Affiliate marketing is a way for bloggers to promote others’ products and earn a commission based on link clicks and product sales.
Affiliate marketing is how bloggers make money as well as expand their blogs to reach a larger audience.
There are several steps to expanding your skills to make yourself a better and more successful affiliate marketer.
Here are some tips on how to create strong relationships with readers and businesses.
1) Educate Yourself
The most important step to take is to build your knowledge. Ask questions and be well informed about how an affiliate program works.
How does affiliate marketing help your business and your readers? Read blogs and articles about the best practices for affiliate marketing.
You can search websites such as givingassistant.org or aworkathomebusiness.com to find tips and tricks to get the most out of your affiliate marketing partnerships.
2) Choose A Handful Of Good Products
You have a to-do list the length of your arm sitting on your desk every day. You have kids yelling in your ears and dinner to prepare.
But then you realize you have twenty products to sell in order to pay the bills due next week. How are you supposed to get all that accomplished?
When you become an affiliate marketer, it is important to know you can’t sell everything.
The best strategy is to choose four or five good products that you are confident in.
There is a simple checklist that can help determine the products that will work best for your website. First, choose a product that speaks to your specific blog audience.
For example, advertising scrapbooking tools on a cooking website for single people will not generate many sales.
Second, research the demand for the product. If no one wants it, then no one is going to buy it.
Third, choose a product that you are passionate about. If you wouldn’t buy the product, why would your audience?
3) Understand Your Audience
When you try to sell a product, you want to ask to whom am I selling?
Whose lives am I trying to improve with this product? Without knowing who your readers are, your sales will fall flat or become nonexistent.
Not only will talking to your readers help sell the product, it will also create a loyal readership. You are marketing to their needs, not to some random person who just happens upon your site.
These people don’t click links to explore your content or buy anything.
This goes back to choosing a product that speaks to your audience.
Research demand for a product before determining what product to sell.
When you have a higher demand from your audience, you will receive higher sales.
4) Improve Lives
When readers find a website, they are searching for a solution to a problem. They need to know how to make something or how to do something to make their lives easier.
The ultimate goal of affiliate marketing is to sell.
However, if you just try to sell a product without explaining how it makes lives easier, then there isn’t any real incentive to purchase the product and you lose sales.
Ask yourself the following questions: why should your reader click a link? What is in it for them? How will it make their lives better?
5) Create Timeless Content For Your Specific Product
Beginning an affiliate marketing program often involves creating content or adding advertisements to your website pages as sidebars or widgets.
By creating timeless, or “evergreen” content, you are promoting the product over the long term.
You are also giving more readers the chance to discover your content.
There are some ideas for creating content that can help increase readership as well as sales.
One idea is to write a product review.
It is especially helpful if you have used the product and are able to provide an honest review to your readers. You can also write a post comparing products.
This type of post not only promotes one product but three to four products.
You are giving yourself plenty of opportunities to make more money and engage an otherwise passive audience.
6) Tap Into Other Traffic Sources Besides A Blog Post
There are many different ways to advertise for a company besides a sidebar on your website or even a blog post. There are widgets, such as Google Adwords, that can help you promote your website.
Speak with your affiliates and see if they have any suggestions on ways to promote their product.
Research other sites or reach out to other bloggers for guidance.
You can write specific, targeted blog posts about a product and how it will help your readers.
7) Market Your Services
You want to reach as many readers as possible to grow your business. You can do this by reaching out to companies with available affiliate programs.
There may even be local businesses that you can offer advertisement opportunities to help them to expand their businesses.
This will, in turn, expand your affiliate network and give you more opportunities.
When you find a product that you are most passionate about, you will find creative ways to present it to your readers.
If you have trouble trying to decide what product to market, or how affiliate marketing works, visit other bloggers in your niche.
Look at their sites for ideas about placement and possible businesses to add to your network.
8) Track Every Sale
It does not seem that keeping track of sales helps you become a better affiliate marketer. Instead, keep track of several key metrics:
- The Sales Source: Where did the sale come from? This helps you narrow your market and target specific potential buyers.
- Performance: What is working and what isn’t? If you have a link to a product that gets less traffic than a sidebar advertisement, then you know to ditch the link or reposition it in a place where it will get more attention.
With this information, you can fix ad placement, ad wording, and even whether that product is a good fit.
9) Stay Active
If you are committed to making your blog work and be a reliable stream of revenue or income, then we recommend devoting as much time to building affiliate programs as writing blog content.
Build relationships with companies, other bloggers, and your audience.
When you build a relationship with a company, they will likely view you as a dedicated member and possible offer you additional opportunities to progress.
10) Be Transparent About Affiliate Relationships
Readers appreciate when bloggers are open about their relationships with their affiliate companies. Full disclosure of any advertisements or blog posts specifically about products will build a loyal reader base who trusts that you will do and say the right things.
People do not appreciate being swindled into clicking a link that has something they don’t need or something they don’t care about.
Most people are willing to help a blogger earn money by clicking a link if they know and trust you won’t send them to a spam site.