11 Proven Methods to Promote Affiliate Links & Monetize Your Blog

11 Proven Methods to Promote Affiliate Links & Monetize Your Blog

Arif Chowdhury
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Last Updated on September 2, 2022 by Arif Chowdhury

Everyone wants to earn a passive income that will generate even when they are sleeping. People usually do not like to do a job under the command of other people. They want freedom. There is only one way to achieve independence. That is – having a business of your own.

Though almost everyone knows that having your own business can bring freedom, starting a business needs a considerable amount of capital and the underlying risk that most people cannot afford.

So what is the alternative? The answer is: building a website/blog is your ultimate freedom. Because, unlike a business, a blog does not require huge starting capital; instead, you can create it for only $15 per month. You can reach a global audience like a multinational company by producing high-quality blog posts. Therefore, your growth potential is limitless.

Some people will say to grow a YouTube channel by creating awesome videos. However, those are not your business, as YouTube holds all the rights.

So, how are you supposed to make money from blogging? The answer is using monetization methods. There are many ways to promote affiliate links and monetize your blog; let me show you some tips on how you can do it.

In this guide, I will show you how you can monetize your blog using affiliate links and earn a passive income from it.

Let’s start, then.

What is an affiliate program?

Organizations that want to make more sales by outsourcing are called affiliate programs. It is a cost-effective method for them, as they only pay their affiliate marketers when they make a sale. The commission structure varies from the company, i.e., 3% to 20%.

For example, you become an affiliate of Amazon & start promoting their products on your blog/website. Then, you will get a commission whenever someone visits your site and makes a purchase. Simple as that.

How does an affiliate program work?

When you sign up with an organization’s affiliate program, they will ask for your website details, like how many visitors you get every month. From this niche, how many subscribers you have, how much revenue your website generates every month, etc. In this way, they will get an idea about your influencing power.

Sometimes they reject you simply because you do not have enough visitors or subscribers. But in most cases, your application will get approved. After you register with them, head to their resource section. You may find several forms of “referral links.” Text referral link, banner with a referral link, etc.

Referral link: https://www.example.com/ref/dfrd012

It is just an example; here, you can see that the website’s main URL is “example.com” & your unique referral link is “example.com/ref/dfrd012”. Here, “dfrd012” is your referral id. When you want to promote their website, you have to use this link so they can recognize who is sending visitors to their site. And if someone among your visitors makes a purchase, they will be able to credit you.

One more thing; every affiliate program has a unique cookie duration. It can be 30 days or even one year long, depending on company policy. If someone visits through your affiliate link, however, didn’t purchase right away. But 20 days later, they revisit the site & make a purchase but this time, not through your affiliate link. Yet, that sale commission will be credited to you. If their cookie duration is at least 30 days long & they credit the first cookie, not the last one.

How to register for an affiliate account?

Many affiliate programs exist that you can search in Google using the “Affiliate Program” keyword and get started. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. You must have to prepare yourself before you join an affiliate program and make some money.

First, take a look at your website visitors. How many visitors do you get monthly? If it is below 1,000, you better work to get at least 5,000 visitors per month. For this example, let’s say you have 5,000+ monthly visitors to your blog. Now, what to do? It is time to register for an affiliate account that suits your website audiences.

Here is a list of Affiliate hubs you should check:

Recommended Reading: Largest Affiliate Networks You Should Join to Make Money (Review)

Why is a reasonable amount of quality visitors needed?

As I said, if you have below 1,000 monthly visitors, you should work hard to reach 5,000+ visitors. But why should you wait for it? Some affiliate networks will accept your application even if you have zero monthly visitors. So, why should you work hard to reach 5,000+ visitors?

Well, it’s mainly because of the result. Suppose you have only 100-200 monthly visitors and register for an affiliate account. The probability is that you won’t be able to make a single sale, not even in the next six months. So what’s the point of all the hassle of registering and promoting affiliate links?

You won’t make any commission, and it will also reduce your reputation on those affiliate networks to zero. Because even after six months, your performance is good to nothing.

You must focus on your website’s monthly visitors first, then register an affiliate program to start.

How do I utilize the dashboard & start affiliate marketing?

After registering, visit your new affiliate dashboard and locate the resource section where you may find referral links. My suggestion is to use only text referral links for promotion. Do not use their banner ads in your blog. It’s not a significant issue, though, unless you want to mark your blog mainly for advertising to your audiences.

Quick Note: If you want to grow your blog for the long term, then do not use banner ads everywhere. Then your readers will leave your site because your blog looks spammy.

It’s so apparent; ask yourself which one you like the most. For example, when you visit a site & see so many ads here & there (footer, middle of a paragraph, sidebar). Or, when there is no ad, only a nice & clean blog post. The 2nd one you would like the most.

Then the question is, how am I supposed to promote affiliate links without putting ads in my blog? Use “contextual links” inside of the article body. For example, if you want to promote an online service about SEO, then write a review about their service and put a link within that article’s body. This way, it will look natural, and your audience will love it. As your audience loves your blog, it will eventually grow, and you will make thousands of dollars in profit. It’s an intelligent way of marketing without putting ads on your blog.

How to track your performance?

When you have done writing reviews and put affiliate links within it, it is time to check your performance from the affiliate dashboard. First, visit there, and check the “performance section.” Here, you will see how many of your audience click on your links and visit the affiliate site. How many leads & sales do you receive from your audience?

Monetize your blog using affiliate links and payout your earnings.

If you get any commission, then it will show there. You can visit the “payout section” to request a payout through your favorite payment provider (PayPal, Skrill, Stripe, Credit/Debit card, etc.) Sometimes they have a minimum payout threshold; for example, a $100 commission must accumulate before you can request a payout.

Proven methods to promote your affiliate links.

There are many ways to promote affiliate links. However, you should be aware of “link spamming” because if you are not careful when promoting affiliate links, you do not only lose your commission but also will lose your affiliate account altogether.

Therefore, you must learn how to promote affiliate links without spamming them. Below I will show you ten proven methods to promote an affiliate link.

Method 1: Write a review article.

It is by far the best & safest way to promote an affiliate link as long as it is within your website niche. You must write a meaty blog post, at least 1,000 words articles, and provide enough evidence. You have to prove why you recommend this product/brand to your audiences within this content.

A small article below 300 words won’t do any good at all. Because Google counts them as thin content, you won’t be able to write much about that product or brand. Therefore, at least 1,000 words should be enough to do the job.

Try to provide enough evidence. For example, if it is a product, then what is it? How to use it? What are the benefits users get from it? Is there any issue you found personally, whether the price is reasonable, etc.?

For example, if you are writing a review of a social media marketing service, provide some inner details of the results you got from them. How effective is their marketing? How many sales do you make from them? What was your ROI (Return on Investment) ratio?

By providing this information, you encourage your audience to use their service. And you are promoting affiliate products without doing any advertisement. If you write high-quality & engaging reviews, then most likely, your audience will purchase their service & you will get a commission.

Recommended Reading: Cornerstone Content 101: A Simple 7-step Practical Guideline

Method 2: Write a product tutorial.

It is another innovative way to market affiliate links. Instead of writing only a review, a product or service tutorial can be much more effective and profitable. Because when you write a tutorial, you provide actionable insight that directly helps your audience. For example, if you write a photo editing software product review, you do not provide any in-depth analysis, only a review of good or bad about that product.

However, you provide detailed information when you write a tutorial about that photo editing software. For example, how to use this software in your professional life, how to edit a photo using this software, how to handle color contrast, why this software is much easier to operate than other photo editing software, etc.

Write a product tutorial with actionable insight to smartly promote it.

In this way, you will be able to pull more visitors to your blog. Remember, people love actionable insight rather than a generic article. Thus writing a product tutorial can be very effective for product promotion. Just include a text link inside the tutorial blog post & that’s it. You are good to go.

Example of in-depth, actionable insight:

  • How to operate the product?
  • If you get stuck, how to solve (specific tutorial)
  • Exclusive product tips

Method 3: Alternative banner ads.

I warned you not to use banner ads in your blog, as it looks spammy when you use too many of them. Your blog will be suspicious to them, as every space is filled with annoying ads. Sometimes readers cannot even read appropriately because these ads keep flushing in front of their noses.

Then how should you get the advantage of banner ads? What is the alternative? Well, use high-quality images from your affiliate site. If they do not have any pictures except banners, visit their homepage, take a screenshot, and crop it. Make it informative and related to your article.

How to avoid using banner ads by this trick.

For example, please take a look at my blog post. Here I reviewed several VPN software & this blog post length is 2,500+ words. It’s a high-quality pillar blog post containing only text, images & links, nothing else. There are no banner ads, annoying sidebar ads, footer ads, and nothing.

Even after that, I have injected affiliate links in every VPN software review. So, when my audience reads this blog post, they won’t feel annoyed by unwanted ads. Still, they can click on affiliate links & I will earn a commission.

It is an intelligent way of marketing without making your blog spammy.

Method 4: Smart email marketing.

I am not talking about bombing your audience with thousands of spam emails that your readers never open. Instead, smartly build a double-opt-in email list and implement an email marketing method that eventually will work.

To make it work, you must first make them trust you. So how should you do it? Simply install email marketing software in your blog. It will value your audience by asking them to submit their primary email address.

Now, what is this value I am talking about? Well, it can be anything related to your website niche. For example, if your website is about digital marketing & SEO related, then offer your audience an eBook. This eBook should be valuable to your audience. Write a 20-50 page eBook that contains the actionable insight, i.e., “How to Become an Expert in SEO.”

Offer value to your audience & receive their email in exchange for it. A perfect way to build an opt-in email list.

This eBook offers your audience value in exchange for their primary email address. As you can see, you are giving away a valuable eBook, which in turn makes you trustworthy to them. So do not start bombing them with promotional offers from the next day. Instead, try to send them some valuable articles from the next day & continue this generous, unselfish task for at least the next seven days.

If you can do this for seven days straight, the probability is that – You will become trustworthy to your audience. Start sending them promotional offers (blog post links containing affiliate links). However, do not overdo it. Try to send them one promotional request every seven days. This way, you won’t lose their trust and be able to keep promoting your affiliate links.

Recommended Reading: Best Bulk Mailing Software for Small Businesses (Reviewed)

Method 5: Provide valuable resources & tools.

It is a new trend in online marketing. Sometimes even better than writing a high-quality blog post. By providing value, i.e., resources & tools to your audience, you can quickly increase your traffic by at least 120%.

For example, let’s say your blog is about photo & video editing. Then you can offer a resource page to your audience that will contain several helpful website links related to photo & video editing, i.e., image compression, crop, editing, banner creation, logo creation, video editing tools, etc.

Provide valuable online resources & tools to your audience. This is a perfect way to get tons of free organic traffic.

You can even purchase various online tools for your website & offer these to your audience for free. Visitors will start to come back to your website to use that software. If they like it, they will share your website link across the internet. You will start to get thousands of extra visitors & an abundance of powerful backlinks, which will increase your authority rank.

Though it is not directly connected to your affiliate link promotion, however, when your blog rank & traffic increase. Eventually, more visitors will see your blog post. Thus more commission you may earn.

Recommended Reading: How to Write an SEO Optimized Blog Post that Rank (Practical Guide)

Method 6: Inside of digital contents.

I already told you to provide value to your audience to earn their trust through email marketing. But that is only for increasing your website rank & traffic. It is not directly related to your affiliate links promotion.

How about you input affiliate links within the digital content you create? Let’s say when you write that eBook “How to Become an Expert in SEO,” you can input some of your affiliate products’ links as a suggestion. Or, make a list of SEO services or software like “7 Best SEO Services You Should Try”.

Therefore, inside the eBook, you will write how to become an SEO expert and add some SEO service links. Hence, your readers will love it & click on those links to check it out. It’s another clever way of affiliate link marketing without spamming it.

Method 7: Promote in video platform.

Similar to writing a review or tutorial of products. You will make a video of that affiliate product. It can be a review or tutorial. Tell your audience why you recommend this product, what benefits a user gets, how to use it, where to purchase it, etc.

Promote your affiliate links by using video content.

After making a video, upload it to various video-sharing platforms. Most of the time, the audience loves to watch rather than read. Ask yourself what you generally do when searching for a product review or tutorial. In most cases, when we search for this kind of resource, like a product review or tutorial, we look for a video to watch because it is easier to understand than reading an article with lots of descriptions & images.

List of video-sharing sites:

  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
  • Facebook
  • Twitch
  • Daily Motion
  • IGTV
Use CTA (Call to action) inside your video content to receive targeted organic visitors

The above example shows how they inserted their product/service links in the video description. However, you can also display links within a video that will be even better. It’s called YouTube annotation. You can add a call to action button at the end of your video & it is clickable. Therefore, create an excellent & detailed video about your affiliate product, insert a call to action button using YouTube annotation, and then add your affiliate link.

Recommended Reading: Does Geotagging help with SEO? (Beginner’s Guide)

Method 8: Promote social media.

Social media is just becoming a gold mine for all types of businesses. More than 4.4 billion people on earth use social media, which is 49% of the world’s population. Therefore, you have a great chance to promote your affiliate links here. However, do not try to spam affiliate links here & there. You will blacklist yourself on social media, and the affiliate website will also ban you because you spammed their links.

Use social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. to promote your affiliate products.

So, what’s the best way to promote affiliate links in social media? Well, the first search for a related social group. Join there and start discussing with people about your affiliate product. When they ask you to send them a link, do it. In this way, you are not doing any spamming & promoting affiliate links legally.

You may also open a business page for your website on social media. Promote that business page. And when you reach thousands of audiences, start promoting affiliate links there. Some people do not even own a website. They simply started their business by creating a social media page.

Recommended Reading: Benefits of Digital Marketing for Your Business in the Post-Pandemic World

Method 9: Promote through SMS & push notifications.

Probably it is one of the most popular methods among webmasters. SMS marketing is not new; however, web push notifications are new. However, most websites around the globe use this service to reach their audience. There is not much difference between SMS & push notifications. The audience must permit sending in push notifications, yet SMS marketing does not need any of it.

Now, the question is why SMS & push notification is more effective than email marketing.

It’s simple; in a recent study, people use mobile phones more than other devices. Here are a few statistics for your reference:

  • More than half of consumers check their cell phone messages more than 5-6times per hour.
  • Age between 18-29 check messages even more, 7-10 times per hour.
  • An average of 65% of consumers check their cell phone within 5-10 min of walking up.
  • More than 90% of consumers tend to reply within 30 min of receiving a text message.

As you can see, email marketing is for formal communication; however, SMS & push notification is even better for faster response.

Method 10: Promote in Forum.

The forum can be another excellent & intelligent way to promote affiliate products. It is the predecessor of social media. Therefore, you can say that social media is the next generation of the forum. But forums are still active, and thousands or even millions of people are still visiting various forums around the globe.

So, you can take advantage, just like you did on social media. First, use Google to list forums related to your affiliate niche. Then join them and start making conversation with people.

Use forums to get many targeted visitors to your website. You may leverage forum signature to input your affiliate links.

Some forums have strict rules that you cannot join and start posting links. You may have to become active & prove yourself before posting any links. For example, you must post at least 20 replies before qualifying as a verified full member. And then, you may post a link.

Just like social media, start a conversation about your affiliate product. Then, if someone asks, only then post it in the forum.

Method 11: Promote in Q&A.

Q&A means Question & Answer. There are many websites all over the internet where people ask for help. For example, Quora is one of the top-rated Q&A sites with more than 450 million monthly visitors. Almost all kinds of topics are discussed here. In addition, thousands of questions may find related to your affiliate link.

Use the search box to find a relevant question about your product. But, again, do not simply drop your affiliate link. You will become suspicious as a spammer and may ban from Quora.

So, use innovative tactics. Write at least 300+ words short articles about your affiliate product & describe how it can solve their problem. In this way, people will love your answer, share it & more sales you may get.

A list of Q&A sites you could use:

Executive Summary.

Registering for an affiliate account & promoting its products is not that hard, as long as you know how to do it perfectly. If you do it honestly, it may consume lots of time & effort; however, you will start to see results. And there is no worry that you will also get banned or blacklisted in the future.

There is another way to promote affiliate links that I forget to tell you about. That is, use a PPC advertisement. It may cost you considerable money; however, it all comes together if you take it as a business.

For example, invest $100 in Google advertisement for affiliate product promotion and get a $150-$300 return, which is an excellent ROI (Return on Investment). However, there is a chance that you may not get that much profit only if you choose a terrible affiliate product that has a low conversion rate.

Therefore, choose high-quality affiliate products with a high conversion ratio, then invest in Google ads.

Further Reading on Cliobra: If you want to promote your website/blog & get millions of free organic traffic, then I suggest you read my guide “How to Increase Rank in Google.” By doing so, you can reduce a considerable amount of advertising expenditure thus, increase your profit margin significantly.