Make Money Online

How to maximize your affiliate marketing income?

October 7, 2019 by Jane Sheeba 8 Comments

There was a time when people used to blog just to share their experience and ideas about certain things, but with time, that concept has changed a lot.

Now-a-days, blogging is one of the most common ways of earning online. Through affiliate marketing, you can now earn lot of money.

All you need to do is have a blog of your own and you are ready. Affiliate marketing is nothing but earning through commission.

There are certain ecommerce websites that are willing to provide you a commission on each and every sale.

Technically, affiliate marketing does not involve a lot of work and is pretty much simple to get started with.

But earning a significant amount of money through affiliate marketing can be a bit difficult.

To ensure that you have stable affiliate marketing earning, you need to know a few tricks and tips.

Build trust with your readers

Building trust is everything! Having an affiliate link on your blog post is not really good enough to earn you a lot of money.

For this, you will have to build trust between you and your readers.

Being honest and transparent about your work can certainly make your readers trust your blog, and therefore, the products that you post.

Prompt replies to your reader’s questions can also build trust. While doing so ensure that you disclose your traffic and sales coming from the affiliate
marketing.

This will make your readers more attached to the blog, and therefore, increase the chance of clicking your affiliate links.

Monetizing your popular post

Instead of making new posts to promote your affiliate link, find the most popular of the posts that you have.

Now choose a perfect product that will go nicely with your post and put your affiliate link on that post.

This will ensure that you have posted your affiliate link to a page that has high traffic.

To do this you will need to use an analytics tool that will provide you with information about the traffic that comes to your blog posts.

Once you find the posts that have the best traffic, you can start finding affiliate products suitable for your post

Email marketing is the key

Email marketing might seem like a basic way of affiliate marketing but this is the most important of the tools that you can use to increase your traffic and income.

All you have to do is know your customers and their needs, and you will able to deliver the same via email marketing.

Incentives

Although this might not work if all your readers are anonymous, but in case you have the user profiles logged into your blog, then you can contact them and offer them incentives, just to ensure that they buy products from you.

Talk to your readers

This is another important point that you need to remember.

While you try to earn from affiliate marketing, you have to make sure that you talk to your readers.

This will sure increase the chances of a sale via your affiliate link.

Try and reply to every single comment on every single blog post. This will allow the users to interact with you through the blog.

Launch of new products

Whenever there is a launch of a new product on your affiliate website, make sure that you let your readers know about it.

You can use your blog posts and email marketing for this purpose. In case there is some bonus offer on your affiliate site, you can also inform your readers via email.

Just make sure that your subject of the email is good enough to attract the reader’s attention and things should work out for you.

Limit your products

Instead of promoting all the products that you find, it is better to promote a limited number of products on your blog.

Not only will this help you to market your affiliate links, but it will also save a lot of time.

Minimizing the list of products that you wish to promote will ensure that you have to concentrate on lesser number of individual posts.

This will help you promote your affiliate link easily.

Using your affiliate link to good effect

To use affiliate links to full potential, it is important that you use your links intelligently.

Ensure that you are using the link at least 3 times on a single blog post.

Do not add your affiliate link after every paragraph, rather try to use them in specific places as this might help you catch your reader’s attention.

Don’t use too many links

Using affiliate links too many times on a single post or using them within the content is not the ideal thing to do.

You have to make sure that your content is not disturbed due to the presence of the affiliate links.

It should not disturb your writing flow in any way possible.

The reader is here to read what you have to share, not just to click on your links, and buy a product.

It is the content that will make your reader interested in the products and not the links, so be careful while using them on your post.

Understand your audience

Not every person is keen to buy products online, so even if you have a lot of readers, it is really important to understand whether your readers are at all interested in buying products online.

Unless they are looking to buy online, you are never going to have a single sale from your affiliate link.

To do so you can put up a questionnaire for your readers, or may be mail them a poll to understand their reaction about the online purchase.

So, as you can understand, it is all about knowing your users and making them interested in your posts.

You have to think about engaging your readers to your blog first, provide them with products that will be useful to them and only then will you be able to increase your earnings from the affiliate marketing.

10 Best Free and Premium Amazon Affiliate Plugins Going into 2019

May 1, 2019 by Guest Author Leave a Comment

10 Best Free and Premium Amazon Affiliate Plugins for 2019

Affiliate marketing has become one of the fundamental constituents of digital marketing.

Within a short period, it has gained a wide range of popularity over the marketplace around the world.

There are tons of Affiliate programs and networks that you can be a part of as an affiliate.

Among the all other affiliate programs, Amazon affiliate is the best and extensive affiliate program in the world.

With the change in modern technology, the pattern of marketing has changed a lot.

With the use of plugins in WordPress, now things become easier for the users. The same thing happens in the Amazon affiliate program.

Best Plugins for Amazon Affiliates

There are hundreds of plugins for Amazon affiliate program that can confuse you while choosing a quality plugin for your personal need.

To make it easy for you, I have listed 10 most compatible free and premium WordPress Amazon affiliate plugins for your better usage.

Before going into the deep, I am listing here in numbers:

AzonPress
Amazon Associates Link Builder
EasyAzon
Amazon Auto Links
Amazon Link
AAWP
AmaLinks Pro
WooCommerce Amazon Affiliates
Amazon eStore Affiliates Plugin
Amazon Simple Affiliate

All the plugins listed above are the most quality plugins for Amazon affiliates. Let’s take a look at the detailed observation of each plugin.

1. AzonPress

AzonPress is the most intuitive premium Amazon WordPress plugin that facilitates its users to earn affiliate commission from the Amazon marketplace.

This is one of the fast-growing Amazon affiliate plugins for Amazon associates.

The most interesting part of the plugin is that once you install the plugin, it will generate auto links against each product and the plugin globalizes every Amazon link on your site.

You can get crucial features that are needed for an Amazon affiliate plugin.

You can create affiliate links for you with a tracking id and when the product information is updated regularly, it will synchronize through Amazon’s product advertising API.

Using AzonPress you can take the products links from any of the Amazon domains including US, UK, Canada, Japan, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, China or India etc.

AzonPress allows you multiple product tables layouts. You can create general product table and comparison table as well with versatile customization options.

You can add a various attribute to the tables that are relating to the Amazon marketplace.

Using AzonPress, it’s really easy to style your tables in various ways.

You also can add custom CSS to furnish your product tables. You will get a design mode and an edit mode for the specific table decoration.

In pricing, the plugin is one of the cost-effective plugins for WordPress users. The plugin offers three types of licenses for its users.

They are single site license, business license, and unlimited site license.

Single Site License – $39.00
Business License – $79.00
Unlimited Site License – $149.00

To learn more about the plugin, you can visit the official website of the plugin.

2. Amazon Associates Link Builder

The Amazon Associates Link Builder plugin released in December 2016.

The plugin renders an easy way to use the shortcode that enables an affiliate to advertise the Amazon products into the post content in different formats and layouts.

Using the plugin, you can add different products to the WordPress content editor form the Amazon product directory.

The plugin also provides you an admin panel that can facilitate you as a user to select up to the nine items, associate ID, ad unit template, and Amazon marketplace as well.

There are multiple attributes with the shortcodes you would handle with:

‘asins’ – Amazon Standard Identification Number.
‘template’ – Templates to be used to show the ads.
‘store’ – This can be store ID or a tracking ID.
‘marketplace’ – Specifies the Amazon marketplace.
‘link-id’ – Link identifier for an ad unit.

The settings option of the plugin placed in such a way that it provides us with a list of options to make the plugin usage easy and comfortable.

There are four templates available in Amazon Associate Link Builder plugin for adding the products into the post.

In pricing, the plugin is free of cost.

You can get the plugin for free from the WordPress directly.

3. EasyAzon

EasyAzon – Amazon Associates Affiliate Plugin

EasyAzon is one of the standard plugins in the marketplace. You can easily link with your WordPress admin panel with the plugin.

In fact, you can use the plugin from any places if you have connected with Amazon affiliate program.

EasyAzon saves your time and earns more money in the most efficient way. You can create high converting Amazon affiliate links rapidly.

Actually, the plugin lets you localize your affiliate links and makes you unable to make full use of international traffic.

You will get built-in link localizer to create global links. This tool also provides you product pop up feature to get more user engagements and conversion.

You don’t need to have any technical knowledge for operating the plugin.

The premium plugin lets you link not only text links but also affiliate links. Moreover, you will have an opportunity to create product information blocks with the call to action button.

You can get the plugin completely free. Click on the link given below.

4. Amazon Auto Links

As the name implies the functionality of the plugin, you can get a clear idea just by looking at the name of the plugin.

This plugin allows you to create automatic links to your expected products that are intended to promote by yourself.

Amazon Auto Links plugin works slightly differently on your site; for instance, if you want to promote products by displaying on your site, this plugin will allow you to present them categorically on your site.

One of the most interesting aspects of the plugin is its support of 10 Amazon locales and works on JavaScript disabled browsers.

Using this plugin, you can have the widgets to insert into a sidebar area.

Moreover, Amazon Auto Links is shortcode friendly that facilitates you to add different ads to your specific posts or pages. You can define a custom button and export ads into external sites with a feed.

So, now, buy the plugin from WordPress directory for free

5. Amazon Link

This is another Amazon affiliate plugin to add product links based on Amazon marketplace within your WordPress.

Your affiliate links will be tracked by the use of the unique Amazon affiliate ID.

Even, if you want to assign a country that will show by default, you can do such as the plugin’s system is compatible with the most Amazon associate programs in the various countries in the world.

Moreover, the powerful search option of the plugin allows you to locate any kind of product on Amazon and you can add links to your web pages.

There are a bunch of options available in the plugin option including My Favorites Widget, Amazon Carousel Widget, MP3 Widget, and Wish List as well. From these templates, you can use any one of them into your posts.

In addition to this, you also can generate product links using the shortcode.

The plugin is free of costs and you will get the plugin from the WordPress.Org.

6. AAWP

Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin (AAWP) is another most prolific Amazon affiliate plugin for WordPress users.

It’s one of the most popular premium Amazon Affiliate Plugins that works tremendously for boosting your affiliate earnings.

Using AAWP, you can do multiple tasks like product reviews, advertisements, or even simple text links that can facilitate you with easily customize the presentation of Amazon products on your website.

This is a flexible affiliate plugin that includes a wide range of features and capabilities. You can earn commission very smoothly using this plugin.

This plugin provides a sort and filterable data to you that makes things easy for you.

One of the important aspects of the plugin is its standard compatibility with most of the standard themes and it works in most of the Amazon locales.

In pricing, the plugin costs €39 for personal usage. It has 4 types of pricing plans. Here they are:

Personal – €39
Plus – €99
Pro – €199
Ultimate – €299

7. AmaLinks Pro

AmaLinks Pro is an Amazon affiliate plugin developed to increase your Amazon affiliate earnings.

The prime objective of the plugin is to cover all the affiliate marketing aspects of Amazon marketplace.

If you have your own blog to start earning with Amazon affiliate, you can do such using this awesome plugin.

You will get pre-built ad templates including multi-product options.

The dynamic product search of the plugin built in directly into the WordPress editor.

Using AmaLinks Pro, you can work seamlessly in the WordPress and Gutenberg editor as well.

You can add any kind of images with your preferred size from the Amazon product listing into your posts and pages.

There will have an easy customization option for adding custom buy/CTA buttons. You also can create comparison tables using the plugin easily.

In pricing, the price of the plugin starts from$47. There are 3 basic plans of the plugin. Here, they are:

Basic – $47
Premium – $97
Platinum – $297

8.WooCommerce Amazon Affiliates

WooCommerce Amazon Affiliates plugin is a plugin that is developed to facilitate the Amazon affiliates solely.

This is a premium plugin which is designed to make things easy in integrating Amazon affiliate links to products with your WooCommerce store.

If you are an affiliate marketer, you may need to have the latest trend of the time that would be the best catch for your readers.

Using the plugin it’s pretty much easier to work with Amazon affiliate WooCommerce platform.

You can easily import a product search according to the category and subcategory from Amazon store; you can do it easily using the plugin.

The product tables created by WooCommerce Amazon Affiliates plugin wouldn’t break even if your server gets slow.

Moreover, the plugin supports huge product variations so that you can share a super cool bird feeder in terms of all its various sizes and colors.

In addition to this, you will get 90 days cookie, synchronization with Amazon products, advanced product search options, and so on.

In pricing, the plugin costs $49.

9. Amazon eStore Affiliates Plugin

This is one of the handiest popular plugins for Amazon affiliates.

To manage Amazon affiliate products and links on your website this could be an amazing option.

There are a number of options you can have using this plugin.

Before using the plugin, you need to get the affiliate ID by signing in at the respective affiliate account, then provide all the credential into the plugin.

One of the most important aspects of the plugin is the plugin includes a unique content spinner that automatically replaces the product information.

It also helps to improve SEO and track every individual how they are performing.

You can import products and fetch images from Amazon CDNs as well as for checkout email.

Moreover, you also can add multiple Affiliate IDs and Facebook integration.

In pricing, the plugin costs $39.

10. Amazon Simple Affiliate

ASA 2 or Amazon Simple Affiliate is another quality plugin you can take as an Amazon Affiliate.

Its easy integration makes the user more interactive while promoting their expected products.

Using Amazon Product Advertising API, the plugin lets you make money with every sale that generates from your Amazon affiliate programs.

The plugin is on the market almost seven years going on that contains a bunch of features with an easy to understand interface.

The installation process is easy and quick. The sortable table feature an automatic update feature makes the plugin more interactive.

The support system of the plugin is awesome as they provide a dedicated support facility to its users.

The documentation and the video tutorials are really useful. Spending 20-30 minutes you will get a clear idea about ins and out of the plugin.

In pricing, the plugin cost starts at $59.

Over to You

In terms of WordPress-based sites, Amazon is a vast range of marketplace to work with and its niche is the leading market niche at the moment.

As it’s an extended marketplace, it has an enormous opportunity for the Amazon affiliates.

Using quality plugin can resolve all your hassles of Amazon Associate’s policies.

For me, if you want to have a premium one that have a bunch of advanced features, then I highly suggest you to use AzonPress plugin to boost your Amazon affiliate earnings in the best possible way.

It has dynamic options with advanced features that facilitate every affiliate to operate the process very smartly.

To be honest, if you know any plugin that works well but that’s not on the list, let me know in the comment section.

Either way, if you want to share any of your experience you can also comment in the below.

I hope the article helped you who are about to use an Amazon affiliate plugin but in a confusing state.

Sazzadul Bari is the digital marketing strategist at WPManageNinja, specializing in content writing and lead gen. He is also the man behind BlogCD, a blogging resource site for bloggers.

7 Affiliate marketing tips to become a trustworthy affiliate

May 17, 2018 by Jane Sheeba 2 Comments

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. There are various benefits to it.

One of the major benefits that attracts me is that with affiliate marketing, you don’t need to create a product in order to make sales.

Creating a product is a tedious task (although for some businesses, this cannot be totally avoided).

Some bloggers might find it easier especially after they have created more than one product in the past.

But if you haven’t yet created a product, creating your first product can be a challenging and time consuming task.

It will require you to put in time and effort, usually leaving aside or moving aside your regular blogging activities.

But wait! I am not discouraging you against creating your own product. I actually insist bloggers to create their own products.

Apart from acting as a regular stream of income, a product of your own will speak for your authority in your niche.

But who doesn’t want to make money without doing much of a hard work ;)?

Well, I am in!

Affiliate marketing is one such way, where you don’t have to create a product of your own, but can still make money from others’ products.

You don’t have to worry about setting up your sales website, setting up payment processors, dealing with customer support and updating the product – Nothing!

But then affiliate marketing is not so easy-peasy as you might think of!

There is still a reasonable amount of “work” you have to do.

I am not going to talk about that in this post. Rather I am going to give you tips for long term success with affiliate marketing.

The key with affiliate marketing is to build trust.

These tips will help you become a trustworthy person in your niche, so people will buy your recommendations without a second thought.

#1 Do not promote a product that you have not tried yourself

OK, I’m sure not many will agree with me on this. And my statement is a generic one, isn’t?

Well you can’t always do this. There are exceptions.

But in general, do not promote a product that you haven’t tried out yourself.

This is why I say so: You won’t be able to clearly point out the positives and negatives of a product if you haven’t tried it out yourself.

Do you agree with me on this?

Well, I said there are exceptions! Yes you may not be able to afford to buy every laptop and camera you review.

And you may not need every software out there

#2 Research about the product

Before you promote a product (even after you have used it) research about the product to see for any scammy associations.

I usually do a search with “product name + negative keywords” – and negative keywords are usually stuff like “sucks”, “scam”, “waste” and words like that depending upon which product you are choosing.

As always a product cannot please everyone on the planet so there will be haters even for a decent product.

So make sure you are not jumping into conclusions by reading just one or two personal views.

When you research for such scam relations to the product, it is best to read user comments in additional to the original blog post.

Even better, if you research in forums you can see really useful information on the topic.

Nevertheless, as I said, do not judge a product by looking at what some people say.

The fact that some people write bad reviews about the product doesn’t mean that the product is crappy, but if you are seeing quite some bad reviews, then you should get that into account!

#3 Make sure the product promises what it delivers

This is one of the main reasons why it is important to try out the product before promoting it!

If you don’t use the product, you won’t know if it delivers what it promises.

Products with fake promises are really annoying. Sometimes, the product owners simply promise stuff to market the product.

Sometimes the product owner might simply hype things about the product because it is “their” product!

So if you are going to write a review of the product or put up a banner on your site or recommend that product to your readers in a blog post just by believing that hypey sales page, you could be doing injustice to your readers.

Since it is YOUR recommendation, it is also YOUR responsibility to check out the product thoroughly before you make a recommendation.

Don’t just take a glance at the sales page or read the product features and make recommendations based on your reading.

You really have to find out if the product delivers the promises!

#4 Make sure the product has a good standing in the market

This is something I am recently seeing myself. You come to know about a great product.

You buy and try it yourself. You find the product to be amazing. You find it to be reasonably priced as well.

And you find that the product also delivers everything as promised in the sales letter.

So you write your recommendation. But then things change after a while!

The product stops receiving any updates. Or the product owner disappears from the market.

Have you seen any of these? I have!

That is why recently I have it as a policy to specifically research for the “good standing” of the product and/or the product owner in the market.

You need to look at the following aspects:

How long is the product in the market?
Who/What company is behind the product?
How long has the company been the market?
How long is the company doing this (relevant) business?
… and this kind of research.

Unless you clearly know about the company’s (and the product’s) standing do not recommend the product.

Remember, with affiliate marketing, it is all about building trust.

If you recommend a product that does not have a good standing in the market, you will only ruin your reputation and trust!

#5 Make sure the product gets good support from the developers

There is no point in recommending a product if the customers are not going to get proper support for it.

You are providing a recommendation as a blogger to *help* your readers.

And if the product does not get proper support from its developers, those who buy the product will be left confused and annoyed!

Personally, I value support very much! Whenever I research to buy a product, I see how good the support is.

You can see this by visiting forum threads that talk about this product, read reviews and so on.

Mainly, I value a product by not only seeing its features but I give weight to the support (and documentation).

Basically it doesn’t matter how great the product is – if I cannot get help when I am stuck with something, there is no point in using that product.

And whenever I face such an issue, I not only find the product useless but I also get annoyed! So it is quite natural that I need to put myself in the shoes of my readers.

Tip: As a reviewer/affiliate, be prepared to answer questions about the product – or notify the product owner about the review and arrange for him/her to answer some of the critical questions about the product.

#6 Don’t write an all-positive-buy-it-NOW kind of review

In your review, make sure you point out both the positives and negatives of the product. I am 200% sure that no product is perfect!

Why? Because “perfect” is a word that is person-dependent. Something that is “perfect” to me would be crappy to you! And vice versa. Why? Because we all have different preferences.

I might have different needs with my business and your needs could be different from mine; so are the features with any product.

So make sure you don’t paint an all-positive picture. If you write such a review people will see you as a “desperate” affiliate marketer who wants to push sales.

If you write a “genuine” review which points out both the positives and negatives of a product you will not only make the review really useful to your readers, but you will also build trust in the industry.

Rather than simply pointing out the features, if you do tutorial, it would be great.

While you do a video review showing a hands on session, people will be able to actually look at the product being used – these kind of reviews are highly helpful for products that don’t have a free or trial version – you will help people look behind the walls before they can actually invest in the product.

They will also be able to “see” the challenges in using the product and/or how easy it is to use the product for a particular type of usage!

#7 Update your review often

This is something I have to do myself with my current reviews – I can say this is a note to myself.

Reviews need to be updated regularly, don’t you agree? Things change! So do products and their updates.

With every update, a product could be fixing a bug, or could come out of beta, or could introduce new features, or could change its pricing or something like that!

So it is important that you keep yourself updated of these changes. Usually all product owners keep their affiliates informed of these changes.

Make sure you stay subscribed to the affiliate list of the products for which you are an affiliate.

This will help you easily stay updated. Otherwise it would be a tedious job for you to manually check the updates of those products!

Once you find out that there has been a change of any form (as the ones mentioned above), please do update your review accordingly!

Think of this scenario – when people land on your review page when they see that your review is outdated, they are simply going to bounce off. Nobody wants to read an outdated review.

Affiliate marketing: Takeaway tips and conclusion

As I said, the key element is to build trust. If you look for making some quick commissions, you will only fail trying. Just put yourselves in the shoes of the buyer.

Let’s say you come across a recommendation from a person you trust and then you also read another product promotion review from a person who you barely know or a person who have been in the market for a very short time!

From whom will you make those purchases? From the person you trust, right?

Even if you were on the fence about buying that product, a recommendation or an endorsement from the person you trust will surely make you buy it!

So focus on building trust.

Be honest and transparent when you make product promotions or recommendations.

It will take some time. But you will make it!

Hope you found these affiliate marketing tips useful!

The misconceptions associated with making money via blogging [and what to do about them]

April 23, 2018 by Jane Sheeba 20 Comments

So you want to make money blogging. That’s a great desire. But it is not always quite easy, isn’t?

You know that already. Otherwise you won’t be reading this post with so much interest (I really hope that you are reading this post with much interest! ;)).

One of the main reasons why bloggers (you) are unable to make money blogging, even if they have the desire, is that they (you) have some serious misconceptions about money making!

And these misconceptions are no joke because they actually pose a risk to your blogging career!

OK so what are the risks? That’s the topic of this post! Let’s dive in right away.

You think you know how make money blogging; but in reality, you don’t know how!

Don’t you realise that this is one of the greatest misconceptions associated with blogging and money making?

The mere fact that you want to make money doesn’t mean that you will be able to make money, right?

You should be able to DO what is needed in order to make money. Otherwise you won’t be able to fulfill your desire.

Alright I hear you saying: Jane not knowing something is not the end of the world. I will somehow learn how to make money.

I appreciate that!

But it is not very straightforward, you know. I’m not making you scared.

But the point is this – many bloggers still don’t make money because they “don’t realise” that they don’t know how to make money!

That’s a lot of “don’ts”!

It is like not realising that you are blind and you really hope that you are going to make it. But not realizing you are blind is going to cost you a lot.

Is this a serious thing? Is this a risk? Yup it is! Because you will be wasting your precious time, money and efforts on various money making activities.

But you don’t realise that those activities are not actually money making activities as you are blindly believing.

So what to do about this misconception?

Unless you start to realise this fact, you will be wasting your business resources.

You might be wondering how other bloggers are able to make it while you are just dragging your feet.

So you need to stop what you are doing and take a closer look at what you are doing.

You THINK you know how make money blogging; but do you REALLY know how?Click To Tweet

Are your money making efforts paying? If not, you just need to change your strategies.

Most commonly, people choose the wrong money making methods.

If you are doing something for a consistent amount of time and if that money making strategy is not paying, you should stop doing it and find out what’s wrong.

You should specifically find out WHY you are unable to make money via that particular strategy while someone else is able to make it.

If that BIG BLOGGER is doing it, I’ll do the same to make money!

Well, don’t get me wrong here. Following a big blogger’s money making strategies is a good thing!

In fact, it is a smart thing because you don’t have to reinvent the wheel!

There are so many big bloggers like Pat Flynn, Darren Rowse, Neil Patel, and others who make a very good amount of money consistently via their blogging business.

Some of them (like Pat) even publish income reports – I particularly love Pat’s income reports because he clearly spills what he does every month and what contributes to every one dollar of his income.

His income reports are not only motivating to new bloggers but also give other bloggers working ways to make money blogging.

But that doesn’t mean you will also be able to make money like him following his ways exactly.

So what to do about this misconception?

Just because it works for that established blogger doesn’t mean it would work for you too.

Pat is making a lot of money and he publishing income reports where he explains how he makes that money.

BUT – blindly following Pat’s money making methods will not or may not give you the results that he is getting.

For instance, he is making a lot of money via affiliate marketing – but if you have just started a blog and want to make money via affiliate marketing (instantly), you might be wasting your time and efforts.

Why? Because people don’t buy Pat’s recommendations just like that or just because.

He has built a very strong trust factor! And this took him quite some time and a LOT of hard work!

So if you want to make money via affiliate marketing, you should first be prepared to put forth the hard work that Pat has put forth.

Without the trust factor you cannot simply casually mention a product in one of your blog posts (with your affiliate link, of course) and expect to make thousands of dollars, like Pat!

Hope you got my point. If you are thinking about making money with affiliate marketing, in particular, read this post.

What is affiliate marketing? How to succeed!

I have used affiliate marketing here as an example. It could be anything in fact.

Thinking you could make a full time income solely from Adsense

Well I’ve used Adsense here as an example – it could be any ONE income stream!

But before I talk about other examples, I would like to emphasise Adsense in particular.

Many bloggers (the very new ones included) think Adsense is the only and easiest way to make money blogging.

They think that starting a blog, publishing a few blog posts and then putting up a few Adsense banners is all that is needed to make a full time blogging income.

I am not against Adsense – in fact Adsense is indeed one of the easiest ways to make money blogging; but note that here I said “one of the easiest ways” instead of “the ONLY easiest way”!

And, Adsense will not be your easiest money making stream UNLESS you have a really popular blog that has millions of page views per day!

Even then, having Adsense as your ONLY income stream is not a smart idea!

As I said earlier, Adsense is just an example. It is in general not wise to have only one income stream!

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It is not safe to do so.

What to do about this misconception?

Every money making stream takes time and effort. So don’t think anything is easy. I talked about Adsense above.

Similarly some bloggers think affiliate marketing is easy, just because they don’t have to create their own products.

And, there’s one more thing to realise before you can handle this misconception.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t rely on only one income stream!Click To Tweet

If you are into affiliate marketing, don’t do that alone.

If anything fails (say, the products you recommend go bad, or you stop getting search engine traffic due to a search engine update), your business will fall flat overnight.

There is no such thing as overnight success, but overnight flop does exist!

We all know about businesses that went back to zero just with one search engine update.

There is no such thing as overnight success, but overnight flop does exist!Click To Tweet

If you don’t want that to happen to your business, you should create more than 2 income streams for your online business.

Wrapping up…..

So what are the misconceptions that you have about making money online? Have you realised/identified those misconceptions?

What have you done to stop believing those misconceptions and change things for good? Please share your views/experiences/misconceptions related to “make money blogging” in the comments below!

Before you leave, check out this free guide of mine:

Can I REALLY make money blogging?

Stuck with affiliate marketing? These 7 powerful tips will unstuck you!

March 5, 2018 by Jane Sheeba 22 Comments

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money online; or that’s what you have been told.

If you are a beginner trying to get to know what it is, then it is quite common that you would have heard this advice – affiliate marketing is easy.

I agree that affiliate marketing is much easier than other money making methods like for instance, creating your own product.

Many bloggers hesitate creating their own products because it takes time, effort, discipline and some commitment to get it done.

On the other hand, with affiliate marketing, one can simply start making money because the product is already made!

And, not just that – most of the heavy lifting is already done by the product owner.

Be it pre-promotion, the launch of the product, taking care of discounts and coupons, dealing with the launch (which is pretty scary for many bloggers), the promotion after launch, keeping up with technical and sales support and things like that.

With affiliate marketing you don’t have to go through any of these, since you don’t own or create the product.

And this is one of the main advantages of affiliate marketing. Since affiliate marketing has benefits like these, it has become one of the most attractive ways to make money blogging in the blogosphere.

But as I point out in this post, affiliate marketing is not all easy.

It is not like, you sign up for the affiliate program of a product and then share your unique affiliate link for that post on social media or mention it on your blog post and start seeing commissions roll in.

You will see what I mean if you read this post > How to become a trustworthy affiliate?

In this post I am going to cover some of the affiliate marketing basics so beginner bloggers (or affiliate marketing beginners) can start making affiliate marketing work for them. Let’s begin.

#1 Build trust

Let me start with my top tip here – you have to build trust in order to become successful at affiliate marketing.

There is no short cut to this point. Without the trust factor you might make a quick sale here and there, but you won’t be able to keep at it for the long run.

No trust. No affiliate commissions. Zilch.Click To Tweet

If you are serious with affiliate marketing and want to keep it as one of your income streams, you have to start building trust from day 1.

What should you do in order to become a trustworthy affiliate? You could reference my post above.

But here’s the gist:

Try out the product before promoting it (aka. Do not promote a product that you haven’t put your hands on)
Do your research on the product
Make sure that the product delivers what it promises
Check if the product has good standing in the market
Check whether the product gets good support from its developers
Don’t write a biased review
Keep your product reviews up-to-date

If you neglect building trust, don’t expect yourself to become successful at affiliate marketing – as this forms the basics of the affiliate marketing concept.

#2 Choose your affiliate product wisely

When you are starting out with affiliate marketing, you will be tempted to promote every product you see out there.

Coz you are interested in those affiliate commissions, right?

It’s not a sin to be interested in affiliate commissions, but that doesn’t mean you should blindly start promoting every product you see.

Just don’t blindly join in the affiliate program of all the products you come across.

So what do I mean by “choosing wisely”? There are various factors that you need to consider when choosing products to promote as an affiliate.

a) Is the product great?

It doesn’t have to be the ultimate solution to a problem – there will always be shortcomings in any product. But does the product keep up the standards?

If you start promoting crappy products just to earn quick commissions, you will lose trust and you won’t be able to build a long term business based on affiliate marketing.

Before you promote any product, even if it is great, you have to make sure if it is a good fit for your audience (more on this later).

Does the product has good value for the money your readers are going to spend on it?

Does the product owner back up the product with good support – I value support very much!

If a product doesn’t have proper support and if I don’t have someone I can turn to when something doesn’t work, it sucks!

How long has the product been in the market? Is it some new person that has come from nowhere with a shiny product?

The product can be new – but is the company or the person who owns it – is he around for a while? How is his credibility?

b) What is the affiliate commission?

Is it a fixed percentage? How much does that count per sale, taking into account the price of the product.

For instance a 50% commission on a $50 product will help you earn $25 per sale.

But a 10% commission on a $1000 course will help you make $100 in one sale.

Does the product offer tiered commissions? You earn a commission for person A that you referred.

And let’s say you earned 20% commission for that sale.

Let’s assume person A referred person B, and that you get a 10% commission for person B – that is 2-tiered commission!

There are products that offer even 3–5 tiered commission.

Joining such affiliate programs (provided the product is great and keeps up with the standard) will help you earn a lot more commissions compared to programs where you get one tier commissions.

But please note that these kind of affiliate programs are not very common.

Will you get recurring commissions? There are products that provide commission on every billing cycle.

For instance let’s take Aweber – I refer one customer to Aweber and I can keep getting commissions for lifetime, every time that person is paying his/her Aweber bill! How sweet 🙂

#3 Don’t forget link cloaking

Cloaking your affiliate links is very important to keep your website and the links neat and professional. Let me give you an example of a raw affiliate link:

https://www.evernote.com/referral/Registration.action?uid=4574760&sig=52e7bd2fc64672fba1d6c5108b76db6c

That’s my affiliate link for Evernote. And here is the cloaked version of the same link:

http://www.janesheeba.com/loves/evernote/

Which one looks clean and professional? Of course the second one, right?

OK so why is cloaking very important? Cloaking links will help you present your readers with a non-spam looking link to click on.

Even if you don’t paste the raw link inside your content, when your readers hover on the anchor text to click on it, they usually check what they are going to click.

If that is a long link which is a combination of crazy characters and strings, they are going to be taken aback.

Cloak your affiliate links. Don't look spammyClick To Tweet

Cloaking links will also helps you shorten the links – plus helps you add the name of the product or a relevant slug as the affiliate link – for instance in the above examples, you can see the second link and say clicking on it will lead to Evernote’s website.

There are various ways in which you can cloak links; with WordPress you have plugins!

You can use Pretty Links plugin, Thirsty Affiliates or even SEOPressor. I use Thirsty Affiliates to cloak all my affiliate links.

#4 Promote the right product

OK so I have discussed quite a bit about how to choose a product to promote to your readers.

You may analyse its standards, its usefulness, its quality and things like that.

But if it is not the right fit for your readers, you are not going to make sales!

I used to do this terrible, dumb mistake when I started out. At that time I was reading both Problogger and Digital Photography School blogs by Darren Rowse.

I’d then join his photography product’s affiliate programs and put up banners for those books in my blog!

How dumb! And I was hoping to make affiliate commissions, you know.

When you pick up products to promote, make sure it aligns with the overall strategy of your blog.

If you talk about conversion optimization on your blog, an email marketing service will be a good and related fit.

You can slightly widen the scope but don’t go overboard and promote guitar courses to your conversion optimization audience.

#5 Backup your promotion with high quality, useful content

I hope this doesn’t need to be said. But I might say it anyway coz I still see a 2 para summary of product features published as “Reviews” with affiliate links on them.

If you are just going to announce that the product has been launched and summarize its features, don’t expect to make big commissions – coz people can read the original product specs and features on the product page itself.

They don’t need to read your review for that!

So if you are going to promote a product do something more than just summarizing its features.

People usually read reviews to help them decide if the product is good or not.

I personally don’t trust the words on the actual sales page (of the product) 100% because there will usually be some sort of hype.

And any product owner will claim that their product is the best.

That is why people seek for reviews or other helpful material to hear about the product from someone else other than the product owner.

Put your affiliate link inside a useful piece of contentClick To Tweet

Make sure your review or other form of content (like a tutorial) fulfils that quest of your readers.

If your content truly helps them, you will win their heart. And it won’t be a pain for you to persuade them to make a sale!

#6 Use the right affiliate marketing tools (the ones you absolutely need)

For any kind of online business you need to have the right tools in order to pursue.

Without the right tools you could be wasting a lot of time and even the easiest of things would be a pain for you to execute.

At the same time, you don’t need any of those sophisticated tools to get started with affiliate marketing.

Think of a centralised place to put your affiliate links. I use Thirsty Affiliates plugin for that – if can keep all your affiliate links in one place and you can see the stats for those links.

In any case you will need a plugin for cloaking your affiliate links.

If you are going to put up affiliate banners (banner images with your affiliate links on that), then you will need a plugin like Adrotate or something similar so you can set up a bunch of affiliate ad banners for one widget and they will display in rotation for your audience (for every page load).

You can use more tools – but just stay with what you need by all means! Don’t overload yourself with too many tools 🙂

#7 Approach affiliate marketing strategically

This is my final tip – but a very crucial tip so you can gain success with affiliate marketing, especially if you are a beginner.

If you don’t strategize your affiliate marketing efforts, you will not be able to set up the right streams, analyse what works and what doesn’t and you won’t be able to make progress towards affiliate marketing success.

Working strategically means, you have to first be very careful in picking up the right products.

You have to plan your content strategy and affiliate marketing strategy well, so that they align with each other.

You should be able to casually mention your affiliate products in the blog posts you publish – even if not on all posts of yours, you should be able to do it one in at least 5 posts you publish.

Do a monthly audit to see which affiliate programs are your top earners. Find out what strategy worked.

Is it the banner ads that got you more sales, or is it that honest review of yours?

Once you find out what works and what doesn’t, do more of what works and stop wasting time on stuff that doesn’t work. Don’t blindly shoot for the stars.

Aim and shoot. Have a plan and stick to it.

Summary and takeaway

Hope this post gave you information about the affiliate marketing basics – even though these are very basic stuff, these are highly crucial.

And if you don’t pay attention to them, you will lose big time. You might end up banging your head for months without seeing any progress.

I did that. And I don’t want you to go through the same, terrible route. Know the basics of affiliate marketing.

It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner with affiliate marketing or an advanced blogger, make sure you always approach affiliate marketing strategically!

Don’t forget these affiliate marketing basics and you should be good to go!

Don’t forget to get instant access to the Blogging Success Foundation Course (a free gift from me :)).

PS: Now, I want you to leave a comment on the blog post letting me know what ONE thing you tried really hard with affiliate marketing, that DIDN’T WORK.