Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers: Everything you need to know to start earning from your blog!
Today I have a guest post from Emma who blogs at EmmaDrew.Info all about ways to make money, save money and live the life you want. Emma does amazingly at affiliate marketing in the UK and today is sharing some of her affiliate marketing secrets with us. You can also find Emma on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. Over to Emma…..
Affiliate marketing is where a company will give someone a commission for generating a sale or sign up for them. Affiliate marketing is a great way for bloggers to make money for a number of reasons. Bloggers can promote product and services that they love, and can earn money passively once they have written their posts or promoted their affiliate led content. The sky’s the limit when it comes to earning money from affiliates, and you don’t need to have created your own product to sell. It attracts lots of bloggers.
Making money from affiliate marketing isn’t about just linking to something you love on Amazon and waiting for the money to roll in. In fact, I’ve probably earned less than £200 last year from Amazon Associates. In order to be successful at affiliate
What does an affiliate marketing strategy look like?
In order to create a successful affiliate marketing strategy you need to look at a number of things. You need to figure out what your audience want, and how to serve them in a way that gives them what they want but also gives you the chance to make money by using affiliate links.
An affiliate marketing strategy sets out what you are doing to provide your audience to entice them to use your affiliate links.
Your strategy will also include things like how often you will post affiliate led blog posts, how you will repeat your message without getting too samey, how often you will find new affiliates to promote and the types of affiliates you will promote.
Finding out what your audience want …
There is no point in advertising products and services that your audience don’t want. You won’t connect with them, they will lose interest and you won’t make any money.
There are some easy ways to find out what your audience want.
Your own analytics are a good place to start.
Look at your top 10-20 posts over the past quarter and take note of them. These should help you identify if there are any pain points that your audience need help with.
If you are lucky then you might be able to identify affiliates that will fit into your top posts straight away, but most of the time you will need to get creative.
You can also get your audience involved by asking them what they want and what their struggles are. This takes more time from you, and you might not get the results you were expecting, but this is really useful to help you come up with your affiliate marketing strategy.
Serving your audience
The key to making money from affiliate marketing is to actually serve your audience. If you are able to give them really valuable advice then they will reward you by using your affiliate links.
In my niche (personal finance) I created a 6 week money making course that is totally free. I knew that my readers wouldn’t pay for this knowledge, so instead I packaged it up and used affiliate links where I could to make my money. By answering my audiences’ pain point of not having enough money, I am able to serve them. In return for providing this valuable knowledge for free, my audience used my affiliate links.
It is worth pointing out that not everything I promote in that free course, or on my blog, uses affiliates. I still write about what I think are the best websites and side hustles, regardless of whether they have an affiliate program or not.
How you serve your audience can take on numerous forms. It could be through blog posts, courses, a Facebook group, regular challenges and more.
Finding high paid affiliates
I class a high paid affiliate as any affiliate that will earn you more than £5 per sale or sign up. Your number might vary, but there are so many affiliates paying pennies for sales and sign ups that anything over £5 is worth me working towards.
There are high paid affiliates everywhere, examples include:
- Website hosting
- Utility switching
- Recurring subscriptions where you earn commission monthly
These high paid affiliates deserve more attention in promoting them because they are going to yield you great results.
In summary, in order to be successful with affiliate marketing you need to come up with your affiliate marketing strategy, find out how to serve your audience and find high paid affiliates to promote.
Last year I launched a course called How To SMASH Affiliate Marketing For UK Bloggers, and I have teamed up with Jenna to offer you a discount code. The code BLOGLANCER will get you £5 off this course.
*This post contains an affiliate link to Emma’s course*