There are several steps you should take to get started with affiliate marketing. This post will cover those steps and give you details on how it works to earn you passive income.
You'll also learn about strategies that help you navigate the rules and policies on social media channels.
Each channel has rules that you must follow to post your links or get your commissions with ease.
Passive income is income you can make while you do other things. Watch the video below to learn how to use a blog post or YouTube video platform to earn.
The Process for Posting Your Affiliate Links
This is the suggested process you'll need to get those commissions coming in. You can modify it to fit your needs:
1. Choose (1) one affiliate network to work with when you're starting out. This enables you to learn about affiliate marketing without being overwhelmed. Shareasale or Amazon are both great networks to start with.
2. Select 2 - 5 links to promote. Save your links to a place that you can access from any location. Evernote, Google Docs or Google Sheets are great places to store your links.
3. Post daily so that you can start reaching an audience. Consistency gives your readers an opportunity to know when to expect you.
It also helps you establish an audience of loyal followers. I'll show you automation tools that will enable you to post while you're working on other things.
4. Establish rapport with your followers by providing information that will help them do things like save money, earn money, save time, be more productive, and reach their goals.
Problems Encountered When Posting and How to Resolve Them
1. Long, Ugly Links
Here is an example of an ugly affiliate link from Shareasale:
https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=992347&u=1321822&m=50947&urllink=&afftrack=
Here is an example of an ugly affiliate link from Amazon:
Most people are leery of clicking on links that look like the ones above. To counter this, there are apps and plugins that you can use to make your links look better.
Here is a shortened link from Shareasale that look better when posting on social media, if short links are allowed:
The Shareasale network has a link shortener that you can use to make better looking links. PrettyLinks and Bit.ly are two other programs you may be able to use to make your links look better.
Please Note: Check with your merchant before using link shorteners like Prettylinks and Bit.ly. You'll want to confirm that these programs work with your particular affiliate and that they won't break your affiliate tracking.
Watch the video below for ideas on how to post affiliate links and work around any issues.
2. Sites That Frown on Affiliate Links
Be aware that some social sites only allow you to use long links like the ones shown above. On these sites, shortened links will be flagged as spam or blocked.
There are other social sites where it's not an issue to use shortened links. As an affiliate, it's important to know which sites frown on affiliate links.
Additionally some of those same sites that require long links also require you to indicate that it's a sponsored post.
Some affiliates use a hashtag to indicate that a post is a sponsored post.
Posting long links, using sponsored hashtags and direct linking (sending a user straight to products) to your affiliate products and services, may give you mixed or limited results based on the kind of products you're promoting.
For example, if you're promoting clothing or home decor, sending readers directly to a product may be fine. But if you're promoting high ticket products, like courses, guides or a bundle or series, direct linking may not be as effective.
Because what's accepted on social media changes from time to time, the best way to know how affiliate links will be handled on a given site, do a Google search like "how to post affiliate links on _______" entering the name of the social media site into the blank.
So for example, if you were wondering how to post on Pinterest, you would enter Pinterest in the blank. Then you would choose the search result from Pinterest for the right way to post.
You could also go directly to Pinterest's support page and search for "how to post affiliate links".
The various constraints imposed by social media sites poses a challenge for affiliates who are trying to earn from affiliate products and services for a number of reasons.
- People are leery of clicking long, crazy looking links.
- Using hashtag #sponsored means you're trying to sell people on something and sometimes that's OK; sometimes, not so much.
- Shortened links may or may not work.
- Sending people straight to an affiliate product may get you a few sales or clicks, but it takes your business completely out of the loop in terms of engagement.
A work around that solves those issues is to send users to an informative blog post, sales page or landing page that contains your affiliate links.
This help readers understand the benefits or best way to use the product or service and allows you to use any link you would like (long or short) on your post. By sending readers to your blog, helps to establish you and a resource in that subject matter.
After you have created the content on your blog, you can share it with optimized images and copy to social media platforms without worrying about whether your links will be banned.
3. Limited Opportunities to Connect with Buyers
Sending readers directly to your merchant's sales pages with no intermediate steps gives your affiliate merchant traffic and a potential buyer.
That's great, but it doesn't give your readers or social media followers an opportunity to connect with your brand.
This means that they will likely remain a cold lead that clicks on your social posts without ever engaging with or knowing anything about your business. It's likely that you'll never see them again.
To work around that, try taking your readers to a landing page, a sales page or an informative blog post that leads them to your affiliate product or service.
When readers engage with your blog it gives you several advantages:
- They can learn more about your affiliate product through your unique perspective.
- They can learn more about who you are and what you do. If you send them to a landing page that allows them to leave their email address in exchange for an item of value, this allows you to follow up and build a business relationship with them.
- This also places your business top of mind when they need similar products and services in the future.
This method can help you make the sale and it helps readers obtain useful information about your affiliate products.
4. Shutting Down Your Profiles
Depending totally on social media to promote your affiliate products is okay... until you do something the social site doesn't like.
It's important to stay up to date on the policies of your respective social media sites so that your content isn't reported, banned or shut down.
People don't want to be sold but they love to buy!
You've probably heard that "people don't want to be sold but they love to buy".
What that means is you'll receive better results when you solve a problem for your readers. When you help them with something like saving more money, saving time and reaching their goals.
Provide information people are looking and you'll earn more from your affiliate marketing efforts versus trying to sell or talk people into something.
In general you want to provide content that makes your reader's lives better.
Learn More About Affiliate Marketing
Tools and Resources
Canva - This tool allows you to create images and designs for marketing materials, social media, blog posts, YouTube videos and other media. They have free and paid plans.
Tailwind - Schedule posts to Pinterest and Instagram and generate traffic to your blog. There are free and paid plans.
Hootsuite - Automate your affiliate posts to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn at the time you set. They also have a URL shortener as well as free and paid plans.
Thrive Architect - Create conversion focused blog posts, sales pages, lead generation forms and landing pages that will present your affiliate content in the best light, while maintaining formatting on mobile, tablet and desktop platforms.