Generate Income From Your Blog with Affiliate Marketing

Generating income from your blog is one of the best ways to start a business online. One of the best ways to generate income from your blog is through affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is also a great way for business owners who don't have blogs and websites to generate regular, passive income.

With affiliate marketing, you don't need a product of your own... you just an internet connection, a landing page, social media account and a willingness to learn how to promote products.  

One of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you can work in an industry or niche that fits your passions and interests.  

You'll enjoy running a business that ties in with something you enjoy, versus waking up to something you don't believe in. 

Affiliate marketing is a great fit for most new owners because it only requires a few simple steps:

1. Selecting a Niche - A niche is a segment of the market with specific interests. Interests about subjects that help them live their best lives. These consumers are looking to purchase specific kinds of products or services in the near future.
2. Finding great merchants (advertisers) - You want to not only look at the income potential a merchant offers, you want to make sure that their products, values and goals align with your brand. Choose affiliate partners that have products that support your hobbies, skills and chosen niche that you can promote to help your readers and community.
3. Building a blog - Many affiliate marketers choose blogging as their primary platform, and they select other marketplaces as secondary promotion channels. You'll need a platform that you can use to communicate with your audience and promote your affiliate products and services.  You can also promote your affiliate programs with a video channel.
   
4. Writing great content - Research your market to determine which topics are popular in your niche. Write content and promote products that your readers are looking for. 
5. Promoting your affiliate links - When starting out, you need a platform that will allow you to promote your affiliate links. Social media is also a great free method to promote your affiliate products.
   
6. Building an audience and driving traffic to your links - Traffic is a major component of affiliate marketing. You need an audience that is interested and engaged with your content that will purchase your affiliate products.
   
   Setting up a funnel that takes potential customers on a buying journey is one of the best ways to engage your audience and earn consistent income. 

With affiliate marketing, it's best to have a blog or website that you can use to promote affiliate offers through links and images.  

If you don't have a blog or website, you can use a free landing page through a company like aWeber that you can use to sell affiliate and digital products without a blog. 

Even though a single landing page is a great solution for the short term, you will need a blog or another platform that will allow you to track your affiliate links to determine which ones are performing best. Without tracking, it's hard to see what's working and what's not.

You'll also want a platform that will allow you to build a list. Building a list will enable you to build an audience of people you can regularly talk to about your business.

One of the best ways to promote your affiliate links is to build a blog, focus on building your audience and traffic, creating engaging long and short form videos, and writing quality articles and product reviews.

If you don't have a blog, this is another great reason to create one.  If you're not convinced about blogging, read our article on why you should have a blog or website.  

Blogs provide a platform that you can use to generate income, whether it's through direct sales, network marketing (MLM) or affiliate marketing. 

There are some advertisers who will automatically approve you. There are others that require a certain amount of traffic before you will be approved. Some have limitations on the kinds of advertising you can use.

For example it's a violation of Amazon's terms to use affiliate links in email marketing.

This makes it really important to read the terms and requirements for each sponsor (advertiser) to make sure you meet their criteria before applying. That will save you time and energy. 

Affiliate programs are a great way to help the parent (advertiser) company drive traffic to their website, exposing customers to even more potential buying opportunities.  

For example, a company that pays a 10% commission if a visitor to your web site clicks on your affiliate link and makes a purchase on their site, will pay $10 for a $100 purchase. This would be a pay per sale transaction.

The "best" affiliate marketing program is really an individual decision.  It requires research to determine which options are available and which programs are best the best fit for your audience and brand.  

For example, pay per sale transactions represent only one method.

There are many other types of affiliate programs including pay per lead, residual income, (also known as recurring commission, recurring income, lifetime commission and lifetime income).  

There are also affiliate networks, CPA networks, two tier programs, popups, pop unders, ad networks, and contextual ads.

Learn more about how affiliates get paid in each type of program our article, How Affiliates Marketers Get Paid.

All of these companies will enable you to earn money, but the way you make the connection between the consumer and your blog or website is a great way to determine whether a particular program is a good fit for your company.

The amount you earn depends on how effective you are at converting readers into buyers, and the amount of effort you put into working with them.

The more targeted traffic you have to your site, the better. Targeted traffic will enable you to match the needs of your audience to the best products. If you're not sure how to get targeted traffic, check out  these titles on Amazon.

Shareasale, Rakuten, PartnerStack and Impact Radius are companies that manage affiliate programs for other companies.

Join their site to find numerous affiliate programs that you would never be able to find on your own without a lot of time and effort.

• Many popular brands offer affiliate marketing opportunities.  Make sure that the companies you sign up with offer a great experience for your readers. 
  
  For example, make sure they have great customer service, a good return policy, brand recognition, and quality products/services.  
• Learn how they compensate affiliates and whether the products/services they offer would be a good fit for your company. If they are a great brand, but their products don't fit your niche, it's probably best to pass on the opportunity.
• Another tip for affiliate marketing is to promote products that you actually use or companies that you have had interactions with.
• If you think a product/company is not above board, don't select their program because of they offer a higher commission. 
  
  In the long run it will be a headache for you and a reflection on your business to involve yourself with a company that is not above board and fair with customers.

For example, we are part of the Amazon affiliate program and though we haven't purchased every single product they offer (that would be pretty difficult), we have purchased from them for years, so we're familiar with their policies and customer experience. 

We know they have great customer service, product reviews for most every product and a return policy that will allow customers to send items back if they are not what they expected.

We feel very comfortable sending our customers to their website to make a purchase. They recently changed their commission structure for specific products, which is something they periodically do. Even with the cuts, I think they are a great way to get started with affiliate marketing. 

Check out our favorite resources and tools for more information on the resources and affiliate programs we use to generate income from multiple sources.