How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
This post may contain affiliate links where I may make a commission on purchases made through those links. For full details please see disclosure page.
This post is going to break down exactly what Affiliate Marketing is and how to make money from it.
Affiliate marketing has quickly become one of the most popular ways to generate passive income online. With good reason!
The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can make money whether you are looking to start a side hustle, or wanting to start a full-time online business, affiliate marketing can fit in and generate income for you!
The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to create your own products or manage stock/inventory. Instead, you promote other people’s products/services and you then earn a commission for every sale made through your unique referral links.
You recommend products you already love, to people who you know are interested in the sorts of products you’re talking about. If they choose to buy them through your link, you get paid – Affiliate Marketing.
Let’s get into how to make money with affiliate marketing!
Before we get into how to make money with affiliate marketing, we first need to go over what affiliate marketing actually is!
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is often made out to sound complicated but the process is actually very simple.
Affiliate Marketing is when you promote someone else’s product, and when someone buys that product through your unique link, you earn a commission. That’s it.
You may initially be wondering why brands would choose to pay you to promote their products. Fair question!
If you think about how much money brands spend on advertising or any other potentially expensive way of promoting or marketing their products, paying someone a commission on a product that has already been sold, makes a lot of sense.
This is why so many companies offer an affiliate program now. It’s a win-win for all involved!
Being able to make money with Affiliate Marketing is one of the most amazing aspects of having an online business or just making some money online.
It doesn’t matter your niche, your platform, audience size or how you promote it, if you have a way to reach people who trust you, you can make money.
Because most companies have affiliate programs, you can find something you love and want to promote, no matter if it feels a little obscure to you.
Where Can You Promote Affiliate Links?
You can promote your affiliate links pretty much anywhere!
Some companies do have rules of where you aren’t allowed to post. For example, Amazon affiliate links are not allowed to be promoted in private Facebook groups. So it’s important to check out your links to confirm you are following the rules of the brand, but the whole point of being an affiliate is to promote your links (and in turn, the brand’s products), so anywhere public you are generally safe with!
Be aware where you can and can’t link to your affiliate links directly. Often platforms such as Pinterest don’t let you link straight to affiliate links. Your pins need to link to a website such as your blog or a landing page which can then have further information on, before linking to your specific affiliate link.
The plus side of having a blog or landing page for your links is that you can share more information, explain more plus points and in some situations you can also collect email addresses too to be able to send out more information on that particular product or service.
Remember to always have a visible disclaimer advising of affiliate links.
*Important note* – you must ALWAYS disclose when links are affiliate links.
Each country is different so please do your own research and find out how is best to do this, but often you need a note on each post there is affiliate links in, advising of this.
There are many ways to promote your links to make money with Affiliate Marketing. Blogs and YouTube are two of the most popular ways. The most important thing – if you are wanting to make an income as opposed to a little cash here and there – is having an audience who trust in you and your knowledge.
Links that link out to specific products or services that are relevant to whichever topic you are speaking about will usually perform the best.
One example would be if you had a cooking blog/YouTube channel, you may link to the exact stand mixer or cookware set you use/that you love.
Another example would be if you take an online course you loved and truly feel others can get value from, you can share it with your audience.
A third example would be if you were a YouTuber, you can link to the camera, microphone and lighting set up that you use.
The nice thing about examples like the above examples is that it’s easy to naturally promote, as you are using and loving the products/digital products anyway!
What Sorts of Products Can You Promote?
Anything! Everything! Whatever your heart desires!
Okay maybe not literally anything… but close!
Of course it’s dependent on if the product/brand you are looking at even has an affiliate program that’s suitable for you and your audience.
You can choose from a huge range of products and brands, and can of course promote multiple products. Some products will work a lot better than others for you. It will depend on how big your audience is, how well they know and trust you, what your content is about and your overall niche.
For example, if you have a blog about tropical fish and you’re trying to promote binoculars – no matter how much you love them – it will be hard going.
On the other hand if your blog was about garden birds and you happen to have a pair of binoculars you absolutely love and they are from Amazon or a website that offers an affiliate program – bingo!
Nearly all companies have an affiliate program now, no matter the type of product. If you want to make money with Affiliate Marketing, there will be products and programs out there for you.
There are also websites such as Impact and Clickbank which have a marketplace for a large range of products and companies you can have unique affiliate links with.
Examples of the types of products you could promote:
- Physical products
- E-Books
- Online Courses
- Services (online or in person service like tutoring)
- Subscription websites
- The list goes on…
The important thing is to find things you use/love, that are relevant and useful to your readers!
Do You Need a Blog or YouTube channel?
Not necessarily! What you do need is an audience of some form.
Blogs (especially if you have an email list), and YouTube are often the most popular ways to promote your affiliate links as you can explain all the good (and bad) points about that certain product. You don’t NEED to have either of these if you don’t want to, though of course, you can promote via any other social media that you prefer.
It’s important to check the rules of whichever platform you choose to promote on as some don’t allow direct affiliate links, such as Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.
In these situations you will need to place your links on a middle website, be it a blog, a Stan Store, Link Tree or anything else along those lines! You then link that website to your Socials, and your affiliate links can then be found from there.
This is why having a website with blog posts relating back to those affiliate products can be so beneficial. Not only can you post a lot more information and photos about the products you are promoting, but from your own website you can also place your affiliate links in directly!
If you aren’t sure which platform to start on or want a place to promote your blog posts, Pinterest is an amazing place to start. Pinterest itself is a search engine as opposed to a social media, meaning people are often on Pinterest to search for things.
Linking your Pinterest pins back to blog posts containing your affiliate links can bring in money for a long time to come!
How to Make Money Through Your Email List
Email lists are so underrated!
It’s something I would recommend anyone with a blog, or who wants to get into affiliate marketing, should have.
I won’t go into landing pages and funnels in this post, but more just explain how your email list can work so well in terms of affiliate marketing.
To answer the first question…
What Is An Email List?
An email list is a list of email addresses that you’ve collected by people entering their email address in exchange for goods or services (often for free).
You build your email list by having something to offer your readers for free.
This could be a checklist, an e-book, a planner, a few pages of a book etc and people who are interested in your offer will give you their email address in return for your specific freebie.
The key is to offer something of true value.
When people see there is something of value being offered for free, on a topic that is of interest to them, they are likely to pop their email address in to get that freebie. They get their freebie and you then have their email address added to your email list.
They get their freebie, you get their email – win win!
All the email addresses you get from people are held on your list.
This is how you can get in touch with people who are interested in whichever niche that initial freebie was in. As a blogger, your email list helps you stay connected with your readers by sending them newsletters, updates, or blog post notifications. It enables direct and simple communication, and helps to build trust over time, ensuring that your audience doesn’t miss out on any valuable content or key information!
There are many different tools for capturing email addresses and sending out emails to your list.
The one I currently use and really enjoy using is Mailerlite.
Mailerlite currently has an offer on too where if you sign up through my link you will get a $20 credit too!
While I have upgraded to a paid plan, the free plan lets you do everything you need initially, and you can then upgrade as your list grows!
In affiliate marketing, an email list becomes an even more valuable asset.
Building and nurturing your email list is essential to creating an engaged audience that enjoys hearing from you. You want your readers to trust that you are always coming at them with trustworthy information. This way they are more likely to listen to your recommendations, leading to potential sales and income.
One of the best things about having an email list is that you own it.
You may have a large Instagram following but if Instagram disappeared or your account got banned for whatever reason, all those followers are gone.
The email list is something you own yourself so will always have.
Email is such a good way to keep in touch with your readers. Not only have they trusted you enough to give you their email, but by doing so (to get that amazing freebie you created), you already know that they are interested in the kinds of things you have to say and the information you have to offer.
This makes your email readers your target audience. Not in the sense that you will push sales onto them of course – no one likes a spammer!
But if you think about the types of products your readers will be interested in if they already enjoy and are interested in the content you are producing… they may very well benefit from the amazing products you have found and are using!
Do You Need a Large Following To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?
This is a tricky question to answer.
How long is a piece of string?
From experience, it’s absolutely possible to make money with a small following as we all start off with a small number of readers/viewers. As your following grows, it does become easier (numbers wise).
The only thing to keep in mind with a small audience especially is that sometimes brands do have an application process for you to become an affiliate with them and they then can ask how many followers/pageviews etc you get. This is also for the brand to confirm that your content is a good fit for their products, and vice versa.
If you get rejected or told you don’t have enough followers at this moment, don’t worry, there are so many more brands out there!
Making money with affiliate marketing is doable with even a small audience though.
Another scenario to consider is that you may have a smaller following but with readers more likely to buy the sorts of products you are promoting. This is more likely in a slightly more obscure or less common niche.
For example if you have a blog about Cooking. In theory nearly everyone could be interested and sign up to your email list so you may have a huge number of people on your list which is amazing! Your conversion rate may be a lot lower though, but with a huge following it shouldn’t matter much.
On the flip side, if you had a blog about Lawnmowers, you will have a much smaller group of people interested in getting on your email list for more info. The plus side is that you can be sure that most (if not all) of those people are truly interested in Lawnmowers and so would be more likely to grab any deals or recommendations you were offering!
You may have 1000 people in your email list (Lawnmower related for example), and find that an average of 10% clicks your links = 100 people.
On the flip side you may have 10,000 people in your list (Cooking related) but only 1% click through – again, 100 people.
This is exactly the same amount of people clicking but with a following ten times smaller!
Obviously the larger the following you have the higher the chance that people will click on those links and buy the things you are promoting.
As a general rule for audience size, the larger the better, BUT it also comes down to quality over quantity. What I mean by quality in terms of your audience is purely in the sense that 100 people who are truly interested in the things you are talking about is so much better than 1,000 people that have just given you their email address/followed you just for the numbers.
This is often why you will find that you sometimes get emails through from people checking who is reading their emails.
Professional bloggers and affiliate marketers will often remove email addresses of people who don’t read/open their emails, as this then narrows their list down to the people who are truly interested and keen to stay following that blog/person/brand.
How Much Money Can You Make from Affiliate Marketing?
Another piece of string question!
To keep it real, the answer here is literally… as much as you want.
The sky’s the limit!
When it comes to wanting to make money with affiliate marketing, you should put no limits on yourself or your earning potential. At all!
Each affiliate program is different, some offer as low as 1% commission, some offer up to 80% and all the ranges in between.
Some offer one off affiliate payments, others offer it on a monthly basis if your readers sign up to a subscription service and each month they stay subscribed, you get a commission.
Examples of these that I am an affiliate for are:
One Off Payments
Perfecting Blogging Blogging Course
Recurring Payments
KeySearch Keyword Research Tool
As mentioned earlier, some affiliate marketing programs require you to have a certain amount of followers/page views a month to be considered. Others (like Amazon), let you sign up straight away!
Amazon itself requires you to make 3 affiliate sales in 180 days for your account to stay active. If you go past this and haven’t made the 3 sales your affiliate account will be deactivated but you can always reapply when you are ready!
If you have your eye on one that you need a certain number of monthly pageviews for, use this as a goal to work towards and you’ll be signing up with them in no time.
You aren’t limited to just one (or 3 or 10) affiliate marketing companies/programs. You can sign up for as many as you want.
If there is another product you find you are loving and using a lot, why not share it too?
Never put all your eggs in one basket! If you want to really make money with Affiliate Marketing, definitely have a few different channels of income in terms of different programs.
Of course don’t go overboard with the promotion of products! Mix it up with recommendations of things you aren’t an affiliate of, but in the grand scheme of things, you can promote anything you like.
Whether you choose to promote 99p notebooks, £400 cameras or £3,000 online courses – there is a commission to be made.
You choose what’s right for you and your readers and what you’re comfortable with. You can always work up as you go on!
Other Ways To Make Money Online Through Your Blog
Affiliate Marketing is without a doubt one of the best ways to make money from your blog (or whichever platform you choose).
There are other ways to make money online though if you are looking for more income streams, don’t feel affiliate marketing is quite right for you or just to see some other options of avenues you can go down to make money.
If you would like to have a look into some other ways, have a read of this post here:
7 Ways to Make Money From Your Blog
Affiliate Marketing is single handedly one of the best ways to make an income online – use it to your advantage and everyone wins!
Speak soon!
Katherine
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