Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers: How To Monetise Your Blog With Affiliate Marketing
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If you work online or even spend your time on social media, you certainly have been exposed to someone offering you to buy a product they have used and recommend to try out. If you watch tech reviewers on Youtube, they will always put in the description of their video their links related to the gear they use.
All of this is called affiliate marketing. You promote a product on behalf of a company with your unique link and you get a percentage of commission on the sale if someone decides to purchase the product or service using your link.
It is the most common way of making a living online for bloggers and social media influencers. This is how I started making my first dollar online as a travel blogger.
Some people blog as a means of de-stressing, or as an anonymous confession of all their sins in front of the whole world.
Others would blog for making the world a better place, for educating people and share their worldviews and ideas with others.
But the vast majority of people writing a blog of any typewrite to make a living from it – and one of the best ways to do so is through affiliate programs.
The truth is, affiliate marketing is quickly approaching a $7 billion dollar industry!!! And it just keeps on growing.
So if you are looking for a way to earn an income online with your blog, follow my footsteps and work as an affiliate marketer. It is the easiest way to start generating a passive income even as a side hustle.
And the great thing about it is that you can have as many affiliates offers as you want. All you need to do is to promote it to the right audience.
What do you need to know about affiliate marketing?
1. Find your niche
By definition, a niche is:
"A small but profitable segment of a market suitable for focused attention by a marketer."
To make it simple it is a group of people on a market having the same interest that you wish to sell your product or service to. Let it be beauty, travel, pets, entrepreneurship, etc...
It is important as a brand or business to define your niche as this will be the foundation of your marketing strategy. Otherwise, with no niche, all your marketing effort will be like throwing a rock in the middle of the sea. You won't have any impact on the audience you wish to target.
Niche marketing is one of the "easiest" marketing strategies out there but I understand can be tricky to figure out. Check out this article that provides you with a better understanding of what niche marketing is all about and what are the benefits to use it.
2. Find the right Affiliate Program
When promoting a product or service as an affiliate, you'd need to be authentic in what you do and not only think about the money you can make out of your sales but what can actually help your audience. You need to have some ethical conduct regarding this revenue stream.
i.e. Promote products you believe your audience could be interested in and would bring value to them. And always include a disclaimer on your site. Contrary to what many people think, it won't stop your readers from buying. You are just being transparent with them as you would be with your friends or family.
So where to start?
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You will need to join programs. Search for products that you have already tried and contact companies asking if they have an affiliate program you can join. If not many websites today have a dedicated affiliate program on their website, look for it, sign up and start promoting.
Here are some affiliate market places you can search for affiliate products:
• CJ
High Ticket Affiliate Marketing
High ticket affiliate marketing just means that you are getting a higher percentage of a commission from a sale. This percentage can go up to 60% from the one I have experienced so far.
Where to find those high ticket affiliate programs you wonder?
Websites like JVZOO or Clickbank are a great source of high tickets offers. But most of the time, the best thing to do is to look for online courses from famous marketers.
To join their affiliate programs, some will ask you to become a member of their program, while others will just ask you a few questions and 1 out of 3 times would accept you.
3. What is a two tiered program
By definition, a two-tiered program is designed to encourage current Affiliates to recruit new Affiliates into a Merchant’s Program.
A Merchant can set up a two-tiered program in two different ways – bounty or percentage.
Bounty is a flat rate that the current Affiliate would get for recruiting a new Affiliate.
Percentage goes a little further; the current Affiliate would get a percentage based on the commission that is given to any of their recruited Affiliate for driving sales.
4. The legal aspect of affiliate marketing
Each affiliate program has a Program Agreement that legally binds Merchants to any affiliate who join their program.
This is an important setup step for Merchants! It lists any program restrictions, guidelines of use, or conditions that Affiliate partners must follow while promoting the brand. For example, without a program agreement, a Merchant wouldn’t be able to void orders for breaking their rules!
Make sure to read yours when you sign up.
4. Protect Yourself
If you decide to promote your affiliate links on your blog and are collecting data from your audience via the use of cookies or mail list form, you need to have a privacy policy document on your website to protect you against all charges in case someone does not enjoy a product after buying it from your recommendation. Many online generators exist that would help you populate the legal document according to your business needs. Just google "privacy policy generator".
5. Learn The Most Common Terms With Affiliate Marketing
Affiliates: Publishers like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and make sales.
Affiliate marketplace: There are many marketplaces like Shareasale, Clickbank, paydotcom. These work as central databases for affiliate programs in different niches.
Affiliate software: Software used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product.
Affiliate link: Special tracking link offered by your affiliate program to track the progress of your affiliate promotion.
Affiliate ID: Similar to the affiliate link, but many affiliate programs offer a unique ID which you can add to any page of the product site.
Payment mode: Different affiliate programs offer different methods of payment.
Example: Cheque, wire transfer, Paypal, and others.
Affiliate Manager/OPM: Many companies have dedicated affiliate managers to help publishers earn more by giving them optimization tips.
Commission percentage/amount: The amount or percentage you will be receiving in affiliate income from every sale.
2-tier affiliate marketing: This is a great way of making money from an affiliate program. With this method, you recommend that others join affiliate programs, and you receive a commission when a sub-affiliate makes a sale (similar to MLM or multi-level marketing). This income is also known as a sub-affiliate commission.
Landing pages: A unique product sales or demo page used for the purpose of increasing sales. Most of the programs that you will be promoting have many landing pages, and you can run A/B testing to see which pages convert best for you.
Custom affiliate income/account: Unlike a generic affiliate account, many companies offer custom affiliate income to people making the most affiliate sales for them.
Link clocking: Most of the affiliate tracking links are ugly. Using a link clocking technique like URL shorteners, you can turn ugly links into links that can be read and understood by your readers.
Custom coupons: Many programs allow affiliates to create custom coupons which are also used to track sales. Custom discount coupons help you to increase affiliate sales as well.
6. Start Promoting your affiliate products
When it comes to affiliate marketing, you really need to have a marketing strategy in place.
You don't require any qualifications to get started and promote products online, but it won't be as easy as it sounds.
Despite the fact that you could potentially earn a 5 figure income on monthly basis doing it. It also requires some marketing knowledge and hard work.
If you are interested in learning more about how to start and run a profitable business online using social media, I invite you to register for this FREE 1-hour training that breaks down how to build a successful brand online that attract the right clients on automation.
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If you enjoyed reading this blog post and found it valuable, make sure to like it, it actually makes a difference. And if you believe someone else could benefit from it, do not hesitate to share it with them.
