Disclaimer – This post includes affiliate links and links to my own products.
Affiliate Marketing if done right, can bring big money in for ANY blog. Many readers come to my blog to find affiliate marketing tips, and trick to improve their income. I find myself reading the same sentence when it comes to affiliate marking queries, so I thought I’d write a new affiliate marketing post to talk about it. The sentence being “I struggle to make consistent sales with affiliate marketing”.
Without sounding rude, if you are trying to monetize your blog with affiliate marketing and haven’t earned any money, then you are doing something wrong.
In this post I will cover why you aren’t making sales, ways to improve on it, strategies to try, and affiliate marketing resources you need to be reading.
You Don’t Understand The Basics To Affiliate Marketing
A lot of bloggers struggle to earn anything, simply because they don’t know how to do it. Many think that they just whack affiliate links on their blog, and that people will just click on it and buy it. I don’t wish to be the person who breaks it you, but it takes a bit more than that to make big money with affiliate marketing.
Cookie Data
When you sign up to affiliate programs you will receive an affiliate link, this is a personalised link for the program for you are using. Once you place that link on your blog or socials, and a reader clicks on it it will drop a cookie into your reader’s computer that will allow sales to be tracked.
All affiliate programs vary with cookie length, you absolutely need to consider this when signing up to an affiliate program. It’s been said a reader has to see a product 5-11 times.
For example the Amazon affiliate program for example only has a 24hour cookie. If the person who clicked on your link doesn’t purchase anything from Amazon within 24 hours after that first click then you won’t earn anything. This is one of the MANY reasons Amazon if not a good platform for beginners.
For this reason most of the platforms I choose to use have 30 or 60 day cookie length.
Picking The Right Programs For Your Niche
This is the one I see the most. Affiliate Marketing programs cater for all types of niches. All niches are profitable, and can be profitable. But if you’ve been a fashion blogger for 3 years, and you start sharing Pinterest course based affiliate links, are you really picking the right product or program for your niche? I think not.
You Put Your Hopes Into Making Big Money From The Amazon Affiliate Program
No one, and I mean NO ONE is going to add Amazon onto their blog and make $1000 in the first few days.
Amazon is a HARD affiliate platform to use, but it is also one that most bloggers start off with. You aren’t really doing yourself any favours by putting all your hopes into it hitting off straight away.
I also think it’s worth mentioning if you struggle to make the 3 sales to qualify, then you will most certainly struggle to make consistent sales from it.
One really useful resource I’ve found on the Amazon Affiliate Program, is How To Effectively Make Sales With Amazon Associates (AF). I purchased this a few months back from the lovely Shyla, and it genuinely taught me a lot. I’m a seasoned affiliate marketer which says a lot.
You’re Not Ranking Organically For Your Chosen Affiliate Link Topics
One of the absolute best ways to make affiliate sales for your chosen subject is to rank for it organically. Why?
People are actively looking for what you are selling. It can be an absolute goldmine for making sales. If you don’t understand keywords, or how to rank your blog posts on Google, you really need to learn asap. You will struggle to monetise your blog without doing so.
If you need help with getting your posts to rank on google, why not pick up a copy of Nele’s Keyword Research For Bloggers (AF) you can use ‘kayleighzara’ for 1/3 off. Nele’s products are the only reason I know how to rank. I used all 3 of eBooks to teach myself the best SEO. You can learn more about this in How I Got My Domain Authority To 29.
Affiliate Marketing Strategies That Work
Now we’ve gone over some of the big reasons affiliate marketing isn’t working for you, let’s go over some that will work for you.
I also want to add in here, affiliate marketing is not a get rich scheme. It requires work, lots of it and constant editing, improving, looking at statistics and learning.
Create An Engaged Audience
When it comes to affiliate marketing, your audience size doesn’t necessarily matter. You can still make decent sales with under 5,000 views per months. What matters is your rate of engagement, and your competition.
Obviously, if you have more page views you are have a better chance of making sales, but I know of people with the same stats as myself who don’t make any sales at all. So it really comes down to marketing.
Having an engaged audience, comes with time. You want to write high quality posts, engage with what your audience wants and grow a loyal following. If you need help with growing your blog following, Jenny has a fab ebook on doing so. Check out A Beginners Guide To Growing Your Blog Following. Jenny sells this for £2.50 which is less than the cost of a Starbucks.
Utilising Pinterest
The dreaded Pinterest. Unfortunately if you want to make big affiliate sales, Pinterest will play a part in this. Not only can you boost your pageviews but you can make big ££ from it.
As a blogger Pinterest is one of the best and quickest ways to drive large traffic to your blog, or directly to your affiliate links. Unfortunately, there are SO many rules on what Pinterest does and doesn’t allow for affiliate marketing. It will take you time to learn these, and if you don’t your Pinterest account can be penalised or shut down. If you do go down this route I would suggest sharing one or two affiliate links for every fifteen to twenty blog links you share. You don’t want to spam your following.
One of the best affiliate marketing resources I’ve read is this one by Emma, How To Make An Affiliate Sale In 24h. It shares a massive list of 40 high-paying affiliate programs you can use on Pinterest.
Using Email Marketing To Make Affiliate Sales
Email marking is one of the best ways to make affiliate sales. Building an email list, means that you have one platform where your readers actively sign up because they are interested in what you have to say.
Create quality emails that help your audience. For example if you are a lifestyle blogger, send emails that will your audience improve their lifestyle, or share seasonal content via your emails that will be beneficial to them.
How you handle your affiliate links is down to you and what niche your blog is. I don’t recommend hauling 30 affiliate links at your list every other day. One email weekly is honestly more than enough, one every two weeks would be ample.
If you’re interested in signing up to mailing list do so below!
Affiliate marketing really does come down to you get out what you put in. A year from today you’ll be so happy you put the work in now.
If you enjoyed this post and you’re looking for some help to grow your own blog 35 Useful Resources For Bloggers and Simple Tips For Growing Your Own Brand.
This post was so helpful, Kayleigh! I’m definitely trying to work on my affiliate sales lately. I think I really need to focus on improving my email marketing. Pinterest is also being so weird for me lately! Thank you for this post.
This post was so helpful, I’m definitely guilty of putting all my efforts into Amazon, just because it’s so easy! I’d love to see what affiliate marketing you recommend!
I found this so interesting!! Thank you X
This is sucha useful post Kayleigh! I need to look around with the affiliate marketting, as I have the amazon one, but like you say, it is so difficult to get going with.
Thank you for your tips and resources!
Aimsy xoxo
Aimsy’s Antics
I’ve recently starting to look more into affiliate marketing so this post is really helpful. I need to do a bit more research to find out more programmes that will work for me and then start there x
Excellent post kayleigh. It is such a hard thing to get right. I made my first amazon sale this month and it made my day. I know I need to work harder and across more avenues, thanks for the tips
I’ve not looked into putting affiliate links into my posts, but it’s something I’d love to build up to one day so thanks so much for all the inspo!
Katie | katieemmabeauty.com
This was super helpful, I think I will just drop Amazon affiliate program but I will definitely be using your tips thank you for sharing
I’m only a hobby blogger so don’t have an interest in earning money from it at the moment! But I always find your posts so helpful and it’s good to know where to go if in the future I decide to try and monetise!
I am working on growing my traffic and growing my affiliate income. I am being quite careful with the links I am adding at the moment. Thanks for this post, it has given me a few ideas of what to do next.
This was a very helpful read! I didn’t know you could use pinterest too, so I will have to read more about that before making the plunge! Thank you so much for sharing plenty of resources too x
Very informative post, thanks for the advice. Definitely needed as I only recently started doing affiliate links.
xoxo Olivia | http://www.oliviaandbeauty.com/
Thank you for the helpful information I didn’t know that about Amazon cookies!
Thank you so much for sharing this!! It was really helpful. I haven’t done affiliate marketing but now I’m thinking about it! ❤️
I love your posts, they’re so useful! Thank you so much for sharing this ❤
Caroline | https://envirolineblog.com/
I always love your posts, they’re so helpful! I really want to try getting into affiliate marketing more and this guide is great – thank you xx
Great tips! I agree, every niche is profitable but you have to find affiliate products that will resonate with your audience. The right products can make all the difference! I have been using Amazon on both of my blogs and making ok money on it, however, the bigger payout comes from my other options.
Affiliate marketing is usually a challenging task for many bloggers. Few succeed at affiliate marketing. Am glad you put this great resource to help affiliate marketers succeed. Thanks.
These are perfect tips for me! I’m hoping to do affiliate marketing later this year 🤞
Great information! I am still trying to figure how to make affiliate marketing work for me. Posts like this are so helpful. Thanks for sharing!
This post was so helpful, I am really curious to see what affiliate marketing you recommend!
Thanks for sharing
https://uncuaderno4cero.wordpress.com/
This is such helpful information Kayleigh! x
Lucy | http://www.lucymary.co.uk
Thank you for sharing this Kayleigh! I feel super overwhelmed with how to make money from blogging and I basically have a 10 month window to make it work. I love reading your posts and bookmarking/pinnning them for later when I have time to study and take notes! This will be one of them x
http://www.lynnmumbingmejia.com
This is so informative and helpful. I have not been very successful with affiliate marketing yet so I really learned a lot from reading this!
This is such a helpful post. The only affiliate marketing program I have any experience with is Amazon but I’m hoping to expand that this year, so knowing what does and doesn’t work ahead of time will help me out a lot.
I do most of the things you have written and nothing has changed. However, I wish you could go into further details on how you grew your income and traffic without referring me to a book. Most of us prefer to read blogs than books these days
Affiliate marketing is definitely something I’m getting into and trying to learn more about. I knew that it is going to be hard but I still want to do my best. Thank you for sharing such a valuable information.
Antonia || Sweet Passions
Brilliantly informative post Kayleigh. You really are the queen of affiliate marketing and I love your guide, I have so much to learn, seeing an email from one of my affiliates is the best feeling in the world x
Really helpful post! Affiliate marketing isn’t my strongest but at the same time I don’t really put the effort in that I need to in order to make it work because I just don’t like it. You can definitely see how much hard work you put in to making your affiliate marketing work so well and this was a really handy post. I’m thinking about signing up for Amazing Associates soon so I might have to check out that ebook x
Omggg no wonder I’ve always been poop when it comes to affiliate marketing – I didn’t advertise enough!! I had no idea that someone had to see something at least 5 times… Gosh! I’ve given up on it tbh although now I’m tempted to start it again. Thanks so much for your advice!
Such an informative post, as always Kayleigh! I started to work on my aff marketing last year and this year I began to get more sales (altho not every day). There are a lot of things to learn for sure. Thanks for sharing this x
Your blog posts are always so helpful and informative! I really need to put time aside and get my hear around this but as my blog is now, my primary concern is to build traffic right now. I’m sure this post will help lots of people, thanks for sharing!
Such a informative post! Definitely learnt a few things here!
Thanks for posting 🙂
Happy to be here!
I came from twitter to this blog of yours. It’s really worth spending time on your blog and reading this valuable info that you’ve provided on the blog.
Will be visiting soon to grab few for valuable informations to grow online.
Kudos to the author
This is so interesting! I was getting pestered by the Amazon affiliate team to join not so long ago, and I’m glad that I didn’t join if it’s one of the more difficult ones!
One of the strategies I need to focus on is my affiliate strategy too so this post is very much helpful. Thank you for sharing! x
Okay, THANK YOU for this post!! You actually made it all make sense for me. I’ve tried doing research about affiliates, but I never could seem to fully “get it.” I never fully understood the whole ‘cookie’ situation, but the way you explained it helps a lot. Thank you again!
Hi Kayleigh. What a very informative post, thank you. Making affiliate sales is not the focus of my blog (I just do it for fun and to, hopefully, entertain and educate people) so its not something that I have looked into in any great detail. I didn’t realise just how much there is to it! Kudos to you for mastering it 🙂
This was so useful! I only began affiliate marketing in October/November last year (I think) and to be honest I did not have a clue where to start etc. And I have been hobby blogging for 5 years now. I just had to do a lot of research and reading (or buying guides/ebooks like yours) to understand it more. I really want to start up email marketing but again I am just nervous and I have no idea where to begin/what email service to use etc. But thank you for this post it was super helpful xxx
This is such a useful post, I’ve been looking in to affiliate marketing recently (but haven’t done anything about it yet). I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to this post a fair few times whilst I’m getting set up and utilising affiliate marketing as an option for me.
This is so helpful! I have recently started getting into affiliate marketing.
I hope to be a six-figure blogger one day and I know affiliate marketing is the way to go. I have been afraid to post any affiliate links since I don’t have good or consistent traffic.
Really helpful post Kayleigh! I’m pretty new to blogging (just 6 months) and have made a few affiliate sales so far but I know I need to put some more work into it. Unfortunately for me, I’m in the travel niche (which is non-existent at the moment!) but hopefully this will pick up again in the next few months. It can definitely be done though and you’ve shown that – just checked out your income report. Congratulations! All your hard work has paid off 🙂
Great tips, I didn’t know about the cookie and how it can help but that’s nice idea to consider. I’m thinking to get into the affiliate marketing soon. Thank you for sharing!
Super useful post darling. Thank you for sharing !
Miki x
https://www.littletasteofbeauty.com
Such a helpful post on affiliate marketing, I really need to start utilising pinterest for my blog 🙂
Mel 🌙 | Moonlight Mel
As a new blogger I found this very helpful! Thanks for posting.
Thank you for this! I am finally putting more time and effort into my blog so I have a feeling I will be coming back to this post often. There is so much to learn, but I know the hard work will pay off over time. 🙂
WOW! I found this super helpful! I have been wondering however, what would you possibly say is the minimum amount of posts/content you should have before thinking about monitoring your blog in a any way… xxx
That is a very important post, much needed for me as I struggle to make sale through affiliates. Would incorporate your tips and look forward to more advice from you, thanks!
Thank you so much for sharing this, it’s so helpful! I signed up to a few affiliate schemes a few years ago but I’ve never had much success with them. Will definitely be taking on board some of your tips! xx
Tiffany x http://www.foodandotherloves.co.uk
This is such a helpful post! I think you’re right, people think they can plonk a link anywhere and it’ll get the attention but there’s more to it than that!
Rosie
Fascinating! I have been considering trying to make money off my blog lately – think I’ll be permanently glued to your blog for a while so I can learn all your tips and tricks!
Saph x
http://www.simplysaph.co.uk
Thanks for the helpful ideas. I’m still working on affiliate marketing and getting more page views with content.
Thanks for the great tips, I really need to set up my Cookies!
This is a really interesting Post. I have started to use affiliation links and haven’t made any sales yet. I really need to look more into what i can do to make people want to use my links x
This is such a useful post. I’m trying to start affiliating but haven’t had much success – I might have to look into Pinterest!
Tash – A Girl with a View
Lots of good info…I’ve got a lot to learn!