Affiliate marketing is one way in which bloggers utilize their blog to generate revenue. The amount of revenue generated by a blog featuring affiliate marketing links may vary significantly depending on the amount of traffic the blog receives as well as the compensation offered for the affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing means creating links on your blog that point to others companies websites. These companies then will pay the blog owner a previously agreed sum as a commission. This commission can be paid in a number of ways. This maybe when the advert is clicked, or if an affiliate link is clicked and the necessary action is taken. Either a purchase or joining a website.
This article we will discuss some aspects of affiliate marketing which bloggers should understand including start a blog ,selecting opportunities carefully, maximizing the income potential for these opportunities and understanding the requirements associated with these affiliate marketing programs.
How To Start A Blog
If you have not yet got a blog then no worries you can have one up and running in no time at all. There are a few different platforms for building blogs but I would always recommend using WordPress. They are easy to build and no coding is needed so you don’t have to have any previous experience. You can even start building a website for free at Wealthy Affiliate. Which is a great training and educational site on everything affiliate and internet marketing too.
Okay so you now know where to build your blog, now let’s find out how you can make some money from it!
Choosing Affiliate Marketing Programs
There is a wide variety of affiliate marketing programs available. Many companies and websites offer affiliate marketing programs. In a lot of cases just a simple sign up with the web address of your website / blog plus a few other details is sufficent for approval. Very rarely do companies reject applications, but could do if there’s a confict of interest with the company’s mission.
However, although getting approved to display affiliate links on your website is a rather simple process, this does not mean blog owners should select these affiliate marketing opportunities without discretion. It is a far better idea to carefully select affiliate marketing opportunities with companies who are of interest to the target audience of the blog.
A well focused blog that is reaching a specific target audience should seek to display marketing links directing website traffic to companies which complement the blog without acting as direct competition to the blog. This helps to ensure the blog visitors will not only be interested in the affiliate marketing links and therefore more likely to click on the links but will also help to ensure the blog visitors do not find the affiliate marketing links to be bothersome.
Maximizing Affiliate Marketing Opportunities
Once blog owners have selected affiliate marketing opportunities it is time to consider how they can maximize the profit generated by these links. There are a couple of critical factors which blog owners should carefully consider to help maximize their profit from affiliate marketing. This includes regularly evaluating the effectiveness of the affiliate links and promoting the blog to maximize traffic.
Blog owners who incorporate affiliate marketing into their blog should regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the affiliate links. This can be done by comparing the percentage of blog visitors who click on the affiliate links to the overall blog traffic. A blog which has high traffic but a relatively small percentage of visitors who click on the affiliate links should consider making changes to attempt to entice more blog visitors to click on the links. These changes can involve the aesthetics, size or location of the advertisements. Making only one change at a time is recommended because it makes it easier for the blog owner to evaluate which changes are most beneficial.
Blog owners can also help to maximize the profit from their affiliate marketing opportunities by looking to brand yourself online, this will drive additional website to the blog. This will likely be beneficial because higher website traffic will generally translate to greater profit from affiliate marketing. Additionally, the blog owner may want to occasionally mention companies for which they are an affiliate to generate interest in the advertisements on the website.
Understanding Affiliate Marketing Requirements
Finally, blog owners should pay careful attention to the affiliate marketing agreements they enter. This is important because some companies may place restrictions on the usage of a link to their website. This may include restrictions such as avoiding objectionable content, not including links or advertisements for direct competitors or restrictions on the appearance of the affiliate links. Failure to adhere to these guidelines may result in the blog losing affiliate privileges and the blog owner being denied compensation.
Wrapping Up
You can now understand that affiliate marketing and blogging work really well together and once you get established within your niche then it can be very lucrative indeed. Let me know your thoughts and experiences about this in the comments below I would love to hear from you.
Disclosure :- Affiliate links may be used within this post. This means that if you purchase through my site after clicking a link then I get a small commission, at NO extra charge to yourself. This helps me to continue giving great free content. Thanks
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I found this article to be very helpful and informative. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn money online and I think that everyone can succeed in this. I would recommend all folks who want to earn online to start affiliate marketing because rewards are priceless. Thanks for sharing this helpful information.
Thanks for dropping by Daniel indeed Affiliate Marketing is certainly one of the best ways to earn extra money.
Great article Martin! Well explained what affiliate marketing is and how it can be used when blogging.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most efficient long term strategies when it comes to making money online. Nowadays, everyone can create a website and start earning some revenue, but hard work and the right training is needed if you want to see results.
Thanks for your comments Jenny… indeed training and hard work is a great combination
Hi Martin,
Very well said. You have explain the process of affiliate marketing from the nutshell, Well, I am still new in affiliate marketing but the way you explain the process of creating profit from blogging, this will really helps a lot of your readers, And maybe they will join Wealthy Affiliate. But my Q is, can I increase my traffic just by using SEO or I need to engage with social platforms like FB,IG, etc..etc.. I hope you could answer my Q. Thanks.
All I would say is that the more content your produce the more organic traffic you can get, but that said I would certainly look at social media too as this will help with rankings and get you some more traffic.
I found your article very helpful and useful as I am newer at blogging. I still don’t have much traffic to my site, but I do have organic traffic every day. I like the idea of changing your links around to see what works best. I am not even getting 70% of my traffic clicking on my affiliate links, so I think that I need to make some adjustments with my links. Your suggestion of just changing one around at a time is great. I think I will experiment with some links being text and some being pictures and see if that helps at all. Also, thanks for the tips on making sure you know what you are getting into with the different affiliate programs. The last thing I want is to get banded after putting all the work into my site. I appreciate your suggestions.
Thanks for your comments