Affiliate marketing with a blog is a very powerful method to make a lot of side income, or even a full time income. If you want to start affiliate marketing on a blog, you may be wondering when the very best time would be. So when should you pair blogging and affiliate marketing?
This all depends what method you plan on using, but if you want to use Amazon Associates out of convenience (because they have so many products), I wouldn’t apply until you have a good amount of traffic coming in on a regular basis. Once you do have good traffic, apply to be an Amazon Associate, and then start adding in your links. However, there are other affiliate programs, but a lot of them may have a sales quota just like Amazon. This makes it important to have good traffic regardless.
So why should you wait? Well the answer is simple. When you sign up to be an affiliate on Amazon, you have 180 days in order to make 3 sales. 180 days is 6 months, and that’s actually the amount of time it takes to get traffic to a blog post. So if your blog is new, chances are you won’t hit the traffic you need to get the 3 sales needed to continue as an Amazon Associate.
Why Is It A Problem To Add Links Right Off The Bat?
When you add links right off the bat, and you don’t end up getting the traffic you need to achieve the goal of 3 sales in 180 days, your links will not work at all anymore. This means, you will have to reapply to the Amazon Associates program, and once you do that, you will have to individually replace the first set of links you put throughout all of your blog posts.
Doing this will be inefficient because you want to be able to focus on constantly adding blog posts (and other things that will move the needle forward) and not doing gruelling work replacing all of the links.
How To Add Value Good Enough For Affiliate Marketing On a Blog
Answer Questions People Are Looking For Instead Of “Best Of” Blog Posts
Most people think you should go ahead and add 100’s of blog posts with the title, “best coffee machines”, or, “best baseball bats”, etc. However, this isn’t the case. You want to dive even deeper for your audience in order to give them value, which will make them want to buy.
The key is to find underserved topics in your niche. Let’s take the fitness niche for example. One underserved topic in the fitness niche is the question, “are garage gyms safe”. I found this by using Keywordchef, which allows you to find underserved topics by filtering keywords that rank #1 on google on forums like Quora and Reddit.
So with this question, you could write a blog in regards to safety in garage gyms. You can answer the question and then, while writing the post recommend different products that will ensure the safety in a garage gym.
This way, your audience get’s their question answered, as well as get the products they need to move forwards and create a safe garage gym.
100 ‘Best Posts’ could come off as spammy, but answering questions like this is the best value you could possibly give.
Link To Other Relevant Posts That May Have Other Products That People May Want To Buy
Another post opportunity that I found in relation to garage gyms is, “What Color Should I Paint My Garage Gym”. If you write this post as well, and then link to paints on Amazon, you could make money from this post as well.
If you could find a way, link these two posts to each other, and In result, you may make a commission on recommending safe products, and the paint to use for the visitors garage gym.
If you plan 100’s of these posts, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be making a considerable amount of money over time through Amazon Associates, or whatever affiliate program you plan on using.
Is It Possible To Do Affiliate Marketing With a Free Blog?
It’s most definitely possible to do affiliate marketing with a free blog. It’s still important to check the amount of sales you need to get in a certain period of time in order to stay as an affiliate. This is because the same rules apply with a free blog.
One free blogging example is LinkedIn. You may want to add in your affiliate links in later, even blogging on there. This way you could ensure your posts are getting enough traffic to make affiliate sales.
However, if you can, purchasing your own domain and hosting is the best for the long haul of affiliate marketing. This is because if the free platform you use goes down, or you get banned, all of your hard work goes out the window.
There are some risks with getting your own blog, like algorithm updates, ETC. However the risks are much less going this route.
How Much Content Do You Need To Make Money Affiliate Marketing On a Blog?
This question is up to a few things. The first one, is quality of content. If you could consistently make good enough content that ranks first or within the first page of Google, you may be able to make good money with just 50-100 posts. However, if you take a volume approach, it may take a little bit longer to make a good amount of consistent income.
Blogs take 6-12 months to really hit their traffic potential. So just starting out, I wouldn’t expect much too soon.
In Summary
I know you may be excited to get your affiliate marketing journey started, however, you should be patient and strategically plan out your posts in order to not have to do the same work twice.
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