Everyone nowadays talks about affiliate marketing. There are hundreds and millions of websites running online, some are monetized, and others are still in process. The monetizing of your blog means that you start making money through it by promoting some or the other products and services of other popular brands. Affiliate marketing is one such stream which will help you to earn lots of money. In this part of affiliate.blog, I will tell you how to promote affiliate products on your blog.
The money making process through various affiliate programs is not that difficult if you follow a precise pattern to do so. There are many bloggers and webmasters who are making their primary source of income through affiliate marketing. But when you think about it, be sure your blog’s niche allows that. Without a directing niche, you will never be able to make good money. So before going in-between the process just start a new blog for monetizing purpose or think of another way to earn money with your existing one, because affiliate blogging can be done with branded but few products and services.
So when it comes to affiliate marketing, there are many popular programs like amazon, GoDaddy, Hostgator, BigRock web hosting services. Whenever someone signs up with them or buy stuff through your account, you earn a commission. So the process is simple but for making a good earning through these referral commissions. You need to understand few basics of affiliate marketing before referring these products.
Also know- Complete Guide on How to Make Money on Referral Marketing?
There are 2 common ways to get affiliate products to endorse on your website. One is through the direct company itself, and other is through affiliate websites. Approaching the brand straight away is always better than go-betweens. I also prefer this way as it saves your time. For this, you just need to go to the official website and explore their process of being their affiliates.
How to choose the perfect affiliate products and service?
Many bloggers and webmaster find this area of promotion to be the most lucrative one. No doubt it is but you must have some rules set before approaching the desired official brands websites. Only making money is not the motive, you also need to check the feasibility and response of the brand in the market. If you choose one wrong product to promote, you will lose your readers trust on that. Any blogs readers will not buy a product just because you are endorsing it, but instead, they will themselves do a little more digging about the product.
You must always choose an affiliate product of those brands who have
- Money return policy– many renowned firms provide money back guarantee if the user is not satisfied with product or service, or he is not able to continue the service due to some other reason. For example, all the best hosting services will provide you with the refund if you do not get the desired results. So go for such familiar trustworthy brand names.
- High-quality of services and products– amazon affiliate program is trusted among its members as they have maintained the standard of their goods. Amazon so far has all the well-performing products under his roof and a maximum number of satisfied consumers.
- Redundant Customer service– all the service providers who have strong customer support team to handle the grievances, must be picked for affiliate sign ups. If at any point in time, the users are not satisfied with the service, they will post a negative comment on your blog. This will affect your blog’s reputation and overall readers too.
Few things to keep in mind before getting into the lucrative process are given below precisely:
- Your blog’s niche must allow promotion of products and services in various ways
- Your blog must have good number of readers
- Whatever niche you choose, that must be explained through proper details
- Every product and service you include for referring must have engaging content
- The blog must have relevant layout to describe your niche
- Your blog must provide well-searched, and actual information about the endorsed services and products
All the above-mentioned points must be kept in mind before monetizing your blog through different affiliate programs.
Now let’s elaborate on the ways to promote affiliate products on your blog
Guides
The best way to promote affiliate products is through proper instructions to the readers on “how to” basis. You can support multiple products and services, by making your users aware of the working of a particular product or how to implement the service to make the task easier. The “do it yourself” tutorial work fairly well with many products and services. If your blog is a technical one, you can provide information about various software, plug-ins, and directions on how to use them or how to download them.
Or if someone is searching for the particular process of fixing something, your blog can provide them with the particular brand product or service which will certainly help in fixing things. The content must be written in engaging manner so that it provides a to z procedures of the endorsed merchandise.
Reviews of products and services
A fetching review of anything works miracles for the product. A comprehensive review post introduces the actual product to the readers and makes them aware of each and every aspect from a user’s point of view. Few points to be kept in mind while writing a product or service review are:
- The Review must be written on a personal note using “I & You”, so that your reader feels involved in the in-depth knowledge provided about the product.
- A Review must have all the real information about the product, from basic to advance, every aspect of the product must be included in detail.
- Write about a product that you or your close friend has already used. This will help you in making strong recommendations of the service or product.
- Personal referrals always help in image building of the blog and promote the product in better ways.
- Always include pros and cons so that the user gets the ideas about every situation he will be facing after buying a product.
- Take help from “Author Review Plugin” to include star ratings to your blog posts.
Blog post backing
You can even make more by using affiliate links to the products and service to your blog content. For example, if your post is regarding – “How to make money blogging”, then you write a tagline saying “I too use this method to earn money from my blog,” and insert your blogs affiliate link in this. This will make the reader inquisitive, and he will try to know more about the related topic, and finally, he will end up in either signing up for that service or buy that product or service.
Coupon code reviews
This is also a thought-provoking way to stimulate the reader to buy that particular affiliate product. During the holiday season or on various occasions like Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, people look for deals and discounts on the prevailing services or products. So bloggers and webmaster take advantage of the situation and endorse those products & services which have great demand and whose suppliers are offering huge deals and offers at that particular time.
You can include those stuff on your blog and provide a coupon code through which users will get extra benefits. Providing coupon codes with significant discounts will not only increase the suppliers the sales but will simultaneously increase your commission too. Some blogs only provide with promo codes of the particular service provider through affiliate linking. And some provide a detailed review along with coupons codes so that the user understands the productivity of the service specified.
The other method through which you provide details of the product along with codes will make the reader click that affiliate link to see the coupon code. Always use those buttons which stimulate the user for going on merchandise website. You can also target users for monthly coupon codes post, for example – “Best buy coupon code of BlueHost for the month of March 2017”.
Mark the article as your featured post
The page on which you write your post has several options through which you can change you’re the visibility of your post to the readers. For instance, on the right side of the menu, you have Publish icon and below that is Visibility. You just need to mark the box which says “Stick this post to the front page”. Your highlighted post will be put on the front page so as to gain more viewers.
You can do this with all those demanding affiliate products which have a high demand in the market in that particular period. During Black Friday Cyber Monday offer period, you can feature all those posts with related content and affiliate products.
Use Placards on the sidebar
If your blog has a good number of readers, then you can put the banner of product ad on the sidebar. But don’t be too covetous in your approach, as placing many side posters often irritate the reader. Just put two or three streamers of different products so that the buyer understands the correlation. For instance, if your post is related to Bluetooth headphones, then don’t place a banner ad of waterproof headphones. The buyer will get confused and will not be able to decide which one to buy. Instead, put an ad of headphones amps so that purchaser ends up in buying multiple products.
This sensible act of yours will help the buyer in proper decision making, and he will build a trust factor towards your blog as your blog will provide him with the best selection of related products.
Use of email marketing
When the reader subscribes to your blog, you can send him the affiliate products via email. Email marketing is a great tool for influencing decision making. It doesn’t mean that you have to sit and mail every post related to affiliate products to your readers. There are many platforms like AWeber which provide automated mailing services to those who sign up for your blog.
But remember; emails must be designed carefully without using too pushing words like “got and get it”, “go and buy now”. These words may make the reader to press unsubscribe button for your posts. So be genuine and just prepare your content to be helpful as well as worth clicking.
“Where to” posts
You can develop content as to where will people find their desired products and services. You can easily attach the link to your affiliate products in “where to” posts. For instance, if you have a blog related to mother and kids, you can promote mothercare brand products and tell people where they can buy it targeting the website name in your post. If you are writing about parenting books, then you can mention the affiliate product along with the image of the book, directing the mothers where they can buy it.
So helping people find the place to get to the particular product and service is also a type of affiliate marketing and you can easily promote your affiliate products through such posts.
Link up the affiliate merchandises in your e-books or monogram
Many people who write e-books, also endorse products of different brands. If you are a writer and your book is related to baking, then you can include amazon’s baking molds used for preparing cakes along with your affiliate link. This will make you earn good money as well as add up to amazon’s selling.
Many pro bloggers and webmasters use their affiliate products in their monogram to seriously endorse the product. Their professional email signature contains their favored brand linked to it. They may include a quote on their blog as to how that particular product or service helped them to reach so far. For instance, if someone is the brand ambassador of a particular product, he may use that brand name in his profile portrayal as many times as he wants.
Prepare a case study or make a video
The case study may cover up your real experience of getting a specific product or service and how it helped you in making money, increase your blog traffic or enhancing your lifestyle. You can easily include your tried and tested products in the case study and promote the services of the vendor by providing affiliate links to the product. For example, if you have a blog related to health products, you can write your own story of using the such and such product on yourself and its benefits derived mentioning the affiliate product of a specific brand.
You can even prepare a video of your affiliate products describing and reviewing them, then providing affiliate link below the video. YouTube is a great platform to endorse your affiliate products. When you can add affiliate links below the video, you have monetized your YouTube account.
Make use of social media
If you have just tried new waterproof headphone of a particular brand, the just post your picture wearing those headphones in rain or pool and post it on all your social accounts. You just need to put the affiliate link, few hashtags, and memorable lines for the product and you get into the business. You can even link the pic to your blog where you have given a detailed review about that product. This will bring in more clicks on the product as you have self-tried the product. These type of references work great.
Other ways
There are other ways too which can help you in promoting your affiliate products from your blog like:
Giveaways
Offer discounts for sign up
Linking the products at the end of the page
Write tutorials
Write a comparison post and place you affiliate products there
Make a list of the best products & services, and include your affiliate products there
Create new post for the same product when it has any advancement
Build up a resource page
Final verdict
So, friends, I have tried to list all those ways through which you can promote your affiliate product from your blog itself. If you too know any other way, then let me know in the comment box below. I am sure my post will help you to make your blogging more productive and profit rendering. Affiliate marketing is a great stream through which you can inform people about the branded products as well as earn good commission for yourself.