How Can You Monetize Your Blog With Affiliate Marketing?

First of all, let us know what is Affiliate marketing. Well, Affiliate Marketing is defined as the performance-based marketing practice where the online retailers reward certain business websites with a commission for each referred customer through the promotional activities of the website. The affiliates get paid right when the outcome of their promotion is a transaction.

Four parties are involved in affiliate marketing, namely:
• Affiliates promoting the products
• Product creators creating the products
• Networks managing the affiliates
• Consumers, ultimately using the products or the end-users

Always a network need not be involved in becoming an affiliate, but the remaining three patties – affiliates, product creators, and consumers, form the very basis of an affiliate program.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Serve its Functionality?
An affiliate is paid whenever your referred visitors enter into a transaction, in the form of clicks, submitting the lead forms, and sales. At large, affiliate marketing is totally performance-based, that is you are paid as an affiliate when the visitors engage themselves into action.

The common affiliate marketing models are:

PPC or Pay Per Click: The affiliates are paid for all the generated clicks, regardless the lead has come up or the sale is made. It is fairly rare, as the major risk is borne by the product creator.
PPL or Pay Per Lead: The affiliates receive the payment for every lead they have generated, like the online form submission, pre-purchases, and the trial creations or sessions. It is a shared risk on part of both the merchants and the affiliates.
PPS or Pay Per Sale: The affiliates make an earning for each sale they could generate – it is the commonest model as the affiliate take all the risk.

Now we shall come to the core of our discussion.

How do Affiliate Marketing Help in Monetizing Your Blogs?
Depending on Affiliate Marketing for monetizing blogs is not tough, but the start for the non-experienced is truly daunting. Nevertheless, three tips will be really helpful to begin, go ahead, and achieve success.

i. Choosing a Profitable Niche
The subset of a large market is a niche targeting a particular audience. Selecting the right niches is to hit the right target audience so the making money becomes relatively easier. Every marketer might not overly be saturated with the process.

For every affiliate, it is a crucial step, since the profit potential of the niche largely determines the success of the niche blog. So, to successfully find the best or the exact niche for your blog, keep the following in mind:

• Make sure to include your expertise and interests: The best marketing practices is engaging with the audiences you are familiar with and have all the knowledge about. You should even combine interests and narrow down your subject matter to get the right niche.
• Conduct keyword research: With the help of free online tools like Keyword Tool, it is easy for you to understand the profit potential keywords related to your niche.

You should balance between the profitability and accessibility to ensure having the apt sales opportunities, and make a name for yourself as an affiliate marketer in the market.

ii. Selecting the Right Affiliate Programs Befitting The Niche of Your Blog
You should select from numerous affiliate programs, being an affiliate marketer. The key to the successful affiliate blog is selecting the programs suitable to the niche and targeting your audience appropriately.

You must even consider the ways the programs are benefiting you, for instance, if they are offering a good commission rate. Now to start with finding the appropriate programs, you should:

• Ensure using the affiliate marketplaces: ShareASale and Click-bank offer access to uncountable affiliate groups.
• Create a comparison spreadsheet: Creating a spreadsheet using Google Sheets, you can compare the programs. Make sure to include the resource hub offered by the programs, bonuses, and commission rates.

When you choose higher-quality programs, particularly the ones with higher commission rates, you are sure to increase profits while reducing your workload.

iii. Creating an Effective Linking Strategy
A website’s vital elements are the links, especially on the affiliate sites. Being an affiliate, you have to share links for affiliating products with your audience. When these are used for making a sale, you get a part of the profits. So, linking strategy is extremely vital.

You should create the linking strategy campaign with a purpose. Either you can create on your own or take the help of special link management tools like Pretty Links. Some techniques ensuring the effectiveness of your strategy are:

• Tracking the link statistics: The link statistics include the clicks and conversions to give you an insight into your visitor’s behaviors and for helping you to optimize using the links.
• Using the branded links: You can create a greater cohesive look on your business website and increase your brand awareness by branding your links.

You can even use your preferred strategies on related platforms like guest posts, social media, and email campaigns.

While determining the ways to monetize your blog, you might face certain choices, which might seem impossible. Nevertheless, affiliate marketing is easy for getting started, which helps you in creating a profitable business, which even offers value to your target audience.