So you've got a blog, and you're doing affiliate marketing - with either no success, little success or great success (high five!) - but hey, you're always looking for ways to make more. Below are nine things I've done over the years - with success - to earn more revenue from my blogs. Nine Ways …
Affiliate Marketing
Below you'll find the posts at Sugarrae from the affiliate marketing category. I highly recommend you read each of them if you're serious about making an income as an affiliate marketer.
If you already know about affiliate marketing and want to get straight to the tips and strategies for making more money with it, click here.
If you're not familiar with affiliate marketing or are unsure of how it works, keep reading.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing allows you to recommend products and services from other companies and be paid a commission if someone buys the product as the result of your recommendation. To track which purchases happens as a result of your recommendation(s), the merchant will provide you with a special link to use when linking to their website that contains a unique referral code assigned to you. If people click that unique link, and buy the product or service within a specified timeframe (the timeframe varies depending on the merchant), you get a commission on the sale.
The products cost the consumer the same amount of money as it would if they didn't buy it through your affiliate link, but the merchant pays you a referral fee for generating the sale. For a visual explanation of this process, click here.
So affiliate marketing is legitimate?
Absolutely. Affiliate marketing is a viable and legitimate way to monetize your blog or website. Tens of thousands of merchants run affiliate programs and will pay you a commission for sending them sales. However, there are some scams centered around affiliate marketing. You'll find information on how to spot affiliate scams – and avoid them – here.
So how do you find affiliate programs to promote?
The easiest way to find affiliate programs to promote is to check if the people selling products and services you love have an affiliate program – assuming those products and services would be relevant to the visitors to your blog or website. There are also multiple ways to find new quality products or services to promote to your audience based on their interests. You'll find more information on how to do this here.
Is affiliate marketing free?
Yes and no. You should never pay to become an affiliate for a merchant's program. Joining and promoting an affiliate program is a free opportunity. If someone is asking you to spend money to become their affiliate, then you're being presented with an affiliate scam and should steer clear of that program.
While joining affiliate programs is a free opportunity, it's a business – and like any business, it will cost some money to start and run it. But those costs will be associated with building, running and promoting your blog or website. There are many tools – free and paid - you can use to assist you with all of these processes. I list a few of my favorite affiliate marketing tools here.
Can you really make passive income with affiliate marketing?
Yes and no. Affiliate marketing can generate passive income, but the passive side of the income usually only follows putting in a few years of hard work to generate the brand and audience you'll need to begin generating those passive sales. I have multiple sites earning passive income, but each of those sites took a lot of front end work to build up to that point. And not every site gets to the point of passive income. Some sites require continual maintenance though the revenue they generate can also allow you to pay for that maintenance to be done vs. you needing to do it yourself.
Anyone promising to teach you how you can make thousands without putting in much work is selling you the dream and should be avoided.
How to Create Passive Income with Profitable (Yet Honest) Reviews
When I did my post on how to make money via blogging, I'd mentioned doing product reviews within it as one of my favorite ways to generate passive income with a blog. To me, there's no better recipe for monetization than taking a product I love, walking you through it, showing you what you can …
Why Turnkey Affiliate Websites are a Waste of Money
When I did the Sugarrae reader survey, one of the questions I asked was: "Have you ever paid for a "turnkey" affiliate marketing product? (Such as a domain and a store setup to sell affiliate products with promises that it was ready, set, make money?)" .8% of you said you had an found it …
Tracking Your Affiliate Partners and Website Earnings
Years ago, the word organization and I did not belong in the same sentence (some days they still don't, but I'm so much better than I was before LOL). I really couldn't even tell you how much I even actually made from affiliate marketing in the early days... I only knew that I made more income than …
Finding a (Good) Niche in Affiliate Marketing
The question I get asked the most often - hands down - is how to go about finding - and evaluating - a potential niche in affiliate marketing. Most people give the same advice. Find something you love and go into it. If this were 2002, I'd have laughed at that advice. I've always joked that I …
Affiliate Site Maintenance (& Avoiding Potentially Costly Mistakes)
After 10+ years as an affiliate, I own a lot of affiliate sites. Some very successful, some semi-successful and yes, some have been complete failures. Once you start getting into the running multiple sites arena, it's easy to let some things slip through the cracks. It's not uncommon for me to …
How to Make Money Blogging
I was recently trying to explain to a friend new to the concept of affiliate marketing how I made money from blogging. For this post, I'll use Sugarrae specifically as an example of how I make money by blogging since most people blogging primarily to earn extra cash (or a full-time income) are …
How to Add SID Tracking to the “Big Network” Affiliate Links
Call it a SID, CID, MID, TID - but no matter what you call sub campaign affiliate link tracking, you damn sure better be using it. Sub campaign tracking is critical in helping you determine which affiliate links on your site are working and which aren't, rather than using a generic link site-wide …
How Affiliate Marketing Works – A Step by Step Visual
Recently I've been doing some articles aimed at the beginner affiliate - like how you can avoid affiliate marketing scams and how you can find reputable affiliate programs to promote. After spending over a decade in the Internet marketing industry, I think I often forget - and have failed to …