What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is where you link to a product or service from your website or social media, and if people click through the link and buy something (it doesn’t have to be the product you recommend), you get a commission. The commission can vary from a set percentage to a referral fee. Sometimes it’s pay per click (PPC).
You can sign up directly to an affiliate programme of a company, or via an affiliate site that handles lots of companies, like AWIN for example. Once you’re a member of an affiliate programme, you get personalised links to use either to their home page, or a deep link that links to any product or page on their website. You could also get a unique referral code that gives the reader some money off, and you get a percentage of the sale. The other method is banner advertising, where you place a banner ad on your site that contains your affiliate code. If people click through and then buy anything, you get the commission, but you don’t get anything from simply placing the ad. Some affiliates are on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, where you get a certain amount per click.
Affiliate networks to join
The most popular affiliate network is Amazon because it’s easy to join and you can buy pretty much anything from there, but the commission is low. Head to the Amazon page and go to the footer, find associates and sign up there. The commission takes a while to get to the threshold for payout, which is about £20. Sign up to all the countries you can, but bear in mind the US program will chuck you out if you don’t make any sales in the first 6 months. I have a link localiser plugin on my website to ensure that wherever they click my link from I should get the commission. Amazon has a 24-hour cookie, so if anyone clicks on your Amazon affiliate link and buys anything within 24 hours, you get the commission. It’s great at Christmas time.
Next is Awin. You need to pay £5 to join, but that goes on to your balance and you get it back with your first payout once it hits the £20 threshold. They have loads of merchants to apply to their programs, or you can put some code on your site to make any links apply. I prefer to have manual control though because some brands and SEO agencies don’t want any affiliate links in their posts and it can be a headache to remove them. I have the Awin Chrome extension, so I can get links on the go. You just click the browser button on one of the merchant websites and you can get a link ready to insert. They have shops like Etsy, Dunelm Mill, John Lewis and loads more.
Share a sale is a US-centric network, but it has Tailwind and a few others on there that I work with.
If you really want to get the top-secret affiliate programs that have recurring commissions and up to 300%, take a look at my ultimate guide 2023 for the shortcut you need to supercharge your affiliate earnings.
Ebay and Canva, have their own programs. Your hosting company will have an affiliate program if you want to recommend them, as will some themes. If there’s something you’re passionate about, search for their affiliate program by searching ‘brand x affiliate program’ and you’ll find out if they have one and who it is with.
If you’ve taken a great blog course or bought a digital product or physical product you love or think your audience will love, this is the most natural way of promoting it. Digital products and courses often offer a healthy commission, so they are worth promoting. I became an affiliate for the Ava fertility bracelet and I earn $20 per sale, which mounts up. I also have another affiliate where I make £1 for each person who signs up to their mailing list and it’s in one of my most popular posts. Every quarter I get a payout from them.
Disclosing Affiliate Links
Always disclose your affiliate links, wherever you put them. You can simply say ‘Affiliate link, aff link, #affiliate #ad’ or ‘If you use this link to buy I get a commission, at no extra cost to you. Technically, you should put it before the reader sees the affiliate link, so a sentence at the top of the blog post is fine. If you plan on using them a lot, you can always make a reusable block (on WordPress) and put it at the start of each post. For Amazon you need to put their specific disclosure somewhere on your site, I put it on my disclosure page.
How to use affiliate links without being too ‘salesy’
It’s no good just slapping affiliate links into your blog posts and hoping for the best. The first thing to do is to work out what your audience is interested in from you. Hopefully, by now you will have your niche sorted. Are you helping parents become more organised? Then maybe you should focus on organising products like storage, decluttering products, etc. If you focus on baby-led weaning then think of weaning products to promote. Here are my top tips to make the most out of affiliate marketing:
- Build your know, like, and trust factor so people feel comfortable buying from you.
- Create a Facebook Group alongside your page. Add value to the group with extra info, and be supportive and present. When you add your affiliate recommendations, you have a ready-made audience.
- Try offering challenges relevant to your niche and include any relevant affiliate products
- Offer a free course or eBook with affiliate links in
- Use pretty links (the free version is fine) to make the links look better and less spammy
- Use your affiliate links in reply to comments, on social media.
- Once you sign up for affiliate networks, the brands will send you their special offers and sometimes discount codes. Share these special offers and discount codes you get, and consider making a weekly or monthly blog post or newsletter with your offers.
- Don’t forget you can link images and graphics within your blog posts, just put in a custom URL.
- You can make a graphic for Pinterest and put your affiliate link in the URL box – remember to disclose it as an affiliate link in the description
- Offer free eBooks on Amazon, especially around Christmas, if they buy anything else within 24 hours you get the commission
- You can negotiate a higher rate of commission with some merchants if you have specific ideas to promote them
- Look out for high-paying affiliate programs, like being an affiliate to a course or digital product in your niche
- Use your email list if you have one – give them special offers, entice them with your favourite things
- Write a tutorial for your favourite product or service
- Do a craft post and put affiliate links in for the materials
- Do a video tutorial or review and link the affiliate product in the description
- Write a roundup or resource post with affiliate links
- Create gift guides
- Make the affiliate link longer than one word, use a phrase
- Make a button and link it to your affiliate
- Put affiliate links in your Instagram stories
- Put an affiliate link in your social media bio
- Make an equipment list
- Compare different types of products/ services e.g. ‘Which pram is best for you?’
- Make a shop page and put in affiliate products
- Have a resources page for your niche and put in your affiliate products/ services
- Use Linkdeli to make roundup posts easily.
So there are a few ways to do it, once you have a strategy in place and you know where the money comes from, you can build on that.
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