Affiliate Marketing isn’t a new term as it is one of the oldest forms of marketing. In affiliate marketing, you refer someone to an online product, and when that person purchases the product through your recommendation, you will get a percentage of the sale known sales commission. The sales commission can be anywhere from $ 10 to $ 1000. The higher the value of the product, the bigger the sales commission will be.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Many online businesses now offer affiliate programs, including e-commerce giants such as Amazon and eBay. If you own a website that has the content related to the item sold by any of these e-commerce websites, you can join their affiliate program and become an affiliate. After the registration, you will get your unique affiliate ID. Now whenever you write about the product, you can use your affiliate link or ID to refer the business site. If your reader purchases your recommended product using your affiliate link, you will get a share of the sale.
For example, suppose you have a website about mobile phones that mainly covers mobile related topics on its blog. The targetted readers of such websites are the people who either wants to buy a mobile phone or are planning to buy one. When a user visits the blog while searching for a mobile phone, he may find an affiliate link to buy that phone. If he/she use the affiliate link to purchase the recommended product, the website owner will get a commission for the sale. This is a win-win situation for all. The business owner got a new customer; the referrer website got their share of commission, and the reader got the product they wanted without having to pay a penny more.
What are the best ways to Promote Affiliate Products on your Blog?
Now that you know what affiliate marketing is, it is time to know some of the best ways to promote affiliate products on your blog. Mind you, becoming an affiliate is as easy as taking a screenshot, but being a successful affiliate marketer requires skills that you gain with experience and experiments. There are several ways to promote an affiliate product on your blog including sidebar banners and featured posts. So, today I will be listing the best possible ways to promote affiliate products on your blog.
1. Review Posts – Review posts are currently the best way to promote affiliate products. Every buyer wants to buy a genuine product that worth the money the manufacturer is asking. Hence, they will try their best to research about the product they are willing to buy. And what can be a better place than Intenet to research about something?
A review post introduces the product to the readers coming to your blog. If your review can impress the reader, the possibility of that reader becoming your first affiliate referrer is about 90%. While writing a review, make sure that you are writing a review and not a post to promote the affiliate product. An honest review is more likely to have higher conversion rate than a product advertising review. Always write about the pros and cons (if any) of all the products that you are willing to review. Also, make sure that you have good knowledge about the product that you are trying to review
2. How-to articles and Direct Linking– How to articles are evergreen and can bring you traffic for years to come. Suppose you have a technical blog and are writing an article about connecting two PCs using LAN cable. In this example, the reader requires a reversible LAN cable to connect the PCs. You can use your affiliate link to recommend the required product from any e-commerce site with whom you are associated. This way you can be sure that the reader will use your affiliate link to buy that product.
The only thing you need to take care here is that you don’t stick to one e-commerce website, but give the reader more options. If you have readers from both India and US, and you are only referring to the US e-commerce sites, you will lose the affiliate commission from Indian readers as the US e-commerce site may not provide shipping to India.
3. Use Sidebar Banners – Using banner ads to promote an affiliate product is an old tactic, but it still works quite well. You can use the banner ad at the sidebar to promote an affiliate product. Create and customize the sidebar ad banner with an attractive image showing the product your are promoting. Make sure that the product you are trying to promote is related to your website and readers are interested in it. Also, make sure that you don’t promote two similars products on your sidebar. Recommend one thing that you think is the best. You may have multiple banners and multiple products, but don’t promote two similar products.
4. Featured Posts – Featured posts are the article that you feature on your blog’s homepage. The featured post gets the most attention of the readers who visits your blog. So, you can write a review or article promoting an affiliate product and place it in featured posts area. When a reader visits your blog and finds the contents on the blog useful, they will look for more interesting articles. So having some really good content as the featured posts can do wonders and lead to higher conversion.
5. Use Discounts and Coupon Codes – If you have visited a coupon website, you will find that the websites don’t show the coupon code directly but want you to click on a link to view the coupon. When you click the link, a new tab will open redirecting you to the merchant site. The reason for this is to drop the cookie. So, even if you choose not to buy the product instantly, the website will get the commission for the sale. The only condition here is that the user should buy the product before 48 hours are up or else the cookie will expire.
Is it safe to use Affiliate links with Google Adsense?
Absolutely! You can use the affiliate links while using Adsense ads on your blog and it is completely safe. Just make sure you don’t use excessive affiliate links within the content as Google doesn’t like links for the sake of promotion.
Now that you know the best ways to promote the affiliate products on your blog, it’s time to know some advanced affiliate marketing techniques.
So, that is it for the post! Let me know your thoughts about affiliate marketing in the comments below. Feel free to suggest if you have any tips for the budding affiliate marketers.
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