8 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you’ve probably noticed that my main method of doing affiliate marketing is via PPC, however, what most people don’t realize is that I actually do pretty well using SEO to rank affiliate sites as well as using affiliate programs on content sites or blogs. I don’t by any means consider myself to be an expert in this field of affiliate marketing, but I figured that a lot of people may benefit from hearing the simple phrase that affiliate programs most likely can and will bring in more profits than Google Adsense (or other contextual advertising) if done correctly.

So, without further adieu, here are 10 tips to using affiliate programs on your blog or content site.

1. Know Your Audience!

Most people, while this is one of the most important things, ignore this when they start choosing which affiliate programs they are wanting to promote on their blog or website.  Just because you run a site/blog about birds doesn’t mean your visitors want links to where they can buy birds.  Likely bird food, toys, etc would do better.  Again, while this may seem like common sense it’s amazing how many times I see a site or blog trying to promote something their customers just aren’t looking for.

2. Research What Your Offering!

You readers aren’t stupid!  Assuming they are will only make an ass out of you!  Make sure you do some research on an affiliate program before using them.  Is the product(s) they offer good quality products?  Do they receive good reviews online at the different review sites out there?  This is something that is easy to find out with a quick search so DON’T be LAZY!!!

An even greater thing that will make your readers happy is to know that you yourself are using the product(s). If your not using them, why should your readers?  If you wouldn’t ever buy the product or service yourself then don’t promote it!

3. Don’t Send Your Visitors to Their Homepage!

Another common mistake I see users do when they are using an affiliate program is to link directly to the advertisers homepage.  This is a big no-no in my book and shouldn’t be done unless you absolutely can’t deep-link to a specific product on their site.  And if thats the case, I would start looking for a new advertiser personally.

The reason Google Adsense works so well is because the ads are relevant to what your user is reading about for the most part.  Why wouldn’t you then do the same when using affiliate programs?  When you link to a product don’t just send your visitor to the homepage.  Instead, link them to the actual product page of the affiliate programs site where they can easily read more about the product and buy it all from that page.

From all my personal experiences in this field, the less work (pages) your visitor has to go through to get to the buying point the higher your conversion rates will be!

4. Don’t Strictly Use Affiliate Programs

While I believe affiliate programs can easily allow you to make more than traditional contextual advertising, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use other forms of advertising.  I still strongly recommend using contextual advertising and direct ad sales along side of affiliate programs.

Most people tend to think one will take away from the other, but from my tests and most others, that is very rarely the case.  Different advertising attracts different people!  The people that normally don’t click on contextual advertising may very well click on an affiliate link!

5. Sleep Around!

If your only using or focusing on one particular affiliate program you could very well be losing out on the potential of making a killing using this form of advertising.  If your always promoting the same product or service, how are you advertising to your readers that have already bought that product or service?  You should be using several different affiliate programs on your site/blog.

On the flip side of that, make sure your not using too many affiliate programs at one time.  If every post has 2 or 3 affiliate links in it, chances are your writing content based on advertising instead of writing it based on your readers.  While this may seem like a good idea in your head, it barely ever works out to the best.  There are very few niches I know of that can do this and actually gain readers and increase revenues tremendously.  One of those such niches is in the Make Money Online niche.  I’m sure most of you have seen it and sometimes I think we get the idea that this works in all niches, however, it doesn’t!

6. Does it Sell Well Online?

Is the product or service your trying to promote sell well online?  Again going back to my bird example from one of the points above, assume that you have a blog/site about animals/pets.  Now while there are affiliate programs out there for selling pets online, is the market wide enough compared to something else you could be offering?

Now there are people that buy animals online and have them shipped to them, especially rare fish.  However, this doesn’t mean that allocating a link for buying a fish online instead of a link for buying fish good online is a good idea.  What is going to sell better online and potentially bring you in a bigger profit?  Just because there is an affiliate program for something doesn’t always mean its a great program.

7. Don’t Try to Hide it!

Trying to cover up that fact that a link leads to an affiliate program where you can potentially make money really isn’t necessary and in fact can sometimes hurt you.  Especially in a tech savvy niche where users realize what’s happening.

Most people don’t care that your trying to make money from your site/blog as long as your being honest about it.  However, a lot of people don’t just assume you are trying to make money from your site/blog so by trying to hide it, your visitors may very well think your trying to dupe them into buying something just so you’ll earn money from doing so.  Be honest about your income streams and if your using products that you would personally recommend to a family member, you won’t have a problem!

8. Track Your Results!

Tracking which programs are converting and which aren’t will allow you to realize better as to tip one which was know your audience.  If you know what products or services your readers are buying, then you know what to continue to promote.  It’s as easy as that!

If your not tracking your results, you essentially losing out on money.  We all want to increase how much we are making and one of the easiest ways to do this is to make sure your advertising correctly to the visitors you already have!

I’d love to hear any other suggestions you guys may have for using affiliate programs on your blog or site.  In fact, I’m sure all my readers would love to hear some more tips on potentially increasing the revenue they receive from their blog or website.

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