7 Tips for Affiliate Marketing on Social Media and Blogs
Love to spend time online? Turn your hobby into a source of income through affiliate marketing on social media and blogs! Affiliate marketing is a fun and easy way to get commission by promoting another person’s or company’s products and services.As an affiliate marketer, you would create content about your chosen product or service. Then you would post it on your social media accounts, blogs, or website. The merchant of the product or service that you are promoting would pay you for every sale that you make.If you spend hours every day on posting content on social media, you can spare some time and make money through affiliate marketing.
How can you start?
Here are seven tips for affiliate marketing on social media and blogs:
Focus on what you love.
Making content is easy if you are interested in the topic that you are writing about. Whether you are interested in sports, fashion, music, cooking, or traveling, you can be able to find something to write about and an audience that would be interested in your work.Writing about your passion feels more like a hobby than work! It also makes the output more authentic and not too hard sell. Your audience would be able to relate more to what you are writing because they see you as another customer and not as a sales person.
Only promote products and services that you have tried and liked.
Your audience would know if you are sincere and honest in saying positive things about the product. Never promote a product or service that you have not tried or liked personally.Trying out a product or service before promoting it helps you understand the perspective of the customer and makes it easy for you to see its pros and cons. If you are satisfied as a customer, it would be easier to encourage others to use the product or avail of the service as well. No need to lie about your review of the product.
Determine and build your target audience.
Once you have chosen a topic and products or services that you would like to promote, you need to determine your target audience. List down the basic demographics and technographics of the audience that you want to reach. Demographics are the age, sex, and location of your audience. Technographics are their online behavior such as the gadget that they use, the time they go online, and the websites they like to visit.Determining your target market is extremely important. Your writing style, message tone, and time of posting would be affected by your audience’s characteristics. For example, if you want to promote cooking materials and you want to target household mothers, you need to know what time most of them are online and what kinds of posts they want.
Choose your online media.
There are lots of social media and blog websites now. Based on your audience and expertise, choose an online media that suits you and your work.For example, if your target audiences are mostly on Facebook, you should focus on using that media. Research is very important in this process.If you have your own website or blog, you can share your works on different social media channels to gain more audience. Before promoting anything, it is important to gain enough followers on the media that you have chosen.
Study online marketing.
Affiliate marketing on social media and blogs requires a basic knowledge about online marketing. For example, you need to know the standard dimensions of photos or videos used in different social media websites. You should also know how to post online ads if ever needed.Another important thing to learn is analytics. You need to know how much traffic you are bringing to the merchant’s website so you can be properly paid for your work. If you want to know more about online marketing, check out video tutorials and blogs about it.
Know search engine optimization basics.
It is very important for your posts to be easily searchable. Affiliate marketing on social media and blogs would be in vain if your target audience would not be able to see your posts.To reach more audience, online marketers aim to make their posts appear on the top results generated by search engines such as Google. This process is called search engine optimization (SEO). For example, if you are promoting a brand of shoes, aim for your post to appear on the first page of results when someone searches for shoes online.Search engines change their algorithms often so you need to stay updated. Check out Google Adwords and Google Trends to determine the keywords that are commonly used by your target audience.
Learn basic photography and videography.
Affiliate marketing on social media and blogs is more effective if the posts have promotional materials such as photos or videos. Though you can use promotional photos and videos provided by the merchant, it would be more authentic if you can produce your own.No one wants to look at low quality photos and videos. This is why it is important for you to learn taking and editing pictures and videos. There are lots of available tutorials online and you can also apply in short courses if you want.If you cannot produce your own promotional materials, you can ask the merchant for help. If the merchant does not provide what you need, you can search online for materials but make sure that you have the right to use and modify that image or video. Check the material’s copyright.
Affiliate marketing on social media and blogs is both an art and a science. You need to be creative in making your posts and you also need to know the science behind the online marketing industry.If you write passionately and honestly, you would be able to get the attention of both merchants and customers. Just follow the tips listed above and start making money online!
How I learned Affiliate Marketing:
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner of the personal finance blog Making Sense of Cents has an incredible online course. I took her course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing and immediately began making affiliate commissions. She covers everything from where to find programs to the legality of affiliate marketing.
Her course contains 6 modules:
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
How To Find and Apply To Affiliate Programs
Follow The Rules
How To Get Your Readers To Convert
Strategies and Ways To Promote Affiliate Links
Rinse and Repeat
I highly recommend taking this course if you plan to monetize your blog and social media!
Affiliate Programs:
ShareASale
ShareASale is an affiliate marketing program that allows you to partner with merchants and promote their products to your audience.
Amazon Associates
Promote any amazon product!
JV Zoo
Huge affiliate program with lots of tools for making online sales
Linqia
Get paid to write blog posts and social media posts! Must have 2,500+ followers among all of your social media accounts.
CJ Affiliate
Like ShareASale, partner with merchants to promote their products!
Go make some cash, kid!
Xx,Katie