How To Make Money Through Affiliate Marketing

Hello! I am Morgan Molitor and I blog over at construction2style alongside my husband Jamie about our home renovations, remodels and DIY projects. I also get the great opportunity to work alongside this creative man, Tim Brown, at Snap Agency

As a full time blogger one of the biggest questions I get asked on a regular basis is how I make money through my blog. We monetize our blog and make money online through affiliate marketing. You get paid to talk about brands and products you LOVE, how awesome is that?!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

According to wikipedia it is defined as:

“Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network(that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.”

Said in simpler terms, affiliate marketing is referral marketing. You make money by helping promote brands and businesses through your blog.

At construction2style we do this a few different ways. We write product reviews, build brand awareness by mentioning product names, brands and services within our posts and we also have banner ads placed on our sidebar. My favorite affiliate marketing is brand awareness; writing about the products, services and brands within our posts. For example, we did a post about our kitchen remodel in which was sponsored by Black + Decker. All we had to do was mention that the post was sponsored by Black + Decker and we were paid a flat rate for the post. The benefit to the brand is that not only do they get brand awareness but we link to their site which drives more traffic and the linking in turn helps with SEO.

Best Part of Affiliate Marketing

Besides making money one of the biggest perks about working in affiliate marketing is that you get a ton of free goodies! In our house, it feels like Christmas on a daily basis. Some of the other perks is that there are no fees, no actual product to stock and mail and you are able to reach and market to people globally. Which means the skies the limit!

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We recently received a Roll-A-Bucket and Roll-A-Tray for a sponsored product review we will be doing soon. Our son Greyson thinks it is his new toy. 🙂

More Traffic means More Money!

The key to affiliate marketing is knowing how to be able to convert massive amounts of traffic. construction2style receives over 7,000+ page views per month and currently has 10,000+ social media followers. If you have 100K + followers per month you are able to make anywhere from $800-$1200 per blog post. If you are like us and have anywhere from 7,500-10K visitors per month you can make around $200 per post. Through pay per click you can make anywhere from $1-$3 per click. If you have less than 5K monthly page views sponsored posts are usually around $0-$30 per post. However, through pay per click you are able to maximize that one blog post and reach the max they typically cap you off at around $50-$100.

How do you get Started?

One of the first things you need to do when getting started with affiliate marketing is obtain a good base following. If you don’t have google analytics installed on your website, do it now! A lot of affiliate programs want access to your analytics to verify the traffic to your site. All affiliations have different minimum requirements. Obviously, if you want to be successful at affiliate marketing you need a large number of people visiting your site so you can make more money. However, don’t be discouraged when you are just starting out and aren’t seeing much traffic to your site. And don’t become obsessed with looking at your analytics everyday. Just do what you love and write and write and write, and they will come.

[bctt tweet=”“Just do what you love and write and write and write, and -affiliates- will come.” @C2S_molitor” via=”no”]

Affiliate Programs

If monetizing your blog through affiliates is the path for you, there are many amazing services available to help you manage your own advertisers on your blog that offer affiliate advertising and display ad services for use on your blog. There are a TON of different affiliate programs to be apart of and it really depends on the niche of your tribe that you are wanting to cater to. We are apart of the following programs:

• BlogHer
• Rivit Media
• Weave Made Media
• Google Adsense
• Massive Sway
• Moms Affiliate
• PassionFruit
• Link Vehicle
• Linquia
• Amazon Affiliates

Other great affiliate programs are:

• Nuffnang
• Adproval
• Commission Junction
• ShareASale
• Chitika
• MyThemeShop
• Themeforest
• A2Hosting
• Hostgator

Once you get accepted into the affiliate program, you can start to choose what content you want to promote onto your website and apply for that campaign.

Different ways you can easily promote affiliate products on your blog:

1. Write a Tutorial
2. Write a Review
3. Add Affiliate Banners or ads to your sidebar
4. Include them in your email newsletter
5. Create a case study
6. Make a video
7. Do a giveaway
8. Offer discounts

Tips

1. Promote the ads through content within your blog. Posting an ad to your sidebar might make you a buck or two but it will not generate the potential revenue you are able to maximize.
2. Promote  brands, products or services that you believe in and actually like. If you get too money happy you will quickly lose your following.
3. Be honest. Don’t lie and promote products you don’t believe in to make a couple extra bucks. In the long run it will only destroy your creditability.
4. Be careful on promoting brands or products that aren’t within your niche. I once did a Twitter post about a medical product. Although, I don’t think it hurt my credibility…it just didn’t make sense to the “home remodeling” tribe I’m apart of. Made for good laughs and an easy $50 bucks but I should have said no as I don’t want to risk my credibility.
5. Avoid overcrowding. Nothing is a bigger turnoff than going to a blog or site that is overcrowded with ads and all of the posts are selling.

There are so many fun affiliations to be apart of. At times it can be overwhelming but start with one at a time and see which one makes the most sense for you and your tribe. If you are already blogging, you mine as well make some money at doing something you love. Good Luck!

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Besides learning ‘How To Make Money Through Affiliate Marketing‘, my blog has other highly valuable posts chalk full of value. Please check out any that sound useful to you: my multiple chapter “WordPress for Noobs” series,  interview with 5 Minneapolis freelance web designers post “How to find a good fit for a Minneapolis Web Designer,” and my first massive content hub, “A Crash Course in Hand-lettering.” I love doing WordPress web development in Minneapolis, so if I can help you with anything like that, drop me a line.