PB051: How to Make Money As a Blogger Through Affiliate Marketing

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. My Tips for Making Money As a Blogger Through Affiliate Marketing Today's episode is all about how to make money as a blogger through affiliate marketing. Making money through affiliate marketing is not easy money, but there are things you can do to increase your chances of earning a regular stream of income from it. I share insider tips about what's worked for me in making money through affiliate marketing on my blogs. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). In today's episode: What is affiliate marketing? Why affiliate marketing works Why the rewards from affiliate marketing can be greater than advertising Real-life examples of affiliate marketing 3 different types of affiliate programs you can use 3 things you can do to make sure affiliate marketing will work on your blog Further Reading and Resources for Making Money As a Blogger Through Affiliate Marketing What is an affiliate promotion (infographic): The affiliate sweet spot graphic mentioned: Here’s the Promotion Sequence mentioned: Best Seller List Examples: The 30 Most Popular DSLR Lenses with our Readers The 19 Most Popular DSLRs Among our Readers The 19 Most Popular Compact System and Mirrorless Cameras with Our Readers Affiliate Networks Mentioned: Rakuten/Linkshare Commission Junction Avangate Clickbank Shareasale Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. This is Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 51. Today I want to talk to you about affiliate marketing and how to make money as a blogger using affiliate marketing. Today will be a bit of an introduction to how I do it. I want to talk a little bit about what affiliate marketing is, but then get into some tangible tips that you can take away, and put into practice for your first affiliate promotion or to improve the affiliate marketing that you're already doing. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/51. Creating great content. Finding an audience. Engagement. Monetizing your blog. This is ProBlogger. Let's start with the question: what is affiliate marketing? I don't want to spend too long on this because I know many of you already do some affiliate promotions on your blog. In short, as a blogger, when you do an affiliate promotion, you promote a particular product. It might be an ebook, or it could be a physical product. Really, there's a whole heap of things that you can be promoting. When you promote it, you're promoting it to your readers with a special link which has a tracking code in it. Or, you might be using a coupon code, which also tracks the sales that you send. If the reader buys the product, they go to the business's website that has that product. They buy it as a result of clicking on your link which has that tracking code. The business knows that you referred that business, and then they pay you a commission for promoting that product. In my digital photography site, occasionally, we will mention a camera. It might be a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX50V camera. Bit of a mouthful there, but that's what a camera is called there. When we mention that camera, we link to Amazon. Amazon, the bookstore, but also has a whole heap of other products. When someone goes to Amazon and buys that camera—it might be a $300-camera—and someone buys that, we earn a 4% commission on that. We might make $15 or so dollars for that sale. It doesn't sound like a lot but when you refer a lot of business to Amazon, that adds up over time.  Other affiliate programs might pay you a higher commission. For example, on an ebook that you might be promoting,