Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time, and it’s still one of the best ways for publishers and bloggers to leverage income. Below are seven lucrative strategies for those who want to get into affiliate marketing.
1. Build and grow your community
Your website is a source of income and a perfect platform for creating a community. Building your users’ database is one of the most used affiliate marketing tools. Use your website traffic to grow your loyal society on other channels constantly:
– Social media accounts. Redirect the audience from your website to your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter by placing a “Follow us” widget or social media icons on the main page. It will help you increase your presence on social media and build a stronger relationship with your audience.
– Newsletter. Email marketing is free advertising. Create a captivating signup form on your website and place it in a visible position. You can acquire contacts directly through lead generation (a form on your landing page, Facebook group, and so on). Offer incentives like a free product or trial in exchange for a subscription (guide, checklists, gift cards, etc.) to raise attention and stimulate people to leave their contacts.
– Blog. Fill your blog with valuable content to generate readers’ interest. Post the links to your blog articles on your website and social media channels. Use eye-catching headlines for your posts. We live in the click-bait era, so it’s important to attract users’ attention in this initial stage.
Soon you will be able to monetize each platform individually. If you are not using your website to grow followers on other marketing platforms yet, start now.
2. Use affiliate links
A basic tool in partner marketing, beginners often miss affiliate links on their websites. Affiliate links connect websites and help generate income.
When choosing over a wide variety of affiliate marketing tools such as widgets and search forms, always use links. More familiar to website visitors, the link is perceived as a recommendation or call-to-action (CTA).
In contrast, widgets require more time for users to understand all the details, while banners could be considered ads. Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called “banner blindness”).
The link should be inspiring. That’s why it’s important to add a motivational call-to-action anchor to it. For example, you can use CTAs such as “learn more about car rentals,” “generate higher income with these tips,” etc.
3. Keep your audience
Use retargeting campaigns to reach users who have interacted with your website in the past. It turns out that 97% of people who visit your site for the first time leave without buying anything. However, you can bring them back and raise your total income.
Check out Google Ads, Facebook retargeting, and LinkedIn Ads for building retargeting campaigns. Although this form of online targeting advertising requires skills, you will be able to remind your website visitors of your products and services after they leave without buying once you have learned it.
4. Even if you found the best, always try new
Having tried a great number of affiliate networks, you probably chose a few that work the best. However, that does not necessarily mean you should stop. The key is to always keep it under the radar. Keep trying new affiliate platforms and tools, even though you are satisfied with current partners and total income.
During the pandemic, travel advertisers are changing or even closing their affiliate programs. Now is a good time to review your offers and check out alternative programs on the market or more lucrative niches that you can join.
The constant search for the best practices will keep you on board, help to know what is trending and always earn on affiliate marketing. Choosing the right affiliate program will allow you to hit the nail on the head in affiliate business from the start.
Therefore, diversify your income sources, find advertisers with higher commissions on products you already promote and explore other niches. For example, you can apply your knowledge to parts of the travel, software, or finance industries that seem lucrative.
5. Mix the topics and niches
You can always find other related niches and earn from them. Let’s say your website is focused only on travel, but your audience might need more services. For instance, travelers from Europe to the U.S. will need an adapter for charging their devices as the outlet is different. Think ahead and offer your audience such products.
During the pandemic, many affiliates rushed to other niches that offered more views and better conversion. Online entertainment, food delivery, finances, e-commerce and healthcare are among them. While the whole economy seems to be in depression, some niches have experienced an uptick and, in all likelihood, will continue on this path, including:
- Finance and Remote Work
- Health, Fitness, and Well Being
- Household Staples and Meals
- Entertainment
- Communication Software.
Switching to a new niche or combining different ones, you can use the same platform you used to run your affiliate campaigns but broadening the scope of topics and promoting offers in a different niche. For example, you don’t have to become a food blogger to start promoting grocery and meal delivery affiliate programs in the current situation. You can simply tell your audience about your social distancing experience and share how you have coped with the problems everyone is facing. For example, food delivery service reviews may be quite valuable to your audience.
The same is true about other niches. Thus, to promote finance-related offers, you don’t necessarily need to create a content-related website and limit yourself to this niche. This is because financial well-being is one of the most topical issues and almost everyone seems interested in it, especially now.
Remember that part of your audience needs extra services and goods besides your main offers. It could be an extra source of income for you.
6. Grow your brand
You will be able to increase your income faster if you build a brand. You can use PR and get your company or yourself featured in well known publications and develop a content plan for your social media platforms. This will reduce the cost of attracting visitors. If you can keep the audience on your website rather than switch them to other platforms – go for it. Use White Label solutions or work through API. In this scenario, a user will buy a service on your platform and more likely to be back in the future.
However, keeping users on your website is not always beneficial. In some cases sending users to advertisers’ websites could bring more sales. For example, when the purchase is expensive or your affiliate partner has a well-known and more trusted brand.
7. Think about your income in advance
When deciding which content to post on your website, choose the one you can monetize. It is clear that everything isn’t about income. However, monetization will lead you to more results than increasing traffic. You might have hundreds of visitors coming to your website every day, but traffic won’t convert into sales without the right placement of tools and links. To earn money, you need to give preference to the content you can implement to affiliate links and cause the intent to buy something. Writing itself won’t bring income unless you monetize the website with affiliate marketing or by selling your product.
Think in advance about what you can sell through your content. Pick a product or service you want to recommend and include an affiliate link to it on your website. A commission will be paid upon a successful deal: namely, your visitor purchases the promoted product/service via your link. For example, such stories as “How to book a bus ticket in New York City” will be harder to monetize through affiliate transfer programs than “How to get to downtown from the airport.”
Any website can make you a profit if you know how to monetize it. But don’t focus just on a high income; instead, focus on the quality of your website and use monetization methods smartly. Traffic, type of promoted product/service, and placement of the affiliate link increase monetization.
Summary
There are many ways to boost your affiliate marketing strategy, and to increase your exposure as best you can try to combine various methods.
Always experiment, look for different options and pick the ones that work better for your audience. Try to involve versatile channels, such as social media, email marketing, webinars and others, to gain and engage with your audience.
