Affiliate Marketing for Dummies: Bloggers Edition
Last Updated on November 30, 2021
Here’s your ultimate guide to affiliate marketing for dummies!
Today I’m going to be talking all about affiliate marketing for dummies. Within this blog post, we are going to cover what affiliate marketing is, why you should be using affiliate marketing within your blog, how to find affiliate programs and three mistakes that I see bloggers make time and time again with affiliate marketing.
What is affiliate marketing?
If you are new to this blogging realm you may not know what affiliate marketing is and that’s okay. Let me explain it. Affiliate marketing is when you are provided with a custom link from a brand. When someone clicks on that custom link and they purchase that product or service, you will get a commission.
Affiliate marketing is an incredible thing to help you earn money off your blog. It’s one of the main ways to earn money off a blog if done right. I see it done wrong a lot, like a lot. And that’s why I wanted to write this blog post. The commission can be anything from 3% to 40, sometimes 50% if you’re lucky! This depends on the program. But imagine if you were earning 10% on a product that was $100, that’s $10 straight in your pocket. If you can get multiple sales per month, that quickly adds up!
This is something I teach in both my courses in-depth – The Blog Machine. If you’re interested in learning more then go check it out!
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When is a good time to start with affiliate marketing?
No matter how big your blog is, you can start with affiliate marketing today. Even if you created a blog yesterday, start by making a plan on which affiliate programs you will join and how you will implement them. Right now, you can start earning money for your blog. Don’t wait until you’ve been blogging for a year or two years. Start from when you begin your blog.
How to find affiliate programs?
There are a lot of affiliate programs out there. If you think of your favourite products and services, they probably have an affiliate program.
Write down your top five favourite brands or services that you use, and I want you to go onto Google. Type in the brand and type and then ‘affiliate program’. You should be able to see if the brand or service has an affiliate program that you can join when you type that into google.
What are the top five brands and the services that you use daily and could easily promote to your audience because you love them so much? It’s a lot easier to promote those products because you are a customer yourself and are probably more passionate about promoting them compared to brands or services that you use little or not at all yet.
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
Best affiliate programs for travel bloggers
Best affiliate programs for fashion bloggers
Tech affiliate programs
It’s really easy to join affiliate programs. All you usually have to do is and wait to be accepted. If you have success with an affiliate program you can also contact your affiliate manager and ask for your commission to be raised too
Affiliate marketing mistakes
Now let’s get into mistakes that bloggers make when getting into affiliates and how to avoid them in the first place.
Affiliate marketing mistake #1
You joined way too many affiliate programs to start.
Now I can say this from experience. When I first started blogging, I think I might’ve joined upwards of 30 different programs, 30 different brands and services that I thought that I could promote all at once.
It got me overwhelmed and I didn’t know which one to put within my blog. I didn’t know which one to promote first. Instead, pick five brands or services that you use to start with. Then later down the line when you are earning a passive wage from those, you can add in more affiliate programs.
Affiliate marketing mistake #2
Not using SEO to make more sales.
The second mistake that I see is not using SEO to help with your efforts like marketing within your blog. Now, one of the best ways to implement affiliates within a blog is to create a blog post around that product or service.
I’d recommend that you use SEO to get that blog post ranking because obviously, you want people to go into your blog so that they can click on the link and purchase. You need that traffic to that blog post otherwise you won’t see conversions.
I see time and time again, bloggers put out a blog post that is not SEO optimized and the main keyword is not clear. When you’re thinking of a product or service, I want you to go and do some keyword research.
What is someone going to type into Google to get to your blog posts about that product or service?
What language are they using?
You need to think of yourself as a user. Let’s give an example here. Let’s say I need some travel insurance. Maybe I’m thinking, should I join WorldNomads, or should I go for SafetyWing?
What am I going to type into Google? I could type in:
- Is WorldNomads travel insurance good?
- The best travel insurance
- World Nomads vs Safetywing
You need to think about what they are going to be typing into Google, and then you can think about how you’re going to implement this SEO keyword, to get people to that article.
Affiliate marketing mistake #3
Being too vague
The third mistake with affiliate marketing is being too vague. If you join an affiliate program like Amazon, you need to leave a link to a specific product within Amazon, not just amazon.com, right? People want to know your specific recommendations!
Let’s say I did a blog post on gifts for your boyfriend at Christmas, you’re going to want to link to a specific product because how annoying would it be if I just said go to Amazon. When you have a specific link, it doesn’t mean you’re only going to get a commission for that product too. If they end up adding more products to their cart, you get that commission too!
Those are the three mistakes that I see with affiliate marketing so to summarise:
- Don’t join a million affiliate programs at once. Keep it simple to start with, and then you can join more later on
- Use SEO to bring people to affiliate blog posts.
- Don’t be vague with your links!
If you have any questions about affiliates, then leave them below! I hope you enjoyed this guide to affiliate marketing for dummies!
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