Want to make money from affiliate marketing on your blog like Ana from the She approach but not sure of where to start? This guide and a free course linked below will help you get started.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing and blogging has become so popular and continues to grow.
With affiliate marketing, your role is straightforward.
To drive traffic and generate sales or leads through your unique affiliate links and here are the steps that sum up how affiliate marketing works:
Here is an example.
I signed up to the Amazon affiliate program. After I got approved, I took affiliate links for some productivity journals I wanted to promote. I wrote a blog post about daily routine and staying productive. In this post I added links to the journals.
When my audience reads the post and decide they want to buy the journals, they click on my link and make a purchase. Amazon will give me a commission every time someone buys the journal using my link.
How much can you make from affiliate marketing?
There really is no limit. Your marketing effort and the price points of products your promote will determine how much you earn.
That said, according to Glassdoor, the average salary of an affiliate marketer is $59,060 per year but can range from $58K to $158K.
As a beginner, you can make around $100-$1,000 a month.
Like any business idea, to be successful and make sufficient money, you’ll need to put in the work.
What are some advantages of affiliate marketing ?
There are so many reasons why we are all interested in affiliate marketing.
- Low Start-up Costs: You don’t need to spend any money upfront. Well except the cost of running a blog, a few marketing tools and a landing page where you will be posting your links. Running a blog is pretty cheap these days and you can use this step by step tutorial to start your blog for only £2.95 in less than 30 minutes.
- Wide Range of Products and Niches: there is flexibility to promote many different products or services.
- Flexibility and Location Independence: You can work from anywhere in the world, as long as you have an internet connection.
- Passive income: It can eventually becomes passive income. You create content once and make money from it over and over again.
Three sure-fire ways to promote your affiliate links on your blog.
We are now going to go through how you can promote affiliate links on your blog in order to be successful and make money.
1. Create valuable content
Writing helpful articles that educate and entertain your audience while incorporating your affiliate link naturally is a great way to promote your affiliate links. For instance, if you have a food blog and you’re promoting cooking utensils, you could create interesting recipes and include links to the recommended tools in the video description.
You can also write a review of the products you’re affiliated with and then include your affiliate link in the article.
2. Promote your blog posts on Social Media Platforms
This is completely free traffic. You can share blog posts that promote affiliate products on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or Pinterest to increase traffic. The more the traffic, the higher the engagement and the chance that people will click on your link to buy.
3. Make use of Email Marketing
To create an email list and get people to subscribe to your blog, use any one of the following:
- ConvertKit
- MailChimp
- Mailerlite
There are many ways to get people to actually sign up to your email list. First principle is you need to offer something valuable and free. If you own a food blog, for example, you can offer meal planning templates in exchange for sign ups. A finance blog? you can offer a budget tracker. A gardening blog? You can offer a free online course.
There are websites like Gold city ventures where you can buy templates to offer as freebies. To create freebies yourself, Canva has many templates and graphics for inspiration.
Once you are able to grow your email list, first you want to share useful tips, product reviews, or exclusive offers with your subscribers. Then you can subsequently include your affiliate links where appropriate.
4. Collaborate with other bloggers and Influencers
Collaborating with other bloggers in your niche or influencers is a great way to promote your affiliate links. This could involve guest posting on their blogs, participating in joint ventures, or featuring your affiliate products in their content. For instance, if you’re promoting travel accessories, you could collaborate with a travel blogger who showcases your recommended items in their travel guides or videos.
Ready to get started with affiliate marketing on Pinterest? There is a free course that can teach you all you need to know and how to make your first sale. You can also test the 20-minute action plan I always use to prime myself up to start affiliate marketing in a new niche:
Your 20-Minute Action Plan:
- Spend 20 minutes today researching and signing up for relevant affiliate programs in your niche.
- Allocate 20 minutes each day to create three visually appealing pins promoting affiliate products, ensuring they align with Pinterest.