Do you have a BLOG and would like to start making money from your blog but are not sure how to go about it

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize your blog. In this post, we will look at how to use affiliate marketing programs to help you make money online with your blog.

Affiliate marketing is an effective way to build a business and create a passive income stream for yourself that can earn you money for years to come if constructed appropriately.

In this post, we will look at the following:

• What is Affiliate Marketing?
• Affiliate Marketing Terms Defined
• Where To Find Affiliate Marketing Programs
• How To Create Content That Converts
• Where To Get Started
• Final Thoughts

WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING?

Affiliate marketing is earning a commission when someone buys from the links on your blog when you promote other people’s products.

Affiliate marketing is a specialized form of marketing where an advertiser seeks to advertise or sell products or services through an affiliate network.

There is more to affiliate marketing if you want to be successful in this business.

Building a blog is one of the best methods to build an affiliate marketing business.

You can produce a blog about the product or company you are affiliated with or blend the product or service into your posts with related topics.

The Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing

• Low or no-cost start-up
• No product needed
• Flexible work settings
• No sales experience required
• Huge customer base

The Cons of affiliate marketing are it is more challenging than answering surveys, testing apps, or anything like that.

To explain further, companies offer bloggers or anyone wanting to earn money to promote their products by giving them a link.

You will use this link on your blog to explain the product and recommend it to your audience.

When your readers click on the link, it will take them to the company’s website selling the product, allowing them to buy it.

When they buy, you will earn a commission. That’s the whole cycle of affiliate marketing.

AFFILIATE MARKETING TERMS DEFINED

Before we go further, I want to explain some of the terms used in affiliate marketing:

• Affiliate Link – This is the link companies provide you to use to promote their products. It can be specific to a particular product on their website, or it can be a search page or a category. This affiliate link tracks the users going from your website to their website, and your commissions are paid to you
• Affiliate Products – You can promote and earn a commission on these products.

• Affiliate Programs – When looking for affiliate products, you first want to know if a company even has an affiliate program. Companies create affiliate programs if they wish others to promote their products and, in return, pay them a commission or fee for their referral.

• Affiliate Networks – Some websites bring together website publishers and advertisers (companies that offer affiliate programs) in one place. The network runs the affiliate program for the companies in the network. Publishers like you and I can visit these networks to find many companies that offer affiliate products.

• Commissions – This is money you earn when someone clicks on your affiliate link, and you make either a flat fee or a percentage of the sale. Commissions are pre-determined and should know before joining any affiliate programs. Amazon’s affiliate program calls their commissions “advertising fees,” so there are different terms.

WHERE TO FIND AFFILIATE MARKETING PROGRAMS

Affiliate Networks:

You can find links on affiliate marketing networks such as  CJ Affiliate by Conversant (formerly known as Commission Junction), LinkShare, Clickbank, ShareASale, Amazon Associates, and eBay.

You apply to these networks, and they all have different requirements; sometimes, you can get in immediately, but it can take a little while.

For others like CJ Affiliate by Conversant, you can set up your account quickly. Still, then after you’ve found the companies or products you want to promote, you have to apply to the individual companies in the network.

The company you choose can approve you immediately or take some time to review your website and approve or disapprove as they determine.

Once approved, you can get the affiliate links to start promoting.

For Amazon Associates, your application will only get reviewed once you have made your first commission, but that also means they can disapprove you, and you will not earn that first commission.

However, once Amazon approves you, you don’t need to apply further to promote any of the products they carry.

Private Affiliate Programs:

Some companies offer affiliate programs like HostGator, Fiverr, Nike, Apple, and Disney.

To find out who has affiliate programs for the product you want, go on Google and search “product name + affiliate program,” you should be able to find the companies that offer them.

Best Type of Affiliate Programs:

Different affiliate programs are out there, and knowing the different types determines which program you want to join.

HOW TO CREATE CONTENT THAT CONVERTS

The best way to promote your affiliate products is not by selling to your audience but by recommending the products.

Nobody wants to be sold to, especially people who don’t know you.

You need to earn their trust, and you can do that by creating helpful content.

If you want to help others, then you cater to their needs; it is crucial to know the needs of your audience.

After learning something new and thinking your recommendation will work, the reader will click on your affiliate link and take them to the site that sells and buys the products.

Meeting your reader’s needs is the best way to convert your readers into buyers!

Here’s a walkthrough of the process again here:

• Find a problem your audience may have;

• Show them how to solve this problem;

• Recommend the products that will help them solve this problem;

• The reader clicks on your affiliate link and buys it on the recommended site you linked them to; and

• You make a commission!

Sometimes the simplest way to convert a reader is their need to be noticed and met, but many publishers miss this, and all they do is sell.

You need to build trust with your readers and find them solutions they can use; that’s why they were on the internet in the first place, searching for answers.

I hope this has helped you see how this process will more successfully convert your readers to buyers than just telling them how great a product is.

Your audience will always want to know how a product will benefit and improve their lives if they have it, so you need to show them this.

WHERE TO GET STARTED

There is a lot to learn about affiliate marketing, and the internet has a lot of information about everything.

But on the internet, the information is in multiple places; gathering all the information necessary to build a successful online business will take some time and effort.

You will need proper affiliate marketing training to understand better how to write content, find products, know what to write about, and use keyword techniques to generate free blog traffic.

The best training available is at Wealthy Affiliate; they are my #1 recommendation for getting trained on building this affiliate marketing business.

You can get a step-by-step guide here to show how easy it is to start your affiliate marketing website for free with Wealthy Affiliate.

You can follow the guide above to get your one free website and start learning the first level of the Online Entrepreneur Certification course, which has five lessons for free.

There are five levels in that course, and you’ll need to upgrade to a Premium membership if you want the rest of the system after you finish the first level.

Create your free account at Wealthy Affiliate and immediately start training.

The first seven days will allow you to test-drive some Premium member features, but you can stay a free member as long as you want after the trial period.

If you would like to learn more about Wealthy Affiliate first, no problem,

You will see that way more training is available than that one course, and there is much more included in a Premium membership that you can’t get anywhere else.

A few of the advantages of the Premium membership

• Live Chat for instant help
• Private Messaging for more one-on-one coaching
• Weekly Live Training Webinars to stay on top of hot topics to help your business; already over 200 webinars on instant replay for you to learn from.
• Unlimited Keyword Research Tool
• 11 Other Classroom discussions on specific topics
• Highly Secured, Super Fast Web Hosting for up to 25 websites
• Privacy Domain Registration included
• SSL Certificate included
• and much more!

This online training platform has genuinely been the best one I’ve found, and I’m so glad I found this platform.

I never thought I could be a blogger, but thanks to Wealthy Affiliate, I am now a blogger making money online.

Wealthy Affiliates have an active community where you can always get your questions answered without much delay.

I became a Premium member three months after I joined and haven’t looked back since.

You can  create your FREE account here with no credit card needed here:

START YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS FOR FREE

FINAL THOUGHTS

You will need to find out how much money you can make with affiliate marketing; This is a real online business opportunity that can make you more than a full-time income if done correctly.

The best in this industry make millions with just affiliate marketing alone, let alone all the other opportunities that have come up for them in the process.

With the abovementioned training, you can start earning within your first year. Remember, this is a business you’re building, so it does take time to make.

JOIN THE BEST AFFILIATE MARKETING  TRAINING PLATFORM FOR FREE

This program is not a scam, this is an honest way to make money online, and the training at Wealthy Affiliate will help you reach your financial goals.

It’s all up to you! The more effort you put into your business, the more likely you’ll succeed.

The best thing is that you’ll have help if you join Wealthy Affiliate.

If you have any questions or thoughts about affiliate marketing or Wealthy Affiliate, please do not hesitate to leave me a comment below! I always reply to all my commenters!