Lately, I have been thinking back on one of my greatest blogging victories and I can’t believe I didn’t share it with you sooner! I had been blogging for 9 months without seeing any real earnings. Then, by changing just a few simple affiliate marketing strategies, I went from $0 to $1,200 in affiliate marketing sales in one month! A few tiny tweaks made all the difference. If you have been struggling to make money with affiliate marketing, you are going to want to keep reading. I will fill you in on the simple changes I made and give you the full inside scoop on how to rock at affiliate marketing.

*This post contains affiliate links. Although I may make a commission, all recommendations are my own. 

What is affiliate marketing?

In case you haven’t heard of it, what affiliate marketing is in its simplest form is recommending products or services to your readers and getting paid for it a commission from the companies or brands.

Each brand or business that you are an affiliate for will give you a special code to use in your links. When a reader clicks on your link and makes a purchase or signs up for a program, you will earn a commission for recommending them!

A lot of us use this when it comes to recommending our favorite apps. The app will encourage you to text friends by sending a message that might say something like this: “Share this with a friend, give them $5 and get $5 for you!” Read: How to Build a Six Figure Blog Without Millions of Visitors or Selling Your Soul.

Is affiliate marketing for you?

If you are naturally recommending things to your friends, family, and readers anyway, then affiliate marketing is something you definitely want to learn more about.

While affiliate marketing originally got it start through the blogging world, it is also something you can utilize in other areas like Pinterest and social media.

Learning the ins and outs of how affiliate marketing is relatively simple once you get the hang of it and can be applied to many different places.

How to start affiliate marketing

My top recommendation for getting started with affiliate marketing is to first get a thorough understanding of how affiliate marketing works and the best practices to follow. I personally chose to start with the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course.

Affiliate Marketing Course

Even though I had an understanding of how affiliate marketing worked before taking the course, after applying the lessons I learned the in course, I was able to skyrocket my affiliate income from close to $0 to $1,200! Click here to learn more about Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.

Start with 5 or less

When I first started affiliate marketing I had the mindset that the more stuff I promoted, the better things would go. In reality, the smartest thing you can do is start small. Choose a few affiliates to work with, and really get good at understanding all there is to know about them. This is he best way to gain trust and become a mini expert at the companies you’ll be recommending.

Be open and honest

I made all the mistakes in the world when it came to sharing affiliate links. One thing I can say is whenever I shared an affiliate or created a blog post with affiliate links from a place of honesty rather than with the mindset of making money, those posts always performed better. Your readers can sense authenticity and are more likely to respond well if you are creating for their benefit rather than for monetary gain.

Using affiliate disclosures

Another thing you must remember to do that is absolutely crucial is that before you share any affiliate links in a post, email or on social media, you must openly share this with your audience.

You may have noticed mine at the beginning of this post. “*This post contains affiliate links. Although I may make a commission, all recommendations are my own.”

Tips for successful affiliate blogging

While I have made some mistakes in the blogging world, there are also a few things I can look back on and be glad that I did. These practices allowed my blog to continue to grow and helped aid in making more affiliate marketing sales.

Treat your blog like a business

I have always been a firm believer in treating my blog like a business which means I am always investing in it! Before I even started the blog itself, I invested in a quality blogging course from a blogger that I trusted.

The first course I invested in was a course that teaches the basics on how to start a blog. This course is no longer active, but you can read my post, How to Start a Blog.

After learning the fundamentals of how to start a blog, I purchased the course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing so that I could better understand how to monetize my blog which was my goal from the beginning.

Read: Make Money Blogging: 7 Big Questions Answered.

Use one link 3 times

Once you have your top 5 affiliates chosen, try to focus on only one affiliate per post if possible. When you do that try to use the link several times throughout the post. At least 3 times is a good start.

Make clickable links

When working with certain affiliates, there may be special offers that your readers will gain from clicking on the link. For example, they might get a 2 week free trial or $5 when they sign up. Take the time to share this when you are creating a clickable link.  

Do you need BIG commissions to make money?

The craziest part about all of this is that you don’t necessarily need to work with affiliate that offer a big commission in order to make money. When I went from $0 to $1,200 I did it using affiliates that mostly only paid out $5 per affiliate sign up.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to find affiliates that you truly love and can easily promote. When you do this, sharing about these affiliates becomes a natural process and the money will steadily show up.

Managing your affiliates

Once you’ve gotten the hang of your affiliates and running a blog, make sure you are learning the best ways to practice organizing your affiliates and your posts with affiliate links.

This is another thing that is discussed in Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing and will be a helpful tool in ensuring that you can thrive with affiliate marketing.

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