How to Maximize Your Income From Affiliate Marketing as a Blogger

Tips that helped me generate a full-time income from affiliate marketing

It was the year 2011 when I first started my career in blogging. Much like your average newbie, the idea was to create content every day, generate sufficient and sustainable traffic to my blog, and ultimately monetize it with Google AdSense to make money. Sounded simple enough.

In the next two years, I hardly ever missed a day when I didn’t create new content for my blog. I was consistently working on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), backlinking, marketing, and what not to spread the word. Like, “Yo, there’s a new blogger in town, and you’ve got to check him out”.

Well, not “HIM”, his content I meant. But you got me.

The hard work paid off, and by the end of the second year, my blog was attracting sufficient amounts of organic traffic on a daily basis. I knew that I was now only one step short of getting rich and having my name listed in the bloggers’ hall of fame.

Excited, I set up an account on Google AdSense and proceeded with monetizing my blog. The first month after integrating AdSense, I ended up making a few cents.

Now, if there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I’m stupidly optimistic. So, I told myself that one month wasn’t enough to explore the true potential of Google AdSense.

To me, somewhere around a year sounded fair. During this year, I continued writing consistently on my blog integrated with AdSense. I told everyone I was self-employed or that I was in the writing business.

I won’t tell you exactly how much I made in that year from Google AdSense. But let’s just say it was a little under what I wanted to make per week. That’s when it dawned on me — I didn’t have a business; I had a very expensive (time-wise) hobby.

How Is Affiliate Marketing Any Better?

But how could that be? There were clearly thousands of bloggers on the internet that were making money that most of us consider more than a full-time income. So, I started digging deeper into what other alternatives were there to explore. What could help me turn my writing into a legitimate business?

That’s when I landed on “affiliate marketing” and haven’t looked back ever since. Yes, I do have multiple other streams of income. But a huge chunk of my money comes from affiliate marketing every month.

Wait a minute, I know that look. You’ve tried affiliate marketing already and want to throw it in my face that it’s even worse than Google AdSense, right? You gave it a go and never even made a few cents?

Trust me, I get it. I wasn’t successful with affiliate marketing in the first go either. That’s when I meticulously researched and found out that there were a bunch of basic mistakes that bloggers make that prevent them from making good money from affiliate commissions.

Point being, you can make a full-time income out of affiliate marketing as a blogger. In fact, it is one of the finest, the most efficient ways to monetize your blog since you don’t have to create your own product. You’re simply promoting someone else’s product, and for each sale that you refer, you earn a commission.

Simply put, the more sales you refer, the more you earn. And to maximize sales, you need to make sure that you’re following these rules.

1. Focus on Writing

When I started affiliate marketing on my blog, I thought it was the affiliate link that will make me money. While in reality, it was my writing all along.

Please don’t trick yourself into believing that the idea is to simply sprinkle the links all over your blog post. And people will magically click on those links, buy the products, and make you rich.

The first step to finding success in affiliate marketing as a blogger still remains an undying commitment to writing a blog post that delivers an impeccable reading experience to your audience.

You might tell yourself that people are not on your blog for a good read. So, let’s just put the information together, insert a few links to the products, and wait for them to make the purchase. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

After all, if the first few lines of your blog post are so bland that it fails to grab their attention, you can practically kiss your dream of referring sales goodbye. They’re already onto the next blog since yours wasn’t engaging enough.

Think about it; there literally are hundreds of other blogs that are promoting similar products. Your audience needs a reason why they should make the purchase from your affiliate link. And that reason is going to be a smooth reading experience.

If it was all about randomly sharing links, don’t you think anyone with a Facebook profile could be a successful affiliate marketer? But they’re not, and there’s a reason why. Your success in affiliate marketing as a blogger lies not only in the links, but in the information that you deliver, and “HOW” you deliver it.

So, making your blog post genuinely informative, organized, and engaging must be a priority if you want to earn big out of affiliate marketing as a blogger.

2. Be Selective in Picking Products

If you’re someone like me who made a blog, built an audience, and then monetized it with an affiliate program, it’s absolutely crucial that you know your audience.

In other words, while promoting products on your blog in hopes of referring sales and generating commissions — you need to make sure that you’re choosing a select few that gel with the overall theme of your blog.

It’s similar to a mistake that bloggers make in SEO as well. You find a few high-volume keywords, and it automatically becomes a priority for you to somehow stuff those keywords in your content even if they’re only vaguely related to the theme of your blog. In the process, you might even end up destroying the overall flow of the content as well.

In the same way, affiliate marketers often pick up products that “THEY” want to promote. Maybe it’s something that resonates with them on a personal level. Or perhaps, it’ll earn a bigger commission. But what you neglect is the fact that the product is not in line with what your blog is primarily about, or what your audience is interested in.

For example, say that I run a blog on meditation and mindfulness. Wouldn’t you say that my chances of referring sales are that much higher if I promoted a meditation cushion? As compared to an MP3 player, because, well, they can listen to a guided meditation on it?

Point being, you could have millions of visitors on your blog every month and yet be doomed to fail in affiliate marketing. Because the products you’re promoting are not precisely what your readers could benefit from.

In fact, if you continue to promote irrelevant products, you might even risk annoying your readers into switching to a different blog.

3. Be Genuine With Your Recommendations

Since it’s affiliate “marketing”, many of you would make the mistake of trying to shove a purchase down their throats. When you review a product, you find yourself obsessed with the idea of making it dreamy.

But here’s the catch. There’s hardly a product that is universally perfect for everyone. I know that, you know that, and your reader knows that too. The moment you start to try too hard to make it sound like the perfect product, they’d call you on your bluff, and you wouldn’t just lose a sale, but also your credibility.

In affiliate marketing, regardless of how counterintuitive it sounds, be open and thorough when you talk about a product. That includes not highlighting its strengths only, but also the weaknesses.

That way, you let your reader know that you’re not just desperate for a sale. But you’re genuinely trying to help them pick the best possible product. Remember how I told you that you need to give your audience a reason to buy the product via your link? Here’s another one — your credibility.

Plus, just like strengths, shortcomings of a product are not universal either. They’re entirely dependent on individual preferences.

For example, say that I’m in search of a digital camera. I land on your blog and read through the review of a specific make and model that I’m interested in. That’s when I find out that the battery timing on this product isn’t as good as I could find on a few of its competitors.

But guess what? Battery timing isn’t my primary requirement anyway. Perhaps it’s the screen size, or maybe the megapixels that are more important to me — a criterion that it clearly meets.

Now, just because you were fair with me and mentioned the weaknesses of the product as well, I already know that it was an authentic review. Instead of looking into it any further, if it’s meeting my requirements, I’m that much likely to go ahead and purchase the product from your link right away.

4. Offer Extras

Offering extras, incentives, bonuses, whatever you want to call them; is probably the oldest known strategy for marketing, and yet only a handful of affiliate marketers use this trick.

Honestly, I understand why. Because a lot of you don’t have anything valuable to offer as a bonus, right? After all, the reason that you’re in affiliate marketing is that you don’t have a product of your own to sell.

Then what could you possibly offer as an “extra” to entice your reader into buying the product from your affiliate link? PLR articles, guides, and eBooks. That’s what.

Take me, for instance. I primarily work in the “make money online” niche. A few months back, I had an affiliate deal with a client that wanted me to sell his comprehensive course on how to make money with affiliate marketing on my blog.

But I wasn’t the only one who was selling his course. And he wasn’t the only one on the internet who was coaching affiliate marketing. To stand out of the competition, therefore, I went ahead and purchased a PLR (Private Label Rights) eBook on how to set up an LLC (Limited Liability Company) for an Amazon business in the United States.

The idea was that if someone was interested in making money via Amazon’s affiliate program, they might be interested in setting up an LLC for an Amazon business as well. So, I offered the eBook for no additional charges to all readers on my blog that purchased the course via my affiliate link.

Now that my audience was getting an additional guide, that they were interested in, for free — psychologically speaking, they were more likely to make the purchase via my affiliate link.

The PLR eBook cost me roughly the same amount as my commission per sale. But it was a one-time investment. So, the first sale covered for the cost of the bonus I offered. The subsequent sales, that it drove hundreds of, generated commissions that went straight into my pocket.

It’s All About Patience and Consistency

Now, the hardest part. Even if you’re religiously following the tips I’ve mentioned above, don’t be mistaken into believing that sales will start raining like cats and dogs in a matter of weeks.

I want you to wrap your head around the fact that affiliate marketing is NOT a get rich quick scheme. It’s not a shortcut to a billionaire lifestyle. It’s a legitimate business that much like any other, takes its time to grow.

So, patience and consistency are key to finding success in affiliate marketing as a blogger. There are hundreds of claims on the internet that over 90% of affiliate marketers fail to make a full-time income. But they won’t tell you that the majority of those are the ones that gave up too quickly.

All you have to do is not be an easy quitter. Success is just around the corner.