It’s no surprise that affiliate marketing is on the rise, as it’s a great way to get the word out about quality brands while making money. The way these mutually beneficial partnerships work is that platforms like websites — the affiliates — receive a commission to recommend products from separate businesses.
This performance-based marketing strategy is a practical way for bloggers to make money by writing reviews, guides, tutorials, and other content about their favorite items. It’s also a cost-effective way for companies to increase brand awareness and sales. The more customers buy from the website, the more both parties profit.
“It’s important to note that the affiliate only gets paid when a sale is made, letting businesses reach new customers and use new channels of distribution,” explains Michelle Nguyen, owner and marketing manager at UpPromote, Shopify’s top recommended affiliate tracking app.
Whether you’re ready to bring in supplemental income or make a living through affiliate marketing, here, Nguyen and other experts share what you need to know to start making money through affiliate marketing for bloggers.
How Affiliate Marketing and Blogging Work Together
Although platforms like TikTok and YouTube can be used for affiliate marketing, the content on these platforms generally has a short lifespan, making it harder to convert engagement into actual sales. Evergreen content, on the other hand, lives on the internet indefinitely, which makes it easier for potential customers to find and use it to inform their purchases. That’s why websites are the superior platforms for affiliate marketing, according to Peter Lewis, CEO of the consulting firm Strategic Pete.
“Blogs are great at driving organic traffic in the long run, mainly through SEO, especially with written content like tutorials, reviews, and detailed guides,” Lewis says. “Companies also love blogs because they can be fully customized, targeting very niche audiences, often indexed by search engines for longevity.”
In other words, using a blog or website to get the word out about your favorite products allows you to create content that can generate affiliate marketing revenue over a long period. Likewise, the customizability of the website will also make it easier to optimize content for SEO so it appears at the top of search engine searches. Websites that stay on top of SEO keywords are set up for organic traffic, so there is less need to spend money to promote your blog with paid ads.
Nguyen adds that affiliate marketing through blogging can also help track website traffic and other analytics data, such as click-through rates and customer conversions. This will allow you to see which links perform the best and develop a strategy to promote products that yield the highest returns.
“Conversion optimization is a major factor because websites enable the thoughtful positioning of affiliate links, call-to-actions, and other conversion-oriented components,” she says. “This makes it possible for affiliates to increase sales and optimize the efficacy of their marketing campaigns.”
5 Steps To Starting Your Affiliate Blog
1. Find a Niche
Lewis and Nguyen agree that finding the right niche to focus on is one of the most crucial first steps in affiliate marketing for bloggers or people running e-commerce websites. This is how you identify your target audience and products that could interest them. Both experts recommend focusing on an area you’re genuinely interested in because this will make your content more authentic. “It could be technology, finance, health, hobbies — anything that interests you and that people want,” Lewis says.
Identifying a solid niche will help you brainstorm content and identify affiliate opportunities, but first, you must pick a platform.
2. Set Up a Blog
Once you know your niche, you need to pick a platform to host your blog before you can create content. Platforms like Substack, Blogger, and Wix are free and suitable for someone just getting started. WordPress is the more flexible platform for customizability and monetizing options, though. Opting for WordPress will require you to brainstorm, pick a domain name, and purchase it through a registry like GoDaddy for about $10 to $20 a year — a small price for an SEO-friendly website that looks more professional in the long run.
WordPress comes highly recommended for affiliate marketing blogs because it’s easy to use and has a large community of plugin developers.
3. Sign Up for Affiliate Programs
With a platform for your blog in place, you can start researching and signing up for affiliate programs or programs that connect affiliate businesses with marketing bloggers. When evaluating potential programs, Nguyen recommends considering the following factors: The relevance of a program’s products to your core audience, the commission rates, the quality of marketing assets, and any reliable tools for tracking and reporting that they may offer.
Some affiliate marketing programs, like Skimlinks, may deny new blogs with limited examples of past content, in an effort to ensure all the sites they associate themselves with have real, quality content. In contrast, others, like Amazon Associates, allow bloggers to sign up before they have a track record. Some red flags to look out for with non-legitimate affiliate marketing programs are ones without a transparent commission structure, payout schedule, or vetting procedure, as well as a negative reputation from past program participants.
4. Create Consistent, Quality Content
Now that you’re on board with a few affiliate programs, it’s time to start writing about the products and driving readers to those affiliate links. While optimizing content to appear at the top of search engine results is helpful, you cannot keyword your way out of publishing content that is free of errors and laid out in a clean, readable way. Search engine optimization and thoughtful content are in no way mutually exclusive, and the best affiliate marketing resources have both.
5. Be Transparent About Affiliate Relationships
The most important step before publishing your first affiliate marketing blog is disclosing that you receive a commission for any sales made from the links in your posts. “The best way to disclose affiliate revenue on your blog is by placing a clear statement at the top of each post containing affiliate links,” Nguyen advises. This statement should read something like, “This post contains affiliate links: I may earn a commission if you make a purchase through these links at no additional cost.”
Not only does this disclosure build trust with readers, but it ensures you will not lose potential commissions — or much worse. Failure to disclose can often lead to fines from the Federal Trade Commission.
“While many affiliate programs have stringent policies against nondisclosure, which could result in removal from the program, noncompliance with FTC regulations can result in fines or legal action,” Nguyen warns. “To stay clear of these possible pitfalls, it’s essential to uphold transparency and adhere to best practices.”
Affiliate Blog Marketing Strategies
Optimize for SEO
One way to create consistent quality content optimal for SEO is by brainstorming and writing blogs that answer real questions that people are prone to Googling. “Content that serves up answers to actual questions and provides solutions that hold some sort of value is organically going to attract over time,” Lewis explains.
Think about people’s problems and then see if you can use products from affiliate programs to solve them. Next, use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush (more on that below) to make sure you’ve incorporated the best possible keywords into content that is already copy edited and tailored towards your audience.
Build an Email List
To build and maintain an audience for your affiliate marketing blog, send out regularly scheduled email newsletters to your subscribers. One effective strategy for building an email list is often hosting contests and giveaways that require emails for entry. “This incentivizes potential subscribers to sign up while also providing valuable data and engagement for your business,” Nguyen says.
Use Calls to Action (CTAs)
If you want to make money on your affiliate marketing blog, you need to get readers to click on affiliate links first and foremost. The best way to do this is by including calls to action, or CTAs, intended to nudge your audience to click on certain links and make certain purchases. Some examples of popular CTAs include “Shop Now,” “Sign Up Today,” “Get Started,” “Learn More,” “Subscribe to our Newsletter,” “Claim Your Discount,” and more.
Promote on Social Media
Once you have a platform for your blog, some content, and a growing email list, you can start cross-promoting specific posts on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. When doing this, you can encourage followers to sign up for your email newsletter and use hashtags related to your niche to attract new audience members.
How Much Can You Make From Affiliate Marketing?
According to a poll from Affise, income ranges widely, but over 25% of affiliates make between $81,000 and $200,000 per year. As for the rest of the 75%, that depends on the traffic your blog generates, the products you promote, and how well you communicate with your audience.
“If you’re just getting started, you may make only a couple hundred bucks per month, but believe it or not, the more you create content, build SEO, and form smart affiliate relationships, the quicker the number grows,” Lewis says. Once your traffic starts to grow and you establish trust with your audience, affiliate marketing bloggers can “earn between $5,000 and $20,000 or more in a month, especially if you’re into high-ticket niches such as tech or finance.”
Where to Find Affiliate Partners
Amazon Associates
The Amazon Associates program is excellent for new bloggers promoting products for sale on the online retailer’s site because it lets you sign up, complete a quick application, and start generating affiliate links right away. This means content creators can track links and sales, while learning and making commissions as they go.
ShareASale
The ShareASale network is more advanced than the Amazon Associates program and offers the potential for niche partnerships and higher commission rates. That said, affiliate marketing bloggers must be accepted into the program, which is also more competitive than Amazon’s network, so newer platforms may have to build up content around their niche first.
CJ Affiliate
CJ Affiliate is the most sophisticated of these networks, providing access to brand partnerships worldwide, as well as a wide variety of tracking and data analysis features. While anyone can sign up for CJ Affiliate, it can be challenging for newer bloggers to get approved by specific affiliates within the network until they have an established niche and audience.
OfferVault
Unlike the affiliate networks mentioned above, OfferVault is an easy-to-use directory that makes it easy for bloggers to search for partnerships and reach out to brands directly. This also allows content creators at all levels to compare the commission and conversion rates across different companies and make the best partnership choices for their niche and audience.
What to Look For in Affiliate Programs for Bloggers
Commission Structure
The commission for affiliate partnerships is one of the most critical factors to look out for because it directly determines how much you make from the sales you generate. Affiliate networks with a low barrier of entry, like Amazon Associates, have low commission rates in the 1% to 3% range, which may be suitable for someone getting started. But a good commission rate is closer to 10% to 30%.
Relevance to Your Audience
As important as it is to consider commission rates with affiliate marketing programs, the product has to be relevant to your audience to get readers to click on links and make purchases. “If the product isn’t something your readers are interested in or can use, you’re not going to see many conversions,” Lewis says. This is why it’s crucial to establish a clear niche early on, so you know what’s relevant to your readers and how to convert them.
Cookie Duration
Lewis also recommends looking for affiliate programs with longer cookie duration, like Shopify’s affiliate program, which offers a 30-day window. That means you will get paid as long as your readers make their purchases within 30 days of clicking a link. “A long cookie means more time for someone to make a purchase after clicking your link, which can lead to more commissions for you,” Lewis says.
Reporting Capabilities
To see what promotional efforts are working (and what ones are not), bloggers should also look for affiliate marketing programs that can track and analyze key metrics like clicks, conversions, and traffic sources. Affiliate marketing platforms should similarly be equipped with tools to analyze sales and overall revenue so bloggers can see what products and categories are performing best. Other helpful resources to look out for include geolocation, device and platform tracking, and time-based data, enabling you to see what your audience clicks on and buys and where and when on your site they do this.
Ease of Integration
Many affiliate marketing programs require frequent edits to links and other details. To do this efficiently and effectively as your blog grows, you must work with affiliate marketing programs that integrate easily with your content management system (CMS). For instance, CMS platforms like WordPress have plugins that allow bloggers to generate new affiliate links and add them to posts, as advanced integration features allow bloggers to pull product data from an affiliate program interface directly. This ensures prices are current and will become increasingly crucial for scaling as your affiliate market blog grows and you have more affiliate partnerships to manage.
Helpful Online Tools for Affiliate Marketers
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a free SEO resource widely used by content creators to identify keywords, analyze their posts’ traffic and performance, and increase their website visibility overall. It’s also a helpful tool for backlink analysis, which allows bloggers to see how people are getting to their websites and find out what is affecting their ranking on Google and other search engines.
Semrush
Semrush is an SEO tool similar to Ahrefs but slightly more comprehensive, but the resource comes with monthly subscription fees starting at $139.95. This can be steep for a new blogger, but it allows you to search keyword phrases and identify the intent behind keywords. This makes it easier to anticipate what people are searching for and why, so you can write reviews, guides, tutorials, and other content to answer their questions.
Pretty Links
Pretty Links is a WordPress plugin that enables affiliate marketing bloggers to shorten links and create custom, trackable links for different brands. Pretty Links is more straightforward and user-friendly compared to more advanced link management tools and is good for a beginner who can afford a modest subscription fee of $99.60 a year.
ThirstyAffiliates
ThirstyAffiliates is a WordPress plugin and link management tool similar to Pretty Links but slightly more advanced. For the same initial annual subscription fee, ThirstyAffiliates allows you to shorten, customize, and manage links and conduct automated audits on them to ensure the links are working as they should be. ThirstyLinks is recommended for more seasoned bloggers with large audiences and new content creators looking to legitimize themselves as players in the affiliate marketing space.
Kit
Formerly ConvertKit, Kit is an email marketing resource that allows bloggers to get the word out about their content through regularly scheduled newsletters. Their free plans allow for up to 10,000 subscribers and unlimited emails, and subscription plans that have more automation capabilities start at $25 a month. It’s a good option for new and established affiliate marketing bloggers alike.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a more popular email marketing tool, but the free version limits bloggers to 500 subscribers. However, Mailchimp offers more design options and flexibility if you pay subscription fees starting at $20 a month. You also get features like A/B testing, where you can compare sample blogs to see which SEO-optimized content would perform better. This makes Mailchimp a smart choice for established bloggers with large audiences.
Key Takeaways
- Starting an affiliate marketing blog is easy, but it requires identifying the right niche, such as health, tech, or finance, and setting up a self-hosted website.
- Evergreen content that solves problems and is optimized for SEO will help you build an audience, and keyword tracking tools will help you appear higher up in search results.
- Email marketing and social media platforms can help affiliate marketing bloggers gain subscribers and traffic over time.
- Figuring out favorable commission percentages for affiliate programs is essential for bloggers to make money, but promoting quality products that make sense for your niche is the most important thing for gaining and maintaining readers’ trust.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is blogger a good platform for affiliate marketing?
Lewis and Nguyen agree that Blogger can be an adequate platform for a content creator who is just getting started. The biggest upside is that it’s free, “so affiliate marketers do not have to spend overhead while figuring out their content and niche,” Lewis says. The biggest downside is that Blogger has very few customization options for design and monetization, he adds. “Blogger is difficult to scale as your following grows, which is one of the main goals of affiliate marketing.”
Which blog site is best for affiliate marketing?
For writers who are looking to build a legitimate following and monetize their blog, WordPress is the best platform by far. “If you’re really looking to build a successful affiliate marketing blog, investing in a self-hosted WordPress site will provide far more opportunities for growth,” Lewis says. Sure, signing up for WordPress requires paying a yearly fee for a domain name, but given how many plug-ins, SEO tools, and customization options come with WordPress, a professional-looking domain name is well worth the money.
Which blog niche is best for affiliate marketing?
Niches like tech, finance, crypto, and online education can offer higher returns of commissions compared to niches with lower price-point products like health and beauty, but that does not necessarily make them “best.” The best niche for a particular blogger will be one that is consistent with their interests and one that connects them with brands and products they genuinely love. This will help bloggers grow a loyal audience through consistent, authentic content.
