Affiliate Marketing Tips to build a passive income portfolio

Affiliate Marketing is in the front of people’s minds who want to monetise and grow a new blog, business, or E-Commerce store.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is performance-based marketing that rewards you for marketing another person’s content. It can be an effective tool to receive an ongoing revenue stream via the commission received. Incentives such as bonuses from an E-book can entice customers to follow the link and ultimately make a purchase.

Growing your business is difficult as you must build traffic, convince others to buy your product, and follow your content.  Affiliate marketing can help grow your side hustle and turn your hobby into a profitable business venture. I have detailed five key steps to improve your success rate and affiliate marketing strategy.

1. Build a website to promote your brand

Before you can start taking advantage of affiliate marketing your need to build a website to promote your brand. There are a number of great online platforms to assist with this process. For instance, to register a domain name you could use Namecheap. This would enable you to create a unique name that identifies your website. I chose Bluehost when setting up a host for my blog. The main reason being that it was low cost and had positive online reviews. Alternatively, you can outsource the setup of your website through platforms such as Fiverr. From experience, I have found Word Press does the heavy lifting of the website design process. Therefore, you are able to d easily do it all yourself. To find out more about creating your website I have written a blog here.

2. Join an Affiliate marketing program

The next step after designing your website is to publish content within your niche category. From here you can grow your following and find the right affiliate marketing program that aligns with your brand. One of the easiest programs, to begin with, is the Amazon Associates Program. It does not cost to become an affiliate and you can immediately start to earn a return with their affiliate links. Other popular programs that offer an affiliate program include LiveChat and Awin.  These programs are affiliate networks that enable website owners to monetise their websites.

The unique affiliate link you receive can link your article to the affiliate program. For example, the link you post can direct your readers to an affiliate such as Binance, Stake, or Sharesight. By viewers subscribing and signing up to the affiliate program you earn a commission on the referral. Stake even offers the person signing up a free US Stock as well as the referrer so it can be a win-win situation. Sounds simple right? The hardest part is getting readers to click on the link, that is where promoting the links is essential.

3. Promote the affiliate links on social media

Getting the affiliate link in front of an audience is where you will make the money from referrals. The quickest and most effective method to promote the link is via social media. If you are just starting out and do not yet have a strong following social media sharing can drive traffic to your website. Use programs such as Canva to assist with the design of your posters, videos, and presentations. This in turn will raise the click-through rate you receive on your affiliate links. Creating a product tutorial would also assist in creating a higher conversion rate. This is due to a stronger engagement as viewers are better informed about the product that is being recommended. You could offer these tutorials on sites such as Etsy to gain a wider audience when promoting your content. 

4. Monetise your website through the Affiliate Marketing Model

Aside from promoting ads on your website the affiliate marketing model can be an effective long-term strategy. The commission your receive from affiliate links can vary and is dependant on a number of factors. The website traffic, the number of visitors, and the willingness to buy can impact your profitability. Tools such as Google Ads Keyword Planner can drive more traffic to your blog or website. This is achieved by target low-volume keywords to promote content within your articles. Google search engine tracks these keywords and effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) enables the website to reach higher traffic. Furthermore, the organic search leads will increase the potential traffic to your website.

The product category can also have an impact on the amount that an affiliate like Amazon is willing to pay. The Amazon program may offer up to 10% of the commission on a particular project. For instance, luxury or beauty goods would earn a higher return as they generate more leads than other products. Affiliate programs such as Pearler offer sign-on bonuses for registering new uses to their platform.

5. Review and improve your Affiliate Marketing strategy

Building an effective affiliate marketing passive income stream is not a ‘set and forget’ process. Whilst it will take time to generate leads there are always ways to improve your website. Plugins for Word press users such as AzonPress for Amazon affiliates can allow you to operate the links from one browser. Benchmarking, comparison tables, and best-selling product lists can refine your niche. Streamlined access to popular products ocan be an effective strategy to boost your conversion rate and overall revenue.

The affiliate links model is a great way to add another income stream and monetise your website. It is not a quick-fix solution to becoming a millionaire. However, affiliate programs are a tool to generate ongoing leads, build website traffic and promote your brand over time. If you are seeking other ways to grow your passive income I have included a separate link to build your passive investments.