Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

Most bloggers make a lot of money with Affiliate marketing and its is a fantastic way to build passive income that will continue to flow in, even when you’re sleeping or spending time on other projects. In this article I have compiled Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing for you.

It’s one of the fastest and most effective ways to begin making an income from your blog or website, even when you’re still building up your following and reputation.

By targeting the right audience, you can enjoy commission while recommending your favorite products and services; and the best part is that affiliate marketing works for all niches.

However, bloggers and niche site owners tend to make a few mistakes that limit their chances of affiliate success.

Here’s my guide Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing so you can maximize profit, making every post pay.

Since there are many considerations involved, please read the full guide before implementing or making any changes to your affiliate posts.

Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

1. Target the Right Audience

When I first started implementing an affiliate process, I applied for popular affiliate programs and inserted the affiliate link into my popular posts. You understand the quest of making money that I had back then, yah!

While this affiliate ‘trickle-down effect’ will make you some income, it’s not the best strategy for affiliate success.

But with a few adjustments you can be back on track. You need to catch the reader with their credit card in their hand to start making consistent sales.

To really start making money from affiliates, you need to flip your affiliate game around and start the process by choosing the right product/service that have prime keywords that will help you rank your affiliate article on page one of Google.

For example, instead of just adding Amazon product affiliate links to your guide on studying for finals, you can choose a product that you know will help students study and target the keywords they would be using to search for such products.

Why not do both?

You can use Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing through both methods, but the more targeted approach will likely make more.

Track the income to see which type of post brings in the most income.

So How Do I Rank on Google To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

This process is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you are not familiar with SEO I suggest you read our introductory guide here.

Part of SEO is keyword research. This helps you target keywords with a decent volume and low competition so you can appear on page one of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in Google.

SEO will allow you to reach the right audience who want to buy the affiliate product or service. We call this process writing ‘money-making’ posts.

You can make affiliate income from social media but you need an engaged audience to do so. Use our tips on Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing. An active newsletter list is another funnel that you can target.

For us, SEO offers the best outcomes for our travel and food sites when it comes to monetizing through affiliates so this guide is going to focus on using SEO.

2. Choose Products/Services to Promote

When deciding what affiliate products to promote, don’t just choose the popular ones. Really consider the following things:

1. The affiliate and the product.

• Do you stand behind the company?
• Is it a high enough price point to actually make money from?
• What is the commission you will receive?
• What is the cookie window?

2. How a buyer would purchase the product. Will they buy right away or consider their decision first?
3. What is the user intent of the target audience?

For example, what does the Google searcher asking for ‘best neighborhoods in Nairobi’ want?

• Vacant houses for rent?
• Clubs
• Hotels?
• Schools?
• Houses for sale?
• Family-friendly areas?

3. Consider the Buying Cycle

You need to appeal to readers who are ready to purchase. So be sure you choose keywords that target the decision/buying stage.

Using buying words and phrases will attract decision-stage readers:

• Product reviews.
• This product vs that product
• Best luxury product or best budget product

Don’t worry so much about the volume of the keyword, if you think you have a chance of ranking on page one of Google with your post. It’s better to rank well for smaller volume keywords than to not rank for high volume ones.

I used to believe you needed a large audience to make money but that’s not true, you need a targeted audience. With affiliate marketing, it is better to have a hundred views that convert, than a thousand that don’t.

For example, one of my targeted money-making posts makes 5x the commission in comparison to another of my posts that receive a ton of views but isn’t targeted.

Affiliate links work much better in a targeted post.

4. Solve a Problem

You can add an affiliate link to just about any post, but the ones that will begin to make money are the ones that solve a problem.

Think about an issue that causes a problem for your audience – something they struggle with, such as how to source a recipe ingredient they can’t get at home, or how to choose the best elliptical machine when there are so many similar options on the market.

Those are the affiliate products you should introduce to your audience.

Brainstorm all the pain points your customers might have. By the way, we always recommend that you brainstorm before writing any SEO post. The affiliate posts process is no different. It helps you consider all the angles of the problem.

After brainstorming, conduct keyword research to see if people are actively looking for a solution to that problem on Google.

If there is search volume, and the post you write solves the problem, you will begin to make affiliate sales.

Note: Don’t forget to consider whether you can compete against the top ten posts in the SERPs. If there are already dozens of people solving that problem, you might have a hard time getting your solution in front of readers.

5. Choose The Right Affiliate Programs 

When choosing an affiliate program, at the very least you have to consider the following:

• Commission 

What percentage will you make? Or

Is there a flat fee you will receive per sale?

• Cookie Window 

  How long does a reader have to purchase in order for you to get the commission?

For example, Booking.com’s direct program gives a 25% commission on the amount they make (not the full hotel booking amount) with no cookie window, whereas Amazon has a sliding scale for commission, product depending, and a 24-hour cookie window.

More advanced site owners will also consider the overall company conversion rate before applying too because the company’s ability to make the sale after you’ve led a reader to them is also very important.

6. Consider the Types of Affiliate Programs

Some companies choose to host a direct affiliate program like Booking.com and Amazon Associates.

Others go via a third party where you sign up for the third-party program (like Commission Junction or Awin), then you must also apply for the individual affiliate program.

There are companies covering every niche thinkable in these third-party sites.

Here are some of the affiliate marketing programs we use on our sites (travel, food and SEO):

• Amazon Associates– Direct Amazon product sales
• ShareASale– Third party, shop for merchants once you sign up
• VigLink now Sovrn Commerce– Third party, shop for merchants once you sign up
• CJ– Third party, shop for merchants once you sign up
• Partnerizewas Performance Horizon – Third party, shop for merchants once you sign up
• Awin– Third party, shop for merchants once you sign up
• Food52 – Recipes, kitchenware

7. Focus On The Perfect Products 

There are a few ways in which you may be choosing the wrong products or services.

Firstly, you are pitching a product that just does not convert.

It might not be right for your audience, it might have poor conversion rates for the company selling it, the product or service is not available all year round, you’ve failed to optimize the post for that product (see next section) and/or you can’t rank for target keywords (see above).

Secondly, you only focus on low-priced products with low commission rates which in return do not make you much in revenue.

Naturally, in the beginning, you may not want to target high-value products because you don’t think you can sell them.

However, business is a risk so eventually; you will have to break out of this mindset.

A low commission rate isn’t always a negative though. If you can sell lots of the product, you create a high average order rate (AOV). In some cases, this can earn you additional income for bringing in a lot of sales.

Note: For many affiliates, the reader doesn’t have to buy the product or service you recommend for you to receive a commission.

For example, with Amazon, don’t be surprised if you see pet-related goods showing up in your reports when you promote wellbeing products.

Although dogs are a great source of happiness, it just means the reader has read your guide, clicked through to Amazon from one of your product links then continued shopping for other items.

This isn’t always something to be celebrated though as it can indicate that the reader did not complete the buying cycle for the targeted keywords/product or service.

8. Optimize Your Affiliate Posts 

You may have SEO down but your content isn’t converting for affiliates.

There are many reasons that your links might not be converting, such as lack of calls to action, placing it in the wrong spot in the post, and not making the buying signals clear enough.

To fix this issue, see below for some great ideas.

Deep Linking – Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

For many affiliate programs, in-text affiliate links that are naturally placed within context convert better than widgets and images. Widgets can slow your page speed down too.

Clear Calls to Action (CTAs)

CTAs are buying signals, like buy here, act now, check prices, reserve your spot, etc. Not including CTAs might leave your readers without a clear understanding of what they should do.

Sense of Emotion

Every good marketer knows that fear sells.

If you can paint a picture from personal experience which outlines why the reader should buy the product and add a sense of urgency or excitement, you could increase your selling power. Remember, solve a problem!

Avoid Affiliate Stuffing

Just like keyword stuffing, you can overdo affiliates too. Sure you want to encourage click-through, but having an affiliate in every paragraph looks spammy and can be overwhelming.

Sell naturally by putting a personal spin on it. If you’re trying to sell products you don’t use yourself, it will come across as unnatural and salesy.

Use Professional Plugins

There are a couple of affiliate plugins which improve the user experience (UX) as well as making items stand out.

• AAWP– Creates stylish Amazon tables, authorized to pull prices which is against T+Cs for you
• Thirsty Links– An easy-to-use link cloaking plugin. Redirects your messy + sometimes spammy looking links to a neat URL. Tracks too

Mobile User Experience

Do not ignore mobile user experience. Google now ranks the mobile version of your site, so always evaluate how your posts look to mobile users. Ask a friend to check for you; sometimes it’s difficult to see issues with your own posts.

9. Track Your Affiliates

Affiliate marketing is not a set-it-and-forget-it process. Question any affiliate course that screams ‘make money while you sleep’.

Sure, you will be selling while you get shut-eye but to make a lot of money you have to stay on top of securing Google rankings through SEO and working out what affiliate placement is working.

If an affiliate program offers a way for you to track the specific link that is being clicked, use it. This will give you great insight into what links are converting, and what links aren’t. Check frequently to see what placement is working and be willing to adjust it when it’s not.

Is it a deep link, a buying signal CTA, a button or a box? Can you replicate what it working elsewhere? If it’s not working, tweak it. Business is about calculated risk. What products are selling? Brainstorm more content, do keyword research and publish.

If you have ads running on your site it might be worth removing them for money-making posts or at least manipulating ad placement, so they don’t detract from the money you could be making.

Even worse, ads can display the same affiliate partner so your reader may be seeing ads promoting the affiliate partner and if they click the ad instead of your link, that’s an affiliate sale lost for you. This can happen if the reader has looked at the affiliate partner site before.

10. Build Relationships

Many bloggers are resistant to following the advice of affiliate partners, and believe me, I was one of them.

For example, whenever I was contacted by a company who wanted me to become an affiliate and start mentioning their product in my posts, I wondered why I should give a company free advertisement on my site. They should pay for that exposure, right? Not necessarily.

While some affiliates will pay for advertisement in addition to the affiliate commission, most won’t.

Effectively, the affiliate commission is your payment for advertising their product. You become partners and agree to positively promote their product on your site, which begins to make you a trusted brand ambassador.

One of my Facebook followers asked if I trusted GetYourGuide tours, which I am an affiliate for.

I could honestly say yes because I’ve used them personally.

Create an open dialogue with affiliate partners. Email often, discuss ideas, ask for reports if they are not readily available. Some partners will be into this, others won’t care. You just have to keep wooing!

Never ignore the wee guys. Some of our most successful affiliate partners are brands you’ve probably not heard about.

Don’t disregard every email from affiliates as spam. Be very diligent with the companies that find you via your top ranking posts. They understand SEO, too. It’s a killer combo for affiliate income.

Ask for placement fees if you can guarantee Return On Investment (ROI). Some companies do have a budget for this. It is more likely that you will have success if the company contacted you. Especially if they found you on page one of Google for a buying keyword.

Attend industry events so you can meet partners face to face. Invite your favorite partners to conferences. If they are going already, arrange to meet for a casual drink or more officially during a speed-networking slot.

11. Don’t Think You’re An Affiliate Expert 

We see this too often. Bloggers make a month of sales and suddenly they know everything about affiliates, so they start a company telling other bloggers how to make money from affiliates.

Affiliate marketing is a long-term commitment. It takes at least a year of analysis to understand the full cycle of your affiliates: the ebbs and flows of traffic, the buying trends, the low season, Black Friday/Cyber Monday rush, the damn cancellations and returns.

Sure, get excited about the first affiliate sales, but don’t get too emotionally attached until the monthly revenue is consistent and growing.

Would the bank give you a mortgage on your current sales?

Readers, always check the credentials of those selling you advice and courses. Make sure they can back up what they say with actual data and proof.

Check the testimonials for blogging courses are by bloggers and site owners, not Instagram accounts owners. These are completely different platforms.

Current Affiliate Issues – Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

When you start really digging deep into affiliates and improving your conversions, you will likely run into a few issues that you need to be aware of so you don’t get burned.

• Affiliates can change contracts when they want and they do! Laura once applied to a program that offered 12% commission only to find they changed the commission rate a month later to 1%.
• Affiliate partners change programs and they may or may not tell you about it. That means you have to change the links to the new affiliate program or they will become defunct.
• Many affiliate dashboards are confusing and require a degree to understand and navigate. We’re spoiled by Google Analytics/Search Console. Why can’t every affiliate have something similar?
• When a reader clicks on your affiliate link and it clicks through to the mobile app instead of a browser, are you making that referral sale? With the majority of our readers viewing our posts via mobile it is something we should all be questioning our affiliate partners.

Final Words – Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

The biggest change you will see in affiliate earnings will be when you start thinking strategically about your affiliate partnerships and links, rather than just tossing a link in whenever it seems convenient.

Start acting like a business person who is in it for the long run and is confident in making strategic risks for increased gains.

Sign Up For Affiliate Programs

Affiliate Marketplaces

(A place to sign up for multiple affiliate programs and manage them in 1 place).

• ShareASale (recommended) – WP Engine, StudioPress, WP Rocket, more. Easy to get approved, create links, track stats, with a wide rank of affiliates.
• ClickBank – LongTail Pro, SeoPressor, more.
• CJ Affiliate – Overstock, GoDaddy, Zappos, Walgreen, Vitamin Shoppe, Verizon Wireless, Under Armour, TurboTax, TJ Maxx, Sears, Samsung, QVC, Priceline, Petco, Old Navy, Office Depot, Office Max, Nike, Newegg, Michael Kors, Intuit, Hotels.com, HelloFresh, Guitar Center, GNC, FedEx Office, AT&T, American Express, Vivid Seats, TeamViewer, Sunglass Hut, Ally Invest, more.
• Rakuten Marketing – Udemy, Walmart, Macy’s, StubHub, Hulu, more.
• Impact – ADP, Airbnb, AppSumo, Allstate, 1-800 Flowers, Avon, Constant Contact, Credit Karma Tax, Envato Market, ESPN+, Getty Images, Gravity Forms, Grubhub, Houzz, HostGator, InMotion, iQ, iStock, Kind, Kohl’s, Lending Club, Levi’s, LinkedIn Learning, Namecheap, Shutterstock, Southwest, Squarespace, StackPath CDN, Target, Turo, Uber, Uber Eats, Xfinity, more.
• FlexOffers – Apple Music, Amore Beds, Mac Cosmetics, Wine Of The Month Club, DirectTV, Sketchers, Barnes & Noble, GameStop, SkyScanner, more.

Popular Online Retailers

• Amazon – up to 10% based on category.
• Ebay – 40 – 80% based on category (but only 24 hour cookie tracking).
• Etsy – 4 – 8%.
• Target – 4% on most categories.
• Walmart – 4% on most categories.
• Aliexpress – 3% for electronics, 7-9% for everything else.
• Newegg – 0.5 – 1%.
• Overstock – up to 6%.

WordPress Hosting

• SiteGround – $50 – $100+/sale (tier program).
• WP Engine – $200/sale + bonuses + $50 two-tier program.
• Kinsta – $50 – $500/sale + 10% recurring.
• Cloudways – $50 – $125/sale (tiered) or recurring revenues with lower initial commission – they were also #1 in many Facebook polls, have a very strong following, and I will be recommending them soon for managed cloud hosting

WordPress Themes

• StudioPress – 35% (usually on a $100 sale).
• Elegant Themes – 50% on plans ranging from $89 – $250.

Email Marketing

• AWeber – 30% recurring (on $19 – $149+ per sale).
• Constant Contact – $105 per sale and $5 per lead (signs up for free trial).

Other Affiliates

• SEMrush – 40% recurring (on $40 – $160/month).
• StackPath CDN – usually $10 – $20 commission per sale.
• MyThemeShop – 55% ($48 commission – $244 depending on plan).
• ThemeForest – 30% of each new person’s first purchase.
• WP Rocket – 20% ($10 – $50/sale).
• Freelancer – fee of the project for first 100 days (usually 10% of the project).
• Udemy – 20% on any course.
• Refer WordPress – 20% for wordpress.com, JetPack, and WooCommerce.
• OptiMonster – 20%.
• LongTail Pro – 30% (and 30% recurring) on $219/year – $377/year plans.
• Elementor – 50% of $49 – $199 depending on plan.
• HelloFresh – $25 (maximum) on first sale.

Coupon Codes

• A2 Hosting + HostGator – these affiliates let you create custom coupon codes which is a huge bonus if you’re doing YouTube videos.

Tyler’s Moore’s video on how to make a WordPress site has 4.5M+ views and he refers people to HostGator using his coupon code.

This means he gets credited for the sale if they use the code (even if they don’t click his affiliate link).

If you’re doing YouTube videos, coupon codes can result in a lot more sales than dropping links in video descriptions and hoping people click on it. He’s made a fortune.

Learn The Different Types Of Programs

One Tier – get a commission when a sale is generated from your affiliate link.

Two Tier – get a commission when you refer other affiliates and they start making sales (think multilevel marketing).

An example is WP Engine’s program where I tell my readers about their WordPress hosting, they start making sales, and I earn $50/sale from each sale they generate.

Climbing Tiers increased commissions as you make more sales.

Recurring Commissions – usually happens with subscription services… you continuously receive commissions so long as people are signed up. AWeber and SEMrush do this.

Sitewide Commissions – get a commission no matter what people buy on the affiliate’s website. Amazon’s affiliate program does this.

Pay Per Lead – get a commission based on the number of leads (eg. contact form fill-outs) you send to a business. Be sure setup your analytics to track this and have a solid, written agreement with your affiliate. You don’t want to spend tons of time and get burned, like I have.

Cookies – amount of time after people click your affiliate link you will receive a commission if a sale is generated. Usually 30-90 days but shouldn’t be a deal breaker when choosing affiliates.

Individual Affiliate Programs where you sign up through their website.

Affiliate Marketplaces – ShareASale and ClickBank have thousands of merchants to choose from. It’s nice to login to 1 place and check the performance of multiple affiliates without going to each individual portal on each website.

Many programs aren’t part of a marketplace though. I’m a big fan of ShareASale – there are so many companies and industries you can choose from.

Amazon Affiliate Program – Easy Steps To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

The most popular of them all. I don’t participate myself (yet) but the majority of affiliate marketers I know use Amazon because… it’s Amazon.

You can review products you have used or write tutorials (eg. how to connect computer to TV) and drop an affiliate link to an HDMI cable… just a couple examples.

You may want to build relationships with the manufacturers so you can get products before they’re released – giving you time to create a review before the product is launched and capture sales during peak buying times.

• Up to 10% commissions
• Commission % based on categories
• Sitewide commissions (if they buy anything using your link, you get a commission)
• Super high conversions
• Create a custom affiliate link to any product

WordPress Affiliate Programs

If you’re in the WordPress industry like I am (whether it be design, development, or SEO) I have accumulated quite the list of WordPress affiliate programs.

I excluded those I found unsuccessful or pay too little to make a profit from, specifically ThemeForest, Creative Market, and low quality theme stores like Template Monster.

Hosting pays well and I wrote a tutorial for SiteGround’s affiliate program and StudioPress themes which are my 2 highest paying affiliates.

Those tutorials have tons of screenshots/social proof especially for SiteGround.

• SiteGround –  my main hosting affiliate with a solid reputation on social media (which I use to my advantage). They pay $50 – 100+/sale and award custom commissions based on your performance and whether you’re selling more expensive hosting plans.
• WP Engine – $200/sale with a two-tier affiliate program ($50 for each two-tier sale)
• StudioPress – known for being the most quality WordPress themes built in Genesis
• Elegant Themes – high quality themes with generous affiliate program (50% of sale)
• StackPath – CDN with 31 additional data centers (Cloudflare has 200+ data centers, but more data centers = faster content delivery). I get around $1,000/month by referring people to StackPath in my cache plugin tutorials. StackPath recently bought MaxCDN and their affiliate acceptance rate is much lower (depends on your potential volume) but most cache plugins converted to StackPath as their recommended CDN.
• Freelancer – refer people to developers, designers, and other freelancers you’ve worked with and make 100% of Freelancer’s project commission for the first 90 days. I get a lot of people requesting WordPress speed optimization services… so I refer them to my developers with a freelancer affiliate link and make $125/month in passive income. You can’t use affiliate links to link to specific freelancer profiles, so I direct people to the homepage via affiliate link and give people my developer’s usernames.

Run The Numbers

High Commissions, High Conversions, Low Reversal Rates
Of course you want affiliates with high commissions, but they should also have a solid reputation with high conversions and low reversal rates (you get $0 if people cancel after signing up).

If they’re part of an affiliate marketplace like ShareASale or ClickBank you can see some numbers there.

Companies likes Amazon/SiteGround are safe bets, otherwise do your research (or track your affiliate links so you can monitor their performance).

Avoid affiliates offering huge commissions since this probably means they’re struggling to acquire/retain customers naturally. This will hurt your numbers (specifically your conversions/reversal rates).

Why I Didn’t Promote WP Engine For $200/Sale

I could have promoted WP Engine (hosting company) for $200/sale with no tier program to climb – sounds pretty good right?

But when I checked ShareASale I saw their reversal rates were 24%! Just to give you an idea SiteGround’s reversals are less than 10%. WP Engine starts at $29/month while SiteGround’s is $3.95/month, plus SiteGround has a better reputation.

I had to climb a tier program to higher commissions with SiteGround, but it paid off long-term.

You might also like:

• How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts – The Ultimate Guide
• Best WordPress Plugins For Blogs For Effective Blogging
• Million-Dollar Business Ideas You Can Launch For Cheap – or even free