How to Promote Affiliate Products: 24 Pros Share Their Tips

When asked how to effectively make money online with content and blogging, I always tell people to refer to my free make money blogging guide, which breaks down the process step by step. The process works like this…

First, you need to put in the time and effort to research your site focus and target audience. Once you have a niche market, you need to niche down again and make it even more focused.

The next thing you need to do is make sure you have a method for monetization (affiliate marketing, product or service).

After that, scope out the competition and see what they are doing… then do it better.

With this knowledge now in place, create some killer content for your site (3-5 articles is fine).

The last step in the process is to promote the heck out of it and to start ranking for keywords that zone right in on your demographic audience and monetization goal.

An extra bonus tip is to take advantage of expert roundup posts. In this link, you will see a bunch of examples of what’s working for sites in various industries today. Expert roundup posts are a great way to bring authority to your site, while also getting a ton of backlinks and social shares in the process — all while helping your site rank higher in the process

Great question. Here’s my take on it:

Do these three steps:

Say if you are promoting a workout program – try it yourself for 30 days and blog about your progress. If you are promoting a WordPress themes club, signup and try out the themes on your blog.

Hard selling and push marketing don’t work well nowadays. To success, we need to help the right people to find the right product with our content (in the form of guide or review).

Jerry Low, Founder of Web Hosting Secret Revealed. We signup and test the hosting service ourselves before publishing our host review 😉

The easiest way to get started with affiliate marketing is to create review posts. I do it too.

The problem is, when you are in most niches, you are not alone. In fact, there is often a lot of competition. And the most powerful website or the one with the most links wins!

So, rather than trying to compete with yet another review post – which honestly is just you trying to sell the product (in most cases), why not try something different?

What people are really after is to see how you have used the product with success. If you have made good use of a product and gotten great results, perhaps it is worth buying, right?

My recommendation for affiliate marketing that beats your competition is to create content that is really helpful (like case studies or in-depth examples) that also recommends a product (or more) that can help achieve a result. These kinds of posts can rank for keywords no one else is competing for and also be a far more compelling sales page than a plain jane review!

Give it a try.

According to my understanding, the most effective methods to promote affiliate products on the blog are:

1. Writing unbiased reviews, comparison articles and tutorials.

The reason why these types of articles convert well is that they target commercial keywords.

People who search for these keywords are already in the buying state. You just need to hit the bull’s eye with your writing.

If you look at my Thrive Content Builder review article, you will notice that I have tried to cover each and every possible benefit of using this plugin.

This is the real game-changer. Tell your readers about the benefits of using those affiliate products and educate them by writing tutorials around them. They will trust you more and your affiliate sales will increase.

2. Having a Toolbox Page

If you are an affiliate marketer, then having a Toolbox page on your blog is must.

Tell your readers which products you use to successfully run your blog. If they trust you, they will purchase those products from your link.

Special tip: Provide some special offers to your readers on your Toolbox page. It will increase your conversions. Try this.

You can check out my Toolbox page to see how I am taking full benefit of it.

Affiliate marketing is all about testing, testing and testing. Keep trying different methods to increase your affiliate sales.

There are a lot of different ways you can promote affiliate products, but a few specific strategies have worked particularly well for me.

1. Write super in-depth case studies about how you used the product to grow your business. For example, I wrote a case study here about how I use SEMrush to perform keyword research for existing sites and capture quick organic traffic gains. The post provides value while promoting an affiliate product.

2. Use influencers to provide the most powerful form of social proof. One of the best ways to do this is strategically position expert roundups around affiliate product categories. For example, I recently put together an expert roundup where I asked 97 SEO professionals to rank their best SEO tools. Apart from being a tool junky and genuinely interested in what tools others were using, I was confident SEMrush (affiliate) product would fall somewhere on the list of the top tools. And, it did. So, not only am I vouching for the tool but over 30 other SEO experts are too. This social proof can help boost click-through and conversion rates.

3. Thrive Leads Smart Links – I wrote a monster review on the tool here. But, here is how it works. When someone signs up to an email list they often see the same opt-in offer the next time they click through from an email. This is redundant. Smart Links allows you to show different messaging on popups, sidebar widgets and all other form types to people who are already opted in to an email list. This is very powerful! If you have a segmented list, instead of showing a redundant offer (or nothing at all), you can promote targeted product sales or affiliate offers. When adding these smart links into automated email campaigns, you create a passive affiliate marketing machine.

4. Giveaways – This one is HUGE! Reach out to the company you are an affiliate for and ask for a free license to their product. Next, launch and promote the giveaway. At the end, you’ll have a list of people you know want the product. Create a separate list segment for these people and hit them up with a follow-up offer, and drip helpful content featuring the product over the next couple weeks. Again, smart links can be incorporated here too. If you want to see the full process I used to collect 1,178 emails in 10 days and generate affiliate sales using a giveaway, check out this case study.

All that said, I only promote a small number of products to my audience that I actually use to run my businesses. Others are more flexible, but that’s just how I operate with affiliates.

I’m going to be an old school here but if you really want to make big bucks AND get consistent revenue you need to find a way to get regularly in touch with the people in your niche.

That can be through a Facebook group, push notifications, retargeting or more classically an email list (the most powerful still).

It takes some initial investment and doesn’t pay back right away but that’s the only way to really compound earnings and get to the 5 or 6 figures monthly realm.

Once you start collecting emails, fans or members, make a schedule and regularly send them info about the niche you’re in. It doesn’t even have to be your content, it can be other people’s content. Just be their curator, mix with your own content, make it valuable. Do that 3 times a week.

Once that is set up, mix the curation with affiliate promos related to your niche.

Both in your content emails (say 1 promo item for 3 content items) and in dedicated promo emails (say 2 a week).

You now have a monetized newsletter. Use the money you make to grow your subscriber either by starting a blog and promoting your content or buying ads.

As you make more money, reinvest in growth / multiply the channels and voila, you have a successful niche business using affiliate marketing.

It really depends what the affiliate products are, but for most sites and niches, the best way to promote affiliate products is to use them yourself, and show people how to use them to get the results they want. For example, if I wanted to sell something like LongTailPro as an affiliate, I’d create case studies and examples showing how I used it to get the keyword research that I wanted, and how that resulted in the rankings and income I wanted.

If you let people easily see how they can use the product to get their desired result, that’s all you need to do.

I would highly recommend them to analyze the traffic on their blogs first. Which article is getting maximum traffic and what keywords are ranking in Google. Once I know the traffic on any particular article and the ranking keywords, now I can proceed to the next step, where I will find the best affiliate products in that category.

You can now proceed to www.offervault.com and see what are the affiliate products in that category. If you find the products in that category, just join the relevant networks in the industry and put the affiliate products in the article.

Further, you can use the exit-intent popup on your blog to get more sales. Let’s say your article is about link building, as soon as your reader try to close the window, show them a popup saying “Download my free book to learn 30 link building techniques.” So he/she will download the book and later you can sell any link building related product to them via a mail.

I have tried different methods to promote affiliate products on my blog. You need to test a lot when promoting affiliate products. One great technique can be promoting affiliate products on About page & recommended tool pages of your blogs. Create a recommended page on your blog and then promote some great products you have used & keep testing the products you are recommending to your users.

Sometimes users might be interested in other offers too, use heatmaps and see how clicks are happenings. I use Hotjar to analyze the clicks on my blog.

Also, try recommending products to the sidebar of the blog it will help you to get more sales.

Have you seen my product SchemaNinja.com which can surely help in recommendations, the free version will be out soon. I am sure the affiliate would make more money with it.

I have seen many top affiliate marketers in my list they have use recommendation feature very well. Try it and see conversions skyrocketing.

Increasing affiliate sales is easy when you build a strong rapport with your target audience. So first make sure to find and target the right audience.

Then, get to know their needs and wants. Only then start promoting the best products that fill their needs. That’s how anyone can make more sales from affiliate marketing.

Another tip to increase your sales is to write genuine product reviews. Write every detail about the products and tell your audience what benefits they can get.

If a bunch of bloggers would come up and ask me this question I would tell them to brainstorm and share their experience. There is power in numbers.

Because I received this question from only one blogger my answer is this:

Change your mentality. The problem that too many bloggers have is that they think only how to grow their sales, hot to get more traffic, hot to earn more money etc. It’s all about them. You should ask yourself how can I help more people solve THEIR problems. See what issues your audience has and search for products that can provide a solution to those struggles. You should always recommend products that have the highest quality.

You should try those products yourself first. Write detailed reviews, do comparisons with other products and show the pros and cons. Honesty is the best way of earn people’s trust. If you only praise your products you won’t seem genuine.

Reviews aren’t the most exciting type of posts so pay attention to the way you format your post to improve readability. Use catchy words in your headlines, use bold text, include bullet points or numbers when you mention the features of a product. Add images with the product to which you are referring. You can find out more details about what is the anatomy of a perfect blog post here.

I also suggest you to promote your posts on Pinterest. This is not only a social network, it’s a search engine where users are looking for products that they are interested in. By joining group boards you can get your product in front of a huge audience, even if you have few or no followers.

Based on the keywords chosen for the affiliate product you are promoting, write a detailed and informative piece of content, something that can actually beat the competition. Then start building links, with a variation of anchor text for your keywords.

Pay attention to link velocity and link profile diversity (here’s a post that can help you). You want to aim for organic traffic for affiliate marketing, it’s the most converting one.

If you asked me what method you should use to promote affiliate products, I recommend building up your email list and using email marketing to get your affiliate offers in front of your audience. Email marketing is a great way to sell. By using a feature opt-in box and/or popups and hello bars, you can build a list quickly with a strong Lead Magnet free gift. The more emails you have on your list, the more affiliate products, and eventually, your own products and courses, that you will sell.

I’d first look at what products I’m currently using regularly and publish honest reviews about them on my blog. I’d also think about what problems or challenges my audience is currently facing and introduce tools, software or training that would help them with each of their specific needs.

The obvious methods are to do things like create a resource page and put your affiliate links on it. You can also feature your favorite products in your sidebar. Additionally you’ll want to include them in your email drip series. The best thing is to write tutorials that show how to get value out of a product, and in doing so if people find it valuable, they will buy it!

1. Promote products which you use on day to day basis. That way you will be able to gain trust of your readers and also you can showcase in depth product reviews, how to videos of those products as well.

2. Suppose you want to promote a WordPress theme. Instead of just giving out review of that theme, write about the problem of your readers first. Write about why a good theme is necessary. Describe how a good theme helps in generating trust and then do a in depth review of a theme you use on your blog. Always start from Problem Statement and then as a solution to that problem bring the product in picture.

3. Instead of doing single product reviews, do a Top 5 or Top 10 or Best 3 kind of articles which will give more options to your readers. Also it will help in generating more affiliate revenue for your website

The best way is to write an article related to the product. For example, if you are promoting a web hosting company, write an article on how to choose the best possible web host. Once you write the article, provide a bunch of websites (affiliate products) that are the best hosting providers. These could be all affiliate links.You are telling your readers how to choose a web host, and you are giving them references to the best web hosting providers you know. This makes it a complete article and increases the opportunity for affiliate sales.

Informative articles and blog posts are the best ways to increase affilate sales.

I first would like to say thanks for considering and including me on the list, Julian Sakanee. Well. Many of us, the bloggers are monetizing our blog by selling the affiliate products. It’s a nice question to discuss how we can promote those affiliate.

Many different and typical ways we can promote the affiliate product using such as share the story and experience related to the product or even write a product review post. However, I don’t think that’s a good idea for monetizing our blog with affiliate marketing. Think about when you first know about the product.

Will you buy it, by the way?

Of course, you won’t.

According to Inbound Marketing, the buyer went through 3 steps before buying any product—aware -> consider -> decision. What’s more, over 90% of buyers are return visitors, depends on CopyBlogger.

So, the best way to promote the affiliate product on your blog is to focus on building great landing pages and capture more emails to your list. You first need to solve the problem of your readers then sell them your products.

When promoting affiliate products emphasis must be given to telling your readers how using those products helped you. When I talk about products like Buffer or Full Contact (or the plethora or tools I use for email outreach), I simply talk about how the tools helps me accomplish tasks that would otherwise be time consuming.

But why is this so important?

Here’s the deal: talking about how something helped you is an action trigger. It prompts users to take action to checkout the product and give it a try. Its also the best way to promote a product you’re not talking about how good the product is. You’re talking about what it did for you. This is why product reviews do so well.

I would not advise them to go directly on their blog and force the things to their readers. Affiliate marketing is much different than just blogging and SEO. First of all, you will have to be very specific with the niche. It should be something you have expertise with and can relate to you.

So if you followed the very basic (but crucial one), you need to produce sufficient amount of worthy content people will care about. And on top of it, you need to market it because no impressions means no profit. Bring cross-channel promotion of your content through Social, Referral and Videos.

There is no doubt that affiliate marketing is the best way to make piles of money. I always recommend that a blogger should choose a product related to his blog niche. It helps to easily market the product as the blogger is already getting the eyes which are looking for the similar products or solutions.

Killer reviews: Writing a killer and honest review not only shows the knowledge of a blogger but also helps them to promote the affiliate products.

In these reviews you can make the readers understand why they should buy the product you are talking about.

Now you may have question that how to write a killer review post?

Honest review: Reviews should be honest. Do not only focus on sale but focus on the value that product will add in the experience or life of a buyer. Always talk about both pros and Cons.

Tone: Always write reviews in a personal tone, as you are talking to thee other person.

Choose right product: Always choose the product which suits your niche. This way you will offer the same thing which your readers are interested in.

Star rating: You can take advantage of star rating if you are on WordPress. Use Author Review plugin to add star-ratings.

I would recommend they do NOT promote directly on their blogs at all.

It’s a largely ineffective way to make affiliate sales for the most part.

Sure you can get a few sales from review posts and dropping affiliate links into posts but IME it’s a low conversion rate.

They need to use their blog to get people onto their email list.

And from their email list they deliver value, educate and entertain, solve problems and promote aff products via email promos.

The best way to get visitors onto your email list is talked about here:

http://nichehacks.com/email-pop-up-case-study/

And ideas for lead magnets discussed here:

33 Irresistible Lead Magnet Ideas To Grow Your Email List Fast

And then these posts show how to do an effective promo:

[Case Study] How I Made $9,954.79 In 5 Days, From An Affiliate Product, Using Fill In The Blank Email Templates

[Case Study] How I Made $6,711.50 In Just 5 Days From A Single Affiliate Product (Plus 9 Affiliate Marketing Lessons)

Promoting affiliate products by email is a far more effective way to make sales.

The best answer I have is based on what I do. I generate $15,000 to $20,000 per month in affiliate commissions. I use several methods. My methods are broken down into types of products and method of promotion.

A. Types of Products

I promote a variety of products.

1. Recurring Commission

My most lucrative type of product that I promote is recurring commission products – usually cloud-based software but other recurring commission products such as recurring services can be very lucrative in the long run too.

I love promoting recurring commission products because you can build up a passive stream of income.

2. Physical products

I also promote hundreds of physical products across my B2C niche websites. I focus on Amazon, but do promote a number of other e-commerce merchants. While I do publish content on my site designed specifically to promote products, I also include affiliate links in non-promotional content as well. I like promoting physical products (especially Amazon) because the conversion rate is pretty high and due to the incredible selection of products it’s pretty easy to promote pretty much anything you want.

B. Promotional Methods

I promote products as an affiliate directly on my website and via email newsletters.

Typically I promote physical products directly on my websites whereas I promote recurring commission software and services via email newsletters.

Both approaches work.

At the end of the day, as an affiliate marketer, I work toward building up stable and diverse revenue stream not being overly dependent on one merchant and/or one traffic source.