If you’re a beginner with affiliate marketing, this post is going to become your new Bible.
Not only am I going to teach you the basics of affiliate marketing, but we’ll also dive into some real examples from professional affiliate marketers who are making thousands or even millions of dollars per year.
In other words…
Want to make a few extra bucks on the side without doing much?
I got you covered.
Or maybe you’re wondering how to become an affiliate marketer and quit your day job?
You’ll find this useful too.
Let’s jump in.
What Is “Affiliate Marketing”?
Well, here’s our (somewhat long-winded) definition:
If you’ve been listening to us for long, you’ve learned that bloggers make money by building an audience that trusts them, and then offering products or services that will genuinely help that audience.
Affiliate marketing is really just a quicker way to offer products and services without creating them yourself.
In practice, it’s a modern interpretation of a very old idea — getting a commission on a sale. You introduce your readers to products or services from trusted companies or individuals and get a commission on any sales from customers you send their way.
For bloggers, that means you find a product or service that you like, promote it to your readers, and earn part of the profit on each sale that you make.
Simple idea, right?
Let’s see an example.
In our WordPress hosting post, we give readers the ins and outs of how to choose an excellent host. A portion of readers want to know who we recommend based on those criteria, and so here’s what we say:
The arrow is pointing to an affiliate link. If anyone clicks on that link and buys from them, we earn a commission
Bloggers can include links like this in blog posts, emails, social media posts, and much more. We’ll get into all the possibilities later.
For now, though, it’s important that you know exactly what affiliate marketing means — as well as its potential for you as a blogger.
Why Should You Learn Affiliate Marketing?
Here are three compelling reasons:
- You can monetize your blog sooner than you would if you created your own products from scratch.
- You can learn what types of products your audience is clamoring for, reducing the risk of any future product launch of your own.
- You can get your readers used to the idea of buying from you — and increase their level of trust (as long as you pick the right products and services to sell).
All pretty significant advantages to you as a growing blogger.
But that’s not all. There are additional benefits to affiliate marketing as well:
- It’s easy to implement. You share a link with your readers and that’s it. You don’t have to worry about tracking sales, providing customer service, setting up payments, or anything else. All that support is handled by the merchant.
- It doesn’t require you to have a support team in place. Affiliate marketing is completely doable even if you’re a one-person show.
- It doesn’t require specialized expertise. You don’t have to be a world-renowned expert in your niche. You only need to be familiar enough with your topic area to know what products are good and worth recommending to your audience.
- It’s low-effort and low-risk. While affiliate marketing isn’t exactly passive income, it doesn’t require a significant time or money investment on your part.
Sounds pretty good in theory, right? Let’s see if affiliate marketing is right for you.
Is Affiliate Marketing Easy?
Affiliate income can look pretty attractive, but you need to have a few things in place first if you want to succeed.
For instance, don’t jump into the deep end if you’re still figuring out how to start a blog.
Instead, make sure that:
- You’re producing regular content on your blog. You have to give a lot of free value to your readers to build your credibility before you start asking for sales.
- You have an email list with at least 500 subscribers. If you can attract and keep 500+ subscribers engaged around your topic, you have a foundation with earning potential.
Hold Off on Affiliate Marketing if…
If you already have a list of at least a few hundred people and are planning to sell services like coaching, consulting, design, writing or other professional services (as in legal advice, finance, or real estate) in the short term, it’s probably best to hold off on affiliate marketing.
That’s because for service providers, your best bet is selling services first. It’s simply your most profitable way to start monetizing.
You can consider adding affiliate offers into the mix once your money-making machine from services is running smoothly.
Still with me? Great!
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: A Crash Course
Even though it’s based on a simple idea, affiliate marketing can be complicated, especially when you start getting into the nitty-gritty details.
The section will help you understand the most important concepts without drowning you in technical detail.
Let’s start with some basic definitions.
Affiliate Marketing Glossary
Affiliate marketing has its own terminology, which can be confusing at first. But if you become familiar with these concepts, you’ll be well on your way.
Here are a few terms it’s important to know:
Affiliate — the partner who promotes the merchant’s products for a commission. Also called the publisher.
Affiliate agreement — an informal agreement specifying the rules that both parties agree to, responsibilities, rates to be paid and other legalities.
Affiliate link — a trackable URL that identifies the affiliate as the source of targeted traffic to a merchant’s site. (A click on an affiliate link counts as a referral.)
Affiliate network — an online marketplace where merchants list their products and where affiliates can find products to sell.
Affiliate program — a program set up by merchants to pay commissions when affiliates refer people to their products.
Commission — a percentage of the total sale that is paid to the affiliate for referring the sale.
Cookie — in affiliate marketing, cookies are used to assign a unique ID to the buyer in order to tag the purchase as being referred by you. Cookies usually have a predetermined lifespan, so that even if the buyer doesn’t purchase right away, you will still get credit for the sale if it occurs within that time-frame (often 60 days or more).
Customer — the end user or purchaser of the merchant’s product or service.
Merchant — the owner or creator of the product or service. Also known as a retailer or brand.
Referral — credit for a click or a sale that occurs when the affiliate sends traffic to the merchant’s site.
How Do I Become an Affiliate Marketer?
Affiliate marketing can get pretty technical. Fortunately, you don’t need to know all the details to get started.
The actual mechanics run in the background, thanks to the merchant’s affiliate program software.
But here’s a quick look behind the scenes:
- When an affiliate joins the merchant’s program, he or she is given a unique ID and a specific URL to use when promoting the product.
- The affiliate includes the link in their blog content and/or subscriber emails and invites readers to click it to find out more.
- When a potential buyer clicks on the link to visit the merchant’s site, a cookie identifying the affiliate is placed on their computer. The cookie ensures that the publisher is credited with the referral sale even if it occurs days or even weeks later.
- Whenever a buyer completes the sale process, the merchant checks the sales record for a cookie identifying the source of the referral.
- If the merchant finds a cookie with an affiliate ID, the affiliate is credited with the sale.
- The merchant makes reports available so that the affiliate can see their referrals (clicks) and sales.
- The merchant pays the affiliate commission at the end of each payment period.
Here’s a graphical overview to help you visualize the process:
The flow is pretty straightforward once you understand it, and it works the same no matter what kind of product you’re promoting or how established you are as an affiliate marketer.
So let’s look at the typical progression for a blogger who’s serious about making affiliate marketing a major source of income.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing in 5 Steps:
Here’s the key point you need to understand if you want to become an affiliate marketer:
You’re earning a commission in exchange for giving readers valuable insights on products or services they were already thinking about purchasing.
In other words, your readers are already buying things. They are already going to make a purchase whether or not you give them any advice.
The question is, could you help them make a smarter decision than they could alone?
Because that’s where you add value. You earn a commission in exchange for helping people make smarter decisions, and you use your blog and the Internet to systemize that process, providing valuable advice to thousands of people.
Here’s a step-by-step process for doing exactly that:
Step 1: Identify What Your Audience is Already Purchasing
The core question you need to ask yourself is:
What types of products and services is your audience already buying?
For example, Smart Blogger readers all need WordPress hosting, WordPress themes, and WordPress plugins to create their site. So, we carefully research all the products in those categories and make recommendations.
So, here’s the question for your audience:
What Types of Products or Services Do They Buy?
Initially, you might not know exactly what products to promote, but if you think about it for a bit, you can probably guess the major categories.
For instance, what do moms of toddlers spend a lot of money on?
My guess: child care, cleaning supplies, snacks, gas, toys.
How about aspiring freelance photographers?
Cameras, other photography equipment (lighting, lenses, etc.), photography courses, photo editing software, and so on.
I’m guessing on both, but there’s a good chance my guesses are pretty spot on. When in doubt, you can also email your audience and just ask them.
How to Conduct a Miniature Survey
There are lots of tools out there for conducting surveys, but the simplest one is good old-fashioned email. Assuming you have an email list, just to send out an email like this:
Readers will reply with answers and give you all kinds of interesting insights. Because it’s through email, you can also reply to ask them follow up questions if you like.
And then you just need to…
Step 2: Choose a Product to Promote as an Affiliate
As an ethical blogger, you’ll always be constrained in the products you choose to represent in one of two ways:
- Either you’re limited by your experience to products that you’ve used and liked, that have affiliate programs and that are a good fit for your audience, or
- You’re constrained by the products you can get access to in order to evaluate them, either by buying them outright or getting a free sample or trial.
No matter which approach you take, expect to have to invest time and money into researching the best products for your audience.
Here are your two main options (with your best option listed first).
Option #1: Promote Products You Already Know and Love
This is the most common way bloggers get started with affiliate sales.
You become an affiliate for something that you’ve used yourself, had a good experience with, thoroughly tested and feel good recommending. You should be fairly confident that others will get the same results you did (or better), as long as they do the work.
If you’ve found great success from a course, mastermind, or ebook that your readers could also benefit from, it only makes sense for you to spread the word and share your results.
Do an inventory of the products, services and courses you already have experience with. You might have a list of a dozen or more.
Which of these would you be thrilled to promote? Cross out any that don’t fit the bill.
Now simply check to see if the merchant has an affiliate program (some won’t but you’ll probably be surprised at how many do).
Do a Google search for “affiliate program” + [product name], or simply email the merchant and ask.
Then run your remaining options through this Good Affiliate Product checklist:
- You’ve previewed the product so you know its quality (given, in this case).
- They have a solid refund policy that you trust they’ll honor.
- They provide good customer support (and you’ve tested it).
- You have a good story to share about your experience with the product.
- The offer fits your audience’s needs and won’t abuse the trust you’ve built with them.
The products that tick all the checkboxes are your best opportunities for affiliate income. As time goes on, add as many of these products to your mix as you like.
You’ve found your first product! Apply using the merchant’s process and start promoting.
If you’re just dipping your toe in the water of affiliate marketing, this first option may be enough to get you started.
However, most bloggers will want to try the next one, too.
(And you’ll have to explore the second option if you don’t have an existing product you love that is also a great match for your audience and offers an affiliate program.)
Option #2: Find Products Via an Affiliate Network
If you don’t have any direct experience with or knowledge of products in your niche that could help your readers, you can often find good affiliate products on affiliate networks (← our detailed guide).
But be careful — this approach requires that you invest time into research and money into purchasing products to try out, more so than the first option.
That’s because there’s less trust and prior knowledge involved from the outset. You have to do your due diligence to protect your reputation and the credibility you’ve built with your readers.
When you work through a network, you typically won’t know the merchant ahead of time and usually won’t build a relationship with them (your business relationship is with the network).
Two of the most popular and reliable affiliate networks are Clickbank and Amazon Associates.
Step 3: Get Yourself Set Up as an Affiliate
Whether you work directly with a merchant or through a network, you’ll have to apply, be approved and provide certain information so that you can be paid.
At a minimum you’ll need to provide:
- Your personal/business contact information for tax and reporting purposes.
- Your bank account where commissions will be sent.
In turn, the merchant must provide you with:
- An affiliate link. Whenever you post about the product, you’ll use this trackable link. It will have a long tag at the end of each link that includes your affiliate ID.
Here’s what some typical affiliate links look like.
EXAMPLE LINK THAT DIRECTS TO THE MERCHANT’S HOME PAGE
https://merchantsite.com/dap/a/?a=1199
EXAMPLE LINK TO ANOTHER PAGE ON THE MERCHANT’S SITE
https://merchantsite.com/dap/a/?a=1199&p=merchantsite.com/page.html
You’ll also usually get some tips and useful assets for marketing the product (often found in a welcome guide or on the affiliate reporting site).
These could include:
- An affiliate guide as well as instructions on how to use the platform and summary of policies such as payment.
- Marketing tools like banners and sidebar graphics.
- Sample email/webpage swipe copy.
- Ongoing communications from the merchant about promotions, new products, etc.
If you use a network like Amazon, you’ll get your own link for each of the specific products you promote.
Be sure to check your specific network’s help or support pages for more information.
Tip: If your audience is global (which many bloggers’ are), you might want to check out
geniuslink for tracking overseas sales through Amazon, iTunes and Microsoft Store.
Step 4: Start Promoting Your Chosen Affiliate Products
Ultimately, all your hard work finding and evaluating products only pays off if somebody takes your advice and make the purchase, right?
For that to happen, you need to put your recommendation in front of your audience. Even more importantly, you need to make your recommendation trustworthy.
This is where a lot of affiliate marketers slip up. They think slapping some banners up on their blog that link to affiliate products is all they need to do.
But take a look at this:
Does that look trustworthy to you? Nowhere close, right?
Well, here’s a little secret:
The most successful affiliate promotions look nothing like that.
Here’s what to do instead:
Option #1: Create a Resource Page on Your Blog
Our own resource page is a good example:
It promotes lots of different products, but it also organizes them according to different types of readers and what they might need at the time. It also explains why those products would be helpful to them.
In other words, it’s not just a sales pitch. It’s educational.
And it’s an easy way to get started.
Chances are, you can put together a resource page like this within a few hours. Your readers will also appreciate you putting all of your recommendations in one place for easy reference.
Option #2: Create and Promote Custom Content
Custom content strategies will be the backbone of your affiliate promotional efforts.
Use as many of the following different strategies as make sense for your blog and audience.
Note: All of these strategies assume that you are already sending traffic to the latest content you’re creating by emailing your list on a regular basis (at least two to four times per month) to let them know what’s new.
A) Write Reviews
You can write detailed reviews of products, courses, books or software products you promote as an affiliate. For example, here’s our review of Siteground.
Your reviews can focus on a single product or compare competing products side-by-side.
The second approach arguably builds more trust, but it also distracts people by giving them a lot of different recommendations
B) Write Definitive Content on a Related Topic
You can write a definitive, comprehensive post on your site to educate your readers and “soft sell” your products.
For instance, you could write an ultimate guide to setting up a WordPress blog and include your affiliate links to your favorite hosting providers.
Whatever the topic, make sure that it’s evergreen content — information that’s likely to be useful and valuable for years to come.
You can create blog posts, videos, infographics or anything similar — but whatever you do, it should not be a sales page.
Finally, your content must be excellent — make sure it’s an authoritative list post, an epic how-to post, an ultimate guide or some otherwise epic content.
C) Conduct Interviews
You can interview people who’ve had great success using the product so that your audience can hear their stories — think of it as a kind of audio testimonial.
If the merchant is an individual rather than a company, you can also invite them to chat about how their product works and why your readers will find it useful.
D) Create Valuable Bonus Content
Assuming it’s allowed by your affiliate agreement (sometimes it’s not), you can create bonus content, exclusive to your readers, that helps people get even more value from the affiliate product.
People love bonuses! You can create many types of bonuses fairly quickly and easily while still giving your readers excellent value.
By the way, this is a fantastic way to differentiate yourself from other bloggers representing the same products.
Here are some example bonuses you could offer:
- Step-by-step checklists
- Quick-start guides
- Video overviews or demos
- Complementary or discounted services (e.g., coaching calls)
Option #3: Craft Promotional Emails for Your Subscribers
Your email list is your biggest asset when it comes to driving traffic to your offers.
Assuming you’re already emailing your list on a regular basis — for example, every Tuesday, every two weeks, etc. — you can also run occasional promotions where you email your readers more frequently.
If your mailing list software allows it, you can segment interested readers onto a separate interest list, so that only people who raise their hands will receive your free informational and promotional emails.
But even if you can’t segment your list, you’ll want to provide lots of valuable content and build anticipation for your product offers.
Here are some quick ideas:
- Promote your offers indirectly by sending emails linking to your free content (blog posts, reviews, etc.).
- Offer occasional special deals exclusive to your readers (discounts, bonuses, etc.).
- Run “social proof” giveaways — ask your readers to share their experience with your process or product in return for a chance to win.
If you’re promoting a low-priced product like an ebook, digital download or hosted service on an ongoing basis, you might do something as simple as using a P.S. or signature link in your regular emails, with occasional emailed links to custom content.
For courses, masterminds, services or higher-earning products, you might do something closer to an official launch once per year with softer launches once per quarter.
And of course, always follow your merchants’ lead. If they run major launches twice a year, for example, you can participate in those and take advantage of the natural momentum these launches often create.
You may have a different promotion plan for each product.
Example Email Sequence
Custom email sequences are especially effective for your core products.
You’ll usually send out a series of five to seven emails spread out over a time frame spanning a week or two.
These can be run in parallel with your normal blog emails or you can “pause” your regular content for the duration of the sequence.
A sample seven-email series might look like this:
- A welcome email (if they’ve joined a new interest list) or a content-rich email talking about the problem the product solves.
- More helpful content (no selling).
- First mention of the product, positioning it in relation to the problem, with a link to a sales page.
- More free content with advice that’s valuable regardless of whether the reader buys the product, also including another link to the product.
- A “bigger sell” to incentivise the reader to buy using scarcity (e.g., “Only 50 places available”) or time urgency (e.g., “This deal ends in 48 hours”). *
- Additional helpful information, testimonials and/or social proof, and a reminder that time is running out.
- An eleventh-hour last call to let readers know that the offer is closing soon.
* Warning: Only use scarcity or urgency tactics if they are genuine and you intend to stick to the limits or deadlines. Telling readers a deal ends for good at midnight, then offering it again the following week, is a surefire way to lose their trust.
The important thing here is to try different approaches for each product, see what your audience responds to best, and don’t give up!
Option #4: Run Exclusive Live Events
Finally, you can run live events to introduce your audience to your products.
Webinars are the most popular way to do this, and you can host them on your own or as a joint venture with the merchant. (Usually, though, merchants will only participate if you can attract a certain number of attendees.)
If there’s already strong interest from your readers in a particular product, you can make it the focus of your webinar, giving attendees one of the following:
- An interactive walk-through showing how you use the product, including tips and tricks you’ve learned along the way.
- A demonstration of specific features of particular interest to your readers.
- A personal case study of the results you achieved using the product.
More typically, the webinar will focus on a particular outcome that the audience wants to achieve and then position the product as a way to achieve those results more easily or quickly.
A common way to separate webinar content from product content is using the webinar to explain what you need to do to achieve a certain goal, and leaving the product to dive into (or facilitate) the how.
Importantly, the webinar should be valuable even to people who don’t end up buying the product.
To give an example, if you were promoting a software product that automates blogger outreach, your webinar could talk about high-level strategies for outreach that attendees could implement manually, then position the product as a time-saver that lets you focus on the relationship-building instead of the initial outreach.
Tip: to get the most from a live event, remember to publish and promote your webinar replays for people who weren’t able to attend first time around.
Don’t Forget to Track Everything to Discover What’s Working Best
Whichever options you choose for promoting your affiliate products, you’ll want to know which are producing the best results.
Pat Flynn recommends Pretty Link for this. You can create clean, easy-to-use-and-remember links plus get analytics so you can see exactly where people are coming from and what strategies are working best for you.
Most importantly of all, be patient. Don’t expect to get any of this right the first time out. Keep building a strong foundation of content and continually test and try new things.
Step 5: Comply with Legal Requirements (and Best Practices)
In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires that you let people know you’ll earn a commission.
But even if it isn’t required by law where you’re located, we recommend it. It’s just good business.
Don’t be afraid to be transparent. People will appreciate your honesty and want to support you to repay you for making their lives better.
So wherever you share an affiliate link, whether it’s in blog posts, web pages, or emails, let your readers know that you stand to earn a small commission if they buy through you — and if they choose not to use your link, no worries.
Assure them that you wouldn’t recommend any products if you hadn’t used them yourself or were confident they could help them.
It’s also a good idea to create an Affiliate Disclaimer page on your website.
Here’s an example of our own disclaimer page at Smart Blogger:
We’re also clear on how those affiliate links might look within blog posts.
So, we’ve walked through the process of becoming a successful affiliate marketer. Now let’s step through some real-world affiliate marketing examples, walking through four different types of products you can promote and make a tidy profit.
Usually, most of your affiliate income will come from one or two “ringers” — core products that just about everyone in your audience needs and which also pay a good commission.
As you progress, you can add complementary products to round out your offerings and help your audience in new ways, but identifying your core earners is an essential first step.
We highly recommend you start with digital products, services and courses for this simple reason:
They usually have greater earning potential.
Digital products generally pay higher commissions than physical products because there is much less overhead to produce and distribute them.
They also have the advantage that the merchant is often an individual rather than a company, so you can build a personal relationship with them that will increase your status as a blogger and future success as an affiliate.
That said, physical products can be a good option for certain niches, but we’ll focus on digital products for the most part (although we revisit physical products below).
So what’s a potential ringer?
Your best bets are mid-priced ($200–$2,000) courses or services that could potentially benefit almost all of your readers at some point in their journey.
Once you start generating steady affiliate income, you can offer other similar products, hosted services or ebooks that allow you to help more people (or help everyone more thoroughly).
Let’s look into the product options for bloggers.
Option #1: Digital Downloads
Digital downloads are online resources that your readers can access instantly, without having to wait for a package to come in the mail (as is true for physical products).
They could be audio or video files, PDFs, ebooks or even links to webpages where the content lives online.
Examples:
- Books or ebooks — Books that are either self-hosted on your merchant’s website or downloaded from Amazon, iBooks or other online sellers
- Software — Downloadable programs, games, apps, plugins and cloud services
- Mobile applications — Some of the hundreds of apps that are available through the iTunes Affiliate Program and other mobile app affiliate networks
- Music, movies, TV shows, and more — Media offered through Amazon as well as the iTunes Affiliate Program and others
Advantages
- Digital downloads are an easy way to get started and help your audience with pressing problems.
- There are no overhead costs of production, shipping or storage.
- Your buyer can access and begin benefiting from their digital product immediately.
Disadvantages
- Many ebook, software or other download products are relatively inexpensive. You’d have to sell a lot of them to make any significant money.
Our Recommendation?
Do it! But expect higher earnings from other options on this list.
Option #2: Online, Hosted and Professional Services
When it comes to selling services as an affiliate, it’s important to concentrate on those which will be accessible to your entire audience no matter where they’re located (as opposed to service providers who serve local customers only).
In other words, don’t limit your earning potential by geography.
Your best bet is to represent online, hosted or professional service providers/influencers you’ve worked with in the past and have full confidence in.
Examples of professional services:
- Designers (99 Designs, Zazzle, Designmodo)
- Media or creative businesses (Media Content Advantage, John Melley Voice Overs & Production, Music Radio Creative)
- Marketing services (Sprout Social, Hootsuite)
- Masterminds and membership sites (Serious Bloggers Only, Freelance Writer’s Den, Digital Marketer)
- Research or consulting services (Questia, Touchstone Research Store, Snow Consulting)
- Accounting, finance, or legal advice (as permitted by law) (Find Legal Forms, Motif Investing, Greatland)
- Niche specialties – pop culture, travel, tourism, nightlife, crafts/artisans (Pet Care Supplies, zChocolat, Silvercar)
Examples of online/hosted services:
- Website platforms (Wix, Squarespace)
- Lead generation services (Thrive, Leadpages)
- Email service providers (AWeber, Constant Contact)
- Website services (e.g., hosting, anti-spam, security, etc.)
- Media (Wistia, Vimeo, Telestream, various WordPress plugins)
- Course platforms (Zippy Courses, Ruzuku, Teachable)
- Virtual Assistant or customer service support (Zendesk Partners program, VA Affiliates, TempsASAP)
- IT support, cloud-based storage, backup, security or other technical services based on monthly subscriptions
Advantages
- It’s easy to become a service affiliate, and it helps your audience manage important tasks that require specific expertise.
- There’s likely a higher earning potential than from digital downloads because services are usually offered at a higher price point.
- Many hosted services will offer a recurring commission – meaning you’ll get paid for as long as the customers you refer continue to use the service.
Disadvantages
- Some of your favorite professional service providers (ones you have experience with) might not have affiliate programs in place.
Our Recommendation?
Do it! Especially if you can find an excellent service provider who can potentially help nearly everyone in your audience at one time or another and who can be a strong, steady income generator.
Option #3: Online Courses
Online courses are an important subset of digital products, especially for bloggers, and the market is huge. They’re so popular that they deserve their own category on this list.
Online courses exist on just about any topic you can think of. They range in price from free to thousands of dollars, with higher-priced programs promising big results for students.
Examples:
Advantages
- Courses are one of the best ways to help your audience achieve a goal that’s important to them or move past a roadblock that’s been keeping them stuck. You can deliver incredible value with little effort on your part.
- Courses are often offered at a higher price point than other digital products, so your earning potential is higher.
- Courses are popular. It should be easy to find other influencers in your niche whose courses can help your readers.
Disadvantages
- You’ll have to spend time working through and reviewing courses to make sure that they deliver on their promises (to protect your reputation).
Our Recommendation?
Do it! Help your readers in a big way, and earn big at the same time.
Option #4: Physical Products
If you decide to represent physical products on your blog, your best bet is to choose high-quality, distinctive products that that will appeal strongly to your specific audience.
Avoid commodity products that your readers can buy anywhere — the commissions are so small you won’t make worthwhile money unless you can drive tremendous traffic to your site.
Commissions on physical products are usually fairly low because of the overhead of production costs, storage costs, shipping, etc. So unless you are planning to build a large review or shopping site, physical products will probably be a very small portion of your blogging affiliate income.
However, if you have a favorite tool of your trade, a must-have gadget that will make your readers’ lives easier, or a high-quality recommendation that you’re sure people will be thrilled with, go ahead and offer it.
You’ll build goodwill even if you don’t make a lot of money.
Examples:
Advantages
- Once you have an established blog, companies may approach you and offer you free product in exchange for a review. (You should always disclose this, as it could be seen as a conflict of interest.)
- If you can afford to purchase products on your own in order to test them, you’ll be seen as a truly objective reviewer.
Disadvantages
- Commissions on physical products are usually a lot lower because of the overhead, so you’ll have to sell a whole lot more product to make a decent income.
- Buying products so you can review them before promoting them can be expensive.
Our Recommendation?
Offer physical products only under certain circumstances:
- They’re directly related to your blog topic and something your audience absolutely needs.
- They’re not commodities. Specialized and distinctive products reflect better on you, boosting your reputation and credibility.
You should now have plenty of ideas for types of products you can represent.
The Bottom Line on Affiliate Marketing
That dream you’ve had of making money while you sleep isn’t just a silly fantasy.
It’s a completely achievable reality.
Sure, it’s not as easy as pushing a magic button, but with a little knowledge and persistence you can definitely do it.
Once you’ve gained a respectable following, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money blogging.
And the best news is that it’s so easy to get started. All the steps are spelled out in this post.
Simply identify the one big thing everyone in your audience needs to reach their goals and start there.
Choose a great digital product that you believe in and share it. Tell the story of your successes.
Provide lots of valuable content that helps and educates your readers, and take care not to be too salesy.
Be honest and transparent. Nurture the trust that readers place in you.
And finally, be patient.
All your efforts will pay you back with that sweet “cha-ching” of overnight deposits into your bank account.
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