We’ve curated the best affiliate marketing tips after spending over a decade building seven-figure niche sites. If you want to get more people to consume your content, click your affiliate links, and create a long-term profitable online business, then keep reading.
Let’s dive in.
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Tips for Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is easy to learn but takes time to get right. Yes, you can earn passive income from it, but not without mastering things like copywriting, content creation, and SEO. Here are some of the best affiliate marketing tips we’ve learned building seven-figure niche sites.
1. Make Sure Your Product Mentions Are Monetized
After putting in hours of work creating content, and carefully weaving product recommendations into the conversation where it makes sense, ensure you’ve added affiliate links.
We see many site owners miss this step. Sometimes it’s forgetfulness (especially when you’re publishing a high volume of content); other times, it’s the feeling of coming across too “salesy.”
Regardless of the reason, it’s lost revenue you could be earning.
Sidenote:Â Don’t be afraid to sell. When you help readers solve a problem with a genuine product recommendation, it’s perfectly fine to include an affiliate link with it.
A great way to ensure you’re not losing revenue is to search for specific keywords and
Let’s say you’re a ConvertKit affiliate, and you already added your affiliate link to the word “ConvertKit” in various articles across your site, but now you want to find all of the places you mention “email marketing.”
That’s easy with Lasso.
Head to Opportunities > Keywords, then type your term into the search field.
When you enter “email marketing,” Lasso scans your site for every mention.
Then fetches every piece of content on your site using that phrase so you can
The above screenshot shows:
- Keyword with Context: Shows you exactly where your phrase appears in the post
- Content: the page or post displaying the keyword
- Monetize: Toggle to “On” to transform un-monetized mentions into affiliate links
Our niche site used the automation and displays from Lasso to earn $1.2M in affiliate income in under five years.
Here’s how to generate more revenue from your blog using our ‘Keyword Opportunities’ report.
🧵👇
— Lasso (@LassoWP) June 24, 2022
2. Track Clicks So You Can Double Down On What’s Working
This is one of the best affiliate marketing tips for beginners to learn early on. If you want to know how well your affiliate partners convert, you need to track clicks.
It lets you see metrics, so you can:
- Measure what’s working
- Estimate monthly income
- Test new affiliate programs
If you have no idea what’s converting, you have no idea how to improve. What gets measured gets managed.
Tracking clicks is how we test our affiliate offers, see which products our readers like, measure audience engagement, and find underperforming links.
Continuous A/B testing ensures you’re making forward progress.
This also helps us measure:
- Conversion rate
- Click-Through rate
- Earnings-Per-Click
You can see how pages perform by heading to Behavior > Events > Pages.
But where it gets REALLY INTERESTING, is reviewing your posts and seeing what links in that post get the most clicks.
This is especially fun to do with List posts. If you have a List post and you’re using Lasso, you can look at that list post and see what links are getting the most clicks. Then, you can reorder that list based on the number of clicks. Links with more clicks get moved to the top of your post. Links with few clicks either get replaced or moved to the bottom.
Watch this video to see Lasso co-founder Matt Giovanisci re-order a list post based on which items get clicked most in real time with his site
Further Reading:
3. Diversify Your Affiliate Programs
It’s tough when affiliate partners lower commission rates, change their terms of service or go out of business.
That puts you in a financial bind when you’re relying on a single program to pay ALL of your bills.
How many were pleased when Amazon slashed its commission rates in 2020?
Diversification is vital and is another path toward affiliate marketing success.
Much like investing’s Golden rule: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If all of your
money is behind a single stock and it goes bankrupt, it’s now worthless.
The same goes for your affiliate program. You don’t want to be so reliant on a single program that your site gets crushed by one change.
Plus, when you’re diversified, you can test for the most
4. Give Readers Fewer Buying Options
When people are presented with an overwhelming number of options, they shut down and can’t decide. Removing consumer choices reduces shopping anxiety.
It’s what psychologist Barry Schwartz calls the “paradox of choice.”
So, instead of writing a product roundup with 20 of the “best espresso machines,” create an article featuring three to five items.
It’s a trick we learned from the billion-dollar affiliate site, Wirecutter.
What the affiliate marketing giant, The Wirecutter, taught us about writing high-converting content.
If you want to optimize your site to make more
money , read this.🧵👇
— Lasso (@LassoWP) July 8, 2022
If you want to boost conversions, add a comparison table to the top of your post.
This lets you compare features across brand names that readers consider important (while limiting the number of options you give consumers). It also presents the product info in a way that makes it easy to decide.
Watch our founder give a 3-minute tutorial on how you can set up comparison tables with Lasso.
5. Write Comprehensive Product Reviews and Tutorials
Nearly half of all product searches start with a Google search.
So, what better way to get more clicks and boost passive income than by creating content around the products you’re promoting?
Objective reviews and step-by-step guides are our personal finance affiliate site’s bread and butter.
These convert higher because the people searching for things like “best robo-advisor” and “M1 Finance” review are ready to buy.
And this type of content leaves you ample room to add your affiliate link.
Add “Best for” Badges to Segment & Qualify Readers
When writing product-focused content, it’s good to have a specific demographic in mind because it helps target the “right” people to click your affiliate links.
This is where badges can be quite helpful. For example, this Lasso display uses the badge, “Best for Site Speed.”
If you want serious speed that just works, this is what you've been looking for. Their performance and bang-for-your-buck are unparalleled. They also deliver a ton of value on their free tier.
If your visitor searches for ways to make their site faster, that badge will catch their eye.
We baked this functionality into our plugin so you can add custom badges to any display. Think about the kinds of “Best for” modifiers you can include with your offers and then create displays with the appropriate badge that’ll qualify readers.
Further Reading:
6. Monitor Affiliate Link Health
Broken links cost you
But it’s hard to know which ones need fixing without diving into pages manually (which is time-consuming). The workaround is using an affiliate tool to monitor your link health.
If you’re using Lasso, you can see which links are broken and which products are out-of-stock in your dashboard.
Often, hosting companies prohibit broken link checkers because they’re always slowing down sites, but Lasso sidesteps this obstacle by running on its own servers.
When it’s time to replace links (or update them), you can do it on your affiliate product’s Link Details page.
This saves you the trouble of diving into every post and page manually.
7. Write Product Alternatives Articles
Leverage another brand’s popularity and write content about its competitors.
For example, suppose you’re looking for alternatives to Quicken; in that case, you’d Google “Quicken alternatives” and see tons of posts on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
That’s exactly what our site did to win more traffic and nab more affiliate commissions.
8. Write Comparison Pages
A “vs.” page (also called a comparison page) compares two products against each other.
Ahrefs vs. SEMrush. Asana vs. Slack. Betterment vs. Wealthfront.
“Vs.” pages have high search demand in Google. This group of commercial investigators has narrowed their search to two products and needs more information before deciding.
Further Reading:
9. Join High-Ticket Affiliate Programs
High-ticket affiliate marketing is promoting premium products for higher payouts. It could be top-shelf online courses, luxury goods, or high-quality software.
You can earn more
Because these products carry commissions ranging in the hundreds to thousands of dollars, super-affiliates can easily earn five or even six figures per month while moving less volume.
Getting started as a high-ticket affiliate marketer doesn’t differ much from regular programs. You’ll still need to sign up, provide your info, payment details, website URL, and explain how you plan to promote their products.
Sidenote: Some of these brands are selective about who they invite into their programs. For example, Authority Hacker’s affiliate program pays up to $990 per commission, and rejects many applicants.
10. Create A Resources Page
Our resources page (or “Toolbox” page) has a 10% conversion rate.
That’s nuts and way more than any blog post. You can and should create this page on your site. The products found on this page can be:
- Bestsellers
- Things you use
- Personal recommendations
Your readers gobble this stuff up and is one affiliate marketing idea you must not ignore.
Tip: Create this page on your site’s navbar, so it’s easier to find (i.e., a page that’s not deep-linked buried on your site).
Further Reading:
11. Increase Your Affiliate Link Placement
Using simple text-only links used to work, but now you need to amplify their presence.
When you position your affiliate links in multiple ways, you give people more chances to click them. It improves your earnings per click (EPC), conversion rates, and click-through rates (CTRs).
We saw higher commissions when adding product displays and embedded images with affiliate URLs to our content.
If you’re using our WordPress plugin, Lasso, you can easily add displays and images from inside your post editor.
Our product boxes have been user-tested against millions of impressions and convert at a higher rate than text links alone (like the borderless version below).
We include affiliate links in the image and the title (or h2) with a clear call to action.
We’ve seen after much testing that users scroll past text links but stop and click our product displays and images.
Tip:Â Promote your affiliate link in various content types. For example, you can feature the same affiliate link in a product review, tutorial, product comparison, and a resources page. This lets you spread your link across your site and increases the odds of getting more clicks.
12. Always Be Disclosing Affiliate Links
You have to disclose affiliate links to readers on your site if you want to comply with the FTC.
These guys are the consumer’s guard dog and work with their best interests in mind. Affiliate disclosures show people you’re in a paid relationship with the merchant.
Failing to comply with the them could result in fines, penalties, removal from affiliate programs, and ruining your reputation.
You might wonder, “What should my disclosure include?”
If you’re using Lasso, we add it to displays for you automatically beneath the call-to-action button below.
The Way of the Essentialist isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s not about getting less done. It’s about getting only the right things done. It’s about the pursuit of the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.
- Will make you more effective.
- Quick read and highly actionable.
- You have to be open-minded.
Of course, if you want to write your own, you can do that with our plugin too.
Further Reading:
13. Leverage Discounts, Coupons, & Bonuses to Attract More Clicks
Many affiliate programs have unique offers for their affiliate partners. It’s a clever way to get more referrals.
But they don’t always advertise it.
So, ask your affiliate manager whether they’ll offer your readers a special discount. Then, if they say yes, you can message your subscribers and social media platforms with your link.
Tip: Test whether offering the discount on an exit-intent pop-up works. Some brands use this as a last-ditch effort to keep you on the site. Some successful affiliates say this has worked very well.
Or, try incentivizing readers with a bonus like email copywriter Chris Orzechowski. Bonuses include free webinars, tutorials, or courses explaining how to use a product.
These work well with anything you promote.
He includes two bonuses:
- A page from his paid newsletter
- An over-the-shoulder quick-start video
Another excellent tactic is using pop-up offers in your content. For example, if a reader lands on your post about the best web hosting, you could create a pop-up display recommending
Brainstorm ways you could create a free bonus for your readers. Another affiliate marketing tip with great results is to review online course platforms, such as Udemy or Skillshare, if you’re stumped.
14. Get Custom Affiliate Landing Pages for Your Readers
If you’ve never seen Pat Flynn’s website, his “Tools” page has many resources, and some are affiliate links.
One smart thing he does for his audience is to use high-converting customized affiliate landing pages. When you click a link for one of his recommended tools, you’re taken to the company’s website, but you continue seeing Pat’s face!
It adds another layer of personalization and is a nice way to extend the transaction from your website to the merchant.
Here’s why this matters:
Custom landing pages increase trust. They’re also the point of conversion in affiliate marketing campaigns. So, you want to optimize them to the teeth, remove friction, and give your reader zero reasons not to buy (or sign-up).
We’ve seen this work with our sites too.
15. Localize International Traffic
Chances are, your site gets international traffic.
If you’re running an affiliate program, make sure you’re web visitors can access your offers without leaving
Case in point: when promoting Amazon products, ensure you’ve signed up for that country’s affiliate program so the person visiting your site from that country gets redirected to their local store.
For example, sign up for Spain’s Amazon affiliate program if you get lots of traffic from that location.
In your Associates account, head to Tools > OneLink and follow the prompts to get started.
OneLink is Amazon’s free geo-redirection solution that sends your international visitors to their local Amazon store to complete purchases.
It also lets your international traffic view product pages in their native language, letting you earn more by expanding globally.
16. Build An Email List
Guess what? You don’t own Facebook, Zuck does. Nor do you own Twitter or Google.
These platforms are out of your control, leaving you vulnerable to algorithm updates, account lockouts (like this tweet), or being banned from the platform.
But you own your email list.
So, leverage social media and search engines to get more traffic to your content, migrate that “rented” audience to your list, and stay connected.
Sidenote: Email marketing has a $44 ROI for every $1 spent.
Building an email list is the best way to boost conversion rates because they’re people who’ve already given you permission to contact them and are already “warm.”
The
money ’s in the list!
The best part:
Your email list isn’t susceptible to algorithm updates, nor will it deny you access, and you can reach out any time you want.
Plus, you can include affiliate links in your newsletter when it makes sense.
Further Reading:
17. Write for SEO
Search engine optimization is in a league of its own. When you abide by it, you do yourself a favor on many levels.
Think about this:
Search engines make
Why hang your billboard in a ghost town?
Ranking on Google’s first page typically means:
- You’re credible
- A better user experience
- More eyeballs on your content
Match Search Intent
But getting those coveted page-one placements involves understanding the search intent behind keyword queries. Writing a list post when all the ranking pages for your keyword are ecom shops will be a waste of your time.
Also, realizing that a term such as “best CBD gummies” has a higher buying intent (and, therefore more potential to earn affiliate commissions), than the term “what are CBD gummies.”
18. Redistribute Your Content to Diversify Traffic Sources
Just because you spent 20 hours on a 2,000-word blog post doesn’t mean you can’t chop it up into smaller pieces and publish it on platforms like YouTube, Medium, and TikTok.
It’s like when Ross Simmonds says, “Create once, distribute forever.”
Find out where your readers hang out online and tailor your content to the platform. For example, Reddit is NOT Facebook. Next, always lead with value.
Harry Dry refers to this as pushing your content around the internet. Then, you can point more visitors to your creations.
What Affiliate Marketing Tips Did We Miss?
There’s a billion successful affiliate marketing tips out there, which is why I didn’t choose them all. I stuck with methods we’ve used or seen our customers pull off.
The above should be plenty to get you started towards success. And remember, don’t feel obligated to rely only on affiliate sales. Create your own products and experience more financial freedom.
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