There are many different ways to monetize your blog, but this time I’ll talk about how to do this by working as an affiliate.
Not only the people who sell products or services can make money working directly with blogging.
There are other ways to monetize your website without the need for the hard work of having to create a new product or service. You should only look for products from third parties that add value to your blog and that are of interest to your visitors, and you can make money, as long as this is done correctly.
If you have a blog with a loyal, defined audience and a certain volume of visits, a good option is to become an affiliate.
How to be a happy and effective affiliate?
Let’s take a cool look at this phrase, word for word, so that you can understand what we mean by this phrase.
Affiliate
An affiliate is a person promoting certain services or products of third parties in order to receive a commission for each sale generated through the affiliate link.
Happy
If you decide to work as an affiliate, you will have to do it in a natural way and convinced of the quality and usefulness of what you are recommending to your readers.
So you need to be feeling happy and know how to pass it on to your subscribers when it comes to advertising this product. The simple fact of making a profit should not be your motivation to advertise it, or you will be just another seller.
Important
Your first question before recommending something should not be: What is the commission that I will receive ? Actually, it should be Will this product be of interest or help my readers?
As an example, if I were to send emails from a company which sells toys for children, no matter what the commission, most of my subscribers would think: What is the relationship between these products and a blog about online marketing?
The happiness of an affiliate must be directly proportional to the satisfaction in using a good product, the affiliate needs to be sure about the type of product hi is recommending.
Effective
Being an effective affiliate is the icing on the cake, if you have already completed the above steps.
This effectiveness is gained by the reward for a job well done, which will be translated into a commission, that is, into profits.
X number of your subscribers followed your recommendation and made a purchase. In addition to the commission, you managed to convince them to buy the product. This means that these users trusted you, they trust on opinion.
If you can do it once, it will be easier to do it more often. Congratulations!
We have understood so far, the ultimate goal of any affiliate. But if you are starting to work as an affiliate, you may wonder how you can find the best affiliate programs for your project.
The first and most recurrent option is to look for affiliate programs on Google and visit the websites that are most appropriate to what you are looking for. If you want to refine the search, you can add one of the keywords that define your niche in the search field.
An example would be affiliate crafting programs if you had a blog about this niche.
The second option would be, when you find interesting contents, to try to find out if the company offers an affiliate program.
Usually, you can find this information in the footer of the page. And if you prefer, you can contact them to see about the possibility of becoming an affiliate. You can even offer to post a sponsored article about their company on your blog.
How To Be An Effective Affiliate
Here are some recommendations:
Look for products that add value
Try to always promote products and services that add value to your blog and help solve the eventual needs of your target audience.
Get involved in the promotion
Placing a banner on a page of your blog usually doesn’t work, at least not if you just insert banners. It takes more than that. Don’t just enter a descriptive message about the product, just to try to sell it.
You should present the product from a personal point of view and from your own experience with what is being offered, highlighting the benefits that the user can get after completing the purchase.
Keep the promotion visible
After writing this post, you can consider giving visibility for this promotion in places like:
Sidebar of your blog
Footer
Banners in your most visited posts.
Email marketing campaigns
Take care of the visual aspect
If you will include some visual content to publish your promotion, try to follow, as far as possible, the same standards of the product you are advertising (colors, fonts, style, &).
Usually the companies will provide their own banners to ensure the campaign is up to their standards.
If you prefer to create them yourself, try to integrate it as much as possible with the image of your blog, to do that, you can use design tools such as Canva or Photoshop.
You have to be careful so that the reader doesn’t think this advertising is intrusive and decides to stop visiting your blog.
Remember that this could cause the user to become suspicious of the product. Hence the importance of integrating it with the corporate image of your project.
Technical requirements for working as an affiliate
This point depends very much on the conditions of each affiliate program. For this reason, it is important to read the rules before joining the program.
Usually, you will have to create an affiliate account with your personal information, in addition to entering information to receive the Payments (paypal email, bank account, &).
The payment options, as well as the generation of invoices, will vary according to each affiliate program.
Also, please remember that according to the laws of your state or country, you are responsible for paying taxes, where applicable. Many affiliate programs have different payment schedule, or minimum amount to receive payments. It is very important to find out about these rules, To avoid future frustrations.
In case you work with an affiliate platform, the process is easier as these platforms are prepared to manage a lot of affiliate programs at the same time and provide interfaces for you to manage everything automatically.
What do I have to do to create my own affiliate program?
Maybe you find yourself on the side of entrepreneurs seeking help for selling your products and services. In this case, you should be looking for the best way to put together this whole structure to manage your affiliates and the commissions they will make.
There are basically two options:
Join an external platform that works as the manager between the creators of the products and those who want to promote them.
Create your own network, where you will have 100% control of the rules.[/su_list]
The main features of external affiliate networks are the fact that they work as a directory of advertisers and affiliates where the creators will expose their products or services and the webmasters can search the best products or services to make money with their blogs.
The platform will usually manage this process in exchange for a commission, so you can save time and don’t have to worry about managing the affiliates and payments. However, usually you will have more competition and therefore it is not guaranteed that users will promote your products.
As explained before, when searching on Google for affiliate networks you will find several results. Although there are very famous local platforms on your country, internationally, the most popular are Amazon, Ebay and Zanox.
These platforms often offer different forms of compensation:
Pay per click: On pay per click, the commission will be paid for each click on the advertiser’s page. In these campaigns, the amount paid is usually low due to the probability that many clicks will not convert.
Pay Per Sale: This is the opposite extreme. This is a commission paid for every confirmed sale, through your affiliate link.
Payment per action: it can be for when an user Confirms the registration on a form, a contact with a customer, or any other action. Depending on its complexity, the commission will be higher or lower.
In all cases, it is important to understand where and how to add your personal affiliate link on your blog. This is the way to make a profit from this type of business.
Tip
If you choose to create your own affiliate program, you should keep in mind that you will be responsible for managing all processes, so I recommend that you try to choose the most appropriate platform for the type of affiliate program you want to create.
There are many platforms that offer different services, with different cost. While all of them will offer basic functionality, including sales, payment management, affiliate programs, etc…
It is important to check the values and services offered by the platform that you will use, so that it is within your budget.
Finally, I would like to comment on the option I chose to manage my affiliates. I use the plugin called AffiliateWP, for $ 49 a year, you can manage and integrate your campaigns with other plugins with which you can manage your sales and private areas for members, digital downloads, etc…. There are other free plugins, but after some research, I came to the conclusion that this would be the best plugin for my needs.
Of course, making interesting profits, no matter if you are creator or advertiser, is not an easy process.
First of all, you should have a good product and know how to sell it, either working as a creator and/or as an affiliate.
Don’t expect to get rich with the commissions you will receive as an affiliate, unless you are working with a very expensive, unique product that just a few affiliates are trying to promote.
Passive income requires involvement of both parties, so that everyone can make money.
But with a little work, effort and interest, the creator will have a boost in sales and the affiliate can make a good profit.
Conclusions
I’m on both sides and each time I spent more time and effort in working as an affiliates as the results are getting more and more satisfying.
In short, I’m on the right path to feel totally like a happy and effective affiliate. And you, what do you think?