How to Use Affiliate Marketing Programs to Monetize Your Blog

One of the best ways to monetize your blog is by using affiliate marketing.  Today, I’ll show you how to use affiliate marketing programs to help you make some money online with your blog!

Affiliate marketing is great because you can really build this business and create a passive income stream for yourself that can earn you money for years to come if built properly.

To learn how to use affiliate marketing programs, I’d like to show you the following:

• What is Affiliate Marketing?
• Affiliate Marketing Terms Defined
• Where To Find Affiliate Marketing Programs
• How To Create Content That Converts
• Where To Get Started
• Final Thoughts

 

 

WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING?

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Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission when someone buys from the links on your blog when you promote other people’s products.

To explain further, companies such as Disney, Target, Walmart, Apple, Amazon, and a whole lot more companies offer bloggers or anyone that want to earn money this way to promote their products by giving them a link.

You will use this link on your blog to explain the product and recommend it to your audience.

When your readers click on the link, it will take them to the website of the company that’s selling the product giving the opportunity for your readers to buy the product.

When they buy, you will earn a commission.  That’s the whole cycle of affiliate marketing.

 

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

What makes affiliate marketing so attractive is because you don’t have to create any products, you don’t have to make large investments into inventory, you don’t have to deal with customer service, and all the other headaches of being a shop owner.

All you have to do is promote and recommend the products you love, as you can pick and choose what you want to promote.

This makes affiliate marketing a passive income stream because when you create a post about the product, you can earn over and over again on that one post as many people will read your post.

The most posts you have, the more chances of you getting ranked higher in the search engines, the more traffic you’ll get, the more commissions you can make from your blog.

This is why I love affiliate marketing, hope you’re getting excited!

 

 

AFFILIATE MARKETING TERMS DEFINED

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Before we go further, I want to explain some of the terms used in affiliate marketing:

• Affiliate Link – This is the link companies provide you to use to promote their products with.  It can be specific to a particular product on their website, or it can be a search page, or a category.  This affiliate link tracks the users going from your website to their website so your commissions can be traced back to you.

• Affiliate Products – These are products that can be promoted by you that you can earn a commission on.  I have a great post here that explains how to find great affiliate products for your niche.

• Affiliate Programs – When looking for affiliate products, you first want to know if a company even has an affiliate program in place.  Companies create affiliate programs if they want others to promote their products and in return pay them a commission or fee for their referral.

• Affiliate Networks – There are websites that bring together website publishers and advertisers (companies that offer affiliate programs) in one place.  The network basically runs the affiliate program for the companies in the network.  Publishers like you and me can go to these networks to find lots of different companies that offer affiliate products.

• Commissions – This is money you earn when someone clicks on your affiliate link and you earn either a flat fee or a percentage of sale.  This is pre-determined and should be known ahead of time before joining any affiliate programs.  Amazon’s affiliate program calls their commissions “advertising fees” so there are different terms out there.

 

 

WHERE TO FIND AFFILIATE MARKETING PROGRAMS

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Affiliate Networks:

To start off you can find affiliate marketing programs at affiliate networks such as CJ Affiliate by Conversant (formerly known has Commission Junction), LinkShare, Clickbank, ShareASale, Amazon Associates, and Ebay.

You will apply to these networks and they all have different requirements, sometimes you can get in right away sometimes it can take a little while.

For others like CJ Affiliate by Conversant, you can set up your account pretty easily but then after you’ve found the companies or products you want to promote, you have to apply to the individual companies in the network.

Those companies can then approve your right away, or take some time to review your website and approve/disapprove as they determine.

Once you are approved, then you can get the affiliate links to start promoting.

For Amazon Associates, your application won’t even get reviewed until you have made your first commission but that also means they can disapprove you and you will not earn that first commission.

However, once Amazon approves you, you don’t need to apply further to promote Nike products, Disney products, or anything else they carry.

 

Private Affiliate Programs:

There are also companies who offer their own affiliate programs such as HostGator, Fiverr, Nike, Apple, Disney and much more.

To find out who has affiliate programs for the product you want, just go on Google and search “product name + affiliate program” and you should be able to find the companies who offer them.

 

Best Type of Affiliate Programs:

There are different types of affiliate programs out there and knowing the different types to determine which program you want to join.

For a detailed look into what those types are and which is the best type to have, take a look a this post here for a full explanation.

 

 

HOW TO CREATE CONTENT THAT CONVERTS

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The best way to promote your affiliate products is not by selling to your audience but by recommending the products.

Nobody wants to be sold to, especially people who don’t know you.

You need earn their trust and you can do that by creating content that is helpful to them.

If you want to help others how to train their dog not to pee inside the house, for instance, you can show them how to use a kennel to help train their dog, or use the doggie pee pads.

Therefore, you can later in that post after explaining they can potty train their dog, recommend where they can buy the kennel or doggie pee pads at the cheapest prices or where they can find the best ones.

After learning something new and thinking your training will work, the reader will click on your affiliate link and take them to the site that sells the products and buys them.

This is the best way to convert your readers into buyers!

 

Here’s a walkthrough of the process again here:

• Find a problem your audience may have;

• Show them how to solve this problem;

• Recommend the products that will help them solve this problem;

• Reader clicks on your affiliate link and buys it on the recommended site you linked them to; and

• You make a commission!

 

Sometimes the simplest way to convert a reader is missed by a lot of publishers and all they do is sell.  If you think about it, when’s the last time you bought something from a website you don’t know?

Hardly ever right?  You need to build trust with your readers and find them solutions they can use, that’s why they were on the internet in the first place, searching for solutions.

I hope this has helped you see how this process will be more successful to convert your readers to buyers than for just telling them how great a product is.

Your audience will always want to know how a product will benefit them, how it will make their lives so much better if they had that product so this is what you need to show them.

 

 

WHERE TO GET STARTED

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There is so much more to learn about affiliate marketing, I’ve just given you all the basics so you can understand the process of affiliate marketing.

For better understanding on how to write the content, how to find products, know what to write about, and use keyword techniques that will generate free traffic to your blog, you will need proper training in affiliate marketing.

The training I’m talking about is at Wealthy Affiliate, they are my #1 recommendation in getting trained on how to build this affiliate marketing business.

I actually have a step-by-step guide right here to show you how easy it is to get started with your affiliate marketing website for free with Wealthy Affiliate.

 

You can follow that guide above to get your 2 free websites and start learning the first level of the Online Entrepreneur Certification course that has 10 lessons in it for free.

There are a total of 5 levels in that course (10 lessons in each level), and you’ll need to upgrade to a Premium membership if you want the rest of the course after you finish the first level.

If you follow my guide, you will create your free account at Wealthy Affiliate and start training right away.

The first 7 days will allow you to test drive some Premium member features as well but you can stay a free member as long as you want after the trial period.

If you’d rather learn more about Wealthy Affiliate first, no problem, you can click this button below to see my full review first which also has a video tour of the training platform:

 

You will learn that there is actually way more training available than that one course I mentioned and all the other goodies included in a Premium membership that you can’t get anywhere else like:

• Live Chat for instant help
• Private Messaging for more one-on-one coaching
• Weekly Live Training Webinars to stay on top of hot topics to help your business; already over 200 webinars on instant replay for you to learn from.
• Unlimited Keyword Research Tool
• 11 Other Classroom discussions on specific topics
• Highly Secured, Super Fast Web Hosting for up to 25 websites
• Privacy Domain Registration included
• SSL Certificate included
• and much more!

This online training platform has truly been the best one I’ve found and I’m so glad I found it just before I start this blog.  It’s been a life saver!

I blogged before years ago on my own, and that was a disaster, but now that I got training from Wealthy Affiliate, I know exactly what needs to be done and I’m not alone this time.

They have such an active community there that you can always get your questions answered without much delay.

I’ve been a Premium member there since September 2016 and haven’t looked back since! You can see my profile here.

 

If you’re eager to start, then create your FREE account here with no credit card needed here:

 

I hope to see you on the inside!

 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

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There’s absolutely no telling how much money you can make with affiliate marketing!  This is truly a real online business opportunity that can make you more than a full time income.

The best of the best in this industry make millions with just affiliate marketing alone, let alone all the other opportunities that’s come up for them in the process.

With the training I recommended above, you can start earning within your first year!  Remember this is a business you’re building so it does take time to build.

This is no scam, this is an honest way to make money online and the training above will help you reach your financial goals.  See successful bloggers here who’s made it with the Amazon Associates program.

It’s all up to you!  The more effort you put into your business, the more likely you’ll succeed.  The best thing is that you’ll have help and you won’t be alone in the process if you join Wealthy Affiliate.

I would love to help you!

 

If you have any questions or thoughts about affiliate marketing or Wealthy Affiliate, please do not hesitate to leave me a comment below!  I always reply to all my commenters!

 

 

Let’s make money online!