Are you looking for the best and the most efficient ways to promote your affiliate links to generate a steady income?
You have come to the right place, my friends.
In this detailed blog post, I’m going to share with you the 10 most effective ways to promote your affiliate links, boost your affiliate marketing strategy, and generate passive income.
Why exactly do you need to promote your affiliate links, by the way?
As an affiliate marketer, you share your affiliate links to promote your products. You earn income only when your visitors make a purchase by clicking on that link before the cookie expires. Usually, the cookie has a duration of 30-90 days.
The more people click on your affiliate links, the more affiliate commission you earn.
When you don’t share your affiliate links, what will your users click on to make a purchase so that you earn a commission?
The affiliate market is a huge market.
According to Statista, U.S. affiliate market spending is expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2022.
You don’t need to invest a large amount of money if you want to become an affiliate. The overheads and costs related to starting an affiliate marketing business are minimal. And you can do this business from anywhere in the world. All you need to have is a mobile/laptop and an internet connection.
Best of all, you earn income even when you sleep.
In this article, we’ll be discussing the best, most effective, and cost-efficient ways to promote your affiliate links.
In this article:
#1. What is an affiliate link?
#2. How to get affiliate links?
#3. How to add affiliate links to your WordPress blog?
#4. 10 best ways to promote affiliate links
- Write Blog Posts
- Email Marketing
- Product Reviews
- Social Networks
- Podcasts
- Advertising
- Guest Posting
- Tutorials
- Online Event
- Contest
#5. How to disclose affiliate links?
But before getting ahead with the ways to promote affiliate links, let’s first try to understand the basics of affiliate marketing.
Let’s get started.
What is an affiliate link?
In affiliate programs, the advertisers use a specific URL to track the traffic sent from an affiliate’s website to the advertiser’s website. This specific URL is called an affiliate link which may contain the affiliate’s ID, username, randomized series of numbers and letters, or some other means of identification.
As an affiliate, you can use your affiliate link in several places on the internet such as social media accounts, blogs, emails, YouTube videos, etc.
When visitors to your affiliate’s site click that link, they land at the advertiser’s website. If they make a purchase, you’ll receive a commission.
Related Articles:
- What is Affiliate Marketing and How it works?
- Top 9 Affiliate Marketing Programs and Websites
- 15 Best Places You Can Use to Promote Your Blog
How to get affiliate links?
Follow these steps to get your affiliate links:
-
Join Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Networks
There are multiple companies registered with the affiliate networks. This makes it easier for you to join the affiliate programs of those companies whose products you want to promote.
Just do some research and find out which programs suit your interests and the content of your blog post.
A few popular examples of affiliate programs for bloggers are:
Before applying to join affiliate programs, you must look into their rates of commission and the rules of applying.
-
If approved, log in to your main dashboard of the affiliate program.
When you have logged in to your affiliate program, you can locate your affiliate links and other promotional content such as banners and special promo codes.
Once you have selected the text link or banners of the advertiser that you would like to promote on your site, your affiliate links will be automatically generated.
How to add affiliate links to your WordPress blog?
So, you have successfully got your affiliate link generated, eh…
Now is the time to add it to your blog post.
There are different ways you can add your affiliate link to your blog post.
Just copy the HTML code or direct link and paste it into your blog post using the “insert/edit link” tool in the WordPress Post Editor.
Or, to make your link visually more appealing, you can transform it by using WordPress plugins such as ThirstyAffiliates or Pretty Links.
Best ways to promote your affiliate links:
Now that we have understood the basics of affiliate links, let’s move onto the best ways to promote them and earn passive income:
#1. Write blog posts
Do you have a blog with relevant and valuable content that drives a decent amount of traffic?
If you don’t, you need to start one right away.
Coz, blogging is one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to promote your affiliate links.
When you write a blog post with valuable content that answers all the questions of your readers, you establish yourself as an expert in your industry. You become a go-to source for useful information, the readership of your blog increases, and your readers will keep visiting your blog for more relevant and valuable content.
The most important thing is posting your valuable and engaging content consistently. This will help you win the trust of your audience and they’ll definitely use your affiliate links to make a purchase.
And if you try to create evergreen content that stays relevant for many years to come, your readers will read and refer to such content over and over again.
All you need to do is refresh it occasionally. And you will have a great opportunity to expose your affiliate links to your old as well as new audiences.
You can create your blog posts in any form you want such as infographics, product reviews, or tutorials.
Another advantage of blogging is that you can use your affiliate links in the replies to your readers’ comments.
IMPORTANT! While placing your affiliate links you need to be a bit careful. Place them only where they’re required so that they may sit naturally within the topic. Never use them for the sake of using.
For example, if you have a link for anti-aging products, use this link on only those blog posts that discuss how to remain young for longer.
Related Articles:
- How to Write A Blog Post: 9 Most Essential Steps to Write A Great Blog Post
- 8 Best Blogging Platforms
#2. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most powerful and sustainable tools to build a community and promote your affiliate links.
According to Statista, the number of email users was 4 billion in 2020 which is set to grow to 4.6 billion in 2025.
The number of emails sent and received every day worldwide was approximately 306 billion in 2020 which is projected to increase to 376 billion in 2025.
Also, the average ROI of email marketing is 4400%. You get a return of investment of $44 for every dollar invested.
That’s huge, isn’t it?
First of all, you need to have a list of email subscribers.
You can make this list by adding a subscription form to your website and asking your readers to subscribe to your newsletters in exchange for their emails.
Another great way of building a list is providing your readers a free offer. You can share with them a report, e-book, webinar, or some courses for free and use a form to capture their emails.
Once they sign-up to your email list, you need to build trust with them by sharing a lot of useful and relevant content, all free.
If your content doesn’t give value to your readers, there’s every chance that they’ll unsubscribe.
Constantly interacting with your audience by sharing your valuable content gives you an opportunity to know them well and establish a one-on-one bond.
When you think that you have won their trust, that’s the right time to send them an email with a link to your offering.
IMPORTANT! Never promote your links too heavily. Using them as part of the body text or in the signature could be a good idea.
And most importantly, always segment your email list so that your emails go to the right audience. Such audiences are more likely to click the link to your affiliate product than just opening and reading your email.
Related Articles:
#3. Product Reviews
So, what do you do just before visiting the product website and making the decision to purchase?
I usually read testimonials and reviews to know others’ views about the product or service I have to buy.
And that’s what 93% of potential consumers do.
They read online reviews before making a final decision to buy a product or service.
Also, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they would if some of their friends or relatives recommend a product.
These stats make the product reviews so important in growing your affiliate business and increasing sales.
Making a review site is a great idea as far as creating an affiliate site is concerned.
You can start writing reviews about a lot of products each with its own affiliate link.
In your reviews, you should give your readers the information on using the products and also the pros and cons of using them.
You should show your buyers both sides of the image, positive as well as negative.
Give them the reasons to buy and the reasons not to buy.
If you keep writing only positive reviews, the consumers may assume that these reviews must be either fake or paid.
So, you’ve to write honest and unbiased reviews and share your personal experience with the product or service you’re promoting.
Your consumers will consider your reviews as a trustworthy recommendation and the majority of them will decide to buy your product.
You can also leave your affiliate links on others’ review sites. Though it doesn’t always work, it’ll give you a little extra exposure.
#4. Social Networks
Social media could be the fastest way to grow your affiliate marketing business. You can share your content with your affiliate link to your followers on various social networks.
Here are some of the common ways you can use social media to promote your affiliate links:
- Write short reviews about the products you promote and place your affiliate links in your reviews. In your reviews, you must share your experience with the products, how they benefited you, and how you use them. You should also give your customers reasons why they should use them and how they can benefit them as well.
- Share your blog content either on your own page or as promoted posts with links to the products or services your offer.
- Use social media marketing to run advertising campaigns.
IMPORTANT! When using social media platforms to promote your affiliate links, you need to follow their guidelines. If you violate their policy guidelines, they can even block your account.
Related Article:
Some of the top social media channels you can use to share your content with affiliate links include the following:
-
Facebook
Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide with over 2.7 billion monthly active users.
Create a business page related to your niche, if you don’t have one. And start sharing your content with the link to your offer either via your personal profile or a business page.
The content could be in any form such as photos, reviews, polls, blog post content, etc.
Besides a business page, creating a Facebook group dedicated to your niche is also a good idea.
Your followers will keep posting content centered around your niche or asking for tips related to your niche.
Here, you have a great opportunity to share your affiliate links.
But you must also disclose to them that it’s an affiliate link and you’ll receive a commission without costing them a dime.
-
Instagram
Instagram is one of the most popular social platforms with over 1 billion monthly active users and more than 500 million daily active users.
Just keep posting high-quality images and videos of the product and service you’re promoting. Gradually, people will start engaging with your photos and videos.
And in just a few months’ time, you can see that you’ve built a large number of followers.
The most important thing is you need to be very active daily on Instagram.
Yeah! You’ll have to post relevant and engaging photos or videos three to four times a day, not just once a day. Other ways of remaining active are commenting on others’ posts, using hashtags wisely, etc.
Once you’ve built your account up to a decent following, what are the ways of promoting your affiliate links?
There are two main ways of doing this.
First, through the photos or videos of the product on offer, try to tell your audience how it benefited you and how it can benefit them as well.
But generating clicks through your referral links isn’t that easy.
Why? Because Instagram posts aren’t clickable.
To make your audience click on your affiliate link, you need to drive them to your bio.
The second way of promoting is using Instagram stories. Instagram stories allow you to post photos or videos that last for 24 hours.
If you’ve 10000 followers or more, you can use Instagram stories to place your links.
-
YouTube
YouTube is the second-most visited website right after its parent company, Google. It’s also the second-most used social platform right behind Facebook.
It is, no doubt, a powerful marketing tool to promote your affiliate links.
People usually turn to YouTube Videos for product reviews, how-to guides, and other information on products and services. They prefer watching product videos to reading about it.
Start your own channel related to the product or service you want to promote and keep posting interesting, informative, and relevant videos.
There are two main ways you can include links in your video content.
First, include your links in the description of all your videos. And don’t forget to call out the description in your videos to direct your viewers to the description box, both verbally and visually.
To make your links neat and clean, you can use a URL shortening service to shorten your URLs.
The second way of placing your affiliate link is using YouTube Annotations.
For this, you need to edit the YouTube video you have to place your affiliate link in. Next, click the Annotations tab and fill out the required info.
Here, you have the option to select the times and places for the Annotations to pop up within a YouTube video. And near the bottom, you can add your cloaked affiliate link.
-
Pinterest
Promoting your affiliate links on Pinterest is always a great idea. Besides Facebook and Instagram, it’s another popular platform with affiliate marketers.
Pinterest, being a search engine, has a great potential to send a lot of traffic to your site.
Here, you have to create boards with pins around a particular product. To create pins, you can use Canva or some other graphic designing tools like Pixlr, Gravit, or Sumo paint.
Write detailed pin description, alt text, and include your affiliate link.
And in the description of your pin, you must disclose your affiliate link.
To get maximum reach and exposure for your pins, you can circulate them through your group boards. Before circulating, you need to make sure that the group board is allowing affiliate links.
What’s more important is that you need to be active and post your images consistently so that more and more pins come up in searches.
-
Twitter
Another great social media platform. On average, 6000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter per second. This means 350,000 tweets per minute, 500 million tweets per day, and around 200 billion tweets per year.
If you don’t have a Twitter account, do create one today for your brand. And start following similar accounts and their followers to let them know about your company.
But with Twitter, there’s a character limit of 280. You can’t describe in detail everything about your product or service.
So, you have to be a bit creative here so that you may be able to convince someone to click on your affiliate link.
Because of its character limit, using Twitter to send traffic to your website could be a better idea. Once your users are on your website, they’ll get to learn more about your affiliate products or services. And many of them will end up clicking on your affiliate links.
#5. Podcasts
Wikipedia defines it as “an episodic series of spoken word digital files that a user can download to a personal device for easy listening”.
One of the great features of a podcast is that it allows a user to subscribe. He can listen to it whenever he likes. Once a user is subscribed, you don’t need to implement a new marketing campaign.
Why? Because he is alerted when a new podcast is uploaded.
Over the years, Podcasting has become a popular and effective way for brands to gain attention.
People have deep respect for the hosts of their favorite podcasts.
Obviously, they’ll trust them and will more likely buy anything they tell them to.
So, how to start a podcast?
Producing a podcast is a lot easier than video marketing.
All you need is a good quality microphone, headphones, audio editing software, and a computer or laptop. That’s it.
As the number of people using mobile phones has increased, the podcast has become a very powerful, effective, and popular marketing tool.
Many businesses, as well as affiliates, are using podcasts to get more prospects and leads.
Unlike YouTube that takes much longer to gain a following, a podcast is easy to grow.
You just need to keep promoting your podcasts by making them available on a variety of distribution channels. This will increase the exposure of your podcasts and will reach out to a larger audience.
Podcast listeners know that podcasts get funded by advertising sponsored products or promos.
So, in your podcasts, you should mention your affiliate offers and tell your listeners where they can get more information on them.
You can include your affiliate link in the episode description as well.
#6. Advertising
You can also promote your affiliate links through advertising by using Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, or your own website to place ads.
Advertisements help you greatly in driving traffic to your affiliate links.
Pro Tip: Some websites including Facebook, don’t allow direct advertising i.e., you cannot run ads directly using your affiliate links. You can use ads to bring people to your landing page where they’ll get more info about your affiliate links.
The main advantage of paid advertising is that the people clicking on your link are those people who have decided to make a purchase.
But before starting any advertising campaign, you need to know how exactly it works.
Why? This is because advertisements cost you real money.
If not done right, the commission you receive may not even cover the cost of the advertising campaign. And you may end up losing your hard-earned money.
So, you need to be experienced and have a good strategy if you want to use paid lead-generating techniques.
#7. Guest Posting
Guest posting is one of the best techniques to generate traffic to your website and promote your affiliate links.
What is Guest posting?
It’s all about writing and publishing a relevant post on another person’s website or blog. It helps greatly in building relationships, gaining more exposure for your website, connecting with new readers, and building links.
But creating your own blog is a lot of work and it takes time to get a decent amount of traffic for your site.
If you have neither time nor desire to start your own blog, you can consider guest posting.
There are many small or medium blog creators you can reach out to. They always welcome guest bloggers for their blogs.
This is because they get valuable and relevant content without costing them anything.
It’s a win-win situation.
The bloggers get content for free and you get free exposure.
Or, you can also try to write your guest post for some well-known and leading blogs in your niche. If accepted, it’ll give you exposure to a much larger audience such sites provide.
Pro Tip: Make sure your content is related to the blog you are writing for and is useful and relevant to the audience of that blog.
Another aspect of Guest blogging is accepting guest bloggers on your own website.
If you have your own blog up and running, you can publish content from other bloggers on your site.
Doing this will also gain you exposure for your website and your affiliate offers to new audiences.
#8. Tutorials
Tutorials are one of the most effective ways to grow your audience and promote your affiliate links.
You can create in-depth tutorials around the products you want to promote in the form of videos or blogs.
Through tutorials, you try to educate your users about everything related to the products. For example, how the product works, how to use it, how to place an order, where to find it, its pros and cons, etc.
When you give all the information about your product in your video or blog post, they come to believe that the product works exactly as you claim. And this increases the chances of their clicking on your affiliate link.
#9. Online Event
This is something that helps you get hundreds or even thousands of people together from different parts of the world at once.
Online events have grown in popularity due to two reasons:
- People are busy. They may not be able to take out time from their busy schedule to attend in-person events.
- It doesn’t cost much to start online events. To attend an online event, the participants need just a smartphone or laptop/computer and an internet connection.
Selling to your audience of online events is much easier.
But how? Online events give you an opportunity to create a one-on-one relationship with your audience. So just drop a link in the chatbox and educate them about your product or service on offer. And then try to give honest answers to all the questions your customers might have regarding your offer.
The success rate of online events of selling or getting sign-ups is higher than other techniques of promoting your affiliate links such as ads or email marketing.
#10. Contest
Hosting a contest is a great and fantastic way to promote your affiliate links.
People love winning prizes. When you host a contest, more people will start talking about your brand and thus increasing the engagement of your website.
Contests help you reach a larger audience, gain more followers, more leads, and if done properly, can provide you incredible ROI.
There are endless options for you to conduct a contest online. For example, Photo contests, Video contests, Sweepstakes, Social sharing contests, etc.
To get your audience to use your link to buy a product and share that link to their network, you have to tie in your affiliate link to the contest.
You can tell your audience that they’ll enter a contest by purchasing a product using your affiliate link and win amazing prizes.
Make sure that the contests you are launching are worth the time and money of the audience. The prizes should be attractive so that they enter into a contest without thinking twice.
How to disclose your affiliate links?
It’s a law that you disclose your affiliate links whenever you use them.
Disclosing your affiliate links makes your incentives transparent and your customers may also be able to make informed decisions.
The terms and conditions of the affiliate programs also require you to disclose the affiliate links when you use them.
This means, by not disclosing the affiliate links, you violate not only the FTC policies (in the U.S.) and GDPR policies (in the E.U.) but also the terms and conditions of the affiliate programs.
So, it’s a must that you place a written disclosure in an obvious place in every blog post containing affiliate links.
Here are a few examples of disclosure statements:
“This post contains affiliate links from advertisers. If you click on these links and purchase a product/service, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. However, these products/services have helped me tremendously and I recommend them fully. Thank you!”
“This post contains affiliate links. Click here for more information.” (Don’t forget to link to your Disclosure page.)
“My posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, you won’t pay a penny more, but we’ll get a small commission, which helps keep the lights on. Thanks!” (Disclosure by NomNomPaleo.)
You must also have a disclaimer/disclosure page in the header or footer menu of your blog.
Conclusion
I hope this detailed blog post about affiliate links and the best ways to promote them is helpful to you.
You just need to find out which of these tactics work best for your users.
Next, search for some high-paying affiliate programs to join and start putting your affiliate links in the best places for your audience.
And voila! Your blog is now all set to get monetized.
Becoming a successful affiliate marketer is never easy.
It requires time and hard work.
So, be patient, work hard, and take your time to improve your skills.
Once you improve your skills and implement the above ideas, your affiliate links will start getting more clicks.
And very soon, you’ll be noticing some amazing results in your affiliate marketing strategy.
What other tactics or ways you use to promote your affiliate links? Do let me know in the comments section below.