Want some affiliate marketing tips to earn more from your content?
Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time and continues to grow year over year. But that means the landscape is also more competitive than ever.
That’s why we wanted to give you some affiliate marketing ideas so you can make the most out of your marketing efforts. Many of these tips apply to digital marketing models beyond affiliate marketing strategy as well.
Let’s get started!
- What is Affiliate Marketing?
- 15 Best Affiliate Marketing Tips
- Build Your Own Audience
- Focus on Your Target Audience
- Build Trust by Disclosing Affiliate Links
- Reuse Existing Content
- Align Your Content With Search Intent
- Publish Product Reviews
- Post Comparison Pages and Roundups
- Write Tutorials
- Share Coupon Codes
- Offer Your Own Incentives
- Choose Your Affiliate Partners Wisely
- Make Your Affiliate Website Mobile-Friendly
- Time Your Ads
- Use Link Localizers and Cloakers
- Track Your Performance
- Conclusion: How to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an online business model where you earn fees from promoting affiliate products through special links. When one of your website visitors clicks your affiliate link and makes a purchase, the brand pays you a commission. While each individual affiliate commission may not be very large, if you have a lot of traffic and clicks, that can add up over time.
Affiliate marketing has become a popular way to earn “passive income.” But don’t be fooled: it still takes work to establish the audience and influence needed to succeed. Fortunately, even beginners can set up a profitable affiliate marketing strategy as long as you’re patient and willing to work smart. In the next section, we’ll go over our top tips for getting the most out of your affiliate content.
Want to learn about the latest trends and growth opportunities in the affiliate marketing industry? Explore these 18 Affiliate Marketing Statistics All Marketers Must Know.
15 Best Affiliate Marketing Tips
1. Build Your Own Audience
Our first tip is to always make sure you have your own way of reaching your readers. Don’t rely entirely on third-party social media platforms or content sites like YouTube. The rules on these sites can change quickly and you have no control. A simple algorithm change may suddenly cause a sharp drop in views on your social media posts or YouTube channel.
The best way to own your audience is to build an email list. Email marketing still has higher conversion rates than almost any other digital marketing channel. Because email marketing is permission-based, your subscribers are more engaged than someone casually scrolling on social media.
You can include affiliate links directly in your email newsletters. Another option is to promote new content or popular posts on your website that contain affiliate links.
In order to use email to grow your affiliate marketing business, you need to get more subscribers. One of the easiest ways to grow your email list is with OptinMonster.
OptinMonster is a popular tool for lead generation and conversion optimization. It allows you to create attractive popups, slide-ins, and other types of opt-in forms. These campaigns encourage website visitors to subscribe to your email list, join your social media accounts, or take other actions that can grow your business.
Here’s how OptinMonster can help you grow your affiliate marketing website:
OptinMonster offers various form types, such as popups, slide-ins, inline forms, and more. You can choose the form type that suits your website and customize it to match your brand. OptinMonster also offers a drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy to customize your form.
You can connect your OptinMonster account with your email marketing platform and easily send new subscribers to your list.
OptinMonster allows you to target specific website visitors based on their behavior, such as exit intent, scroll depth, or pageviews. You can also set up triggers to determine when your opt-in form should appear, such as after a certain amount of time or when a visitor clicks a specific button. These targeting and trigger rules allow you to find the most engaged readers who are most likely to join your email list and click on your affiliate links.
Once you set up your opt-in form, it’s important to test and optimize it for maximum conversions. OptinMonster offers a built-in A/B testing tool that allows you to test different form designs, copy, call to action buttons, and targeting options to see which version performs best.
By following these steps, you can use OptinMonster to grow your affiliate marketing website by capturing more leads and increasing conversions.
2. Focus on Your Target Audience
If you try to market to everyone, you’ll end up selling to nobody. We recommend that bloggers and other affiliate marketers choose a niche to focus on. Your niche should interest you and also have enough search traffic to generate revenue.
Experienced and new affiliates alike need to build authority. The best way to do this is by creating helpful, accurate content that your audience wants to read. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, and SEMrush to see what your audience is interested in. Posts that get more traffic and engagement are a good indicator of the type of content that will convert well.
Another strategy is to ask your readers directly with a survey. OptinMonster makes it easy to display surveys right on your website. You can use the powerful targeting rules to survey your most interested readers to see what they need.
3. Build Trust by Disclosing Affiliate Links
In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires that websites state when affiliate links are used.
In addition to following the law, disclosing affiliate links also builds trust with your readers. These disclosures show that you aren’t trying to hide anything or trick them into buying a product just because you want to earn money.
Here are some affiliate link disclosure examples:
- Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you click and make a purchase. Thank you for supporting our site!
- Affiliate Disclosure: Some links on this website may be affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission if you make a purchase through them. Your price remains the same either way, and we appreciate your support.
- Important Disclosure: Some links on this site are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you click and make a purchase. We only recommend products we believe will be helpful. Thank you for supporting our work.
4. Reuse Existing Content
If you’ve already established authority in a niche, you can run affiliate marketing campaigns on that existing content. Simply sign up with the right affiliate partners and insert the links into your posts.
For brand new websites, it can take awhile to start earning affiliate income. That’s why we recommend launching your affiliate website with plenty of content in place. If you only have one blog post, your site will look unprofessional in addition to losing traffic after visitors read the lone article and leave.
Another way to reuse existing content is to promote it across different platforms. This allows older content to reach a different part of your audience. And it gives you something new to share!
Here are some ways to repurpose content:
- Expand on a blog post in a YouTube video
- Summarize a longer article in an infographic
- Post snippets of YouTube videos on TikTok or Instagram Reels
- Tweet lines from previously published articles with a link to the full post
- Turn a quotable sentence from a blog post into an Instagram graphic
- Compile an eBook from related blog posts and use it as a lead magnet or paid product
5. Align Your Content With Search Intent
Affiliate marketing works best when you publish content that your audience is already searching for. That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important. With SEO, it can be tempting to focus on the numbers. How much search engine traffic are certain pages getting? Which keywords have the most search queries?
But another important factor to consider is search intent. This can’t be measured by numbers and requires you to step into the reader’s shoes a bit. Search intent is the reason or motivation behind a user’s online search. In other words, what are they hoping to do or learn from the search results?
There are 3 main types of search intent:
- Informational search intent: When people want to learn something, they use informational search intent.
- Navigational search intent: When people want to go to a specific website, they use navigational search intent. For example, if you want to go to YouTube, you might search “YouTube.”
- Transactional search intent: When people want to buy something, they use transactional search intent.
Informational and transactional searches are most important for content creators. Your affiliate content should include posts that meet both informational and transactional search intent. But affiliate links on transactional content will likely convert better.
6. Publish Product Reviews
Product reviews make amazing affiliate content. These articles attract readers with high transactional search intent. Review readers are looking for information to help them make a purchase decision. In other words, they’re really ready to buy. Why not share your affiliate link along with your helpful content?
To get more affiliate link clicks from your product reviews, make sure your review is high-quality. Test the product yourself, don’t just rephrase the marketing materials. Be really honest about any weaknesses you find or things that you wish were different. People want to read real experiences, not just polished success stories.
Remember, successful affiliate marketing relies on trust. No product is truly perfect, so it’s more trustworthy when a review includes an honest discussion about a product’s shortcomings.
7. Post Comparison Pages and Roundups
Other types of content that show up in high transactional intent searches are comparisons and roundups. Comparison pages analyze 2 or more products side by side and typically go more in-depth than a roundup or showcase. Roundups gather a list of similar products in a category. For example:
- Comparison page: Netflix vs Hulu vs Peacock
- Roundup: Best streaming services in 2023
Both comparisons and showcases should include pros and cons, features, benefits, and price point. Roundups may include less detail for each item, but they’re good for readers who are still browsing but fairly interested in this product category.
Use headings and subheadings to make your content easy to scan. If possible, include comparison tables to show the differences point by point. You can use affiliate links for every product or just the ones you like most.
8. Write Tutorials
Searches for “how to” content may have slightly lower transactional intent. These readers are primarily there to learn something, not necessarily buy something. But if they find the tutorial helpful, they might be interested in buying the products mentioned in the tutorial. That’s why how-to guides can still be very effective for affiliate content marketing.
Step-by-step tutorials offer plenty of opportunities to share affiliate links. Just be careful to balance the length of your product descriptions with the actual steps of the tutorial. If you’re an Amazon affiliate, you can include a list of all products mentioned in a tutorial to make it more convenient for people to purchase.
9. Share Coupon Codes
Discounts can be a great way to drive purchases of a new product. Customers feel less risk since they’re spending less money.
Ask your affiliate programs if they have any discount codes or current promotions that you can share. You’ll need to keep these updated, but these coupons can be a good motivator for customers to act quickly.
You can also get your own special code that is exclusive for your affiliate website. Early affiliate programs often used codes to track sales made by affiliates, though nowadays affiliate links are more common and foolproof. Even if your affiliate discount isn’t any higher than the brand’s regular discounts, an audience that’s loyal to you might be willing to use an affiliate code just to help you out.
10. Offer Your Own Incentives
While you can’t offer your own discounts on affiliate products, you can add your own bonuses as an extra perk. You can use your own business milestones or important holidays as a way to drive more traffic and clicks on your affiliate website.
For example, you can offer a free download for joining your email list. These are called lead magnets and are an excellent way to get more email subscribers, and thus more eyes on your affiliate content.
Another incentive you can offer is to run your own contest. This works especially well if you offer entries for people who make referrals for the contest. This will bring in more organic traffic who will then click on your links. RafflePress is a super easy way to run a giveaway on your WordPress affiliate site.
11. Choose Your Affiliate Partners Wisely
You don’t want your entire affiliate marketing business tied up in one partner. If they change their rates or even go out of business, your income is also on the line. For example, Amazon Associates has changed their rules and commission rates multiple times over the years. Some marketers lost half their income overnight.
We suggest picking a variety of affiliate marketing programs to join. That way your business will be less vulnerable to major disasters in one industry. Look for different rates and payout schedules to keep your cash flow as even as possible. You can look on affiliate networks for new partners
12. Make Your Affiliate Website Mobile-Friendly
If you’re doing anything in online marketing or eCommerce, you know how important mobile optimization is. Affiliate marketing is no exception.
When your business relies on pageviews and link clicks, it’s essential that your website looks and feels great on mobile devices. If you’re also running banner ads on your content, make sure they don’t crowd the page when viewed on a smaller screen.
For those using OptinMonster to create popups promoting your email list or affiliate links, there are mobile-specific templates built right into the template library.
13. Time Your Ads
If you invest in pay-per-click (PPC) ads to drive traffic to your affiliate content, think about the best times to use them.
Sure, holidays and shopping seasons are competitive, but that’s also when the most people are out looking for deals and products. It can be a good time to build your audience and get some sales.
To complete, you’ll need high-quality content to compete. That means you need to think about holidays like Black Friday well in advance. Stay focused on what your target market wants to hear about, don’t just chase whatever is trendy that year.
14. Use Link Localizers and Cloakers
The nice thing about eCommerce is that brands can sell products to customers all over the world.
When people from different countries visit a website, they might want to see things in their own language or with prices in their own currency. So, link localization is a way for the website to show different versions of each landing page to people depending on where they are from. This makes it easier for people to find and buy things they want, and makes the website more helpful and friendly to people from different places.
In fact, some affiliate programs like Amazon won’t credit international purchases properly without link localization. You may need a plugin or add-on to localize your affiliate links.
15. Track Your Performance
Finally, we advise you to review your affiliate marketing performance regularly. Some important metrics include:
- Clickthrough rate: how often visitors click on your affiliate links
- Conversion rate: how often a click leads to a purchase
- Earned income: how much commission you earn from all of your affiliate links
Your affiliate program may have its own tracking dashboard you can use. Another way to keep track of these metrics is with an analytics plugin like MonsterInsights. With MonsterInsights you can Identify your top-performing pages, track affiliate link clicks and conversions, and monitor bounce rates and engagement.
When you know how much traffic you drive, you can negotiate with partners for higher commissions, special incentives for your audience, and other perks. This empowers you to run a better business.
Conclusion: How to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing
We hope you found these tips helpful as you plan ways to boost your affiliate sales.
To learn more, we also have a list of best affiliate marketing tools you can use to automate and optimize your affiliate marketing business.
Want to start building your affiliate marketing email list? Try OptinMonster risk-free today!
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