Pat Flynn, one of the highest-earning affiliate marketers, can make over $100,000 in a single month from affiliate marketing alone.
Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to start earning money online. No inventory required, and minimal startup costs, depending on the platform you use to market. Everyone must be trying it, right?
Sure, but not everyone does so successfully. Only 9% of affiliate marketers surveyed say they make more than $50,000 in a single year. So what are they doing wrong?
We have 30 affiliate marketing tips to help you figure out where you’re leaving money on the table, and optimize your strategy.
Page Contents
1. Optimize High Performing Posts
As you start to create content, you’ll notice some posts do significantly better than others. Take advantage of that. When you see a post is taking off, make sure you’ve included affiliate links in it, and that they’re optimized to encourage people to click on them.
2. Don’t Ignore Small Ticket Items
It’s human nature to ignore a 3 cent commission on a $5 product, like something off Amazon. Never ignore it. I’m not going to say every cent counts.
But every cookie does. If someone clicks on your affiliate link to check out that $5 product, they may not opt to buy it. But it may remind them their nieces birthday is in two weeks, so they buy that $150 Barbie dream house while they’re there.
You get a commission on that.
But if you are looking for high ticket affiliate programs, check these out.
3. Be Honest
In the digital age, there are no secrets. If you write a stellar review for a terrible product you didn’t do your research on, the internet will find out, and the internet will remember.
What’s even worse is if you fake a good review for a product you know is terrible. Always be honest with yourself, and with your audience. Stand by this value above all else. Because if you don’t, when you’re caught, that’s the end of the line.
4. Niche Down
Affiliate marketers who focus on a specific niche will tend to do better because the market isn’t as crowded. Find something you love, and focus down on it. If you can, focus down on it even more.
For example, you may want to start a blog and write about parenting. There are a lot of mommy parenting blogs online. You may have better luck focusing on a niche like parenting for a kid with autism, for example.
5. Don’t Overdo It
When you start affiliate marketing, you may be tempted to sign up for any program that comes your way. Don’t.
Instead, pick about 10 you can stay consistent with, and edit this list as you get used to affiliate marketing. You can find amazing affiliate marketing programs for beginners here.
6. Use Several Platforms
As a writer, you should publish on your blog. But you may want to consider YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, or even Medium too. The more platforms you use, the more faces you can get in front of.
Stick with your niche, and only focus on as many platforms as you can maintain. But branch onto more than just one.
7. Use Lists
People love lists, and as a result, they do incredibly well in affiliate marketing. Use this to your advantage.
8. Use Product Reviews
People who are looking for product reviews are usually on the fence about buying a product. A good review might be enough to push them in the right direction.
Remember tip 3: Be Honest. If you hate the product, don’t give it a good review just to get the sale. Instead, drop in a similar product you do like.
9. Use Product Comparisons
Look at your top-performing affiliate product. What is their competition? Then write a product review comparing the differences between the two products. You may even be able to become an affiliate for both products.
10. Don’t Ignore SEO
If people can’t find you, you can’t market to them. You may be writing a blog, running a YouTube channel, or marketing anywhere else online. No matter what, make sure you understand the algorithm for that platform. It will help you get more eyes on your content, and thus more sales.
11. Be Consistent
Starting a new business endeavor like affiliate marketing can be slow going. It’ll likely take months before you see real progress. So be consistent, and follow a schedule. Make sure your audience knows when to expect new content, and make sure to supply it.
12. Be a Valuable Resource
Affiliate marketing should (almost) never be the first reason you’re creating a post. Your first reason should always be to provide a valuable resource for your audience. Be as useful as you can, and they’ll keep coming back.
13. Stay Organized
Make a plan on when new content needs to come out, and what that is. Track the progress of your top-performing products, and posts. Staying organized can help you fine-tune and optimize your progress, and be ready to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise.
14. Study, Study, Study
Study affiliate marketing itself. Study the leaders in the industry. Stay on top of what’s going on in your niche. No matter what, you should never stop learning about what it is your marketing.
But never let studying take over creating. Creating is always your top priority.
15. Stay Legal
Anytime you market an affiliate product, you have to disclose that you’re making money from that link. It’s illegal not to. Make sure you understand the laws surrounding affiliate marketing. Keep in mind the rules of each program and platform.
Otherwise, you can get kicked off and lose all the progress you made.
16. Use Your Email List
Your email list is your greatest asset. These are people who have voluntarily given over personal information to you because they like the resources you provide.
Whenever you have a great new offer or deal, let your email list know about it! Especially if you’re in a narrow niche, they’re likely already interested in the product you have to offer.
17. Know Your Audience
Make sure you know your audience. What do they like, and what don’t they like? What are their problems and pain points? How can you help them?
The more you know about them, the more you’ll be able to create the content that best serves their needs, and thus make more in affiliate income too.
18. Be Proud of What You Create
Your audience follows you because they like the quality and value of the content you create. Never sacrifice this. Whenever you publish something new, always be proud of what you create.
19. Stay the Course
You’ll get tired. You’ll feel burnt out. You’ll be ready to give up before it’s your time.
That’s okay, and that’s normal. You just need to keep going.
20. Track Everything
What isn’t tracked can’t be improved upon. Track subscription sign-ups, sales, performance of different pages. Track your links and your click-through rates.
A lot of this can be automatically done and recorded through various tools and plugins. Make sure you have them installed, so the data is there when you want to use it.
21. Have a Backup Plan
Not for your affiliate marketing business, but for specific products. Say you make a good chunk of your affiliate marketing income from a single product – a fancy mattress for example. But then the company changes its policy or decides that they’re going to entirely cancel the affiliate marketing program.
Make sure you have another similar product you can use to replace any content you’re currently using to advertise the mattress. This way, if you can no longer promote a specific product, you can still take advantage of your existing content.
22. Be You
People like to see people. Share your personality and your face in your content. People remember faces more than they remember names, so they’re more likely to remember your content.
Express your personality more throughout your content. You became a more relatable person that your audience knows they can trust.
23. Write a Product Guide
This is especially useful for tech products. People want to know how they work. If you can provide an in-depth guide on how to set up or use a product, your audience will appreciate it.
This is a great place to advertise the product directly or link to other related products.
24. Focus on Evergreen Content
Evergreen content will rarely need to be updated. If it’s high quality, it will keep bringing in revenue long after its created.
25. Stay on Top of Trends
If you want to write about trendy content, like video game updates, for example, you need to make sure you’re on top of a fast-changing industry. Trends don’t last long, but if you’re one of the first people to create content on it, you can make a lot of money quickly.
26. Content Comes First
Make sure you stick to your content marketing plan. Slamming as many affiliate links as possible into an existing post won’t bring in any extra revenue.
It’s the value of the content you create that creates value in your affiliate links. Stay the course, follow your schedule, and make sure you’re putting content first.
27. Create About What You Love
If you start to create content, whether its YouTube videos or blog posts, about something you don’t care about, you’ll quickly burn out. So make sure you pick a niche in a subjet you care a lot about and can create a lot of content within.
The more you love what you create, the more that energy will flow through to your audience. More importantly, you’ll be able to sustain content creation long enough for it to take hold, and for you to b able to start seeing real, rewarding results.
28. Promote Several Products
Very rarely will a post be focused on only one affiliate product. Instead, as much as reasonable, include several different affiliate products in a single post.
For example, if you’re writing about healthy meal prep, you can link to a product like Blue Apron, and also fancy bento boxes on Amazon.
Or if you’re writing about creating a high performing YouTube channel, you can link to the specific tools you use to create your YouTube videos.
29. Test, Test, Test
Test headlines, call to actions, formatting, white space, the color of your buttons. Everything can be tested. It’s amazing how small things like specific words or adjectives or colors can have huge impacts on your audience.
Take time to focus on how these aspects can work together. If you make 10 tweaks that help the content perform 2% better each time, you now have content that brings in 20% more revenue.
30. Be Patient
Affiliate marketing is not a way to overnight success, or massive bucks right away. It takes time, and you’ll have to stay your course. Be patient, and let the process work.
Use These Affiliate Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business
Remember, these affiliate marketing tips will not get you to success alone. It takes hard, dedicated work, persistence, and patience. But they can help you monetize faster, or help you monetize your work when you already have an audience at hand.
Don’t try to implement all of these tips at once, but instead work on systematically adding them to your existing creative process. Affiliate marketing isn’t a quick way to overnight success. But it can be a good way to help you make money doing something you truly love.
Want to dive in even further? Sign up for your free copy of 8 Simple Steps to Affiliate Marketing Riches below!
