Why affiliate links are essential and how they can make you money if done right

As time has gone on and consumer usage of the internet has grown massively, the number of opportunities to make money online has multiplied yearly. Affiliate marketing is one such method that you may not have heard about or you may but are doing it wrong. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to spend money on stock or inventory; you don’t need to worry about customer service or deliveries. You generate leads for companies; once those leads convert, the company pays you a commission.

Now, this isn’t the standard salesman pitch in which you call people or go knocking on doors (maybe if you want to). All you need to start is a link. This link, once clicked, directs potential customers to a product or service that you are an affiliate of. Once you have a link, you can move onto different ways to get consumers to click on the link. We will cover some of the different ways you can drive traffic towards your affiliate links.

Find a niche

First thing, you need to find a niche that you want to start being an affiliate for. This will then help you decide what different channels you will use to drive traffic towards your affiliate links. Should you have a lot of knowledge about PC Gaming equipment, Razer has an affiliate program and pays you a 10% commission on all sales up to 30 days after the consumer clicks on your link (we will talk about the cookies after this). Once you have a niche, you can start to think about the target audience and design a strategy.

Understand the cookie limit

If you are relatively new to affiliate marketing, this may be something that you overlook when joining an affiliate program. The cookie length is the amount of time allowed between a user first clicking on your link and purchasing. If the limit has been set at seven days, but it takes the customer ten days to buy, you won’t get a cut. When deciding what affiliate program to join, it is crucial to think about this; if the product is $1200, but the cookie length is seven days, it may not be worthwhile as people will take a bit longer to decide on spending that amount.

Think about traffic before money

We know that you signed up for affiliate programs to make money, we all do, but before you can generate any income, you need people to interact with your link. Some affiliate programs require you to have already something set up that produces traffic, such as a blogging site. For example, if you have a blogging site, create blogs to help people with a problem. Once you generate traffic and are accepted by specific programs, add the relevant links to the blogs but don’t try and make money from day one!

Build a community

Whether you have a YouTube channel that you post videos to, a blogging website that you upload to, or even Social Media that you create content on, it is vital to engage with your audience. If people are leaving comments, respond to them, even if there are 500+ comments. It is a massive part of building a community, and it allows readers/subscribers to ask you questions and feel genuine.

You will also want to get more people to sign up for your mailing list. Different email marketing companies have other packages; some allow you to reach 2,000 subscribers before even paying. This list will be your honey pot when you have a new program or post a new blog or video. Keeping a list of email subscribers is essential in driving more traffic to your affiliate links and website/channels.

Avoid Penalties from Google

If one of your methods or traffic generation is your website, you will rely heavily on ranking on search engines. Make sure that you follow Google’s guidelines when it comes to affiliate marketing. When someone lands on your website, you need to make sure that it offers value to the readers. Otherwise, Google will penalize you and rank you lower and make sure that you write a disclaimer stating that you are an affiliate and may receive some form of commission if the reader purchases through any of the links on the blog.

Create the pitch

Ensure that all content you create to help drive traffic to affiliate links has the correct pitch. No one will click on a link to a hosting company if you make no mention of why they should engage in the video or blog. Stay on top of the newest features and benefits that the affiliate’s product has so you can use it to build more hype and generate more sales off the back of it. Once you have the right pitch, revisit it every month to ensure that it isn’t getting stale (if you are still promoting that link, of course).

Keep building

After you have one niche set up and have continuous traffic flowing through generating income, it is time to look at more niches. Creating more websites and channels covering different niches allows you to cast a wider net. One month, the gaming niche may only bring in $300, but the website development niche brings in $4000. Eventually, you should have multiple sites and channels covering different niches and have few avenues of income from affiliate links alone!

Affiliate marketing is a powerful way to build passive income and has the potential to generate more revenue than a 9-5, but it takes time. Using the information that we have given you will help make sure that you are always looking at the analytics to identify what isn’t working. Now get out there and make some money.