How to Make Money with affiliate Marketing
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work? You partner with a company selling products/services you would like to recommend to your audience. If they buy something using your affiliate link, you get a commission from the sale. There are other types of affiliate programs, but this is the most common and is also what I do.
1. Find Your Niche My career journey went like this: online marketing > web design > WordPress web design > WordPress SEO > WordPress speed optimization. Now I’m focusing on WordPress hosting. While I was doing WordPress speed optimization I noticed lots of people needed it, but very few people supplied it (there were a lack of services and tutorials when I researched Google). I also knew hosting was the #1 factor of website speed and hosting companies paid up to $200/sale. Hosting is a competitive space but the commissions and lack of supply enticed me. I expanded my SEO blog and started writing about hosting, cache plugins, and other relevant topics… while recommending Cloudways in many guides. I added social proof like the Facebook polls where they were rated #1. Each tutorial was super detailed (like this one) and tons of people found them helpful – many get 100+ visitors/day since great content = higher rankings.
Once I found my niche (WordPress speed optimization), a solid hosting company with a high commission affiliate program (Cloudways) and created tutorials around topics people in my niche would find helpful (and might want to change their host), that’s what got me to $150k.
2. Start A Blog Or YouTube Channel A blog and YouTube channel are completely different, not just because one is writing and one is shooting videos. But each of them are different in terms of SEO, conversions, time, and the cost. Blogging vs. YouTube Videos
Ownership – you own your blog, not YouTube. SEO Traffic – it takes longer to get SEO traffic to a blog than YouTube. SEO Difficulty – the SEO competition in YouTube is often less than Google. Cost – YouTube is free, blogs require domain, hosting, development costs, etc. Content Updates – it’s easier to update a blog post than to remake a video. Coupon Codes – YouTube is great if your affiliates let you use coupon codes. Time – it takes longer to set up a blog, (though Astra Sites have made it easier). Expectations – in your niche, do people prefer watching videos or reading articles? Start A WordPress Blog (read my guide)
Domain – GoDaddy or Namecheap. Hosting – Bluehost for cheap/slow, Cloudways for good/fast. WordPress – what I recommend building your website/blog on.
Astra Starter Templates – WordPress themes most people are using. They look amazing, are mobile responsive, and are 1-click import. Just install WordPress in your hosting account, login to your WordPress dashboard, and download the Astra Starter Sites plugin. Pick a theme and import it in 1-click, then you’re ready to start customizing your blog!
3. Sign Up For Affiliate Programs Hosting, Amazon, and affiliate programs related to “making websites” are very popular. Websites – if you’re in the “how to make a website/blog” industry, I’ve accumulated a list of affiliate programs for WordPress, hosting, themes, plugins, SEO, email, CDNs, and services. Remember that to get approved, some companies require you to be somewhat established. Affiliate Marketplaces – these have hundreds of merchants to choose from. It’s nice to login to 1 place and check the performance of multiple affiliates without going to each individual portal on their site. Many programs aren’t part of a marketplace though. I use ShareASale and Impact. Do the math – to make $300 in a day, I would need to refer about 2 people to hosting, 10 people to themes, or 30 people to plugins. Before deciding on a program, ask yourself a few questions. I personally have roughly 3,000 readers/day and make about 2-3 sales per day at $150 per sale.
What commission will you get? How many sales will you need per day? How much traffic will you need to get those sales (roughly)?
4. Be Careful With Amazon Amazon’s commissions are based on categories are you’re only making 0-5% unless you’re referring people to Amazon games, Luxury Beaty, or Amazon Explore. Otherwise you will need a lot of sales to actually making a living and will likely need to refer people to big ticket items (video equipment on YouTube is a big one especially if you’re into cameras, lenses, lights, etc). But be careful with Amazon’s affiliate program. They have a long history of reducing commissions and writing content that competes with affiliates (and most people go directly to Amazon). I don’t recommend being an affiliate for any monopoly. You could very well end up getting trampled on, like most
Amazon affiliates have. However, if you get lots of views, many affiliates are making “how to do something” YouTube videos and listing their equipment in the video description. A million views can make it worth it.
5. Learn How Affiliate Programs Work One Tier – get a commission when a sale is generated from your affiliate link. Two Tier – get a commission when you refer other affiliates and they start making sales (think multilevel marketing). An example is WP Engine’s program where I tell my readers about their WordPress hosting, they start making sales, and I earn $50/sale from each sale they generate. Climbing Tiers – increased commissions as you get more sales. Recurring Commissions – usually happens with subscription services… you continuously receive commissions as long as people are signed up. AWeber and SEMrush are examples. Sitewide Commissions – get a commission no matter what people buy on the affiliate’s website. Amazon’s affiliate program does this. Pay Per Lead – get a commission based on the number of leads (e.g. contact form fillouts) you send to a business. Be sure to set up your analytics to track this and have a solid, written agreement with your affiliate. You don’t want to spend tons of time and get burned like I have.
Cookies – amount of time after people click your affiliate link you will receive a commission if a sale is generated. Usually 30-90 days but shouldn’t be a deal breaker when choosing affiliates. Individual Affiliate Programs – affiliate programs that are located on their website.
6. Add Affiliate Links To Your content Step 1: Sign up and get approved. You usually need a decent amount of traffic (or a history of sales) before getting approved. If you have a large following somewhere else (i.e. YouTube), you may be able to convince affiliates to approve you. Otherwise, you need to generate traffic first. Step 2: Get your affiliate links. Login to your affiliate dashboard and grab your affiliate links. With most individual affiliate programs, they assign you an affiliate ID which you can add to any URL on their website to turn it into an affiliate link. In affiliate marketplaces like ShareASale, they preassign affiliate links but also have a custom link generator. Use these to add deep links. Step 3: For blogs, install an affiliate link management plugin (I use Thirsty Affiliates) and add your affiliate links here. This lets you organize, track, cloak, nofollow, and add affiliate links. Step 4: Configure the Thirsty Affiliate plugin settings.
Choose a link prefix (I use /go/)
Enable statistics in the “Modules” setting Use nofollow + sponsored (recommended by Google) Consider Thirsty Affiliates Pro if you want automatic keyword linking Step 5: Add affiliate links to posts. If you’re using the classic editor like me, use the Thirsty Affiliates button to add affiliate links. When you do it this way, all the attributes you configured in the settings (cloaking, nofollow, sponsored, etc) are automatically added to the affiliate link. Step 6: Use your affiliate dashboard to track sales, statistics, and get to know your affiliate dashboard because it can be very helpful (especially when trying to increase conversion rates). Banners – banners don’t work well. They’re easy to throw up, but distracting and probably won’t get great results. If you try them, be sure to show specific sidebar banners based on the type of content people are reading on your blog (for posts that fall under my SEO category I would show a banner related to SEO, and for posts under my website speed category I would show a different banner). You can control sidebar banners using a plugin like Widget Logic. AdSense – It’s easy to throw up AdSense on your blog, but good luck making decent income. It is NOT personalized whereas affiliate links involve people taking YOUR recommendation on very specific things. AdSense makes your site slower than a turtle. Not good for monetization.
7. Be A “How To Start A Blog” YouTuber Want to know why this topic is so popular?
Refer people to hosting = $$$ Refer people to WordPress theme = $ Refer people to Elementor products = $ Total income if one person signs up for all three: $200+ The bad news: the industry and keywords are super competitive. The good news: the amount of people looking to start a blog is enormous. You just need a slice. Many hosting companies pay up to $150/sale once you start generating a good amount of sales. People are also searching for how to start a food, fashion, and lifestyle blog. You don’t have to limit yourself to 1 single keyword. Learn about hosting, self-hosted WordPress, and Astra Starter Sites. I could literally start a WordPress blog in 10 minutes. Show people how to do that.
8. Use Coupon Codes It’s a huge bonus if your affiliate lets you create coupon codes. Since your coupon code is attached to your affiliate account, you get credit for the sale if anyone uses it. So in YouTube videos, people don’t even need to click your affiliate link – just give them your coupon code to save them money, and you will get your affiliate commission.
9. Get Traffic Before Sales
One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is focusing on money first. This is bad for a few of reasons:
No traffic = no sales Most affiliates require you to have some traffic Your authenticity is ruined if you’re too salesy from the start But it definitely helps to have money in mind when you start. That way, once you get traffic and are approved by affiliates, you can easily add affiliate links to blog posts where you already mention your affiliate’s products/services. Don’t focus on money first, but have it in your plan.
10. Master SEO Most affiliate marketers get most of their traffic from SEO (or Pinterest which I admit to knowing nothing about). But I do know SEO is a more popular way to get consistent traffic. The key steps to SEO are:
Researching a keyword, it’s search volume, and competition. Creating in-depth content that is better than whoever’s in the top results. Making content user-friendly (YouTube chapters, table of contents on blog). Using your keyword in the right places (title, description, content, video file name). Increasing click-through rates (titles, custom thumbnails, Google’s featured snippets). Researching A Keyword – find a keyword in YouTube’s autocomplete dropdown (or Google Autocomplete for blog posts). You can use the underline character _ to fill-inthe-blank. Broad keywords have more searches but are more competitive. The best keywords are broad (lots of volume) with weak content in the top results. vidIQ helps you learn a keyword’s competition in YouTube and MozBar helps you learn competition in Google. I find the competition in YouTube is much less than Google, so choose broad keywords for videos and specific keywords for blogs. Review Keyword Examples
Apple MacBook Pro 16 review What is the best WordPress hosting SiteGround WordPress Hosting review Solution Keyword Examples
How to do yoga at home (recommend a yoga mat)
Why is my website slow (recommended faster hosting) How to connect laptop to TV (recommend an HDMI cable)
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