Effective Affiliate Marketing Tips And Tricks That Really Works

Affiliate marketing can be a big source of revenue, and this is what ALL the top bloggers use to generate income from their blogs. The key to maximizing your earnings is engaging your readers as soon as possible. Unlike PPC ads where you are paid for impressions or clicks, affiliates are only paid when/if a specific action is performed. The action might be a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, but regardless, you are not paid until you’ve compelled your readers to act.

In my one of previous article I mentioned affiliate marketing as one of the ways to make money from your blog in 2011, so this article will focus on affiliate marketing and how you can make money with these great tips.

Here are 8 GREAT and EFFECTIVE affiliate marketing tips…

Effective Affiliate Marketing Tips

The most successful way to use affiliate programs is to anticipate and meet the needs of your readers. Consider why they are coming to your blog. What are you providing that they are looking for? Make sure the affiliate products you are promoting provide a solution to your audience’s problems.

If you are writing about sports, don’t put up affiliate ads for printer toner just because everyone has a printer and those programs have a high payout. The people who are coming to read commentary or get stats for their favorite teams aren’t thinking about those things when they’re on your blog.

The more relevant the ads are to your readers, the more likely they will use them. So be sure to market products that are related to your blog niche.

Your readers aren’t stupid. They know an affiliate link when they see one. If you break their trust by promoting a product you don’t believe in or take advantage of their visit with too many ads, they will leave and never come back.

It is your repeat visitors that will drive traffic. They are the ones who will give you linkbacks, spread the word, and recommend your blog as the go-to place for valuable content. You need to build a relationship based on genuine content.

If your visitors don’t think you’re being honest, they won’t read anything else you have to say.

Think of affiliate ads as additional resources that complement your content. Give value to your content by making it helpful, useful, and informative.

Don’t put up a list of your favorite books, hoping people will click on the affiliate link, purchase the books (just because you listed them), so you can cash in on a sale. Take some time to write a detailed review, and use affiliate ads to point them in the right direction if they decide to act on your information. That’s what affiliate ads are for. If you write a great review recommending a book and readers buy the book because of it, you should get something for that.

But just throwing out links to products with no rhyme or reason will result in a quick exit by visitors.

Take the time to go through all the different options for products or services available through the programs. Put some thought into which products or services your readers may need or like. Also, change the ads around often, try different ones, and use different graphics and text to see which are the most effective.

It may take some time before you figure out the best formula, and you may also find that you need to continually rotate ads to attract more attention.

Affiliate revenue grows and builds up with time. Remember that some programs offer lifetime payouts. If you refer a visitor, you may continue to make money from that one visitor even if he doesn’t come back to your blog. Also, as long as you have referral links still active in your old posts, they may still payout for you.

Affiliate programs aren’t a get rich quick plan, but it provides opportunity to make passive income in the future.

Keep up to date on the latest offerings of your affiliate programs. New ad units, advertisers, and tools are constantly being added to improve usability and be more visually appealing. Small changes go a long way in motivating action by readers. You may be left out in the dust by being complacent with your strategy.

Don’t get lazy about monitoring trends and exploring new opportunities.

Above all else, your content must be your highest priority.

Your content is your foundation, the life blood on which your blog exists. Without valuable and helpful content, readers won’t come. Focus on providing excellent content, and the monetizing strategies will work out.

Once you start compromising your content to cater to the affiliate programs or any other money-making venture, you will lose your readers. Once that happens, you will lose the opportunity to receive any earnings from any of your ads, be they CPM, CPC, or referral based.

Every customer loves getting discount, so why not create a discount coupon.

If you’re not using coupons in your marketing, you’re definitely leaving money on the table. Go to a search engine, type in the product or service you’re selling followed by the word “coupon” and you might get a shock as to how many of your competitors are using them.

The availability of a coupon can really make or break a sale.

Aside from the money saving aspect, people enjoy the feeling of gaining a bargain and being treated as special – it’s part of the thrill of the hunt of online shopping as much as any financial benefit.

Group Discussion

If you are new to affiliate marketing then I hope you find these tips very useful.