Want to earn more money through affiliate marketing? Here are 12 tips to get you started
Last year, our business generated over $70k in affiliate income. That is $70k for products we didn’t have to create.
Yeah, affiliate marketing is one of our favorite ways to generate income for the business. It is another stream of income that doesn’t take a ton of time off our hands. But we do have strategies in place to make this such a successful income stream.
If you're looking to boost your income as a small business owner, affiliate marketing can be a great way to leverage your audience and earn commissions promoting other company's products or services.
I bet most of the tools, apps, software, and products you use in your business already have an affiliate program. You know those things you talk about for free… you can start earning commission when someone makes a purchase through you!
However, getting started with affiliate marketing can be overwhelming if you don't know where to begin. In this quick start guide, we want to help you select the right affiliate partners, effectively promote to your audience, and implement strategies to increase your earnings over time.
“What is affiliate marketing?”
Before we dive into some tips to help you on your affiliate marketing journey, we first need to talk about what it is! Especially if you are unfamiliar with this type of revenue generating activity for your business, here is a quick run down…
You partner with a company as an "affiliate marketer" to promote their products or services on your website, blog, or social platforms. Then you receive a commission when someone clicks your affiliate link and completes a desired action – usually making a purchase.
Affiliate links allow brands to track sales that you influence. When a conversion happens, you earn an agreed upon percentage of that sale or sign-up. Commissions typically range from 5%-75% depending on the product and what action is required to get paid.
For example, if you were an affiliate marketer for an ecommerce company selling yoga mats, you might place a link to the mats on your Instagram Stories when you do your yoga practice in the morning that features that particular mat. If any viewers click through your link, you’d get a commission on each mat they buy.
Or imagine you have a large Instagram following focused on skincare. You find an affiliate program promoting a popular facial moisturizer that pays commission on all sales driven by your link. If you share that link via your Instagram bio and in your content, you can monetize all followers that convert to customers.
Affiliate marketing can be a great way for bloggers, small business owners, content creators, and influencers to partner with relevant brands in their niche. It allows you to leverage your audience reach and credibility to earn extra income each month – in addition to other monetization models like advertising, digital products, sponsors and more.
A Few Downsides of Affiliate Marketing
While affiliate marketing can be highly lucrative, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. For one, it takes significant effort and time to build enough traffic and audience trust to generate substantial earnings. Additionally, some affiliate programs can be complex with restrictions around promotions or have high minimum payout thresholds.
You’ll also want to vet each affiliate partner carefully to ensure their products and services are high-quality. Promoting subpar offers could damage your reputation with your audience.
Also, affiliate income relies heavily on consistent promotions and audience engagement. If you drive traffic to a poor conversion process or stop marketing an affiliate product altogether, your commissions will quickly dry up.
Going in, understand that affiliate marketing is an involved process that works best when integrated alongside other monetization models. Taking the time to find the right partners, create custom promotional content, disclose affiliate links, and analyze performance is key to finding success.
Word of caution: Affiliate marketing is NOT a multi-level marketing scheme or should require you to pay into the program (sometimes you may purchase the product or offer). You are simply earning commission once someone makes a purchase, and while you DO have to disclose that in your content, there should not be an upfront cost for you to get started.
Now that you have a basic understanding of what affiliate marketing is, let’s dive into helping you get started!!
Selecting the Right Affiliate Partners
When getting started with affiliate marketing, your first step is to find companies and products that are a good fit for your audience and niche. We always recommend starting with products and offers you already use and talk about frequently to your audience and network.
1. Consider affiliate programs with digital products like courses, memberships, and ebooks.
These types of products and offers tend to pay higher commissions, often 30-50% per sale. In our business we stay away from affiliate programs that don’t offer these high commissions. The amount of time and effort it takes to promote a product, and then only receive a 5% commission, is just not worth it to us. If you have a larger audience, you may be able to get away with lower commission percentages, just know you will need a lot more people to purchase to see significant revenue.
2. Only promote affiliate offers for products and services you genuinely know and love.
There are a LOT of reasons why this is a good idea. It will come through in your marketing content if you don’t understand the product, don’t know the product, or don’t use the product. We don’t recommend that you sign up for an affiliate program where you are not already a customer of the product. It’s not worth the time and effort to try and generate income through an offer that you aren’t familiar with… plus, again, your reputation is on the line. Make sure you are comfortable being associated with the brand.
3. Look for memberships and subscription programs that pay recurring affiliate commissions.
Focusing on products that have recurring payments, means recurring affiliate commission! BIGGGGG win for you here. This is going to substantially build up your passive earnings over time. You will consistently get affiliate commission when someone signs up using your link to a membership, as long as they stay a member! Keep in mind that this doesn’t have to be your ONLY type of offer you promote as an affiliate, it just happens to be our favorite and where the bulk of our affiliate income comes from.
4. Research the details of how each affiliate program tracks clicks to sales.
When you get a unique link to start sending out to your audience, the brand you are working with will keep track of who clicks the link, keep track of their information, and when they make a purchase you are given commission. Keep in mind though that each brand uses different software, and they have different rules. Some brands will only track that users activity for as short as 24 hours or as long as 90 days. The shorter the time frame, the more you have to encourage people to make a purchase.
We prefer working with brands that have a much longer window because not everyone wants to make a purchase right away. Instead someone might click on our affiliate link, jump over to the brands website, check it out, and forget to make a purchase. Let’s say we talk about the product again in an email a week later, and that person decides to make a purchase because they saw that email… even if they don’t re-click on our link we will still get credit for it!
Effectively Promoting to Your Audience
Once you've found relevant affiliate partners, you need to incorporate promotional content into your website, blog, or social media presence. Here are some best practices:
5. Promote affiliate offers as enthusiastically as you would your own products.
See why we told you above that you need to pick products you already know and love?? Don't let your affiliate marketing products be an afterthought. You truly have to work with brands and businesses that you love, because you need to be able to talk about them as if they were your own. This is HUGE in getting your audience to trust you enough to purchase someone else's product that you recommended.
6. Create content that relates to the product or company first before directly promoting.
This is key to building familiarity with your audience. Again, if you already use and love the product, you have probably promoted it for free at some point, or at least told someone about it online. Make sure you are introducing the product or offer throughout your marketing, and not just throwing out a “BUY THIS PRODUCT” style of post and expecting people to make a purchase the first time you talk about it.
7. Ask your affiliate partners for discount codes or links to free offerings you can share with your audience first before asking them to purchase.
When you talk to your audience about someone else’s offering, it is way easier to sell them on a freebie or by offering a discount. This is how you continue to build trust with your audience, make the connection between you and the other brand, and all around makes conversion easier.
8. Posting once or twice about an affiliate product usually only generates a sale or two.
Want to know how long we talk about other people's products that we are an affiliate for? A full 8 days - and of course talking about it throughout the year. But just like we use The 8-Day Campaign® sales system for our own products, we do the same for our affiliate products. You have to run longer campaigns for the best possible earnings.
Implementing Successful Affiliate Marketing Strategies
As you become more experienced with affiliate promotions, there are some overarching strategies you can implement:
9. Always disclose that links are affiliate links so you remain transparent with your audience.
Not only is this the law according to the FTC, this builds long-term trust with your audience. You have to disclose that you will earn an income if someone decides to purchase through your link. You can potentially get in a lot of trouble if you don’t. But it’s really simple! Here is a quick template that you can use to plug at the end of your emails, blog posts, social captions, or anywhere else you promote your affiliate product.
The [post/blog/email] above does include affiliate links and promotions. I only recommend products I love and use, and by purchasing through my link, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. [insert #affiliate if posting on social media]
10. Plan affiliate campaigns and promotions further ahead and add them to your editorial calendar.
You don't want to let great programs slip through the cracks, so you have to plan for them ahead of time, just like you do for your own product. Quick story, last year we decided to talk about a product we were an affiliate for during the brand’s open cart period. In 8 days we talked about it so much, we generated over $50k in sales for the brand, and earned a $25k commission! This is something we had planned in our calendar for months, and prepped for it just like a regular sales campaign we would run for our brand!
11. Custom content will always outperform canned affiliate content.
Most affiliate programs come with some sort of “asset bank” where the brand creates basic content for you to share and promote their products. In our experience, this canned affiliate content gives you a ton of great information and ideas, but you should just share it. Take the time to create authentic blog posts, videos, graphics, or social media updates to share! Create them with your branding, in your style, with your flair so it feels like genuine content straight from you. You will find way more success in marketing affiliate products this way!
12. When relevant, discuss your own experience purchasing the affiliate product or service.
This is honestly when we see the most conversion, is when we talk about how well it worked for us! Showcase results you achieved from using the product or offer you are promoting. This provides social proof, continues building that trust with your audience, and overall makes them feel more comfortable making a purchase using your affiliate link!
Your Quick Start Guide to Affiliate Marketing
There you have it - 12 tips to help you get started and find success with affiliate marketing. Just remember to stay true to your audience, choose relevant products, disclose affiliate links, and continually promote partners that drive great value for your followers. With the right strategy, affiliate earnings can become a significant part of your income.
And if you want to amplify your income through affiliate marketing… but you struggle with the marketing part, we are here to help! Grab The 8-Day Campaign® so you can build out full and strategic sales campaigns for the affiliate offers you want to promote. This sales system comes with a strategy, Canva and caption templates, and an entire guide of what to post, when, and how!!
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Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and content shop to help social media managers and Instagram savvy women entrepreneurs to beat the algorithm and grow their organic engagement (yes, even in 2021).
This year she also launched Your Template Club, a Canva Template subscription to provide social media managers and Instagram savvy business owners with content templates designed for engagement in their inbox.
Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2017, Manu started Your Social Team with the mission of helping women entrepreneurs and social media managers grow engagement and sales through Instagram without the overwhelm.