How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
By: Graphic Elements
Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Make Money Blogging, Make Money Online, Passive Income, Ｍedium

How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

How to make money with affiliate marketing. A complete beginners guide. Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money with a blog. It allows you to make a steady stream of passive income while doing what you love. In this affiliate marketing for bloggers basic beginner’s guide I will share with you all I’ve learned on how to make money with affiliate marketing.

This guide is meant to cover all the basics of affiliate marketing for new bloggers. So if you are an absolute beginner blogger who wants to monetize your blog and make passive income from affiliate marketing then you’re in the right place.

In this post you will learn:

What affiliate marketing is

How to find your niche

How affiliate marketing works

Ways to find affiliate products

The various ways to promote affiliate links

If you are interested in learning how to make money with affiliate marketing then keep reading.

This post contains affiliate links. Meaning I may obtain a commission from your purchase at no additional cost to you.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is basically a marketing arrangement in which online retailers pay a commission to external traffic sources for sales generated from referrals or traffic directed back to the retailer.

Find Your Niche

Before you jump in searching for affiliate products to promote on your blog, you first need to figure out what your niche is going to be.

A niche is basically a sub-section of a larger market. So for example there are tons of people who love t-shirts in general, but there are smaller sections of that group of people who like pug t-shirts, people who like cat t-shirts and even people who like beard t-shirts.

So instead of swimming against the tide trying to compete in the broader t-shirt category, you could try niching down into a sub-section that has an engaged following.

Here are a few things to think about when choosing your niche:

What topics are you passionate about?

Think about the things that you like to do in your spare time. What do you like to read about, what hobbies do you enjoy? This could be a good indication of what you’re passionate about.

What problems can you solve?

Do you have the knowledge or a unique perspective on a topic that would be helpful to someone else? Chances are, if you’re passionate about something, you’ve probably learned how to do it pretty well.

Think about all the trial and error you’ve gone through with your hobby or interest over the years, all the questions you’ve asked and things you’ve had to figure out. Can you help someone else answer those same questions?

How profitable is your niche?

Following your passion is one thing, but if you’re in it to earn a living, knowing how profitable your niche is would help a whole lot. Checking out the competition is great way to get this info. You can look around at some blog income reports for bloggers who are in your niche to get a general idea of how much money can be made, if any at all.

Once you’ve chosen your niche it’s time to think about marketing. So let’s get into the details of affiliate marketing for bloggers.

Here’s how to make money with affiliate marketing.

The first necessary step in getting started is having an audience. Most people either use a blog or social media accounts to generate audiences around a particular interest/niche that they create content for. Having a dedicated audience is very important step in your affiliate marking journey.

So how do you build an audience, particularly for a brand new blog? The best strategy used by tons of bloggers is Pinterest.

Bloggers from various niches use Pinterest as a way to drive traffic back to their blogs which allows them to have an audience to share their affiliate products with. If you need more help with increasing blog traffic then check out this Blog Traffic Ebook by The She Approach.

Pssst….Don’t have a blog yet? Why not create one and have it hosted with bluehost ?

However it should never be a case where you simply view your audience as a means to an end. Establish a relationship with them, garner their trust by genuinely offering information that is helpful or valuable to them.

An audience who trusts and sees value in the content you offer will be more receptive buyers to the products you recommend, but it should never just be about making a buck.

But How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Before you can start affiliate marketing you need to find products that you want to promote. But it’s not about choosing any old product. You need to choose products that are relevant to the topics you cover on your blog or affiliate products related to your niche.

The next step is to partner with these companies or affiliate networks. You need to apply to become an affiliate by joining their partner program. Once you have applied and have been accepted to an affiliate program you will receive your own unique affiliate id. You will use this id as part of all links that you add to your website.

How To Find Affiliate Products

The first way that you can find affiliate products to promote is by looking at products that you use. Do you use a product that you love and would be happy to recommend to your readers? Then just do a quick google search to see if there’s an affiliate program for that product.

The second way is to simply look at the products or companies that other blogs or websites in your niche promote. Have a quick look at the banners on their sites, or check to see if they talk about any particular products in their blog posts and you will find that they are most likely affiliate products.

For some quick help I’ve listed some of the best affiliate programs for bloggers.

Here Are 5 Of The Best Affiliate Programs For Bloggers / Best Affiliate Programs To Make Money

Share A Sale is basically a bunch of affiliate programs rolled into one. They work with tons of merchants, from small to large brands. So you will definitely find an affiliate program to suit your niche in the long list of shareasale affiliate programs.

This is an affiliate program that I really love. Creative Market is a marketplace for design goods, and I promote their products mostly on my Pinterest account. Read more about promoting affiliate links directly on Pinterest.

Everybody knows about Amazon. It pretty much feels like the place where you can buy just about anything. Almost any niche can find products from their program.

Bluehost is a web hosting service that offers a very attractive, high paying affiliate program. If you blog about blogging then this would be a good affiliate program for you as most of your readers would be bloggers.

Another marketing network that is a collection of affiliate programs is Rakuten Marketing. Tons of niches can find items here.

Ultimate bundles is a program that offers a collection of ebooks at a discounted rate. This is great for informational blogs, as chances are your audience might be interested in a few of the bundles they have available.

How Much Money Can You Make With Affiliate Marketing?

How much money can you really make with affiliate marketing? Well that depends. The potential earnings from affiliate marketing can vary dramatically from person to person, and program to program. When trying to figure out how much money you could possibly make there are a few things to consider.

First you have to remember that there are different commission ranges for various affiliate programs. Some affiliate programs offer a percentage based commission while others offer a flat rate. For example, while bluehost offers a $65 commission per sale, some other programs may offer 10% commission of the sale price.

Let’s say your referred customer makes a purchase from the affiliate program offering 10%, if the value of the product is $10 then you would earn a $1 from that sale. So while you could make $65 from one sale with the higher paying affiliate program, you would need to make a lot more sales with the lower paying percentage based program to make the same amount. You should also be aware that making a lot more sales requires a lot more traffic.

So with all that said let’s look at how to do affiliate marketing with a blog. There are five common ways to include affiliate products with a blog.

How To Promote Affiliate Links

Here’s a quick rundown of how to promote affiliate links on your blog or website.

Banner ads.

Product Reviews.

Email Newsletter.

List the product in your blog’s resource page.

Create a tutorial around the product.

Putting Banners On Your Blog

That is, in the side bar, blog header, or in the individual blog posts.

Affiliate marketing with a blog, product banner example.

Writing Articles That Allow You To Put Links Directly In The Post (Product Reviews)

So let’s say you have a blog post about brush lettering and you wrote a review of your favorite brush pens for beginners. An example of embedding affiliate links in the post would look something like this.

The Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen is one of my favorite tools for my brush lettering work. When I first got started on my lettering journey I found that the felt tip gave me much more control of my letterforms than a paintbrush. This allowed me to feel a bit more comfortable and a little more accomplished in my early lettering practice sessions.

If you had joined the amazon affiliate program then that link to the brush pen would have your referral code attached to it, and if one of your readers clicked on the link and purchased the pen, you would get a commission for the sale.

Product reviews and comparisons are usually a great way to include affiliate links, because chances are if a person is looking for a review of or a comparison between two products, they are probably thinking about buying that product.

So help them along by giving them useful information so that they can make an informed decision.

Email List (Blog Newsletter)

Many experienced and successful bloggers talk constantly about the value of an email list. The truth is that out of all the traffic that comes to your blog on a monthly basis, only a smaller percentage of readers will actually remember your blog and return there. So how do you get those readers back?

This is where the email list comes in. The strategy usually is to give the reader something valuable in exchange for their email address, and opt-in exchange.

You may have seen this many times before where you’ve been to a website to read an article or to download a product and a little box pops up in the middle of your screen saying “hey i’ve got this pdf, ebook or product that you can download for free if you just submit your email address”.

Chances are the free offer is related to something you are interested in and you’ll submit your email address to get it. A blogger with a strong email list now has the opportunity to market whatever products they want to that list or simply get viewers to come back to their blog by alerting them to a new blog post.

Have A Resource Page

Having a resource page on your blog is a great way to list affiliate products in one place that users can actually find them. I would recommend though that you only list products that you actually use, more specifically tools you use to run your blog.

Create A Tutorial Around The Product.

Creating a tutorial around the product that you want to promote is a great way to include affiliate links, especially if the product can be used as the solution to a problem. A tutorial is basically a step-by-step guide showing someone how to do something.

More About How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

There are many resources that offer valuable information about how to run a profitable blog, affiliate marketing for bloggers is a great way to earn passive income. If you want to see how this blogger went form 0-$2000 in 6 months, then check out Seaside Sundays Affiliate Action Plan ebook.

Here’s a list of the topics covered in the ebook:

Affiliate program ideas for niches such as fashion, fitness, parenting, DIY & finance

How to brainstorm products that work for your niche

Which affiliate networks are best for your niche

How to maximize your profits on and off your blog

on and off your blog Why Amazon Associates can end up being your biggest earner

Four must-do strategies for increasing your sales

for increasing your sales How to capture your audience without cheap sales tactics

without cheap sales tactics What types of posts you should focus on to engage and grow

you should focus on to engage and grow How to keep it legal — disclosures and other important things to remember

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a great way to monetize your blog in a way that allows you to still have the time to do the things you love.

Here’s A Wrap Up Of How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing :

Create a blog or website

Identify a niche that you can create topics around

Find affiliate programs with products relevant to your niche

Create the content and promote the affiliate links

I hope you found this article on how to start affiliate marketing helpful. You can also view our article on 5 Ways To Make Money Online From Anywhere. Now get out there and make your affiliate marketing dreams come true.

Note : This post contains affiliate links. Meaning I may obtain a commission from your purchase at no additional cost to you.