An Easy Start-Up Guide To Affiliate Marketing

Regardless of if you’re new to blogging or if you’re an old hand if you don’t have an affiliate strategy implemented on your site you really need to ask yourself why?

You have a trusted and dedicated following who really value your opinion. You’re driving traffic to the brand’s site through recommendation which will inevitably lead to sales. So the question is why aren’t you receiving a reward for making them money?

If you’re serious about your blogging biz you need to start creating your affiliate marketing strategy immediately! Blogs such as 501words make their income solely from affiliate marketing

If you’re not sure how affiliate marketing works then let us give you a quick overview. You are given a unique referral code for that website. When you send traffic to that site a ‘cookie’ is dropped, in most cases, these cookies are valid for 30 days.

People click your link. Then buy a product. You are paid a commission for the sale. There are thousands of people who earn six and seven figures a year simply through implementing an affiliate strategy. And although we’re not going to guarantee that kind of figures. We’ve studied these people closely and these are our top 5 tips to kick ass when it comes to affiliate marketing.

Find the best affiliate marketing networks to join

There are many affiliate companies who run thousands of different brand’s affiliate programmes. So with one central login, you can access thousands of brands to promote.

The other benefit of using affiliate programmes such as AWin which costs £5 to sign up. However, you receive the £5 back with your first payout. This separates the wheat from the chaff. Those who are serious about getting started with affiliate marketing aren’t put off by this cost.

Skimlinks, which once the plugin has been installed on your WordPress site automatically converts your links to those merchants they have on their platform. Saving you a lot of time while earning you money.

If you don’t run your blog on WordPress then you’re seriously missing a trick. Especially if you want to grow and monetise your site.

Rakuten, which plays home to big brand names such as kate spade new york, Pandora and River Island are part of their platform.

These three are the largest and easiest to use and it makes sense you stick to just a small number of programmes as all affiliate payments are centralised there’s a single payout system meaning that you will exceed the payment threshold a lot faster than if you worked with these brands on individual programmes it would take longer to accrue the threshold. Once you start seeing the money, the more involved you get with affiliate marketing.

Promote, promote, promote

If you are posting content to your site and you have access to an affiliate programme then utilise this link, you could send them 10 people to their site, and if each of those ten make a purchase of £100 and your commission is 10% you make £100 for simply linking to their site through your ‘reward’ link. Imagine if those numbers were 1,000 or even 10,000 click through purchases?

Now you’ll frantically be thinking how much money have you lost out in the past for not affiliate linking every site. Right? I know we are guilty!

If you’re recommending products across social media, in newsletters, on your site then make sure you use your own dedicated affiliate links. If you get into a habit of constantly giving out affiliate links you’ll see your commissions increasing. From people you don’t even know!

Find your niche, push it well

If you specialise in a specific niche, take beauty, for example, build your audience, know your niche and use your links in the best way possible for example, new product launches or back in stock items that people are looking for.

Perhaps you already know your niche, so test out what works. When you find the purchase trigger you can push these links out more often, again increasing your commission. If you don’t know your niche, for example, this publication is classed as Lifestyle so it’s a little bit of everything, then what you need to do is test out what works, for posts like this recommendation to affiliate programmes works well. Whereas Jet2 has been my best performing travel link and John Lewis my greatest shopping referral link.

You won’t make your millions overnight with affiliate marketing, however, if you really put the time and effort into implementing a strategy that works, through pushing what works then you’ll see an increase in commissions each month.

Work with the affiliate programmes that work well

We can all be guilty of wanting more of everything, and affiliate links can be one of them! If you have a collection of 20-50 brands that work well for you, keep them to this number, don’t try and constantly be pushing new links, unless you are able to manage the brand’s you are already generating commissions from, find which merchants work well for you and push their links.

If you obtain the details from the affiliate platform for the Affiliate manager you can drop them an email, explaining who you are and what you do and create almost an elevator pitch to work with them to create content, they may offer payment, gifting of items or they may increase your CPA rate. I’ve found recently that affiliate managers are actively looking for people creating content to push affiliate links if you put time and effort into contacting those brands you already love and champion your efforts will most likely be fruitful.

Persevere

This isn’t an overnight money-making scheme, it’s a long-term strategy that needs constant attention, planning and re-assessment. If you find something that works, do more of it, if you find something flops, do less of it. You’ll find that you need to constantly be testing and adjusting until you find the winning formula, but when you do, enjoy those commissions!

Do you have any great affiliate tips that you’re willing to share with our readers or even any burning questions? We’d love to hear in the comments section below.

Pin me for later ?