When you have a blog, you will be thinking about your monetization strategy to make money. Most bloggers will recommend you monetize through affiliate marketing right off the bat at the beginning of your blogging journey. Then, you may be wondering why affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize your blog.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a marketing activity where you as an affiliate promoting other people’s products or services to the customer. In exchange, you will receive an affiliate sales commission if the customer decided to buy through your affiliate link.
Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative industry. The potential market is huge. I personally can say that affiliate marketing is the best business model ever in this digital era of the internet. It’s possible to earn money just recommending other people about products and services without creating your own product or even delivering it to the customer. Not only that, it’s possible to do affiliate marketing absolutely using FREE traffic without spending any money on ads. That’s why I love affiliate marketing so much. Awesome, right!
Basically, you’re like a middle man (affiliate) between the product owner and the customer. When someone you refer decided to buy through your affiliate link recommendation. You will earn a sales commission. This is something that you can’t find in the offline world. Let’s say you are recommending a delicious restaurant in your hometown to your friends. Then your friends decided to go to the restaurant and try it. Do you get a sales commission for recommending that restaurant in the offline world? The answer is for sure NO.
But it will be a different case in the online world. You could refer your friends to the restaurant through your affiliate link. If your friends decided to order the food from your link. You will earn an affiliate sales commission as a reward for recommending the restaurant to your friends.
There are so many affiliate programs available for products and services. You just need to recommend the product you like, trust and know about. It can be something that you have tried before, or you know it really well but haven’t tried it before. So, don’t limit yourself. If you know exactly the product or service is great based on your research, it’s okay to recommend it through your affiliate link as long as you’re honest to your audience.
Okay, let’s back to the main topic
Why Affiliate Marketing is The Best Way to Monetize Your Blog
There are many misconceptions about affiliate marketing that make people think monetizing their blog through affiliate marketing is hard. Most people think that driving sales from affiliate marketing will require you to have a big followers/ subscribers/ email list to sell the offers. This is absolutely WRONG!
The fact, I am starting my affiliate marketing journey from my blog from the ground (zero website visitors). With only a low traffic volume from forum and Quora, I could earn around a hundred dollars in affiliate commissions by promoting Bluehost as the hosting company that I used.
Many people also think that in order to succeed in affiliate marketing, you will need to master paid traffic such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Youtube ads, etc. The fact, majority of successful bloggers are crushing it on affiliate marketing using completely free traffic (zero ads spend).
I could say that Affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize your blog, even if you are just a new blogger without experience. Let’s see all the possible ways to monetize your blog. We will analyze each monetization strategy and why affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize your blog.
Affiliate Marketing vs Display Ads
Which one more profitable? Affiliate marketing is the winner, wondering why? Here my detailed explanation.
When you want to earn a decent amount of money from display ads, you will need a consistent bunch of visitors to your site (high volume traffic), which is impossible for beginners blogger to monetize through display ads at the beginning of their blogging journey.
It will be different if you monetize your blog through affiliate marketing as a new blogger. You don’t need high-volume visitors to your site. Monetizing through affiliate marketing can be done through low traffic volume as long as you can send free targeted visitors to your affiliate offer.
Wondering where you can find that free targeted traffic to your blog? You can use Quora and forum, which completely free to get faster traction and kickstart your first affiliate sales. You can read my personal story of how I made my first affiliate sales using forum and Quora.
Monetizing through affiliate marketing doesn’t disturb your audience’s user experience since you will link your affiliate link naturally to recommend your audience about a product or service. The case will be different, with display ads that are disturbing your blog reader. If you put so many display ads on your blog, it will give a bad user experience and lead to a high bounce rate.
In terms of earnings, affiliate commission can give you a good amount of money, up to 50% per sale, while display ads will only pay you few cents for one click. So, it’s clear that affiliate marketing will be more profitable for you compare to display ads.
Affiliate Marketing vs Selling Your Own Products
Which one more profitable to monetize your blog? Absolutely affiliate marketing. When you decided to sell your own products. You need to perform market research, create the product, and validate the product in the market to reach product-market fit. This is a stage where your product is successfully accepted in the market. Hence, it’s a really time-consuming and risky process to launch your product.
It will be faster and more profitable for you to monetize your blog through affiliate marketing by skipping the product creation process. This way, you don’t have to build a funnel for the product since the product owner already does the job, such as an optimized landing page, sales copy, email marketing, product delivery, and customer support.
You can skip all the headaches and risky processes of building a successful product that the market can accept. There is no risk for you in terms of product creation which is really costly for you. Your job here is just recommended people great products which are provenly sell on the market.
This is super important for a new blogger, especially if you don’t have your own product. You can start monetizing your blog right off the bat through affiliate marketing. It’s also great to start by selling other people’s products first as an affiliate to gain experience before creating your own product.
Once you have experience and knowledge running your blog, you will figure out what kind of product your blog reader needs. So you can start creating your own product base on your blog reader needs. It can be an ebook, printables, or courses. You can sell services also which we will discuss in the next part.
So, for every new blogger, I would recommend you to start monetizing your blog through affiliate marketing instead of creating your own product directly since you don’t have enough data yet on what is your blog reader wants. You can launch a successful product once you know exactly your audience’s needs and create a product to solve their problem.
Affiliate Marketing vs Selling Services
The other way you can monetize your blog is by selling services on your blog. Actually, you can start offering service on your blog even when you just started your blog as long as you have a specific skill set that you can offer to your audience.
The case is not all bloggers have some specific skillset that they can offer on their blog. Hence, affiliate marketing will be the best option to monetize your blog if you don’t have your own product and any specific skillset to sell as a service.
The only downside when selling service, we exchange our time to do a specific task to earn money, while in affiliate marketing, you will earn money directly without having to deliver service or product. So, it’s even better and easier to earn money through affiliate marketing instead of selling services because you don’t need to deliver any work. It means you will have scalability in affiliate marketing. Pretty cool, right! 😊
Since selling service will require you to do the work, there is a risk you may get an unsatisfied client who will raise a refund to you. When fulfilling your client’s order, you will have limitations to scale up your blog income because you will spend more time working on the project.
It will be different when you monetize your blog through affiliate marketing. It’s giving you a chance to scale up your income since you just need to increase the volume of traffic coming to your affiliate offer. The more traffic you sent, the more affiliate sales generated, and the higher your blog income without having to do any service or product delivery. It’s the product owner’s (company/brand) job to provide the delivery to the customer.
Please kindly note that I don’t say it’s a bad idea to sell service on your blog. Instead, it’s great to diversify your revenue. In this case, affiliate marketing will be a great option if you don’t have any service yet to offer to your audience.
Affiliate Marketing vs Sponsored Post
How about the sponsored post? Which one is more profitable for monetizing your blog. I guess you know the answer already for sure it’s affiliate marketing. Wondering why? It’s the same reason when you compare it with selling service and display ads.
When your blog is new, you don’t have big audiences (followers) yet. In this case, there will be no big brand or company that will come to approach you for a sponsored post. By using affiliate marketing, you can start directly monetize your blog simply by putting affiliate links naturally on your blog post.
Earning from affiliate marketing can be more passive and recurring for you instead of the sponsored post, requiring you to do more work with only a one-time fee.
Base on the explanation above, It’s clear that affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize your blog. It can be more profitable for you than selling your own products, services, sponsored post, and display ads. I highly recommend you start your blog and monetize your blog by putting an affiliate link in your blog post, as this is the lowest hanging fruit you can do as a new blogger.
If you’re still questioning why we need to have a blog to monetize through affiliate marketing. It’s because having a self-hosted site is the best way and everlasting way to sustain your affiliate marketing business for life. You can start affiliate marketing without having a website, but it will be harder for you, and very high chance that you will lose all your hard work. So, it’s a very high risk to monetize from affiliate marketing without having your own blog (self-hosted).
Let’s say you’re using Medium and Google sites to monetize through affiliate marketing. Since both of them are not your own platform, your affiliate article can be de-indexed by Medium and Google anytime, making all your income lost within one night. You don’t want to wake up in the morning and know that all your affiliate blog getting de-index from Google SERP, isn’t it? This is actually happening where Medium and Google sites giving a hard time for an affiliate marketer. Hence, building your self-hosted site is the correct way to monetize through affiliate marketing for life.
Special Announcement:
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Affiliate Program for Bloggers
You have understood why affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize your blog. Then, your next question will be what affiliate program you can join as bloggers. There are numerous affiliate programs on the internet. You can start by joining an independent affiliate program or affiliate network. Here the differences between those two.
An Independent affiliate program means the company/ brand has its own affiliate tracking system without relying on any third-party tracking system such as a hosting company (Bluehost, HostGator, SiteGround, HostPapa, etc.), Fiverr, Shopify, social media software (Kicksta, Stellation Media, etc.), etc. Those company using their own platform to provide tracking information for their affiliate.
While affiliate networks such as Clickbank, Digistore 24, JVZoo, WarriorPlus, Market Health, CJ Affiliate, Impact Radius, ShareASale, and Awin. Those are affiliate network companies that provide an affiliate tracking system for all the companies/brands that become part of the affiliate network. You will find out that the company you apply to as an affiliate will be directed to an affiliate network. Clickbank and Digistore24 don’t need any requirements to become an affiliate, so you can easily get your affiliate link from Clickbank and Digistore24. In contrast, other affiliate networks will require you to have your self-hosted sites and apply as an affiliate to the product in order to be accepted as an affiliate.
How to monetize your blog with affiliate marketing?
Okay, now you have truly understood why affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize your blog. Then, questions that come to mind for every new blogger will be how to monetize your blog with affiliate marketing.
You will monetize your blog with affiliate marketing by putting your affiliate link in your relevant blog post and naturally linking to your article. This way, your blog’s reader will benefit from reading your blog because you recommend the product/service that solves their problem.
You don’t want to spam your blog post with too many affiliate links, which will be really annoying for your blog’s reader. Only link if it’s relevant. You also need to mention on your blog post that the recommendation is an affiliate link in which you will earn a small amount of commission in exchange for recommending the product. This way, your blog’s reader will trust your recommendation due to your honesty and transparency.
Final Thought
Affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize your blog, whether you’re a new blogger or an experienced blogger. You can even drive affiliate sales using free traffic without having to spend money on ads. In terms of profitability, affiliate marketing become a winner compared to selling your own product or services, sponsored post, and display ads. If you need a step-by-step guide on starting your affiliate blog, you can find the complete guide by reading this blog post.
I hope you enjoy my blog post on why affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize your blog. Let me know if you have any questions. Kindly drop a comment below. Thank you!
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FAQ:
How do you monetize a blog with affiliate marketing?
You can apply for an affiliate program, put the affiliate link into your relevant blog post, and link the affiliate offer naturally in the blog post. Then, your last job is sending traffic to your blog post, which contains an affiliate link.
How can I monetize my blog fast?
The fastest way you can monetize your blog is through affiliate marketing. This way, you don’t need to create your own product and high volume traffic.
Is Blogger good for affiliate marketing?
Blogger is not the best blogging platform to monetize through affiliate marketing, you can use it, but you may risk your blog post being deleted since you’re not using a self-hosted site. You should use a self-hosted site to monetize your blog for life without being afraid your content will be takedown.
Which is better blogging or affiliate marketing?
Both of them complement each other. Starting a blog will require you to monetize your blog through affiliate marketing. When you want to do affiliate marketing, having a blog is how you can do affiliate marketing for the long term.
