5 Important Tips All Bloggers Must Know About Affiliate Marketing

5 Important Tips All Bloggers Must Know About Affiliate Marketing

There’s nothing to be ashamed of…

You secretly or maybe not so secretly want your blog to be successful.

And we’re not just talking about touching the lives of others for Christ.

You also want financial success too so you can support your family and your community.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

After all, Christian Blogging Academy was created for bloggers who want to blog full time and want to turn their blog’s into a business.

We have that entrepreneurial spirit and make no apologies for it.

We know that the money we make is a direct reflection of the value our content, products, and services have had on our audience.

When we truly create content and give our readers and subscribers what they truly need then they will gladly compensate you for it.

It’s an even and beautiful exchange.

Given all of that, when it comes to making money with your blog one of the easier ways to monetize your blog is through affiliate marketing (sorry, there’s not a truly easy way…just easier ways).

There’s so much to cover with affiliate marketing and I’m going to go over a lot of it but today I’m just going to give you 5 facts about affiliate marketing that all bloggers should know.

These might just be the most important facts to know and truly grasp about marketing.

Let’s ever so briefly discuss what affiliate marketing is, just in case you don’t know.

But first, if you need help turning your blog into a business then you can download this free action plan! 

This post may contain affiliate links which means I would earn a commission if you purchased something from that link.  

What Is This Amazing Thing Called Affiliate Marketing?

Like I said affiliate marketing is one the easier ways to start monetizing your blog. Why is that, you ask? It’s because you don’t have to create a product, write a sales page, or deal with customer service.

That’s because when you are an affiliate for a product, all you have to do (in theory) is:

1. Find a product
2. Find out if the company who makes that product will pay you to sell copies of that product.
3. If that company will pay you, sign up to be an affiliate.
4. Once approved by the company, sell the product.

Sounds easy enough right?

Well, it’s kind of easy compared to other forms of monetization but there are some important things to keep in mind when it comes to affiliate marketing:

1. You must buy the product (unless you tell your audience that you didn’t)!

When you are promoting an affiliate product, it’s crucial that you buy the product and use it, so that you can report back to your audience on the product’s quality.

Now, I know it’s tempting to just see a product, see how popular it is and start promoting it. And guess what?

I have done it but only when I can find trustworthy reviews of the product (for me, testimonials from the company’s website are not enough…they tend to only post the positive reviews and chuck the rest).

Do you spend tons of time on Pinterest to boost your page view? Check out Tailwind!

 

2. You must believe in the product

When you promote an affiliate product, instead of being overly concerned with how much commission you make from the product, be more concerned with how much faith you have in the product’s quality. If you really believe that the product is made well and comes from a company that you believe you can support financially then you can feel good about promoting it to your audience.

 

3. Be sure it serves the needs of your audience

Not sure what products you should promote to your audience? You have to think about their need’s and goals as it relates to your blog’s purpose. I’ll be talking more about that in a future post because it’s extremely important.

 

4. Be truthful about your product

Make sure you are honest about your affiliate product. Do you really love it or do you love the potential payout you’d get from it?

Have you used the product and found it lacking but still want to promote it anyway because it gives 30% recurring commissions?

And it’s also good when you review a product that you either have used or can find lots of reviews for it, highlight some of the faults of the product.

For instance, on a blog I have about flat irons, I would review flat irons I used and some that were used by others and I would always give the pros and cons so the potential buyer knew what was up.

I don’t like for people to be blindsided and so if there was an issue with a flat iron, I wanted to be sure to let the reader know about it in case they didn’t dig as deeply as I did in the reviews.

Part of our service to our readers as an affiliate is to do a lot of the research work so they don’t have to.

We are serving them by making their lives easier and in the end, we might get rewarded for it.

Then again we may not. They may feel like the cons are too great and decide against buying the product.

But we can feel good about that as well because we’ve helped someone from making a financial mistake and that builds trust with your reader and you may have a sale from them on another product in the future.

Regardless, you can still feel good about helping someone, even if they never buy from you.

 

5. You must place your link in several places in your blog post

When you link an affiliate product, it’s best not to just link it in one place but in several places. And I don’t just mean in a blog post.

Marketing an affiliate product to your email list is probably the most profitable to sell an affiliate product.

That’s again because you’ve often built trust with your subscribers and the trust factor is one of the biggest components of selling online.

So when you sell an affiliate product, you can sell it to your subscriber list and also promote it in your blog posts.

 

Want to know more about affiliate marketing?

If you want to know more about affiliate marketing (because trust me, this article is just the tip of the iceberg) then I invite you to join me for the next few weeks as I dive more in-depth about this topic. I want to help you see affiliate marketing as more of a service to your readers and not just a way to make money. Sign up for my email list so you can get reminders.

And if you want to dive even deeper into affiliate marketing, you should definitely check out the course from Create and Go, which explains affiliate marketing more thoroughly than I can here.

I’ll be talking more about that in future posts but if you’re interested you can check out the course here.

Alright folks all from me…I’ll speak to you soon where we will talk more about the wonderful world of affiliate marketing.

Adios,

 

More Affiliate Marketing Posts From CBA

3 Simple Affiliate Marketing Tips Smart Bloggers Follow To Earn Money

5 Important Tips For Successful Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers

Top 24 Christian Affiliate Programs You Can Easily Monetize On Your Blog