How do I promote affiliate links?

Becoming an affiliate is a great way to earn extra income every month. Depending on who you ask, it’s not exactly the easiest way to make a buck. Did you know that there are people out there who make over six figures a year from affiliate links alone? 

If it’s possible for them, it’s possible for you. I’ve scoured the web to find the 15 best ways to promote your affiliate links. Affiliate marketing accounts make up 15% of all revenue from online creative content. This means that there is a ton of money waiting to be made. Let’s talk about how you can do just that. 

What Is An Affiliate Link?

I wanted to briefly touch on what an affiliate link is. Essentially, affiliate links are personalized URLs that are used to direct an audience to a product or service. As an affiliate, you use your link throughout several areas of the Internet. Then, people will click the link that leads to your affiliate’s website. 

If they make a purchase by using your link you will get a specific commission at no cost to you or the customer. It’s important to note that by law you are required to openly state that you may make a commission off someone’s purchase when they use your link.

Top 15 Ways To Promote Your Affiliate Links

Here are the top 15 ways that you can promote your affiliate links online to make more money. 

1. Blog Post

Starting us off is one of the easiest avenues to use to promote your affiliate links. Having a blog has several benefits that include making money. You can easily add an affiliate link throughout any of your blog posts. 

Blog posts are also a cost-efficient way to promote your links. Let’s say you have a blog about home renovations. If you have an affiliate link for interior paint, you can easily add this link to any blog post that mentions painting your home. There is a lot that goes into blogging. To find out more information on how to use a blog to your advantage, click here.

2. Facebook

There are millions of people who log onto Facebook every day. If you don’t have your own personal page, you may want to have a business page or group. This is an easy way to promote your affiliate link to thousands of people at once. On a Facebook business page, you can share just about anything about your brand that you’d like. 

This can include posting photos, taking polls, and engaging with the audience. You can also have a Facebook group. These can be public or private online communities for specific topics. While your group can be specifically for your blog or brand, it may be more beneficial to have a Facebook group dedicated to the niche you’re in. Continuing the theme of running a blog for home renovations, you could have a Facebook group dedicated to inexpensive interior design. 

There you could easily share your affiliate link with the group members. If you see a post about someone asking for tips related to your affiliate link, feel free to share it, but do be sure to let them know that you might receive a commission, but it will not cost them a dime. 

Before we talk about the next way to promote your affiliate link, you can also use your own personal Facebook page. Your friends and family would love to help you out if you are an affiliate for a product or service that they’re already considering purchasing.

3. Instagram

When it comes to social media, Instagram is easily one of the most popular platforms. Celebrities, business owners, fan accounts, and more exist on this platform. Instagram is best known for the amount of engagement that occurs on the platform. If you don’t already have one, create an Instagram account for your company or brand.

You can then post high-quality images or videos for your audience to see. This is a great way to stay relevant and gain more traffic. 

How do you promote your affiliate link through Instagram? There are a couple of popular ways you can do so. For starters, you can make a post using a photo or video that promotes the product. 

It can be the main focus or part of a bigger picture. You can tell your audience about how this product or service changes your life and that they can use your link to purchase it for themselves. The second way to do so is by utilizing Instagram stories. You can post a photo or video and it will last for 24 hours. 

If you have 10,000 followers or more, you can incorporate a link in your story and people can easily swipe up and be directed with your affiliate link. If you don’t have 10,000 followers or more, you can add your affiliate link to your Instagram bio and lead people to your bio with your posts.

4. Online Event

Hosting an online event is a great way to get a lot of people together from multiple locations at once. Not everyone has the time or resources to attend in-person events. This will help you to create one-on-one relationships and talk with your audience about their thoughts and suggestions. 

You can easily put your affiliate link in the online chat of the event and talk with your audience a little bit about what being an affiliate is like. This may not only help you get people to use your affiliate link, but it may inspire others to start their journey of becoming an affiliate.

5. YouTube

We can’t talk about promoting affiliate links without mentioning YouTube. Because it is increasingly difficult to gain an audience on YouTube, affiliate links help creators be able to afford to post the videos. 

If you’re one of the fortunate people who has a large following on YouTube, you will likely have no problem getting people to use your affiliate link. Put it in the description of every video you have and mention it in your videos as well. It’s important to note that you shouldn’t talk about it for too long and for each video. 

This can turn people off, make them stop watching the video, or even make them unsubscribe. Take 15 seconds at the beginning and end of your video to mention your affiliate link. You could also make a single video dedicated to talking all about it.

6. Twitter

On the topic of social media, Twitter is another great option. Did you know that there are roughly 6,000 tweets per second on Twitter? That is more than 500,000,000 tweets per day. Those numbers are astronomical and to not use that to your advantage would be silly. Create a Twitter account for your brand and follow similar accounts or their followers to let them know your company exists. 

You can also cross-promote your social media accounts with each other. For example, if you already have an Instagram account and you just created a Twitter, it will be beneficial to you to let your followers on Instagram know about your newly created Twitter account. This is an easy way to gain a following across multiple platforms. You can put your affiliate link in your Twitter bio or a simple tweet. You can also use hashtags that are related to the product or service you are an affiliate for.

7. Tutorials

A natural way to promote your affiliate link is to use tutorials to your advantage. If you have an affiliate link for a specific power tool, make a video or blog post showing users how it works. This not only allows them to see the product in action, but it shows them that you use it and that it is capable of doing what you claim it does. One of the most searched for things on YouTube is tutorials. This is a great way to increase your audience and lead people to your affiliate link.

8. Emails

Emails are a very versatile way to promote your affiliate link. There are multiple ways that you can use email marketing to do just that. Email marketing has a return of investment of around 4,000%. Every time someone invests $10, they average a return of $100. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like something worth checking out. 

One way that you can use email marketing to promote your affiliate link is a welcome newsletter. When someone visits your blog, you can give them the option of signing up for an email list. If they opt-in, you can send a welcome email and tie your affiliate link into that email. When doing this, it’s important to do it sparingly. 

You don’t want your audience to only think you’re there to make money. If you promote too heavily, you can lose the vast majority of your audience. There are so many creators out there that there is someone else they can go to. Do what you can to prevent that from happening. 

9. Podcast

Podcasts are becoming more and more popular. People are listening to their favorite podcasts more than they’re listening to the radio. There is a podcast out there for just about any topic. Some of the more popular podcasts are from celebrities or about topics such as love or true crime. 

You can either start your podcast or become a guest on one. It will be much easier to promote your affiliate link if you have your podcast. Something great about this form of media is that it is very easy to grow quickly. 

With something like YouTube, that can take much longer to gain a following. If you’ve ever listened to a podcast, you’re probably used to hearing advertisements for sponsored products. 

This is the main way that podcasts get funded. Whether you have sponsored advertisements to read off or not, you may want to mention your affiliate link and put it in the episode description.

10. Advertising

Many people promote their affiliate links by using ads. Whether these ads are on Facebook, Instagram, or your blog, it is a common way to advertise your affiliate link. 

When talking about advertising, it is crucial to mention that you should never run ads that directly use your affiliate link. This can get you banned from several websites, including Facebook. You can use ads to link people to landing pages that talk more about your affiliate link.

11. Guest Posting

Not everyone has the time or desire to create their blog. It’s a lot of work and it can be hard to gain momentum in the beginning. If this sounds like you, consider guest posting. Whether you have your blog or not, this is a great way to not only share your affiliate link but make friends and colleagues in the industry.

A guest post is exactly what it sounds like, you are a guest on someone else’s blog and you share content that is relevant to their audience. Doing this can expose you to a brand new audience and potential customers. Depending on your status, you may have more luck by reaching out to smaller blog creators at first. They are eager for free content for their blog and it will usually only cost them you promoting yourself. That’s not a bad gig if you ask me. 

12. Contest

People love free stuff. Another great way to promote your affiliate links is to host a contest. This will get people talking about your brand and will increase engagement on your website. Let’s say you’re giving away a dish set. You can have your audience share your contest to get an additional entry to win. 

This is a really easy way to reach a larger audience. You must tie in your affiliate link to the contest. You can do this by talking to your audience and telling them that if they use your affiliate link to buy a product, they will be entered into a giveaway. 

You want to make the giveaway and contest worth someone’s time and money. No one wants to spend money to enter into a giveaway that has bad prizes. 

13. Evergreen Content

If you haven’t heard of evergreen content, it is essentially creating content that will continually stay relevant. If you have a blog post that contains a year in the title, that post is no longer evergreen. Writing using an evergreen method usually will create more customers via your affiliate think. This is because of the traffic continually growing over time. 

Evergreen content can also help you continue ranking high on the search engine results over time. One thing to keep in mind when creating evergreen content is to refer back to it now and again. This will help to make sure that the information is up-to-date and that people can still access the content.

14. Webinar

Streaming is becoming one of the most popular ways to reach people online. Whether you go live on a website such as Facebook or YouTube, or you become a partner on a Twitch, hosting a webinar is an amazing way to promote your affiliate link to your audience. 

You can use a live stream to talk about the specific product or service you’re an affiliate for. If you’re an affiliate for multiple products in the same genre, talk about each of them to increase the chance of people using them. 

Let’s say you go live on Instagram to talk to your followers about a rug for sale on Amazon that you’re affiliated with. You may get some people who use your affiliate link for that rug, but what if someone is looking for a welcome mat instead of a rug? If you are an affiliate for products in similar genres, you can lose out on money by not mentioning all of them. 

I get it, not everyone is comfortable with going live in front of an audience. If this is the case, you can film a pre-recorded webinar and post it on your website or blog. This can prevent any missed steps or awkward moments.

15. LinkedIn

The majority of businesses and professionals have a LinkedIn profile. This website has groups similar to Facebook. This is a great place to promote your affiliate link because it’s a social media platform for professionals that is used to network for people in similar industries. 

When you’re surrounded by colleagues or peers, they are much more likely to help you out by purchasing through your affiliate link. You could also use your Linkedin profile. If you don’t already have one, it is essentially an online resume. You can include your affiliate link in the intro section of your profile.

Final Words

Having an affiliate link is a great way to add extra income every month. There are several ways that you can promote your links as seen above. Don’t be afraid to get creative and utilize social media. I hope this guide gave you several ideas that you can put to practice. 

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