Affiliate marketing is the easiest way to generate passive income online. You don’t need to create your own products, and you don’t even need to really sell anything.
All you need to know how to do is to recommend things, and if you’ve ever recommended anything to anyone before, then you already know how to do this.
It’s important to note that you’re not going to make millions of dollars overnight – affiliate marketing takes time to learn what works, and what does not. But, we’re here to help you speed up the affiliate marketing process and finally get the momentum going your way.
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Let’s get continue.
This blog post is all about how you go from zero to a successful affiliate marketing business – the complete beginner guide to get started with affiliate marketing and find the best paying affiliate products and services for your audience in 2024.
We will explore each step in-depth and offer affiliate marketing tips and tactics to make more money with affiliate marketing, but let’s start by answering some frequently asked questions about starting affiliate marketing in 2024.
What’s affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting another person’s or company’s product. You find a high quality product you like, promote it to your audience, and earn a commission for each sale that you make.
The best part is that you don’t have to spend the time and money to create your own products, because someone else has already done it for you.
Because of that, affiliate marketing is an opportunity you can take advantage of, and it’s easy to get started with affiliate marketing.
You can begin making money online as an affiliate marketer as soon as you have a place to recommend the right products, whether that’s a website you have, a blog you’ve started, or even on social media like TikTok.
It’s worth mentioning that there’s so much more involved to make affiliate marketing work well, which is why most people who attempt affiliate marketing fail, or just see a few dollars coming in from their hard work.
We want you to see real results from affiliate marketing, which is why we’re thankful you’re here.
There are two ways to be involved in affiliate marketing—either as an affiliate marketing program creator (product owner) or an affiliate marketer.
In this blog post, we’re going to focus on how to do affiliate marketing as an affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketing is quite simply one of the most legitimate ways to make passive income online. Regardless of your blogging niche, the upside with affiliate marketing is nearly limitless if you do it the right way!
Who is a good fit for affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing can be a great choice for bloggers, online entrepreneurs, and really anyone who has a website and is willing to build an audience they can serve authentically.
If this describes you, products and services exist right now that people in your target market are probably already buying, and if you can become the resource that recommends those products and services, you can earn a commission as a result.
Affiliate marketing can be an especially good option if you’re not ready to create your own product or service, but you want to serve your community by recommending right products or services that may be helpful to them.
Affiliate marketing can also be a good fit for many people because you can apply a bunch of different marketing techniques to promote affiliate products and services.
These include the same marketing techniques you may already been using—things like email marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, display ads, and paid search engine marketing (SEM).
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that affiliate marketing works best when you’re sincere and confident about the product or service you’re promoting.
You’d only sell your own product or service if you knew it could help your community, and it’s the same with affiliate marketing. If you go in with a get-rich-quick mentality, you’re not going to succeed in affiliate marketing.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Let’s get into the details of how affiliate marketing works. There are three main parties in an affiliate marketing arrangement:
- The affiliate company. In the simplest affiliate arrangements, you work directly with a single company to promote one or more of their products and services. There are more complex affiliate networks that provide an opportunity to earn affiliate revenue on a range of products or services, such as Impact, Amazon, and ShareASale.
- You and your website—the “affiliate.”
- The customer. This is a member of your audience who uses your affiliate link to purchase a product or service from the affiliate company /network.
A company that offers an affiliate marketing program may call it by a different name—these programs are also commonly called referral programs or partner programs.
Here’s how each player benefits from affiliate marketing:
- From your recommendation, your readers learns about a product or tool that may be useful to them;
- From your recommendation, the company selling the product or tool gets new clients they may not have found otherwise;
- As a result of the sales to your readers, the company gives you a commission.
If done the right way, affiliate marketing can be a win–win–win.
But at the center of this is one thing: your reader’s trust.
When your readers believes you have their best interests at heart and trusts your recommendations, then all three players in the affiliate marketing relationship ultimately benefit.
First, earn your audience’s trust, and only recommend affiliate products and services that you’ve used yourself and know your community will benefit from.
And you know what?
A lot of people do it the wrong way by taking an income-first rather than a serve-first approach.
These people push random products or services and over-promote them without providing true value to their audience.
But thankfully, you CAN do affiliate marketing right, maintaining your audience’s trust and having them thank you for your recommendations.
What are some of the benefits & drawbacks of affiliate marketing?
As with anything, affiliate marketing has its benefits and its drawbacks.
Later in this blog post, we’ll give you the guidance you need to go about affiliate marketing the right way so you can make the most of the opportunities out there and avoid the potential drawbacks.
Here are the main benefits and drawbacks of affiliate marketing.
Benefits of affiliate marketing
- Low barrier to entry. Affiliate marketing is easy to get started with, and costs little. Most affiliate programs are free to join, and you don’t have to create, stock, or ship products, which also mean less hassle/responsibility.
- Passive income potential. Affiliate marketing provides the potential for passive income.
- Low risk. You’re not the product owner, so you don’t lose anything if a customer doesn’t buy.
- More freedom. When you start earning passive income, you can work anytime and from anywhere, as long as you have internet access.
Drawbacks of affiliate marketing
- Not a quick fix. It can take time to generate the amount of traffic needed to result in substantial income.
- Risk of link hijacking. Unscrupulous individuals may hijack your affiliate links, known as “clickjacking,” potentially stealing your commission in the process.
- Less control. You don’t own or control the product or service you’re recommending, so you can’t control the quality or customer experience.
- Offer fatigue. Readers can also get “offer fatigue” if they see too much ongoing promotion from you.
- Competition. An attractive affiliate program means you might be competing with others for customers.
- Not all affiliate programs are created equal. While most companies that offer affiliate commissions are stable and ethical, there are shady companies out there too, some of which may not pay what they say they will. It’s important to do your homework.
How much do affiliate marketers make?
The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to invest the time and effort to create a product to sell.
You can begin selling something as an affiliate as soon as you have a platform to sell it on. In this way, affiliate marketing can be a great way to earn passive income without a lot of hassle or upfront cost.
That said, it’s not a way to get rich quick.
Like all passive income ideas, it takes time and effort to create a decent revenue stream.
So, how much can you make once you’re up and running with affiliate marketing?
That depends primarily on how committed you are to making affiliate work and how much time, energy, and focus you’re willing to put into it. It also hinges on a few other factors:
- The size of your audience.
- The commission percentage you receive for each sale of an affiliate product or service.
- Typical commission percentages vary depending on the affiliate company you partner with, and the types of products or services you are promoting.
- How successful you are at promoting those products or services to your community.
Digital products and services typically offer higher commissions due to their lower costs of production and fulfillment—there are no raw materials, shipping costs, etc.
These commissions can be as high as 50 %.
On the other hand, because of all the aforementioned costs, physical products tend to offer lower percentage commissions, sometimes in the single digits.
Thankfully, there is no real limit on how much you can make as an affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketing can be become your main source of income if you’re willing to make the commitment.
If you’re looking for long-term success with affiliate marketing, you have to be willing to do it the right way.
What affiliate marketing tactics can i use to promote my partner’s products?
There are a ton of tactics you can use to promote your affiliate partner’s products or services online.
Here’re 9 proven tactics you can use to promote your best paying affiliate programs.
- Review and compare different products of the same type
First tactic is to compare and contrast different products of the same type, and if you give them your recommendation, make sure that link is an affiliate link.
The reason this tactic works is because people like to shop around, but they also like convenience. So instead of making them carry out their own research all over the web, keep them on your website by reviewing each of the different products in one place.
If you’ve done a great job building up audience trust, then a complete comparison review of different products of the same type can be a great way to drive affiliate sales.
- Create an epic post
One thing we like to do when promoting products or services is creating epic posts about them.
What is an epic post?
Think of it as a potential one-stop-shop resource for this particular product — not just a review of the product, but a full-fledged introduction, how-to, best practices, FAQ, and troubleshooting resource for anyone who buys it.
If you can show this useful information to your audience before they make a purchase, they’ll be more likely to actually make a purchase.
At the same time, the epic blog post becomes an extremely shareable article, one with the potential to rank high for the particular product keyword in search engines like Google.
- Promote your products indirectly on social media
Although your website is the centerpiece of your affiliate marketing strategy, social media—TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.—can play an important role in your affiliate marketing strategy too.
The thing about social media — at least in our experience—is that if you directly promote on your social media platforms, you’re not going to get a good response.
People on social media are typically there to be social, not to be sold to.
But all is not lost in the affiliate marketing world, because you can do an indirect social media push, which means instead of directly linking to your affiliate links on any social media platforms, you’re instead linking to something of value that includes your affiliate link, such as a video, an epic post on your blog or a link to sign up for your webinar.
You’re not linking directly through your affiliate link, but the right resource that will engage people beforehand, earn their trust, and show them what the product or service is about before clicking on your affiliate link.
The more trust you can earn beforehand, the greater the likelihood your audience will purchase from you.
- Host a webinar
Another technique is to host a webinar for affiliate marketing.
Webinars are the most powerful way to share a message with your audience. They’re personable, they’re live, and you can treat them like an actual event. That way, your promotion becomes a much bigger deal than just a regular affiliate link you dropped into your blog post.
- Publish a webinar replay
Be sure to record your live webinar so that you can embed it on your website as a replay for those who didn’t watch it live, as well as those who did watch it live but want to review the information.
We recommend recording using screen capture software like Camtasia Studio or Screenflow.
Finally, make sure that in the webinar and on the blog post where you embed the replay, you give people multiple opportunities to click on your affiliate link.
- Create multiple YouTube videos about the product
These videos should be embedded in your epic blog post.
This is an important affiliate marketing tactic because YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world. You can get a lot of traffic coming in through your affiliate link on YouTube, and the videos themselves can rank in Google too.
Plus, by shooting multiple videos about a particular product or service, you create even more SEO opportunities.
Make sure to include your affiliate link in the video description, ideally in the first part of the description, so people don’t have to click on “show more” or “read more” to see it.
What should you cover in these videos?
We recommend recording yourself from start to finish with it, and then break it up into chunks. People like to watch shorter videos, so this works in your favor, and you get multiple opportunities to rank for various keywords related to that product or service.
If it’s a digital product, start at the moment of purchase and walk people through the entire process. And if you’re doing a physical product, consider an unboxing video.
- Promote products indirectly via your email list
Your email list is an integral part of any affiliate marketing campaign—and if you don’t have one, you need to get started building one today! Email is extremely powerful for affiliate marketing, which is why so many people say, “The money’s in the list.”
As with social media platforms, we recommend indirectly promoting to your email list. We don’t directly promote anything on our email list. If there are any affiliate links in our emails they point back to other blog content, such as epic posts, videos, and the like.
You need to take great care of your email list and not be too aggressive with it. Indirect promotion is a great way to go about things, especially if you’re focused on building trust with your audience.
- Give away a bonus
In addition to promoting the affiliate product, give away a bonus to all of those who purchase the product or service through your affiliate link as a thank you.
Chances are, you’re not the only one promoting that product or service, so to get people to purchase from you instead of the other guy, throw in a bonus that can only come with a purchase through your affiliate link.
Just have your audience members send you their receipt via email and then you can reply with the bonus, or information about how to access the product or service.
So what could that bonus be?
Maybe it’s a discount you work out with the owner of the product, one that provides incentive to buy from you.
Maybe it’s a coupon code to another product you own or have ties to.
Maybe it’s a PDF quick-start guide with instructions, and best practices for that product.
You’re adding much value to the purchase, making your buyers feel comfortable, and helping get those on the fence from “I’m not sure if this is right for me” to “This is exactly what I need, and more.”
- Promote products indirectly on other people’s websites
This is another tactic in which indirect linking is your friend.
If you’re interviewed for another person’s blog, or asked to write a guest blog post, you can link back to blog content on your website that contains your affiliate link.
As with social media and email, you don’t want to hit your audience over the head with your affiliate links—and most of the time, if you try to link directly to an affiliate product through someone else’s website, they won’t allow it anyway.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Now, before you can fully focus on these easy steps to start affiliate marketing however, you’ll of course need to have started a blog or a website in the first place.
If you haven’t already done that, then head over to our step-by-step guide on starting a profitable blog and pick it up here once you’re ready to grow a blog.
Here is how to start affiliate marketing in 5 simple steps:
- Find a company and product you want to promote.
- Sign up as an affiliate.
- Get your unique affiliate link and add it to your website or blog.
- A visitor to your website clicks the affiliate link, which takes them to a third-party page.
- If the visitor makes a purchase, you receive a commission based on the value of the item purchased.
What are some of the affiliate marketing examples?
What does affiliate marketing look like? If you’ve visited our website, you may have come across our tools page.
This page contains a list of recommended resources—products, services, and more—to help our community build their own successful online businesses.
Many of the links on this page are affiliate links, meaning we receive a commission if someone clicks on the link and purchases the product or service it links to.
Here is what someone sees if they click on our affiliate link for Bluehost, the web hosting service we use and recommend:
And here is what they will see when they click on our affiliate link for ConvertKit, the email service provider we’re happy to recommend:
As we’ll further discuss below, you can also earn affiliate commissions by signing up with an affiliate network. One of the most popular is the Amazon Associates program which you can read more about here.
You can easily find tons of other examples of affiliate marketing programs “in the wild.”
For example, Create a Pro Website is an affiliate marketing website and YouTube channel that creates tutorials on anything and everything related to “how to create a website.”
They do a good job of offering value through demoing products, while working in their affiliate links where it makes sense.
Affiliate marketing is essentially about sharing your affiliate links, so however you choose to share those links—whether on your blog website, on social media like TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, or via emails to your email list—well, that’s affiliate marketing in action!
What are some of the most paying affiliate programs and networks?
Pro Tip: Always start your affiliate marketing journey by building a relationship with your audience and never recommend products you haven’t used or don’t love.
That being said, we want to give you a starting point for finding affiliate marketing programs that might be a great fit for you and your business, and give you some insight into what you should consider when evaluating affiliate marketing websites and opportunities.
It’s good to mention that we’ve used many but not all of the below networks and programs ourselves, but we’re familiar with the others from our in-depth research and recommendations from friends and other pro bloggers.
So while we’re comfortable sharing them with you there isn’t any direct financial benefit to us for doing so.
Best Affiliate Marketing Networks
Affiliate marketing networks are platforms you can join to get access to hundreds, sometimes thousands of affiliate marketing programs and products.
Let’s explore a few of the most popular affiliate networks:
- CJ Affiliate Network
- ShareASale Affiliate Network
- Impact Affiliate Network
- ClickBank Affiliate Network
1. CJ Affiliate Network
Formerly Commission Junction, CJ has spent the last 2 decades building relationships with brands and publishers to create an affiliate marketing platform worth exploring.
Advertisers you’ll find here include Overstock.com, Priceline.com, and more.
CJ also includes some one-click join affiliate programs to make it easy for beginner affiliate marketers to start their journey, while also offering omnichannel tracking and strategic recommendations based on business size, vertical, and region for when you’re more established.
Pros
- Intuitive interface and dashboard – ideal for affiliate marketing beginners
- Lots of really big brand names under one roof
- Direct display advertising (flat fee and commission) opportunities
- You can find profitable affiliate programs without having to guess
- Support and tutorials make things very easy
Cons
- Big brands come and go on this network all the time
2. ShareASale Affiliate Network
ShareASale helps beginner and expert affiliate marketers alike create profitable long-term partnerships with brands their audience will love.
With 260+ affiliate programs launched every month, a product discovery bookmarklet for quickly generating affiliate links, and a slew of analytics and reporting tools, if you find a product worth promoting to your audience here you won’t be going astray.
Pros
- Thousands of products and services to promote
- You don’t have to wait months to get paid
- Smaller, unknown but very worthwhile affiliate programs
- Their ‘PowerRank’ metric shows you where an affiliate program sits in the top 1000 on ShareASale
- The “Search for Merchants’ function is far superior to Commission Junction, for example
Cons
- A very dated interface
- The approval process for affiliate programs can be unpredictable at times
1. Impact Affiliate Network
Formerly Impact Radius, their Marketplace was built to offer content creators a seamless way to monetize their work and offer their audiences a lot of value through a huge list of brands looking to advertise and a suite of tracking and automation tools.
With direct access to global brands like Airbnb, and Adidas, flexible payment processing, and robust reporting and alerts, there’s a good chance you’ll find them a great fit for your audience and business.
Pros
- Easy to find brands offering instant approvals
- Smart interface is more intuitive than older networks
- Multiple ways to cash out your earnings, including PayPal and direct transfer
- Home to plenty of big-name brands like Adidas and Airbnb
- Big choice of affiliate marketing programs
- Wide choice of categories, from shoes and apparel to B2B services
Cons
- The wealth of features can make it a little complex for new affiliate marketers
- This is a minor one, but it doesn’t have quite as many big names as Commission Junction
2. ClickBank Affiliate Network
ClickBank has done a good job of owning the information product affiliate program space, offering products like ebooks and online courses that you won’t find as readily on other affiliate marketing platforms.
Pros
- Creating your affiliate link is super easy
- You rarely need to be approved to promote a program
- Probably the best network for anyone doing affiliate marketing without a website
- You’ll have lots of opportunities to promote programs with recurring commission
- Digital products can work hand-in-hand with email marketing/social media
- Most of the pre-selling is done for you by the merchant’s landing page
Cons
- Certain programs can result in very high refund rates
Best Affiliate Marketing Programs
One of the biggest challenges you’ll face when building an affiliate marketing business is finding the best affiliate programs for beginners.
After all, there are thousands of highest paying affiliate programs to choose from.
Choosing the wrong affiliate program could potentially set you back months, whereas choosing the right one could see you generating your first affiliate income before your website is even “finished”.
What is an affiliate marketing program?
Beyond the products you can promote, affiliate programs include the commission rates, marketing materials, payment terms, and promotion rules a business with an affiliate product offers affiliate marketers like you.
Below are the 4 best paying affiliate marketing programs for beginners:
- Amazon Associates Affiliate Program
- Fiverr Affiliate Program
- HostGator Affiliate Program
- Wix Affiliate Program
These affiliate marketing programs are great examples of what’s available to you as an affiliate marketer so use them, but only if they’re truly going to benefit your audience you’ve built a relationship with.
- Amazon Associates Affiliate Program
You know Amazon, now you know about their Amazon Associates affiliate program!
They’re the world’s largest retailer so if your business is related to any sort of physical product, you’ll find a quality option to offer here.
Worth noting, Amazon recently caused quite a stir by drastically lowering their commission rates (from 8% to 4% in many categories), which is a good example of why building relationships with your audience and eventually creating your own offerings is so important.
That being said, on top of having the world’s largest catalog, Amazon has poured billions into optimizing their website for conversions and you earn a commission for any product visitors purchase within 48 hours of clicking your links, so they’re still a top recommendation for physical affiliate products.
Pros
- International brand recognition – everyone knows what Amazon is
- Easy-to-use affiliate dashboard
- Link creation and management is super easy
- Over 385 million products for Amazon Associates to promote
- They place huge focus on customer service, so you benefit from that
Cons
- Amazon changes their mind on commission rates as often as they change their underwear
- The 24-hour cookie is far from ideal
2. Fiverr Affiliate Program
Fiverr, the most popular and mostly used marketplace for freelance services, offers a few different affiliate products and services that might be a good fit for promoting to your audience.
These include:
- Fiverr, the freelance marketplace offering services for everything from graphics and copywriting to complete websites and custom apps.
- Fiverr Learn, their online courses platform.
- Fiverr Business, their suite of premium tools and vetted talent for business owners.
- Fiverr affiliates, their affiliate program.
If you work with clients who might need support from freelancers available on Fiverr’s platform or have an audience of entrepreneurs, a partnership with Fiverr is your best bet.
In addition to being a good fit for a broad set of businesses, I decided to add Fiverr to our list of affiliate marketing programs because they introduce some interesting commission structures you can find in some other affiliate programs.
Many affiliate programs will offer flat commissions per sale.
In Fiverr’s case, this includes a $15-150 Cost Per Action (CPA), depending on the service the person you refer buys.
They also offer percentages of the sale price, 30% for Fiverr Learn courses as an example.
Something you don’t see as often but is very valuable as an affiliate marketer is a revenue share option.
In this case, Fiverr’s “Hybrid” payment structure lets you earn $10 for a first-time purchase and 10% of all further purchases made by someone you refer for 12 months.
The beauty of revenue share commission structures is twofold:
- You have the potential to earn a lot more than flat-rate plans
- Revenue share smooths out your earnings curves
For example, as people get outside during the summer months, you’ll sometimes see a natural dip in traffic and sales for software-based products as people are spending less time on their computers.
But, if you earn a piece of the monthly fees a person you refer pays for their software, you’re less likely to see a dip in your monthly revenues.
Pros
- Really nice affiliate interface – it’s a breath of fresh air compared to others
- New services become available to sell all the time – you’ll always have something to sell
- Fiverr are a market leader, so there’s no real competition
- Potential for deliciously high $150-per-referral commissions – there is potential to earn a lot of money here
Cons
- You don’t get paid for any sales made to existing customers
- Some of the most popular gigs will eventually move to their own website
3. HostGator Affiliate Program
HostGator is a popular web hosting and domain name registration company you’ve likely heard of because their affiliate program is so popular.
And because so many different audiences from entrepreneurs to crochet enthusiasts can benefit from having a website, chances are your audience may be interested in a web hosting service.
While we use and prefer Bluehost because we know them, and trust them, we mention HostGator here because it shows us another element of affiliate marketing commission structures: pay for performance.
What does this mean exactly?
HostGator offers a tiered payments structure based on how many monthly signups they receive from you:
- 1-5 signups per month: $65/signup
- 6-10 signups per month: $75/signup
- 11-20 signups per month: $100/signup
- 21+ signups per month: $125/signup
Again, please think about your audience’s needs and the quality of the product/service first, and commission rates and structures second.
But if all else is equal between two tools, it’s worth investing your time and effort in creating helpful content and building a partnership relationship with the company that helps you grow your commissions as you grow their sales.
- Wix Affiliate Program
Our last affiliate marketing program example is Wix, the popular website building software.
We mention them here for two reasons:
- Again, website-related products and services are useful for a lot of audiences, so chances are Wix might be a good fit for you and yours.
- They’re an example of one other element of affiliate marketing program commission structures – minimum payouts.
To point 2, many affiliate programs have minimum earnings targets you have to hit to get paid. In Wix’s case, you have to generate at least $300 in commissions before they’ll send your earnings to your bank account.
This is a fairly common practice and thus a nice example of why we say affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
What to Look For in a Good Affiliate Marketing Program
- Commission & Payments
Find out not only how much you’ll get paid by a given affiliate program, but also when you’ll actually get paid.
Most affiliates are paid 30 days after making a sale, but others don’t get paid for 90 days.
That’s a long time to wait for your affiliate income, especially if you have bills to pay.
- Ease of Use
When you’re first starting out in affiliate marketing, you should make things as easy as possible on yourself.
That includes signing up for affiliate programs that not only make sense but are equal parts, great management and great design.
- Point of contact
Things will go wrong from time to time.
Links will stop working, or you’ll have a question on why last month’s sales report looks like it’s upside down.
That’s exactly when you’ll need help from a dedicated affiliate manager.
Affiliate networks tend to have a slight advantage here because you can rely on their support staff in addition to the affiliate manager for whatever affiliate program you have a question on.
Just bear in mind that affiliate managers are no different from face-to-face managers in that some of them are really good and some are awful.
Always check what kinds of support you’ll get before you sign up for any affiliate program i.e. do you have a dedicated affiliate manager.
What are some of the affiliate marketing tips for beginners?
Affiliate marketing takes focus and commitment, and certain choreography to make it happen the way you want it to.
Thankfully, there are things you can do to increase the number of people clicking on your affiliate links and purchasing the affiliate products you’re promoting.
So below, let’s go over our 18 tips to help you succeed with affiliate marketing.
Some of these are things we’ve covered already but they’re definitely worth repeating!
Others will be new to you. But all of them are potentially important keys as you build your affiliate marketing business.
18 Affiliate Marketing Tips for Beginners
- Know The Product
- Ask Yourself: Can I Trust The Product Will Be Good For Our Audience?
- Help Your Audience Learn As Much As Possible About The Product
- Become A Source Of Information And Support For A Product
- Use Your Website (Or Build One!)
- Give People Multiple Opportunities To Click On Your Affiliate Links
- Disclose That Your Links Are Affiliate Links
- Use Your Own Language To Promote Your Affiliate Links
- Thank People In Advance For Going Through Your Affiliate Links
- Thank People Afterward For Going Through Your Affiliate Links
- Establish A Relationship With The Owner Of The Product
- Offer Special Deals Just For Your Audience
- Ask For A Landing Page On The Owner’s Website
- Believe In Your Recommendation
- If It Doesn’t Work Out, Try Another Offer
- Test, Test, Test
- Make Your Own Product Instead
- Be Patient
A great affiliate marketing strategy starts with a solid foundation. Here are the affiliate marketing fundamentals you need to keep in mind as you’re getting started.
- Know The Product
If you really know the product, it will shape how you promote it, what you say to promote it, and the overall feeling your will get when you offer or recommend it.
So what’s the best way to get to know a product? Use it. Get to know it.
If you’re not extremely familiar with a product, don’t promote it.
All of the products we promote on our tools page, such as ConvertKit for email marketing, Leadpages for landing pages, and Bluehost for web hosting, are ones we’ve used ourselves extensively.
We know all about them, and we’re very comfortable with how these tools work, so we’re happy to recommend them to our audience.
- Ask Yourself: Can I Trust The Product Will Be Good For Our Audience?
This is crucial. It’s the idea that you should be sharing or recommending something that will actually help your audience.
Do you trust that after you send people through your affiliate link that the sales page for that product, the product itself, and the customer service for that product, if any, will be good to them?
If it’s an awesome product that totally helps them out?
Awesome! You’re going to look that much better and be thanked for it, and it’ll be a win–win–win for everyone.
If it’s bad? It’s a lose–lose–lose for everybody.
- Help Your Audience Learn as Much as Possible About The Product
Instead of just a paragraph or two explaining the product and what it can do for your audience, show them how it works.
Tell them what it’s like to sign up for the product, share some tips to make the experience of using that product even better, give answers to the most frequently asked questions about that product . . . show them everything.
The more you can show, the more comfortable people are going to be actually making a purchase.
- Become a Source of Information and Support For a Product
The next level is to make yourself available to your audience as a source of information and support for that product.
This can help in the pre-purchase process. If someone has any questions about a product before making a purchase, tell them to go through.
The next thing you can do is provide support for it too.
You don’t necessarily have to be available 24/7 for customer service questions.
But when you promote these products, you want to say, “Hey, if you have any questions about this, let me know. Because I know this product, and I want to show you how it can help you achieve your goals or address your pains and problems.”
And when you do that, your audience will automatically think, “This guy knows what he’s talking about, and if I ever have any questions, he’ll be there.”
- Use Your Website (Or Build One!)
There are many ways to build an audience today: on social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or via your own website.
But when it comes to affiliate marketing, one of those is a must-have: a website.
We know a lot of people who are earning an income via TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, without even having a website. Power to them—but if you want to set yourself up for success with affiliate marketing, you absolutely need a website.
What if Facebook, TikTok or Twitter were to shut down tomorrow?
That probably won’t happen, but these websites can still make changes that can greatly affect your affiliate marketing business.
We’ve seen this time and time again, especially with Facebook. Facebook loves to make changes, especially since they went public and are trying to make money for their investors.
Affiliate marketing is your business, and so you need to take control of it, and if you put your business in the hands of something like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or even Google, you’re risking everything.
The smart approach is to create your website where you have full control over the experience of your audience and customers.
Platforms like Facebook are limited when it comes to delivering a custom experience to your audience.
LinkedIn and YouTube are limited in customer experience, and you want those places to be the start of a conversation and always drive people back to your website.
Twitter is extremely limited.
The website is where all the action happens.
It’s where people buy stuff.
It’s where people click and share things mostly, and it’s where you can get the most leverage.
It’s where you can most easily build an email list.
Yes, there are affiliate marketing tools available that allow you to do everything without a website, but if you’re in it for the long term and want to do affiliate marketing the right way, you need to have a website.
Why would you ever put your business in the hands of somebody else?
- Give People Multiple Opportunities To Click On Your Affiliate Links
When you only give your audience one opportunity to click on your affiliate link—by adding a single link near the top of a blog post, for example—you’re losing out on potential income that could come with not much more work.
Of course, you should avoid the other extreme too.
The best thing to do is just naturally place links where it seems like they work.
For a blog post, this could be the first time you mention the product, somewhere in the middle of the blog post and then again at the end.
People who continue to read the blog post are likely to be more engaged and take action.
That’s where adding links in the middle and at the end can come in handy, so these engaged readers don’t have to scroll all the way back up the page.
Another quick and easy tip is to link product images with your affiliate link.
Also consider adding affiliate links to other content, including YouTube videos, and your Tools page.
Bottom line: make it as easy as possible for all of your readers to use your affiliate links, without overdoing it.
- Disclose That Your Links Are Affiliate Links
Most of you know we’re all about transparency and authenticity—and it’s no different with affiliate links. So, we do our best to always reveal when links are affiliate links.
Why?
Well, for one, at least in the US, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations require that if you’re receiving any compensation for promoting any other product or company, you have to disclose that relationship.
There’s a lot more to it than that, but the best thing you can do is just be honest and upfront with your affiliate links.
But more than that, people appreciate honesty.
Along with that, if you give away enough information and really help people out, some of those people will likely want to pay you back for your generosity.
If you disclose that you have an affiliate link they can click on, that right there is a good call to action for people to give back to you.
When you mention that you’re using affiliate links, you should also say you’re getting a commission, but at no extra cost to them, so if they are going to buy the product anyway they might as well purchase it from you and help you make some cash too.
- Use Your Own Language to Promote Your Affiliate Links
When you sign up as an affiliate with a company, they’ll often send you marketing language to use in your blog posts, emails, and social media messages to help sell the product.
While this marketing language can be helpful, we absolutely recommend not using it 100 percent. Instead, use it as inspiration to craft personalized language to sell the products.
Your audience wants to hear from you in your voice. It’ll be obvious to them if you’re just copying and pasting from somewhere else.
- Thank People in Advance for Going Through Your Affiliate Links
When we disclose affiliate links on our blog posts, we will sometimes thank people in advance for going through them.
Is this a small thing that probably doesn’t make a drastic difference in sales?
Yes.
Is it something that’s easy to do and people will appreciate it?
Definitely.
With that in mind, here’s the next affiliate marketing tip, which is . . .
- Thank People Afterward for Going Through Your Affiliate Links
If the company you’re an affiliate with is able to provide you with the name or email of people who purchase through your link, you should definitely follow up with those people and thank them.
Maybe give them a surprise bonus if you want to, something you didn’t mention they’d get in the first place.
This will help make them want to make a purchase through one of your affiliate links again in the future.
- Establish a Relationship With The Owner of The Product
This does a couple of things.
First, it starts to foster the necessary relationship and trust between your audience and the owner of the product, if your audience is ever going to purchase that product.
Second, it helps the audience trust you even more, by showing them that you’ve established a relationship with the owner of the product— you’re not just messing around when it comes to recommending this product.
You’re familiar with the product and the people behind it, which will help your audience, feel even more comfortable with their purchase.
One other advantage of developing a relationship with the product owners is you might even be able to negotiate higher commission rates.
It’s always worth making a connection!
- Offer Special Deals Just for Your Audience
This is the next step in building a relationship with the owner of a product you’re promoting.
If you can negotiate a special deal from the product owner just for your audience, that will give your audience an even better value and more of a reason to buy from you.
You can do a limited-time deal, or one that is evergreen.
- Ask For a Landing Page On The Owner’s Website
Most of the time, the actual sale of an affiliate item takes place on the website of the company that owns the product.
Unfortunately, it’s complicated to keep the entire sales process on your own website, so you’ll need to be willing to send people to the company’s website to complete their purchase.
By vetting the product and the company beforehand, you can help ensure that your audience will have a positive purchase experience.
But you’re still sending your audience into another company’s “territory” where you usually don’t have any control over their experience.
In some cases, you may be able to handle the purchase process on your own website, but that requires the company to agree to it, along with a lot of technical know-how.
But there’s another, easier option that can help increase your audience’s trust and comfort in purchasing: having your own branded landing page on the company’s website.
When people click on your affiliate link, they’re taken to a custom landing page on the company’s website that has some elements from your brand on it.
The huge benefit of this landing page is that it continues the conversation, and makes the customer feel like you’re still there with them as they go through the buying process.
Some companies may not be open to creating a custom landing page for you, and even if they are, you may need to already be a successful affiliate with them before they’ll agree to it.
- Believe in Your Recommendation
If you really believe in the product, in your recommendation, then so will your audience. If you have motives other than trying to help people out or give them something they need — if it’s for the commission, then you’re not going to perform as well with your sales.
Believe in it, and your audience will believe in you.
- If it Doesn’t Work Out, Try Another Offer
Let’s say you have an affiliate product you’d like to promote.
You’ve used the product and you know it will help your audience.
You set up a promotion with links in your blog posts and videos . . . and it doesn’t work out.
It’s not the end of the world.
Sometimes you think your audience will respond one way, but they surprise you and go the opposite way.
Why? Figure out why and evaluate the circumstances, and try again knowing what you now know from what you learned.
Then use what you learned and try another offer!
It’s all a learning process, one that happens through taking action, and trial and error.
That’s what affiliate marketing is all about.
In fact, the more things don’t work out, the better, because the more likely you’ll be to eventually get to something that does work.
And the more you’ll learn along the way.
Related to that . . .
- Test, Test, Test
As in the previous affiliate marketing tip, test your offers, yes, but more than that—test everything.
Test how you promote your products, to see what your audience responds best to.
Test the placements of your affiliate links, the number of affiliate links within blog posts; whether they’re bolded or italicized, whether images work better . . . test everything you can possibly think of.
Test, test, test.
- Make Your Own Product Instead
If all else fails, but you know there’s a market out there for a particular product that’s perfect for your audience, and it doesn’t exist—create your own product.
Yes, this isn’t affiliate marketing.
And when you create your own product, you waive the benefits of affiliate marketing, such as not having to create the product, dealing with customer service, and other aspects of being a product owner.
But affiliate marketing doesn’t always work out, and there are advantages to creating your own product:
- You get to keep people in your own brand.
- You get to keep all the profits.
You can even set up your own affiliate program for other people to sign up and promote your product.
And lastly . . .
- Be Patient
No matter how quickly people say you can make money online with affiliate marketing, realize that it’s going to take time.
Relatively speaking, yes, things can happen pretty fast—that’s the beauty of online affiliate marketing business.
You can have a website up today and start sharing useful content with the world, but in order to make an impact and really make money online, you’re going to need to get your message out there, and build relationships with people.
In time, this will drive traffic to your website, and eventually clicks, sales, and affiliate commissions.
Learn, but take action and keep learning as you go.
Things take time, but by following these affiliate marketing tips, and everything else you learn in this blog post, you’ll give yourself the best chance to make things happen as fast as possible for you with affiliate marketing.
What are some of the affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid?
Affiliate marketing: it’s easy to do—and easy to do wrong.
Anyone can grab a link and promote it from behind the scenes. But successful affiliate marketing that delivers value for you and your audience in the long term?
That takes work.
It also means knowing what not to do.
We’ve covered:
- How affiliate marketing works,
- Benefits and drawbacks of affiliate marketing,
- Affiliate marketing tactics you can use to promote your partner’s products,
- How to get started with affiliate marketing,
- Best affiliate programs and networks,
- Our top tips for succeeding as an affiliate marketer, and a whole lot more.
Now, we’d like to give you some insight into what to avoid when it comes to affiliate marketing.
The 10 Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
- Prioritizing selling over helping
- Not having a deep understanding of what you’re selling
- Promoting a product that doesn’t make sense for your audience.
- Not being honest about a product or promotion.
- Not keeping an eye on the quality of your audience’s experience.
- Publishing low-quality content
- Ignoring/overlooking site speed
- Neglecting readability of content
- Ignoring the SEO basics
- Earning all of your income from affiliate marketing.
Okay. Let’s talk about these 10 dangers you need to look out for on your affiliate marketing journey.
- Prioritizing selling over helping
It’s easy to develop the mindset that getting conversions/sales is your number one priority as an online affiliate marketer.
Unfortunately, this mindset is what results in low quality content and poor results.
Instead, you should focus on creating high quality content above all else. Focus your writing around the reader’s intent, putting them first. Instead of explaining features, focus on benefits to the user.
Avoid user friction wherever possible. Banner ads have a time and place, but are they worth frustrating your visitors to the point of no return? Will your pop-ups be deemed as intrusive content in the eyes of Google?
Every outbound sales tactic, whether it’s a banner ad or a notification request, comes with consequences. It’s up to you to decide whether the user friction is worth it.
- Not having a deep understanding of what you’re selling
One of the common mistakes we often see with online affiliate marketers is not investing the time to learn about what they’re writing about.
Don’t underestimate the fact that your readers are savvy. With the world’s information at their fingertips, potential customers will be ready and willing to call your bluff if you don’t know what you’re writing about.
So how do you combat this?
Subscribe to industry-leading blogs, forums, or Google alerts to stay up-to-date on your niche. Head over to Quora to find out what questions people are asking about your niche.
Most importantly, equip yourself with the knowledge necessary to earn your readers trust and engagement through your blog content. This will help in the long run, both in conversions and page engagement in the eyes of Google.
- Promoting a product that doesn’t make sense for your audience
The biggest affiliate marketing mistake online marketers make is not promoting a product that actually makes sense for their audience.
This often happens when someone takes an income-first approach rather than a serving-first one.
You should look for solutions that can help your readers — whether there’s an affiliate opportunity there or not.
If there happens to be one, great. That’s a bonus.
If there isn’t, but you know the product could still be helpful to your readers, it’s your responsibility to share it with them.
Since our brand is focused on helping people build profitable online businesses, the products and services we promote are all things that support this focus: We recommend web hosting services that help people host their website (Bluehost), start an email list (ConvertKit), plan their editorial calendar (CoSchedule), audio and video gear to create great content, and courses to help people learn and improve their skills.
Most of these are things I recommend as an affiliate—but a good number of them are not.
Even if we can’t form an affiliate relationship with a company, if their product or service is the best one for our audience, we’re going to recommend it.
- Not being honest about a product or promotion
When we recommend products, we’re always very honest about what the product can and can’t do.
When you’re promoting your affiliate products, you need to make sure you set the right expectations for your audience.
Otherwise, what happens? You lose the trust of the person to whom you recommended that product.
You have to be careful, because if you make a mistake that skews your audience’s expectations, you might lose them for good.
You need to be totally honest about what a product can and can’t do, and make sure you’re not recommending it to someone who’s not a good fit for it.
What if you find yourself in a tricky situation where you’ve recommended a product to your audience, then realized later that it wasn’t what you thought it was?
If something goes wrong, be the first one to say something.
If you make a mistake, own up to it.
Perhaps you recommended a product you realized wasn’t a good fit for your audience.
The quicker you can say, “I’m sorry.
That product wasn’t the right fit for you.
We hope you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt and stick around,” the more likely your audience will be to do that.
Being honest fosters trust, even if the circumstances aren’t totally favorable.
And if you’re being honest and serving your audience in a way that’s valuable to them, they’ll often jump at the chance to help you back.
This is where the law of reciprocity comes in — when you do something helpful for someone, they often feel compelled to do something for you in return — and affiliate marketing can be an amazing way to give your audience a way to pay you back.
So when you tell people upfront, “Hey, you know what? This is a product I’m promoting as an affiliate marketer, so I get a commission if you go through that affiliate link,” we guarantee some of those people will be excited by the opportunity to click on that affiliate link.
There are people out there you’ve served who are looking for ways to pay you back.
So make it easy for them.
- Not keeping an eye on the quality of your audience’s experience
This has more to do with how things can change after you start promoting what seems to be a great product that you know is a good fit for your audience.
Let’s say you recently started promoting a new product, and it’s working out well. Everybody’s happy—you, your audience, and the company.
But then the company gets bought out, and new management takes over.
This creates a ripple through the entire company, affecting your audience’s customer support experience with the product.
Although this kind of situation may not occur with every company you partner with as an affiliate marketer, you have to be open to it.
Companies grow and evolve, and people come and go. You can’t assume that if things are going well, they always will.
The lesson here, especially for affiliate relationships you’d like to maintain for the long term, is to keep close tabs on your audience’s experience with the product.
In addition, you should cultivate relationships with the product owners, so they know how important your audience’s experience with the product is to everyone involved.
In an ideal world, your audience’s experience with a product should only improve over time — but if it’s going in the opposite direction, you’ll have to act to make things right, and having a direct line to the company leadership makes it easier to do that.
- Publishing low-quality content
Whether you like it or not, your content is your product as an online affiliate marketer.
Clicks are simply a result of great content that readers deem valuable and credible. Above all else, affiliate marketers should strive to produce high-quality content.
When it comes to producing high-quality blog content, there are a few steps to keep in mind when attempting to outrank your competitor in the SERPs. The first is to identify a topic that is feasible to rank for, aka the “low hanging fruit.”
Once you’ve identified the topic, you’ll need to do keyword research to uncover what it will take to outrank your competitor.
Ask yourself the following:
What’s the word-count of the top-ranking posts?
The average first-page result is 1,900 words. Keep this length in mind as a general benchmark when writing your own blog content.
Does your blog post include an image?
Studies show that a blog post with at least one image ranks higher than those that don’t have any.
How many root domain backlinks do they have?
Use a tool like MozBar to uncover how many backlinks the competition has.
Once you’ve uncovered these details, you’ll have the framework you need to write a top-ranking piece of blog content.
From there, put as much time into promoting that newly published blog post as it took to write it:
- Share your new blog post on social media.
- Do link building outreach to relevant bloggers to encourage them to link back to your new blog post.
- Send your new blog post out to your email list.
- Ignoring/overlooking site speed
Did you know that bounce rates increase by 50% if your web page takes longer than 2 seconds to load? We all know that users are impatient. If your website speed keeps them waiting, they sure as hell won’t wait around and your bounce rate will be compromised.
Head over to GTMetrix.com to see a breakdown of what could be causing your website to load slowly.
Most of the time, a slow website can be attributed to server response times, large files, or method of content delivery. If you’re on WordPress, there are a few plugins we find ourselves recommending time and time again to help.
- WP Rocket: For content delivery, we’d recommend setting up browser caching and testing out delaying the rendering of CSS and JavaScript with WP Rocket. Note: altering JavaScript and CSS rendering can cause issues with your website functionality, so we’d recommend reaching out to your development team or an SEO expert to help.
- Imagify: If large images are the issue, we’ll use Imagify to compress the files as much as possible without sacrificing the quality.
- Cloudflare CDN: When in doubt, implement a CDN via the Cloudflare WordPress plugin to speed up the delivery of content.
For Shopify websites, reach out to the team at Convertly. They offer similar website speed optimizations for Shopify websites.
Not every website will load in under 2 seconds, but there are actions you can take to help improve your website speed regardless. Not only will quicker load times help with user experience, but subsequently rankings and conversion rates as well.
- Neglecting readability of content
In the age of shorter attention spans, visitors have a lower tolerance for confusing or hard-to-read content. When it comes to font size, avoid using any font smaller than 16pt.
However, the font size isn’t the only thing to keep in mind for readability. You should also consider line height, and tracking in your blog templates.
Strive to avoid long sentences and paragraphs. Studies have shown that after 25 words a sentence becomes difficult for people to read. The same approach applies for paragraphs, where you should keep them to 4 sentences or less whenever possible.
If you have to look up a word to use it when writing, don’t include it. Studies show that U.S. readers prefer a seventh to eighth-grade readability level. Before you hit publish, head over to Hemingway and see what grade your content is scoring.
- Ignoring the SEO basics
Publishing a new blog post without proper SEO is like building a house without any roads to it.
Without the proper title tag and meta description, you’re making it very difficult, for people to find your blog content. After all, you’re in the business of generating the most website traffic possible…aren’t you?
The first step is to optimize your title tag and meta description.
Research the overarching theme of your blog post and strive to create a compelling title tag and meta description for potential visitors. Think of this as your sales pitch in the search engine results.
The more your title tag and meta description resonates with the user, the more likely they are to click through to your page. If you’re on a WordPress website, this can be as simple as installing the Yoast SEO Plugin. Then you’ll need to focus on writing compelling copy in your meta description and title tag. Otherwise, I’d recommend contacting an SEO expert to help with this.
Internal links and external links shouldn’t be forgotten either. Internal links help to establish information hierarchy across the website, as well as link equity. As for external links, they are believed to be the most important source or ranking power.
External links are the best way to indicate the credibility and authority of another website’s content in the eyes of search engines like Google. Skim through your blog post and aim to identify opportunities to link to other pages across your website.
- Earning all of your income from affiliate marketing
This leads us to our final point related to the dark side of affiliate marketing.
That is, you don’t want all of your income to come from affiliate marketing.
Focus on building your own brand and serving your audience.
When you make this your primary goal, you’ll find you have plenty of options to make money — with affiliate marketing being just one of those options.
Think about it this way: With whatever path you choose to earn an income, make sure you give the people you serve a way to thank you.
If you’re not thanked for the products you’re promoting, you’re doing affiliate marketing wrong.
So give your audience a reason to thank you and the income will flow in.
Serve First to Succeed with Affiliate Marketing
As we’ve seen, there is a darker side to affiliate marketing.
But if you know what to look out for, you can avoid falling into the common mistakes that befall so many aspiring affiliate marketers.
As a reminder, here are the four keys to staying in the “plus” column with your affiliate marketing:
- Being careful to promote only products that make sense for your audience
- Being honest about the products you promote
- Keeping tabs on your audience’s experience with your affiliate products
- Not relying solely on affiliate marketing or using it as an impersonal, get-rich-quick scheme
Use these four keys as your guiding light, and you’ll be able to make the most of this powerful tool that allows you to tap into the incredible array of products, services, and tools out there that can help your audience succeed.
What are some of the best affiliate marketing tools?
Affiliate marketing is becoming more and more popular every day as people trade in the 9-5 lifestyle for the opportunity to be their own boss.
The only issue with this concept is that making it as an affiliate marketer is no easy feat. The rising popularity of digital marketing is making it harder and harder to build a sustainable affiliate marketing business.
So how do you build a successful affiliate marketing business? You start with the right affiliate marketing tools.
Below is a list of the 11 best affiliate marketing tools that you need to use. We’ll continue to add new tools to this list every month, so check back regularly. They include:
- Yoast SEO
- Ahrefs
- SEMRush
- Duplichecker
- Grammarly
- Hemingway
- Sumo
- WPEngine
- Flippa
- Imagify
- Google AdSense
- Yoast SEO
This is the first SEO plugin that we add to any website that we work on. Yoast SEO plugin provides advanced SEO functionality to every page, including:
- Title tag & meta description customization
- Meta robots customization
- Canonical link customization
- Sitemap creation and customization
This is a free SEO tool. But the paid Yoast SEO version offers 24/7 support, as well as an advanced redirect manager. This redirect manager allows you to redirect broken pages or 410 pages that you want to be removed from search results.
- Ahrefs
Ahrefs serves many of the same functions as SEMRush (keyword research, competitive content analysis, on-page audits, etc). However, Ahrefs places much more emphasis on backlinks than on-page SEO.
Ahrefs provides marketers with in-depth insights about new and lost backlinks, websites that are linking to broken pages on your website, and competitor backlink growth.
Some of the primary things that you can use Ahrefs for are:
- Reviewing new and lost backlinks to your website
- Finding top-performing competitor content to identify new content ideas for your website
- Reviewing competitor link profiles to find new link building opportunities
- Finding websites that are linking to broken pages on your website
Ahrefs and SEMRush are two of the best SEO tools. However, investing in both services isn’t realistic for most business owners.
We recommend Ahrefs for those who are competing with much larger websites and SEMRush for those who are already the industry leader, or very close to it. To add to this, both services offer a free trial for those that want to compare the two.
- SEMRush
SEMRush is the best SEO tool for keyword research, fixing SEO mistakes, and competitor analysis.
This SEO tool is a must-have for marketers who are looking to understand what content is driving the highest ROI for competitors, as well as analyzing on-page SEO issues.
Some of the primary things that you can use SEMRush for:
- Finding top performing competitor content that you should be writing about
- Monitoring press mentions
- Monitoring your keyword rankings on a weekly basis
- Running SEO audits to watch for website issues that could hurt your search rankings
- Duplichecker
For those working with a content team to help produce useful content, we recommend running each article through a plagiarism checker like Duplichecker.
- Grammarly
Grammarly is a must-have for those who are regularly publishing content on their affiliate website.
Not only does Grammarly point out spelling errors. It also identifies grammatical errors such as incorrect word and comma usage.
We use the free version of this tool. However, the paid version offers much more comprehensive content review features.
- Hemingway
Hemingway is another remarkable content review tool. Hemingway app helps you to simplify your writing.
Hemingway helps you to simplify complex sentences. It also points out adverbs and complex words that you can replace with simpler ones.
- Sumo
Driving visitors to your website is good. Turning them into customers is better.
Most website visitors won’t be ready to pull out their credit card the first time that they reach your website.
So how do you get money from these visitors? You sell to them when they’re ready to buy.
The most successful affiliate marketers understand that the best way to scale is to build their email list. This allows them to drive repeat visitors back to their website to purchase products over time.
Sumo offers an easy way to install email capture forms on your website (and they even offer a free version of their service).
- WPEngine
WPEngine is a premium web hosting option that provides plenty of extra benefits.
Pricing is more expensive than other popular web hosting providers like Bluehost and HostGator. However, WPEngine provides the following features in addition to web hosting:
- Regularly scheduled website backups
- Browser caching for improved website speed
- Advanced website security protection
- A free SSL certificate for each website that you set up on their web hosting plan
- Flippa
Flippa is essential for anyone looking to leapfrog the process of building a successful affiliate website from scratch. This website serves as a bidding marketplace for individuals to buy and sell websites. Flippa gives affiliate marketers the opportunity to buy websites that have a strong backlink profile to kickstart SEO growth.
Note: We recommend running a full backlink audit before buying a domain name to ensure that the domain name isn’t being inflated by black-hat SEO practices like PBNs. We’ve seen far too many affiliate marketers buy a website with a strong backlink profile, only to be penalized by a Penguin algorithm update due to the black hat link building practices of the previous website owner.
- Imagify
Bounce rates increase by 50% for every extra 2 seconds that your website takes to load. In other words, slow websites lose money.
So, how do we go about improving our website speed?
Short answer: image compression.
Image compression is one of the most effective ways to improve website speed. Image compression removes excess pixels from images to reduce image file sizes. The best image compression tools do this without sacrificing image quality.
Nowadays, serving images in next-generation formats like WebP and AVIF provide provides further opportunities to load images in a fraction of the time. Skipping out on the opportunity to improve your website speed is a big mistake.
I’ve tested out a dozen image compression tools and Imagify is our favourite.
- Google AdSense
Earning money per referral is great, but why stop there? Google AdSense offers a second revenue stream as you continue to scale.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with AdSense, here’s how it works:
AdSense allows you to set up ad blocks throughout your website that other websites can pay to use. You can select payment per ad on your website in a handful of different manners:
- CPC (cost per click) – get paid for every ad click on your website. Rates will vary from one industry to the next. However, $1 per click and a 1% click-through rate (CTR) is a safe benchmark to work with to estimate expected earnings.
- CPM (cost per thousand impressions) – get paid a flat fee per thousand website page views to a given ad. Rates can range from $1-$3, and go much higher for niche categories.
A few other tools for new affiliate websites:
- Google Search Console – an essential tool for monitoring your website organic traffic
- Google Ads – a PPC tool that helps you to drive targeted website visitors (best used in the early stages of building your affiliate website)
- Google Analytics – a free tool for tracking website visitors
- ThirstyAffiliates – simplifies the process of creating new affiliate links on your website
- Hootsuite – a great social media management tool
- WordPress – our favourite CMS platform for building a scalable website
- ConvertKit – our personal choice for email marketing campaigns
- LeadPages – a landing page builder that simplifies the process of building landing pages
- Canva – tired of hiring a designer to create sleek images for your blog? Canva is so easy to use; we can design a decent-looking image with their software.
The Sky’s the Limit with Affiliate Marketing
If you’ve stuck with us for this whole article, then you’ve taken an exciting journey into the heart of affiliate marketing!
And you’ve hopefully emerged from that journey armed with some serious knowledge, strategies, tools, and possibilities to take with you as you strike out into the wide, exciting world of affiliate marketing.
As with anything, what you get out of affiliate marketing is about how you approach it and what you put into it.
If you treat it as just another tactic, then you’re not going to be very successful with it.
But if you treat it as a way to build more trust with your audience and serve them better, then the sky’s the limit
So now that you’ve made it this far, what’s next?
Hopefully this blog post has given you a great starting point, along with a wealth of resources to support you as you strive to become a successful affiliate marketer.
It will always be here for you as a free affiliate marketing resource.