even if 1% of these people open at least one link, your job will be done.
5. Generate Digital Resources
Most prominent bloggers and affiliate marketers have started using eBooks, online courses, and other digital content for their loyal subscribers. This is also a golden opportunity for you, as you can easily embed the top-ranked affiliate links into the eBook or online course. However, make sure to avoid sounding like a salesman or throwing the link in their face, as it can have an adverse effect.
If you are writing a guide to start your own blog, you can easily add affiliate links for cloud hosting service providers, blogging platforms like WordPress, SEO tools and resources, and much more. This way, you will create a digital resource ripe with affiliate links and receive a substantial amount in commissions.
6. Plug Links Into YouTube Videos
YouTube has a community of 3 billion global users, making it one of the most effective platforms for getting your word across. If you are thinking of sticking to a blog only, you will have to work much harder to promote your affiliate links. However, with YouTube, most of your work is done for you.
Suppose you manage to grow a following of roughly 5,000 to 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. In that case, you can start making product reviews and tutorials for individual products rather than plugging 5 different products in one video. This way, you can create separate videos for highly ranked popular products, and you can have top 5 or top 10 videos for other products, where you can add their affiliate links in the description.
Using YouTube to promote your affiliate links is still one of the most effective and quick methods that you can find. However, it does involve generating quality content and also having to use the products yourself. Otherwise, you can’t actually make a video of yourself reviewing those products, can you?
FAQs
What are the Most Popular Affiliate Programs?
Some of the most popular affiliate programs include Amazon Associates, Clickbank, ShareASale, Awin, and many others.
How Much Traffic Do I Need for Affiliate Marketing?
When it comes to earning commissions from affiliate links and ads, you should have a minimum of 10,000 page views per month, and a majority of your traffic should come from the US itself.
How Many Affiliate Programs Can I Join at the Same Time?
Generally, there is no cap or limit on how many affiliate programs you can join at the same time, but most experts say that you shouldn’t join more than three at one time. If you are a beginner, make sure to do your research and determine which affiliate program suits you best, based on your niche and expertise.
Can I Place My Affiliate Content on Another Person’s Blog?
You most certainly can. Most people post their content on multiple blogs instead of creating their own blog. However, if you are posting on more than one blog, it can be difficult for you to track the earnings and manage the posting.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is easy to start, and it doesn’t even require any startup cost unless you are starting your own blog. Knowing how to promote affiliate marketing links is the key way to being successful.
Once you grow a substantial number of followers and have a high number of content views per month, you can expect to earn a handsome amount that can range anywhere between $5,000 to $100,000 a month.
