This post will be sharing six affiliate marketing strategy tips for your blog.
A few months ago, just before the first lockdown, I finally decided to take my lifestyle blog seriously.
My goal was to grow my traffic and monetize as fast as possible.
So, I mastered Pinterest and got my first 100,000 page views.
Along the line, Pinterest started to tamper with their super frustrating algorithm.
So, I switched strategies to focus on SEO.
Then, I got stuck on how to monetize.
Yes, I got the occasional sponsored posts here and there.
I also have ads that haven’t really brought in much yet.
So, I narrowed my choices down to affiliate marketing and decided to master it.
So far, I’ve gone from making a few sales every month to every other day.
Sometimes, daily (Yes, I still check daily!)
While I’m not yet making my dream income from affiliate marketing, I’d like to share some of the things I learned when I struggled initially.
Here are 6 Affiliate Marketing Strategy Tips To Help You Make Your First Sale
The first thing I did before diving into Affiliate Marketing properly was to purchase Mastering Sales with Ell.
I used to hate buying courses because, given my seven years of digital marketing experience, I thought it was a waste of time.
But then this industry changes so much that it’s so easy to work with outdated strategies.
So, I had to update myself with the best practices to drive affiliate sales in 2020.
Buying that course is one of the best decisions I made because it saved me so much time going back and forth.
While the following tips will be very useful, the course will give you actionable steps to master affiliate marketing in a shorter time.
Focus on a few affiliate programs that are related to your niche.
Every brand and its sister have an affiliate program and want you to join them.
These days, I have to turn down some invitations to these programs because I just don’t have the time to create content and promote them.
I already have my core programs, which I focus on: Amazon, Awin, and Shareasale.
When choosing affiliate programs, you must consider your niche and think like a buyer.
Put yourself in their shoes and think about their journeys.
When buying certain things, like home workout equipment, for instance, where do you think they would go? Amazon or the actual brand’s website?
So, consider your niche and think about where people buy products related to it.
Then, join those affiliate programs.
Amazon is not the best-paying program, with its incredibly low commissions, but I use it because everyone still uses it.
Where possible, choose affiliate programs with high commission
Affiliate Marketing can be incredibly profitable, mainly when dealing with high-ticket products.
These are products with high commissions, and one payout might be what another blogger with low-commission products will get in one year.
That said, look out for products with commissions between 10% and 15%.
This way, you work smart and make more money.
Yeah, Amazon is lovely for the convenience and that extra cash.
But if you see better programs with higher-paying commissions, do go for it!
Just make sure your affiliate marketing strategy is well balanced with a focus on the higher commissions.
Create strategic content around affiliate products
Joining an affiliate program is the easiest thing.
Creating the content that will drive affiliate sales is where the actual work is.
This is one area I struggled a lot in the beginning.
But then, the more content I wrote, the more I began to understand the types of content that convert the most.
Obviously, I studied my analytics to see what links people purchased from.
Then I created more content like that to replicate the effect.
Then, the Mastering Sales with Ell course had some excellent content ideas, which I also implemented.
One of which is the compilation posts/listicles.
Creating a list of related products is a sure way to drive sales.
If Affiliate Marketing is your core income stream, it must be reflected in your content strategy.
Ensure at least 70 – 75% of your content indirectly drives sales.
This doesn’t mean you should be salesy.
Write valuable and convincing content that will convert your audience.
Check out how to make your first Affiliate Sale.
Track your sales and take note of the best-performing posts
It’s probably unhealthy to track your sales daily, but you need to know what works.
You need to be on top of the posts bringing in sales.
If you’re having issues tracking the sales from the posts, manually insert a tracking code in your links.
If a particular post is bringing in sales, do keyword research for alternative keywords and create new posts around those keywords.
Better still, replicate the structure of that post with another topic.
Make sure you’re constantly testing, testing and testing!
Also, improve your highly converting posts.
Insert YouTube or TikTok videos where necessary. Add more content.
Edit and update with more information to help the post perform even better.
Make your affiliate links as noticeable as possible.
When I started, I often complained about not getting affiliate sales.
Meanwhile, my links were barely visible.
They were there but were no different from the rest of my post.
So, even if people wanted to buy, they struggled to find the links.
Make your links as distinct from the rest of your posts as possible.
The easiest thing I do is to change the font, size and colour of my affiliate links.
There is absolutely no way you can miss them.
With the links right in their face, your audience will have no choice but to click them, even if they forget. It’s simply unmissable.
So, if you are struggling with sales, return to your old posts and make them more noticeable.
Start with Pinterest but work towards SEO for long-term traffic and sales.
I got my first few sales through my Pinterest traffic when I started.
I had a solid Pinterest strategy that brought me daily traffic.
It still does, even if I don’t pin daily. Even though Pinterest is quite unstable, it is still the best place to get traffic and affiliate sales for a relatively new blog.
So, use Pinterest to get your blog off the ground, and then work on your SEO.
Pinterest is a very niche-specific platform.
Check out 13 Pinterest-friendly niches For Your Blog.
This means that some niches might not be able to generate traffic or even sales.
This is why you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Also, Pinterest can be high maintenance, so you must constantly attend to it to get results.
SEO, on the other hand, works on auto-pilot.
While you need a solid strategy in place, once it takes off, it takes ALL the way off.
You also have the opportunity to make even more money with the right content through SEO.
In Conclusion,
Affiliate Marketing is easily one of my favourite ways to monetize a blog.
Once you have mastered it, you can create other smaller niche blogs and make even more money.
I hope you found these tips helpful.
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