However, there are a few things you need to know when trying to promote affiliate products from your blog. These things are important to make sure you don't burn a hole right through your pocket.
(1) Which Products Do You Promote?
You'll notice that almost every other product has an affiliate program that you can join (mostly for free), and start promoting online from your blog. Depending on the type of product, your commissions can range from 2% to 8% (physical goods) or even up to 75% for digital goods. There are tons of products to choose from, but that doesn't mean that you should go out and promote all the products you can get your hands on!
Not all products are created equal - some are better that others. Not all affiliate opportunities are created equal either. Just because a product is great, it doesn't mean that it will sell. The "conversion rate" of a product depends entirely on a few things out of your control, for example the sales copy, the overall sales process and the available market for the product.
However, learning how to recognize good products to promote is something totally in your control. When you learn to recognize a few vital clues, you'll be able to tell if an affiliate product will sell from your blog, or if it will just waste precious real estate on your pages. One good guide that teaches you how to find great affiliate products is "Super Affiliate Blogger" by Gobala Krishnan:
(2) Getting Traffic to Your BlogContent is important, but traffic is even more important. Without enough traffic to be making a few affiliate sales a month, you'll eventually give up on blogging altogether. Great content on the other hand, gets better appreciation when you learn how to get traffic to your blog.
While the usual methods work, there are a few things you can do to get more traffic. For starters, yuo can easily get cheap banner advertising on other related blogs who have tons of traffic to give you. By creating a good banner and ensuring good placement, you can start getting fresh new traffic daily.
Another good but more sophisticated way of getting traffic is using PPC or Pay Per Click advertising. Google AdWords is probably the most popular PPC advertising service, but there are other alternatives as well. However, remember that when you're paying for every click to your website, you'll want maximize your returns by creating a "landing page" on your blog. The concept of landing pages and how to do it is also explained in Super Affiliate Blogger:
(3) Tracking Your Affiliate Links
If you're just promoting a handful of affiliate links on a handful of pages, you can easily keep track of what's going on. However if you start to venture further and try to put your affiliate links on many pages and on different blogs, you're looking at a lot of work when it comes to managing and tracking those links.
Any self-respecting affiliate marketer would invest in some sort of link cloaking / tracking software that at the click of a button, will give you the "big picture" of what's happening with your affiliate marketing campaign. How else can you know which affiliate links are being clicked on, and which ones aren't seeing any action. How else can you determine which products aren't selling well, and which ones are working great for your particular blog?
Although there are many affiliate tracking tools, this one is perhaps the most suited to bloggers, especially if you're using WordPress:
Affiliate marketing is simple, and fun. But to break the barriers and start making a five-figure monthly income from your blog, you'll need to think and act like a "Super Affiliate" These guys aren't any smarter than you or me; they just do the right things at the right time. For more information on affiliate marketing with blogs, I recommend you take a look at Super Affiliate Blogger by Gobala Krishnan:
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