To grow a viable affiliate marketing business, you need to be intentional. You can’t throw content around in the hope that something will stick. You have to make it stick.
To do that, you need to implement some of the proven affiliate marketing strategies, whether you want to make your first affiliate sale or grow your earnings. These strategies heavily rely on the right product, for the right customer at the right time, principle.
Thus, joining the right affiliate programs in your niche is very important, as this ensures that the products you will be recommending will be relevant and appealing to your readers.
Here are several ways to promote your affiliate links and make your first dollar online with affiliate marketing:
1. Promote Genuinely Great Products
Think with me for a moment.
If you were selling your own digital products, you would definitely spend time improving, soliciting feedback, and modifying them as the need arises.
Reason? This product is associated with you. Mess something up, and your brand gets hurt.
This, my friend, is exactly how you need to approach your affiliate programs. You do not need to have personally purchased the products you are promoting, but you need to be assured that they are worth someone’s money.
There are several ways you can validate the usefulness of a product. For instance, finding critical reviews that talk about the program, assessing the quality of their sales pages, and what people generally say about the brand and the seller.
If you want to promote a high-end product but don’t want to purchase it, you can utilize their free trial if they have one. Having first-hand experience with the product will help you develop much more comprehensive and detailed content.
Your key role as a content creator is to find useful resources that help others achieve particular goals. By only promoting great products, you foster loyalty and trust.
2. Promote the Products you are Familiar With
This is important as it will help you craft effective content much faster. With new products, there is a learning curve. You will have to figure out how certain software works, what it can do, what it can’t, other people’s experiences with it, and so forth before you can pull out a detailed review.
This can drain you off, especially when you are starting off as an affiliate marketer.
Look for products you are already using and visit their sites to see if they have an affiliate program. Simply check on their footer section for a link to their affiliate program page. A quick ‘brand name + affiliate program’ Google will give you an answer as well.
For instance:
- Your web hosting service such as Hostgator, Bluehost.
- CRM
- Your email service provider such as ConvertKit, Mailerlite
- Your page builder such as Elementor Pro
- Your web design agency. Etc.
These are the platforms you are already using, and it will be easier creating content around them and doing content promotion. Other affiliate ideas include your WordPress theme provider, your blogging tools such as laptop, microphones, camera, etc. All you need is to join Amazon associates and start reviewing these products.
To make money with affiliate marketing, you need an executable strategy. This means you not only need to think of creating content but also how to promote these affiliate posts to get more traction, increase conversion and make more money while still being helpful.
3. Create Relevant and Helpful content.
Content marketing plays a critical role in affiliate marketing. You want to push out content that people will love. This is hard to achieve when you are being too promotional. Your affiliate posts should guide people into making independent decisions.
Whether it’s a product review, a list post, or a tutorial guide, make sure that you are giving people value. This is the only sustainable blogging model I can think of at the moment. The good news is that once these contents begin to pick up, you will start generating sustainable blogging income without the need for extra work.
Invest in your content, and it will pay off later.
Remember to always:
- Make your content natural, engaging, and useful: Your affiliate content needs to blend well with your overall blog topic/purpose. To hone in, you need to create useful detailed content around particular affiliate products and programs. These could be anything from product reviews, tutorial guides, product comparisons to case studies.
- Develop content that outranks your competitors: SEO is big for affiliate marketers. While you will make sales within the first few days after publishing your content since you will be doing heavy promotions, you need to ensure that your strategy has a long-term game plan. Develop content around keywords that you can easily rank for and that are evergreen.
4. Put Together a Resource Page.
Every blog today has a recommendations page, and it’s for a good reason. Your resource page is one of the most visited pages besides the Homepage and About Page. People visiting your resource page are looking for tools they could use.
You want to mix free and paid tools on your resource page. Share the tools that you truly love and those that have helped you transform your business.
The design of your resource page can also help a lot in boosting your conversions. Sample a few resource pages you like and try to model their designs.
5. Work with the profitable affiliate programs.
You have to earn those dollars, yet you only have a limited time to create affiliate content. Thus, it makes sense to only join affiliate programs that are relevant to your audience and pay well in terms of commissions.
A profitable product resonates well with your audience, pays a higher commission, and has an elaborate sales funnel that is high converting.
Here’s your guide on finding high-paying affiliate programs to join.
6. Continue growing your best source of high-quality traffic.
Find one source that works for you and invest heavily in it. Spreading your time and budget all over may not be a sustainable model for most solopreneurs who don’t have the luxury of extra hands in the business.
If you find out that Pinterest is bringing you targeted traffic that converts really well, then consider doubling down on the platform by creating more pins, consulting experts, and optimizing your boards. This applies to LinkedIn, Facebook groups, and Search traffic as well.
7. Build a list of engaged email subscribers.
The success of any online business lies is on the list. You want to build an audience around your main affiliate product. For instance, if you are promoting a web hosting company like Bluehost, you may want to start a 7-day free blogging course.
When all is said and done, your email list still remains the most valuable asset of your business.
8. Be useful, be relatable, and be caring.
Hard selling will not cut with. When recommending products, do so without being annoying.
Thus:
- Send only the emails that you need to send.
- Write a copy that isn’t just purely promotional.
- Share affiliate links on Facebook groups only when your recommendations will be of impact to your users.
- Give people a way out of your promotional content.
9. Work hand in hand with your affiliate manager.
Most popular affiliate networks and affiliate programs will assign you an affiliate manager. These are your awesome partners per se. They are experienced working with hundreds of affiliates and will give you actionable tips and even increase your commissions with time.
10. Shorten Your Affiliate Links.
You do this for two reasons: To easily share your affiliate links with others, and two, to track which links are highest performing in terms of click-throughs.
Also, most affiliate programs have links that are unnecessarily long and ugly, thus looks spammy. Use a plugin like Prettylinks or ThirstyAffiliates links to shorten your affiliate links.
11. Promote Your Affiliate Links and Assets Strategically
To make sales and earn commissions for your affiliate products, you need to drive relevant traffic. To do that, diversify your sources. A few ways to do that include:
- Join relevant Facebook groups, follow the rules, engage and occasionally share your affiliate assets when relevant.
- Join relevant LinkedIn groups and start engaging.
- Start using Pinterest to drive traffic to your affiliate assets. You can also link directly to your affiliate programs on Pinterest if they allow.
- Paste your affiliate links in YouTube descriptions.
- Use affiliate links on Twitter without spamming users.
The winning affiliate marketing strategy is one that involves 3 major aspects: Quality affiliate products, Useful content, and Quality Traffic.
Conclusion
What affiliate marketing Strategies have worked well for you? Let me know below. I also suggest joining affiliate marketing forums such AffLift as the community will help you with tons of tips that are currently working for them.
