10 Must-Follow Affiliate Marketing Tips for Beginners

Want to make money online from your blogging platform?

Affiliate marketing is a popular way for content creators to add a steady income stream to their blog's monetization strategy. It involves offering your content writing services to market an advertiser’s product. 

What Affiliate Marketing Is

Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing in which a referral arrangement is made between an advertiser and a blogger.

Bloggers become affiliates promoting the advertiser’s products and services for a commission. Unlike traditional ad types, this hands-on approach works on a cost-per-lead basis, meaning you only earn a commission when the audience takes an action, whether to buy the product or sign up for a trial.

Here’s a simple definition of affiliate marketing mentioned by Pat Flynn

“Company’s products. You find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.”

The Job of an Affiliate

As an affiliate, your job is to find a product or service that your audience will be interested in and find helpful. Then, you strategically incorporate it into your affiliate marketing content so that your audience may engage with it and buy the product through your referral link.

How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing

If you want to start your affiliate marketing journey with a bang, you must stay on top of certain things. For one, you must choose the right blogging platform. Both startups and big brands have an eye for good content. So, focus solely on the quality of your content, as it will take you places.

That being said, here are 10 top affiliate marketing tips and tricks that are proven to set beginners up for affiliate marketing success in no time. If you want to ensure a good source of revenue for your blog, start taking notes right away!

1. Find Good Affiliate Products

The first step to becoming an affiliate is to find affiliate products and services that are worth promoting. The easiest way to do this is to consider the products and services you already use daily. Knowing the ins and outs of using a particular product will make your task much easier.

Finding reputable brands to become an affiliate for may be a bit challenging, especially when you’ve just started your blogging journey. Hence, you would want to research and join affiliate groups. That being said, don’t hesitate to reach out to companies – many brands have affiliate programs through which you can join their network.

[Recommended: The Top 6 Things I Learned Running An Amazon Affiliate Site ]

2. Understand Your Audience

The key to success in affiliate marketing is knowing your audience and promoting only products that they are guaranteed to find valuable. When you talk about a service that aligns with their needs and wants, there’s no reason why they won’t want to engage and take action.

Remember, you’ll only get paid when your audience decides to go a mile more than just viewing your post or clicking on the link. Before you decide on the kind of affiliate products to market on your blog, ask yourself the following questions:

• What brings the audience to your blogging platform?
• What makes them join your email marketing list?
• Why are they attracted to the content you post?
• What are you providing that they are searching for?

Your goal should be to choose only those products and services that really offer a solution to your audience’s problems.

Building trust with your audience is what lays the foundation for becoming successful in affiliate marketing. In fact, you will find the best products for your niche failing to convert without trust. Trust means that the reader will consider some recommendations simply because they feel they were told the truth and really care for the content you have put out there. And that is why it is important to be transparent, authentic, and fair in your affiliate marketing attempts. Always declare your affiliate relationships, review the products genuinely, and ensure your content is geared toward your audience and their needs.

Such engagement will strengthen your bond and trust with your audience, giving you better credibility and improved prospects for your affiliate promotion. Trust is earned over time; once it is earned, it can be leveraged for long-term success.

Another way to strengthen this relationship further is to keep engaging. Chat with your audience through comments, emails, or even social media to boost the trust and loyalty you have built. This can keep a two-way channel of communication open. Ask for feedback from your followers to understand their preferences and pain points so that when you recommend a product, you better cater to them.

You create an intimate and spurring connection by personalizing whatever you are doing into a specific approach, such as personalized product suggestions or personal stories. Personalization expresses to the audience how well you value its individual needs. The next time you recommend something, your audience will be more inclined to trust your opinion.

3. Choose a Niche and Stick to it

If you’ve dedicated your platform to fashion, you wouldn’t want to put up ads for technology products. People coming to your platform wish to hear about the current fashion trends – they won’t be thinking about technology when visiting your site.

You must choose a niche you’re interested in so that you find it easy to talk about. If you start promoting affiliate products that are poles apart in nature, you will only lose your credibility in front of the audience. Your ads should be relevant to the niche you’ve chosen for your platform. The more relevant your ads are, the higher your chances of generating sales and making money will be.

4. Come Off as Trustworthy

In the modern world, the audience has become tech-savvy. They can easily identify when it is an affiliate ad. This makes it even more crucial for you to choose products very carefully. You shouldn’t promote products that you don’t believe in or that you know aren’t worthy enough to market. Furthermore, if the audience sees that you are only trying to take advantage of their visits by posting ads after ads, they will probably leave and never return.

To gain your audience’s trust, consider promoting high-value products. Your platform is what it is because of your audience—they believe in you and your recommendations. This places a big responsibility on your shoulders to make every move cautiously.

5. Use Affiliate Ads as Value-adding Resources

Affiliate ads should complement your content rather than devalue it. Your content should have value for the audience, and you can ensure that by making it as helpful, informative, and useful as possible.

Affiliate marketing isn’t about putting up product links for no reason. You must have heard a quote, ‘Content is the king.’ So, make sure your content speaks for the products and services you are promoting.

For example, if you are writing a post about your favorite fashion items, just making a list with the affiliate links at the bottom of each listing isn’t enough. It won’t bring your audience or you any good. What you should do instead is to write a detailed review for each item with the affiliate links pointing the audience in the right direction. This will make your recommendation challenging to miss!

To ensure any affiliate program you choose is successful, you must develop a deep understanding of the products you promote. Using and testing products being promoted gives you genuine insights that help you recommend them better. By understanding the features, benefits, and disadvantages, you are better positioned to give honest reviews and practical advice to your audience. This builds trust in you and places you in an authoritative position within your niche.

Publishing detailed product reviews and tutorials prove you are knowledgeable about the topic and committed to full transparency. Reviews should be more than just mentioning the features; they should explain how the product may be of value to your audience by treating pain points or needs. Whether written or video-based, tutorials can further engage your audience and relate to real-life scenarios in which the product may be employed. By offering this with comparative evaluations of similar products, you put your audience in a position to make informed choices that can cement you as a credible party.

When looking into different affiliate programs, products that match your audience's interests and add value to their experience should be considered. Being abreast of the latest product offerings while adjusting your portfolio keeps you abreast and sweetly positions you for affiliate marketing in the long term. 

6. Be Honest about Affiliate Relationships

As stated earlier, your audience might usually be able to identify an affiliate ad. Therefore, hiding or lying about your affiliate relationships is never wise. You should be honest and open about it. Not only will your audience be impressed with your honesty and be able to trust you with their choices, but you will also feel good about the commission you earn from the sales.

Your audience will know that they are supporting you by following your affiliate links, which will help you build a loyal follower base. Many successful affiliates offer their audience a bonus or some kind of incentive, such as a discount code for buying the product using their link. Do the same to stand out from the crowd and boost the number of your affiliate sales.   

Legal Requirement for Affiliate Link Disclosure

Apart from being honest, you can disclose your affiliated status according to the law. Under the rules of monitoring by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), you must notify your audience when an affiliate link is being used. Indeed, the audience should be informed of the fact that you represent invaluable service in earning a commission when they complete a purchase through your affiliate link. Not giving the proper disclosures regarding affiliate links could lead to being charged, so be sure to include a disclaimer in every post that contains an affiliate link. 

Examples of Affiliate Link Disclosures

These patterns are commonly used for easier and better disclosure of affiliate links:

In-Content Disclosure: Add a simple, short statement in the index content where you mention your affiliate link.

Example: "This post contains affiliate links, which means if you click on these links to purchase something, I will earn a small commission, and you will not be charged extra at all."

Pre-Content Disclosure: Disclosing the affiliate relationship before the content begins will at least give the readers a heads-up right from the start.

Example: "Some links in this post are affiliate links, and if you buy using those links, I may get paid a commission."

Create a Disclaimer Page: Another option is to write your affiliate disclosures in detail on a separate page on your website. The link to the page should be easily found in the footer or sidebar.

Hashtags in Social Media Posts: To let users know of your connection, you would add a few hashtags, such as # ad or # affiliate, to posts on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. 

7. Don’t Hesitate to Jump from One Affiliate Program to Another

At times, a particular affiliate program may not work for you while it benefits others. It’s not the end of the world – you would simply want to move on to another program. All affiliate programs are different, offering a distinct variety of products and services and following unique payment structures. Some programs will have better marketing and sales strategies than others. 

In fact, the ideal approach for beginners is to test different affiliate programs and evaluate which one works best for them and their audience. Moreover, you should always be on the lookout for new products and services to try out and add to your portfolio.

8. Make Your Content Timeless

There are many benefits to creating timeless content. A piece of content you posted months or even years ago can still offer the same value to your audience when they go through it today.

Some visitors like to go to the very bottom of the page and if they find outdated content there, they may not want to spend another minute on your platform. We understand that relevant information and content change with time, and it may be challenging to come up with something that offers the same value after two or five years.

So, what should you do? Keep deleting old content from time to time.

NO! You can simply add a link to the updated content on your older posts – and make it timeless. This will ensure traffic coming in for years to come.

9. Keep Yourself Updated

When you decide to dedicate your blog writing services to an advertiser through an affiliate program, you should keep track of their offerings. They tend to update their ad units, tools, and even advertisers to offer a better user experience and boost their visibility. You would also want to upgrade your strategies to avoid lagging behind in the race.

Always be up for monitoring trends and searching for better opportunities. Adding new relevant products and services to your affiliate marketing portfolio will help you earn more money.

To be updated in affiliate marketing, ensure you avail of affiliate marketing tools to systematize your efforts. Here’s how:

Affiliate Marketing Tools: Elevate Your Strategy and Boost Your Earnings

Affiliate marketing is ever-evolving, and staying updated in the field is not just about understanding the latest products; it also involves having the right tools to streamline your efforts. The right tools will help automate tasks, track performance, and provide the insights you need for crisp, data-driven decision-making that will set you up for success.

Here are some of the best affiliate marketing tools, tried and tested to scale your business: 

Affiliate Link Tracking Tools

Finding an affiliate link tracking tool means you can track each click and sale in real-time and thus change your strategies as needed. When you know which links/products perform best, you can invest your time and effort accordingly.

Affiliate Marketing Plugins

You can use WordPress plugins such as ThirstyAffiliates and Pretty Links to maintain and edit your affiliate links right from your dashboard, and you will get excellent results.

Influencer Marketing Platforms

Think Upfluence or AspireIQ, which is specifically aimed at helping you connect with niche influencers. Because your audience already identifies with the influencers you are working with, this expands your market and can help you bring in more affiliate cash.

Marketing Automation Tools

Automation tools such as ActiveCampaign and HubSpot can help you automate email campaigns and sales funnels, keeping you in good communication with your audience and engaging with your affiliate offers.

Analytics Tools

Using software programs like Google Analytics and SEMrush will tell you how well your affiliate campaigns perform. Knowing your customer's behavior, conversion rate, and the effectiveness of each affiliate link will allow you to optimize your strategy in a manner that drives change.

Affiliate Network Platforms

ShareASale or CJ-Affiliate may link you with a vast network of merchants and affiliates if you are new to affiliate marketing or want an expansive reach to find opportunities to market your products.

The above processes let you stay on top of performance, take actionable insight into results, and eventually give better results from your affiliate marketing campaign. 

10. Practice Patience

Nobody gets rich with affiliate marketing in a day or two – be patient.

Specific affiliate programs offer lifetime payouts. By keeping referral links active on your older posts, you can earn money for years. Moreover, when you refer a visitor to your advertiser’s site, you may earn your commission even if that visitor doesn’t.

Affiliate marketing offers you a source of passive earnings from your blog. All you need to do is be consistent, relevant, and patient – and the seeds that you sow today will grow to offer fruits in the future.

While patience is key, integrating strategies like SEO and staying updated with trending topics can accelerate your growth.

• Focus on building an SEO-optimized page that ranks well for highly relevant keywords to your niche. Use tools like Google Trends to identify what your audience is searching for and create content around those topics.
• Stay mindful of algorithm changes to ensure your content remains visible and performs well over time.
• Incorporate trending topics strategically to capture your audience's attention while maintaining long-term relevance with evergreen content.

Your top priority should be your content marketing strategy because your content always comes first. Without good content, you can never be successful in affiliate marketing. Use affiliate ads to enhance the value of your content and platform instead of giving your content in to cater to the requirements of affiliate programs.