Deciding which model aligns with your goals and resources requires a deep dive into the pros and cons of each. Dropshipping offers a hands-on e-commerce experience without the hassle of inventory management, while affiliate marketing appeals to those looking to earn through content creation and product promotion. This guide aims to shed light on both models, helping you navigate their unique opportunities and challenges. Whether you’re drawn to the operational aspects of running an e-commerce site or prefer the marketing-driven approach of affiliate sales, making an informed decision is key to your online entrepreneurship journey.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is essentially a referral business where you earn money by promoting other people’s products or services. At its core, this model hinges on three main players: the affiliate (that’s you), the merchant (the one whose products you’re promoting), and the consumer (your audience). When you, as an affiliate, successfully drive a sale through your unique affiliate link, you earn a commission from the merchant.

This performance-based marketing strategy is built on partnerships and networks, creating a win-win situation for both affiliates and merchants. Affiliates get to monetize their content and platforms without the need to develop a product or handle customer service. At the same time, merchants benefit from a broader reach and increased sales at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. The beauty of affiliate marketing lies in its scalability and the diverse range of products and services you can promote, offering a flexible path to generating revenue online.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping stands out as a streamlined approach to e-commerce, enabling entrepreneurs to operate online stores without ever handling the products they sell. When a customer purchases from your dropshipping store, the order is directly forwarded to the supplier, who then ships the product directly to the customer. This model eliminates the need for inventory management, warehousing, and logistics, simplifying the process of running an e-commerce business.

The mechanics of dropshipping revolve around finding suitable suppliers and products that align with your niche and marketing them effectively to your target audience. While it offers the advantage of low upfront costs and the flexibility to offer a wide range of products, dropshipping also brings challenges, such as dependency on suppliers, potential shipping delays, and thinner profit margins. Despite these challenges, dropshipping remains an attractive option for entrepreneurs looking to enter the e-commerce space with minimal risk and investment.

Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Starting an affiliate marketing venture comes with its own set of advantages and challenges. Here’s a look at what aspiring affiliates need to consider:

Pros:

• Low Startup Costs: One of the most appealing aspects of affiliate marketing is its low barrier to entry. Unlike traditional businesses that require significant upfront investment, affiliate marketing can be started with minimal costs, focusing primarily on building a platform and audience for product promotion.
• Passive Income Potential: Affiliate marketing offers the opportunity to create a steady stream of passive income. By creating content that continues to attract visitors and generate sales over time, affiliates can earn commissions long after the initial work is done.
• No Customer Service Responsibilities: As an affiliate, you’re not responsible for handling customer inquiries, complaints, or returns. This allows you to focus solely on marketing and promoting products, simplifying your business operations.

Cons:

• Dependency on Affiliate Programs: Your earning potential is tied to the policies and stability of affiliate programs. Changes in commission structures or terms can significantly impact your income, and there’s always the risk of a program shutting down.
• Commission Limitations: The commission rates and earning potential can vary widely between affiliate programs. Some may offer low commission rates or place caps on earnings, affecting your overall profitability.
• High Competition: The affiliate marketing space is highly competitive, with many affiliates vying for the attention of the same audiences. Standing out requires innovative marketing strategies and the ability to create compelling content that resonates with your target audience.

Pros and Cons of Dropshipping

Dropshipping is an enticing model for many entrepreneurs due to its accessibility and flexibility, but it’s not without its challenges. Here’s what you need to weigh before diving in:

Pros:

• Low Initial Investment: Dropshipping significantly lowers the barrier to entry for starting an e-commerce business. Without investing in inventory upfront, you can launch your store with relatively little capital, focusing your resources on building your brand and marketing your products.
• Wide Product Selection: With dropshipping, you’re not limited by the physical inventory you can afford or store. This freedom allows you to offer a broad range of products, test different niches, and quickly adapt to market trends without financial risk.
• Location Independence: This business model offers the ultimate flexibility in where you work. As long as you have an internet connection, you can run your dropshipping business from anywhere worldwide, making it an attractive option for digital nomads and those seeking a remote lifestyle.

Cons:

• Lower Profit Margins: Because of the convenience and low startup costs, dropshipping often comes with thinner profit margins. Competition can drive prices down, and suppliers’ costs of goods and shipping fees can eat into profits.
• Inventory Management Challenges: Despite not holding inventory, dropshippers can still face stock levels and supplier reliability issues. Out-of-stock items and delays from your suppliers can lead to customer dissatisfaction and impact your store’s reputation.
• Limited Control Over Product Quality and Shipping: When you rely on third-party suppliers for product fulfillment, you have less control over the quality of the products and the shipping times. Any issues on the supplier’s end can directly affect your customer’s experience and, in turn, your brand’s reputation.

Can You Do Affiliate Marketing and Dropshipping at the Same Time?

Exploring both affiliate marketing and dropshipping concurrently can offer a diversified approach to online entrepreneurship. This combination allows for multiple income streams, leveraging each model’s strengths to build a more resilient business. For example, you could use affiliate marketing to monetize content on platforms like blogs or YouTube channels while running a dropshipping store to sell products directly to your audience. This strategy can enhance your overall earning potential and provide financial stability by not relying solely on one income source.

However, managing both models simultaneously requires careful planning and time management. Each has its demands, from content creation and SEO for affiliate marketing to customer service and supplier relations for dropshipping. Balancing these responsibilities can be challenging, but it also offers a unique opportunity to learn and excel in diverse areas of online business.

The key to success lies in understanding how these models can complement each other. For instance, you might find products to dropship that are related to the content you create for affiliate marketing, providing a seamless experience for your audience. Yet, it’s crucial to be aware of the potential challenges, such as dividing your focus or diluting your brand message. 

Is it Easier to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing or Dropshipping?

Whether affiliate marketing or dropshipping is the easier path to profitability hinges on several factors, including startup costs, operational complexities, market saturation, and personal skills or preferences. Affiliate marketing often appeals to those with a knack for content creation and digital marketing, offering a relatively low-cost entry point and the potential for passive income. However, success in affiliate marketing can take time, requiring patience and persistence to build a platform that attracts significant traffic and generates consistent sales commissions.

On the other hand, dropshipping allows entrepreneurs to dive directly into the e-commerce world, selling products without the complexities of inventory management. While it offers a quicker start and the excitement of running an online store, dropshipping involves narrower profit margins and the challenges of maintaining supplier relationships and ensuring customer satisfaction. The ease of starting a dropshipping business also means facing stiff competition, requiring effective marketing strategies and exceptional customer service to stand out.

Ultimately, the ease of making money in either model depends on your ability to leverage your strengths, manage the inherent challenges, and adapt to changing market dynamics. Both affiliate marketing and dropshipping offer viable paths to income, but they cater to different interests and skill sets. 

Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing: Which One is Less Risky?

Evaluating the risk associated with dropshipping and affiliate marketing involves considering factors like initial investment, market volatility, dependence on external platforms or suppliers, and the sustainability of income streams. Affiliate marketing is often viewed as less risky due to its low startup costs and the absence of inventory or shipping responsibilities. Since you’re promoting products for other companies, you don’t bear the direct risks associated with product quality, fulfillment, or customer service. However, affiliate marketing relies heavily on external affiliate programs and platforms, which can change their terms or commission structures, potentially affecting income stability.

While offering the appeal of running an e-commerce store without inventory, dropshipping introduces risks related to supplier reliability, product quality, and customer satisfaction. Factors outside your control can directly impact your brand reputation, such as shipping delays or product issues. Additionally, the competitive nature of dropshipping can make it challenging to maintain profitable margins, especially when starting.

Both models have unique risk profiles, but risk mitigation strategies like diversifying income streams, carefully selecting reliable partners, and continuously adapting to market trends can help manage these risks. The choice between dropshipping and affiliate marketing should also consider your comfort level with these risks and your ability to navigate the challenges specific to each model. 

How to Know if Affiliate Marketing or Dropshipping is the Right Choice for You

Whether affiliate marketing or dropshipping suits you best hinges on your interests, skills, and goals. Consider these key factors:

• Focus Area: If you thrive on content creation and digital marketing, affiliate marketing could be your path, allowing you to earn by promoting products. Dropshipping might appeal more to you if you’re more inclined towards running an online store, handling sales, and interacting with customers.
• Risk and Investment: Evaluate your willingness to take risks and the capital you can invest. Affiliate marketing typically requires less upfront investment and is seen as lower risk. Dropshipping, while potentially more lucrative, demands more initial spending on marketing and carries higher operational risks.
• Control Level: Dropshipping offers more control over your business, including pricing and customer experience, but depends on suppliers for product fulfillment. Affiliate marketing provides less control over product and pricing but frees you from fulfillment and customer service responsibilities.
• Product Interest: If exploring different products and niches excites you, dropshipping allows you to experiment without significant inventory risk. Affiliate marketing may limit you to products within your niche but also offers flexibility.
• Lifestyle Preferences: Consider whether you prefer a more active role in your business, as seen in dropshipping, or if you’re seeking a passive income model, which is often associated with affiliate marketing.

Ultimately, the choice should reflect what aligns with your personal preferences, investment capacity, and how you envision your online business journey. Both paths require commitment and adaptability for long-term success.

Final Thoughts

Both dropshipping and affiliate marketing offer unique paths to online entrepreneurship, each with pros and cons. While dropshipping provides a hands-on approach to e-commerce with the potential for higher profit margins, affiliate marketing offers a lower-risk way to earn income through content creation and promotion. Your choice should align with your interests, skills, investment capacity, and business aspirations.

Remember, success in either model doesn’t come overnight. It requires dedication, learning, and the willingness to adapt to market changes.

Whether you’re drawn to the creative aspects of marketing and content creation or the operational challenges of running an e-commerce business, there’s potential for growth and fulfillment. Carefully weigh the pros and cons, consider your long-term goals, and choose the path that best suits your vision for online entrepreneurship. With the right approach and mindset, dropshipping and affiliate marketing can lead to rewarding online business ventures.

FAQ Section

What distinguishes dropshipping from affiliate marketing? 

Dropshipping involves selling products through your online store without holding inventory, relying on suppliers to ship directly to customers. Affiliate marketing earns commissions by promoting other companies’ products or services through your content.

Can I integrate dropshipping and affiliate marketing into one business?

Yes, combining both models can diversify your income streams and leverage different aspects of online entrepreneurship, although it requires careful planning and management.

What are the primary benefits of dropshipping?

Low initial investment, flexibility in product selection, and the ability to run your business from anywhere are key advantages.

What are the primary benefits of affiliate marketing? 

It offers low startup costs, the potential for passive income, and freedom from inventory and customer service responsibilities.

What are the inherent risks of dropshipping and affiliate marketing? 

Dropshipping risks include supplier reliability and lower profit margins, while affiliate marketing risks involve dependency on affiliate programs and competition.

Which field faces more competition: dropshipping or affiliate marketing?

Both fields are competitive, but the level of competition can vary based on niche, market saturation, and how well you differentiate your business or content.

Understanding the Affiliate Marketing Ecosystem

Understanding the affiliate marketing game in 2024 is all about knowing your data and the latest platforms out there. We’re going to discover how these can make or break your earnings and show you how to use them to stay ahead of the curve. Let’s get into it.

The Role of Data Analytics in Optimizing Affiliate Revenue

By analyzing which content your audience clicks on, where they come from, and what makes them tick, you can tailor your approach for maximum impact. Imagine a blogger used data to pinpoint that most of his traffic came from mobile devices. He then optimized his site for mobile users and saw a 30% uptick in affiliate click-throughs. Gathering the right data, interpreting it, and turning those insights into revenue by making informed decisions that lead to real results, becomes more important than ever before.

Emerging Affiliate Networks and Platforms

Emerging affiliate networks and platforms are the new frontiers for bloggers. With the right network, your blog can connect to more diverse products, better commission rates, and innovative tools for tracking and analytics. For instance, a tech blogger might join a new platform specializing in software, tapping into a niche market and boosting his earnings by 25%. It’s all about finding networks that align with your content and audience. 

Platforms like AffiliateX are standing out with user-friendly interfaces and advanced tracking, while ShareCommerce fosters a community-driven network encouraging collaboration among affiliates and advertisers. Niche-specific networks like NicheConnect cater to targeted markets, enhancing the connection between advertisers and publishers with relevant offers. The use of blockchain by platforms such as AffiliateChain introduces transparency and efficiency, showcasing the dynamic and evolving nature of the affiliate marketing industry.

1. Optimizing for Voice Search and AI Assistants

Voice search and AI assistants are game-changers in how consumers will find products and services online in the future. It is important to ensure that you’re not just heard, but also chosen, by voice-searching shoppers. The key is to speak the language of the future and to align with the algorithms of AI assistants, so you can transform those vocal queries into quantifiable revenue.

Voice-Activated Affiliate Offers

Incorporating voice-activated offers into your affiliate strategy is about making sure your deals are just a shout-away. For instance, an affiliate marketer focusing on smart home devices on his blog could partner with manufacturers to create voice-activated discounts, saying something like, “Hey [AI Assistant], apply my promo code for a smart light bulb.” This makes the user’s experience seamless and interactive, increasing the likelihood of conversions. The key is to seamlessly integrate these voice commands into your content so that they are natural for users to use and easy for AI assistants to recognize and process.

SEO Strategies for Voice Search Queries

SEO for voice search hinges on understanding conversational language and the typical questions people ask. A practical approach is to optimize content with long-tail keywords that mimic natural speech patterns. For example, a food blogger might optimize for voice searches with phrases like “What’s the easiest recipe for homemade bread?” rather than just the short-tail keyword “homemade bread.” This strategy aligns with how people use voice assistants for inquiries. By anticipating and incorporating these conversational queries into their SEO strategy, bloggers can increase their visibility in voice search results, driving more organic traffic to their affiliate sites and product offers.

2. Leveraging Email Marketing

Email marketing is a direct shortcut to your audience, bypassing algorithms and feeds. The key to this is crafting emails that your subscribers are excited to open, with content that leads straight to affiliate sales. It’s all about building a list that trusts you as a reputable source and then delivering value straight to their inbox, over and over again. Get this right, and you’ll see your revenue grow to a steady stream.

Building a Subscriber List

Building a subscriber list is like planting a garden that you’ll harvest for years. It’s important to attract the right audience with high-quality, targeted content and then use lead magnets as your seeds. A travel blogger might offer an exclusive e-book on “10 Hidden European Getaways” in exchange for email sign-ups. This not only grows his list but ensures that subscribers are genuinely interested in travel deals and information, making them more receptive to affiliate offers for hotel bookings, travel gear, and insurance packages tailored to globetrotters. A well-cultivated list can increase your earnings significantly.

Personalized Email Campaigns

When building personalized email campaigns, it is all about speaking directly to your subscribers. By segmenting your list based on interests, purchase history, or engagement levels, you can tailor your content to resonate more deeply. Let’s assume that you are a fitness blogger. You could send personalized workout gear recommendations to your subscribers who clicked on recent exercise content. Or, a tech reviewer might send customized emails about the latest gadgets to subscribers who frequently check out tech reviews. Personalization can lead to higher open rates, click-throughs, and ultimately, more affiliate sales because subscribers feel understood and catered to, rather than just another address in a mass email list.

3. Strategic Partnerships and Collaborations

By creating the right relationships, you can amplify your blog’s reach and credibility exponentially. Teaming up with the right allies can open doors to new audiences and create win-win scenarios. I’m talking about connecting with brands and influencers that align with your niche to elevate your content and drive affiliate sales. Build these collaborations into your affiliate strategy.

Co-marketing Ventures

This is all about joining forces for mutual benefit. Imagine a fashion blogger and a jewelry brand coming together for a campaign. They create a series of co-branded content that includes blog posts, social media mentions, and email blasts. Each piece of content subtly promotes both the blog and the brand’s products, driving traffic and sales to both parties. It’s a strategic move that can lead to a significant boost in affiliate revenue as both the blogger and the brand tap into each other’s audiences, creating a broader reach and a stronger impact than either could achieve alone.

Leveraging Influencer Partnerships

Look to engage with key personalities who can influence your target market. For example, a beauty blog might partner with a skincare influencer to create a series of sponsored posts featuring a new product line. The influencer’s endorsement gives credibility and extends the reach to a larger, trusting audience. This can lead to higher conversion rates for the affiliate products featured. The trick is to choose influencers whose followers align with your blog’s niche, ensuring that the partnership drives relevant traffic and enhances your affiliate marketing efforts with authentic and impactful promotions.

4. Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), is about turning visitors into buyers. It’s a crucial piece of the affiliate marketing puzzle. Refine your blog’s user journey and ensure that every element, from landing pages to call-to-action buttons, is primed to convert. The key here is to make data-driven decisions to optimize for profitability.

Advanced A/B Testing

Testing is about experimenting with two different versions of an attribute (webpage, CTA, email, etc.) to see which one performs better in terms of clicks and/or conversions. For instance, you might test two different headline formats or call-to-action placements to determine which generates more affiliate sales. It’s a powerful way to make incremental changes that can lead to significant increases in revenue. By using sophisticated A/B testing tools like Monetate or Freshmarketer, you can gain insights into visitor behavior, refine your content, and optimize your affiliate strategies to match your audience’s preferences.

User Experience (UX)

Refining user experience (UX) is about creating a seamless, intuitive journey for your readers. Picture a gadget review blog that might streamline its navigation, categorizing content by device type and creating a more intuitive search function. By improving load times and simplifying the path to affiliate links, the blog makes it easier for readers to find and purchase recommended products. Another aspect could be optimizing mobile responsiveness, considering a significant portion of users shop via smartphones. Such UX enhancements directly contribute to higher engagement and conversion rates, as a smooth browsing experience often translates to increased trust and more affiliate link clicks.

5. Membership or Subscription Models

By launching a subscription model, you offer an exclusive edge to your blog, providing a steady income while delivering value to your readers. Building a community around your content, and offering premium experiences or insider knowledge through a paid model is a great way to maximize the earnings of your blog. By doing this, you’re not just selling products; you’re creating an engaged tribe that is loyal to your brand and more likely to trust your affiliate recommendations.

Exclusive Content for Members

VIP or exclusive content is a magnet for subscribers. By offering in-depth articles, early access to deals, or special resources like custom templates or ebooks, you make your audience feel valued. Take, for instance, a finance blog that provides members with premium market analysis and investment tips. This not only incentivizes readers to subscribe but also increases their engagement and likelihood to follow through on affiliate links for financial tools or services recommended within the members-only content. It’s about adding layers of value that make the subscription indispensable and directly correlate with higher affiliate earnings.

Subscription-Based Affiliate Offers

Offers that include subscriptions are a smart twist on traditional affiliate marketing. By aligning with companies that offer subscription services, bloggers can tap into recurring revenue. For example, a culinary blog might partner with a meal kit delivery service, where each subscription sale through its affiliate link yields a continuous commission. It’s a strategy that ensures a consistent stream of income as long as the customer remains subscribed. This model is mutually beneficial, providing value to the reader with a service they need while also offering the blogger a more predictable, long-term income stream from their affiliate promotions.

6. Income Diversification

Relying solely on one type of affiliate product or service can be risky. Diversifying a blog’s income is therefore something every affiliate marketer should consider. Revenue streams that can work in tandem with your affiliate marketing efforts are for example sponsored content or digital products. By expanding your monetization methods, you’re not only safeguarding against market fluctuations but also maximizing your earning potential. Let’s get into how you can build a portfolio of income sources to support and grow your affiliate marketing blog.

Sponsored Content

Incorporating sponsored content into your blog can significantly boost your revenue. It involves creating content that naturally integrates a brand or product within your posts. A classic example is a travel blogger who partners with a luggage company to create a series of posts on “Packing Tips for Every Destination”, featuring the brand’s products. This approach feels organic, not forced, and can enhance the reader’s experience while providing additional income. The key is transparency, ensuring your audience is aware of sponsored content, which helps maintain trust and keeps your blog’s integrity intact.

Digital Products

Creating and selling digital products is an excellent way to complement your affiliate income. A fitness blogger might develop a series of workout plans or nutrition guides. These digital offerings can be promoted directly to the blog’s audience, who are already engaged and trust the blogger’s expertise. By doing so, you not only diversify your income but also establish yourself as an authority in your niche. The products can range from ebooks to online courses, offering high value with low overhead, and when done right, this can become a substantial and scalable revenue stream for your blog.

7. Scaling and Automating Your Blog

Expanding your blog doesn’t have to mean expanding your workload. It is important to focus on how you can use automation to boost your blog’s reach and revenue without stretching yourself too thin. Essential elements of automating are content delivery, processes, and audience engagement to increase efficiency. It’s about making technology work for you, so you can concentrate on the bigger picture.

Automation Tools for Affiliate Marketers

Automation tools can transform how affiliate marketers manage their workload. A prime example is email automation software like Klaviyo which segments and targets subscribers with personalized content, boosting engagement and conversion rates. Affiliate marketers can also use social media scheduling tools to maintain a consistent online presence without being glued to their screens. Then there’s analytics automation, which provides real-time insights into campaign performance, allowing for quick adjustments and smarter strategy. By leveraging these tools, affiliate marketers can streamline their operations while freeing up valuable time for content creation and strategic planning.

Scaling Content Production

Smartly boosting your content output means you can do more without losing the essence of what makes your blog special. Take a lifestyle blogger, for example, who brings in guest contributors to diversify their content while maintaining a core focus on personal development. Or consider the tactic of producing content in batches – setting aside time to create multiple pieces, then distributing them across your publishing calendar. This keeps your feed lively and drives consistent traffic without overwhelming your schedule. Using a Content Management System like HubSpot’s CMS Hub can simplify this process, enabling you to automate the distribution of your content efficiently.

8. Exploring International Affiliate Opportunities

Expanding your affiliate blog internationally is an exciting step towards greater earning potential. It’s about understanding different markets and leveraging the demand for content and products worldwide. With the right strategy, you can engage with new audiences and create additional revenue streams in the global marketplace.

Localizing Content for Different Markets

Adapting your content for various international audiences involves more than just translation. It’s important to align your blog’s messaging with the cultural and practical preferences of each target market. Let’s take our previous example of a food blogger for instance. Customizing recipes to include locally sourced ingredients for different regions or tailoring dietary advice to align with regional eating habits. This approach not only increases relevance and relatability but can also drive up engagement and affiliate conversions, showing your global audience that you understand and value their unique context.

Partnering with Global Affiliate Networks

Joining forces with worldwide affiliate networks can broaden your blog’s affiliate marketing scope. These networks open doors to affiliate programs from across the globe, suited for various audiences and languages. For example, a fashion blogger could feature clothing lines from international designers, catering to the style sensibilities of readers in different countries. This approach not only broadens the range of products you can promote but also positions your blog to attract clicks and sales from a global readership, potentially increasing your income streams.

Final Thoughts

As we wrap up, remember that in the world of business as well as affiliate marketing, diversification is the key to success. From optimizing for voice search to nurturing international relationships, each provided strategy offers a unique avenue for growth. By harnessing data analytics, personalizing email campaigns, and exploring new affiliate platforms, you can elevate your blog to meet the demands of the growing digital marketplace. Go on and experiment with these strategies yourself, refine your approach, and witness your blog’s transformation into a thriving hub for affiliate success. Embrace the journey, and let these insights scale your progress.

Affiliate marketing has a special place among popular methods to make money online. In fact, due to the success stories, it is one of the most trusted methods to make money online. 

Building a successful affiliate marketing business, contrary to what people think is not a get-rich-quick scheme but a legit strategy to generate passive income online. However, it’s important to take your process seriously so you can become a success story, and to help you we will explore affiliate marketing as a whole to help you make an informed decision before you jump into the digital marketing scene as an affiliate.

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What is Affiliate Marketing? 

Affiliate marketing is an online marketing business that has proven to be a successful method for making money online by promoting third-party products and services in exchange for a commission on the sales generated through your marketing efforts. 

The reasons for its popularity are multiple, but the most remarkable are: 

•  Low starting costs: because, as an affiliate marketer, you don’t sell your services and products, there is no need to invest in inventory and production. It’s possible to start with little to no money. 
• It is an on-the-go business: You can run your affiliate marketing from anywhere, and your working hours are up to you too. 
• Affiliate marketers don’t need an inventory: or shipping budget. With affiliate marketing, you are promoting products to generate your affiliate income. Since you are not selling your goods, there are no production and inventory management costs. 
• Access to multiple product options: the alternatives are vast. You can choose an affiliate program that resonates with your interests and passions.  

How Does It Work?

When you become an affiliate marketer, you promote products or services and earn a commission for the sales you drive using your unique affiliate link.  

Once your business and strategies are set and running, it’s the time to consider your affiliate a revenue a passive or semi-passive income, but as a beginner, there is work involved because you need to research and build your plan so you can have a map and compass and direct your efforts accordingly. Take a moment to learn more about the structure behind affiliate marketing and the different actors involved in the marketing chain.  

The Product Owner

It is the person (or company) behind your product or service. In the affiliate marketing industry, you can find individuals, small businesses, and established companies because affiliate marketing is a cost-effective marketing strategy to generate sales and increase brand visibility.  

The Affiliate Marketer

The affiliate marketer is the one driving sales through an exclusive affiliate link. Beyond sales, affiliate marketers are avid content creators and social media marketers. 

The Consumer  

The consumer can is the final link of the affiliate marketing network. He is living proof of the actual value of your affiliate marketing strategy.   

The Affiliate Network

The affiliate network is the platform or service that serves as the middleman between the affiliate marketers and the merchants.

Joining an affiliate network has added benefits. When you become an affiliate marketer for a network, you can access a standardized commission structure, technical support, tracking, and technical support for problems related to an affiliate program.  

How Do You Become an Affiliate Marketer?

Before you start an affiliate marketing business, notice that apart from your passion and commitment, you’ll need a marketing platform to promote your products or services, a platform to share high-quality content, and a niche or affiliate network to direct your efforts. 

Select Your Marketing Platforms

Affiliate marketers need a place to showcase their affiliate products or services. Think about a platform you can drive traffic to and where you can regularly create content to engage internet users and drive sales through content marketing. YouTube, Instagram, and blogging are excellent options.  

Research

If you are still here, you already know that affiliate marketing works. 

You have probably heard a lot about the industry and feel you are ready to jump in, but like in any other entrepreneurship, you need to educate yourself before deciding to engage in affiliate marketing. 

Many affiliate marketers skip this crucial part of the process and fail because they didn’t take the time and resources to understand how the affiliate business behaves. 

Find a Profitable Niche 

The end goal of affiliate marketing is to make money, and you must drive sales. 

For that reason, you must target and attract a specific audience to convert leads into sales. These niches tend to have a steady following and provide a massive audience to direct your affiliate marketing efforts, increasing the chances of affiliate revenue.       

Select Products and Services 

To become a successful affiliate marketer, you must promote the right products and services. 

Affiliate sales are tricky at times, consider your passions and life experiences to choose the products to promote.

Ask yourself what you would like to promote and target only products within your niche to keep your audience hooked and coming back for more.

Affiliate marketing involves planning and strategy. Decide if you want to associate with a seller or join an affiliate network. If you decide that affiliate networks work best for your particular niche, we suggest you explore the following first. 

Amazon (Amazon Affiliates Program) 

The commission for this affiliate program range between 1-10% of the sale price. Like many affiliate programs, you can promote your affiliate link using social media marketing, blogging, and advertisements. 

ShareASale

This affiliate marketing program helps content creators and influencers to start affiliate marketing to further monetize their content by partnering with popular brands.   

ClickBank

It is a leader in the market and has successful affiliates to back its reputation. For new affiliates has an added benefit, as it offers training and resources to help you become the most successful affiliate marketer you can be.

Omnisend

Omnisend’s affiliate program offers a 20% monthly recurring commission for each new referral that joins the platform on a paid plan, with a 30-day payout time and a dedicated account manager. The program also provides ready-made packs of banners, ads, and other content, as well as above-average ratings from users on popular review sites. Omnisend also has a partner program with revenue share opportunities, bonuses, and access to value-add services

Build Your Operations Center 

You have your game ready, but there is one fundamental thing you need to get started, you need to buy domain name and start your affiliate website. Affiliate marketers need a go-to place to conduct their business, and having your website is the most efficient way. 

There are multiple approaches, some affiliates prefer having only an affiliate marketing website, while others prefer to strategically divide their efforts across multiple websites to boost their resources. 

Consider your objectives, budget, and projections to decide if you want (or can) run multiple websites at once. 

FAQs

What to Consider When Choosing Your Niche? 

Finding the niche for your affiliate marketing business is a complex task. However, you can consider some key factors to make affiliate marketing work for you.

• Compepetitivity and opportunity 
• Profitability  
• Audience size
• Your background and general experience 
• The resources you are willing to invest (money and time) 
• Your interests and Passions
• Evergreen Vs trending marketing niches

What Is the Real Secret to Affiliate Marketing?

It is a tricky question, and the answer relates to who you ask and their personal experience with this business model. 

Thinking about adding value to your affiliate marketing is not just about selling a product, is about selling a solution. 

Connecting, nurturing, and growing an audience drives more sales and helps you build a steady source of affiliate marketing revenue.

Neal Taparia, the founder of Solitaire, recommends focusing on becoming an authority. “If you can show that you’re a trustworthy source where you can provide unbiased recommendations, you can succeed well. We’re able to affiliate market card decks because our users see us as the leader in card games.”

Another secret, or not so secret, is to diversify. A blog can become an excellent strategy for generating affiliate income, but if you are committed to developing your online business, you need to move further than search engine optimization. 

As an affiliate marketer, you are trying to build a steady and trustable source of income, and you can not risk losing everything due to an unexpected penalty from Google.

Always use a multi-channel strategy including social media, forum marketing, and email marketing to spread your unique affiliate link to the world. 

What Should You Avoid in Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing requires a good strategy and part of it is avoiding the common mistakes that often lead affiliate marketers to failure. We gathered a few examples of the common flaws in affiliate marketing. 

Promoting Too Many Products

The best practice to maintain audience engagement and use your resources efficiently is to concentrate your efforts on a limited list of products. 

Promoting the Wrong Product 

Choose your niche and product carefully. If your product doesn’t align with your audience and niche, you may fail in affiliate marketing. 

Ignoring Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the best way to increase and sustain organic traffic and generate revenue. Never underestimate the power of SEO. 

Final Considerations

We explored all the aspects of the affiliate marketing business to provide insight for digital marketers considering stepping into the affiliate industry. 

Affiliate marketing is a legit business model with the potential to create a steady and sustainable revenue if you are willing to invest the resources into this digital marketing venture. 

Many affiliate marketers see the process as an instant solution, but becoming a successful affiliate marketer takes time and commitment. That is the unfolded truth. 

Affiliate marketing isn’t as easy as the experts make it seem.

Buy an Affiliate Site on Flippa

Sure, it would be nice if we could all buy an established website and trade in our full-time job for Mai-Tai’s on the beach.

Image credit: http://gph.is/Zeq0fl

But an early retirement requires work.

Today, we’re going to talk about how to earn those Mai Tais. We’re going to talk about how to convert your affiliate website into a passive income machine with the help of search engine optimization (SEO).

We’ll delve into evaluating the most valuable pages on your website, analyzing the competition, and finding a profitable niche to target. We’ll then talk about capitalizing on your top SEO opportunities, stealing the success of your top competitors, and scaling the most impactful digital marketing initiatives to maximize your results.

Article Contents:

1. Why SEO Matters
2. Assess the SEO Value of the Site
3. Evaluate the Competition
4. Identify a Niche
5. Optimize Top Pages
6. Steal the Success of Your Competitors
7. Scale What Worked

Why SEO Matters

“SEO seems like an arbitrary place to start.” You might be thinking. “Why not focus on social media instead?”

A 2018 study conducted by SparkToro shows that Google drives 10x more referral traffic to the average website than Facebook.

In an ideal world, you would be focusing on SEO, social media, and every other marketing channel out there. That being said, we believe in putting the most emphasis on the initiatives that drive the best results.

With that in mind, we’re not going to delve into using email marketing or a massive social media following to drive affiliate commission. Instead, we’re going to talk about how the most successful affiliate marketers build massive email lists and passive income through SEO-centric blogging.

Assess the SEO Value of the Site

The first step after buying an established domain name is to look under the hood and see what you have to work with.

We break this down by asking three questions:

• Which pages hold valuable keyword rankings?
• Which pages have the most meaningful websites linking to them?
• Which pages drive the most organic traffic?

As we search for those answers, we note our current standings and identify how this stacks up with competing websites in our industry.

1. What Keywords Do You Rank for?

Our team uses SEMRush for this process. However, any keyword research tool will work.

Plug the site into your keyword research tool. Look at the top keywords that your affiliate website ranks for.

Does one page hold 80% of these keyword rankings, or are rankings spread out evenly across the site?

Notate your top 10-20 keywords, as well as any keywords that you rank in positions 11-20. Highlight keywords that have a high search volume or a strong commercial intent.

Keywords that you rank in the top 10 positions for drive value to your site today. Keywords that you rank in positions 11-20 for will be the easiest keyword ranking wins to focus on first.

2. Which Pages Have the Most Meaningful Websites Linking to Them?

Backlinks are the currency of the internet. Take 30 minutes to understand which pages on your website drive the most link value.

Use a tool like Ahrefs to sort your pages based on their link profile. Hover to “Best by links” and sort in descending order based on URL rating or root domain backlink count.

You should see something like this:

Note the top pages that show up here. These pages have the most authority that can be passed to more meaningful pages on your website.

If you see that 50% of your links come from 3 different articles, ensure that those articles include a link to relevant, revenue-driving pages to enhance rankings of those pages.

3. Which pages drive the most organic traffic?

Now log into Google Analytics and review your site’s organic traffic.

Set the time range to view the last 12 months of data (if you have access to this data) and view “Landing Pages” within the “Behavior” tab.

Note the pages that have driven the most organic traffic to the site over the past 12 months.

You should see a strong overlap between the three and have a better understanding of your site’s current search value.

Evaluate the Competition

With a stronger understanding of your site, it’s time to see how you stack up against the competition.

Review your top 5-10 highest traffic-generating keywords. Search for each keyword and list the websites that appear above you in search results.

Now describe your website’s niche in 2-3 words.

Go to Google and type in the phrase “best [insert 2-3 word descriptor] blogs.”

Click on each of the search results that look like these:

Open up each article and list out all of the websites that show up in these lists.

Take all of the websites in your list and plug them into Ahrefs. Write down their total count of referring domains and estimated organic traffic.

Add your site to the list to get a stronger sense of how you stack up against the competition.

Identify a Niche (and Revenue Model)

If you find yourself at the top of the list, you’ve found a great opportunity for a niche site. You can now focus on monetizing.

If you find yourself towards the bottom of the list, it might be time to think about finding a narrower niche where you can outrank the competition.

Once you’ve solidified your niche, it’s time to start thinking about your affiliate revenue model.

There are pros and cons to each option, but the most common ways to make money with affiliate marketing are:

• Google AdSense (or similar display networks)– advertisers pay per impression or click that you generate to their site via display ads. AdSense provides minimal revenue per visitor but can be an excellent source of affiliate income for sites with millions of monthly pageviews.
• Sponsored Posts– offering others in your industry the opportunity to write full-length articles on your site as a form of advertising.
• Affiliate Products– build relationships with advertisers and take a commission for each affiliate sale or lead that you generate via personalized affiliate links. For simplicity, start with an affiliate network like ShareASale, Commission Junction, or Amazon’s affiliate program. Matt Diggity made a list of the top affiliate programs here.
• Ecommerce– sell your own physical products, digital products, or services on the site. 
• Sponsored Emails– build an email list and offer to promote advertisers to your entire mailing list via paid callouts in your email newsletters.

If you struggle to find a revenue model that for your niche, search for a more profitable niche to target.

Optimize Top Pages

With your niche and revenue model at the front of your mind, it’s time to target the low-hanging fruit.

Revisit the top pages that you identified in step 1. What opportunities do you see to enhance the value of those pages?

• The average first-page result on Google is 1,447 words. If your page is shorter than that, focus on expanding the contents of the page
• Look at the pages that rank above you. What content do those pages include that your page lacks? Does it make sense for you to add sections about those same concepts to your page?

More SEO opportunities to scale these pages here.

Next, log into SEMRush and filter down your keyword rankings to show all keywords that you rank in positions 11-20 for (we also recommend filtering out keywords that receive <50 searches/month).

As mentioned above, these keywords will be the most valuable opportunities to capitalize on.

The pages that rank for these keywords are on the cusp of seeing massive traffic gains. Expand these pages; improve their readability; link to these pages from other sections of your site.

Keep your revenue model at the front of your mind when prioritizing these updates. Some search queries will be more valuable than others. However, all queries that relate to your niche have the potential to drive revenue (more on how blogging drives revenue here).

After capitalizing on these top opportunities, it’s time to steal your competitors’ top search rankings.

Steal the Success of Your Competitors

Revisit your list of top competitors. Plug each of those competitors into SEMRush or Ahrefs and isolate each competitor’s top-performing pages.

Add those pages to a list and analyze each of those pages. Break down the length of the content and estimated search traffic that the page sees.

Now evaluate your site. Do you have a piece of content that relates to this overarching theme? If so, is your page more or less comprehensive than the top-ranking page?

The average first-page result on Google is 1,447 words. Scour your competitors for any top-performing pages that are <1,500 words and focus on creating high-quality content that gives a more in-depth overview of each subject matter.

(More on how we find and write top-performing content here).

Identify pages that you have an opportunity to enhance. Then identify new content ideas that make sense to add to your editorial calendar.

P.S. Download this sample template for evaluating competitor content.

Set aside time to promote each article that you write.

Link building is the most effective starting point for scaling long-term visibility. One of our favorite link building techniques is to pull a list of all the websites that are linking to similar content. From there, we start conversations with those publishers.

Build relationships and encourage them to link to your article as a helpful resource for their readers. Outside of that, here are a few simpler link building techniques to gain high-quality backlinks.

Scale What Worked

Take time every 1-2 months to identify the pages that see the most meaningful traction in terms of traffic and commission rates per pageview.

• Review keyword rankings and organic traffic to see which pages gained the most visibility
• Review on-page metrics like bounce rate and average session duration to see which pages kept your site visitors most engaged
• Review goal completions and goal conversion rate to see which pages generated the most leads/customers

Look for trends in performance. Do how-to articles have a higher goal conversion rate than product reviews? Do image-heavy articles keep people on the site longer than articles without images?

Scale what works as you learn more and more about your visitors.

Converting a newly purchased site into a successful affiliate marketing business is hard work, but follow this framework and you’ll be well on your way to building an industry-leading affiliate marketing website.

Interested in working with experts who do this on a regular basis? Learn about Intergrowth’s content marketing services to see if we’re the right team to help you out take your online business to the next level.

Buy Your Next Affiliate Site on Flippa

Though affiliate marketing has been around in one form or another since the early 2000s, it is only relatively recently that online businesses have started to tap into the enormous potential affiliate partners can offer.

It is no surprise then that as of 2021, an estimated 80% of online brands use this strategy to increase traffic and drive sales. Not only are affiliate relationships simple to arrange and cost-effective, but they are also not confined to only a handful of industries and sectors. The beauty is that anyone can get involved, no matter their niche.

The forecasts also present a hugely promising future for affiliate marketing channels. The affiliate marketing industry is estimated to be worth around $12 billion, with that figure expected to continue its positive trajectory. 

In many ways, it sounds too good to be true. But those who have already taken the plunge can attest to its power and reliability. More than 80% of marketers expect their revenue streams to remain stable or increase considerably over the coming months and years.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn how to become a successful affiliate marketer.
• The pros and cons of affiliate marketing.
• Find out how you can join a program and start earning commissions today.

What is an Affiliate?

The first type of affiliate is a business relationship where one business has a minority stake or ownership over a second company. Businesses can also become affiliates if they are subsidiaries within the same parent company, referred to as corporate affiliates. 

The second type is an international affiliate, in which a corporation attempts to enter foreign markets by utilizing affiliate networks.

The third type of affiliate is the focus of this article – a retail affiliate, where the basic understanding of affiliate marketing originated. A retail affiliate is a relationship between two companies where one sells and promotes the products or services of another. If a sale is made, the affiliates receive a commission.

It is an effective way for a smaller business to produce an additional revenue stream by using the larger company’s reach and digital product selection, with both parties benefiting from the agreement.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing, as mentioned, is the process of promoting the products or services of another business so you (as an individual or business yourself) can earn commission as a monetary reward.

Essentially, a company is entrusting you to promote products or services through online marketing efforts, with the ultimate goal being to drive traffic to the company’s website or online store. Remuneration is usually based on pays-per-click; every time a customer clicks on your affiliate link and follows through to purchase, you as the affiliate earn money. 

In today’s online culture, most people have some form of social networking. This social media presence is a potentially untapped customer base for an online business that they can access through the affiliate. 

Companies are always looking for new ways to increase their reach, and affiliate marketing is highly effective. This type of marketing channel can provide a revenue source for the affiliate even if they have developed no physical product or online service. 

The Different Types of Affiliate Marketers 

One of the considerations you will need to make early on in becoming an affiliate marketer is which type of affiliate program you wish to pursue. Pat Flynn, a renowned affiliate marketer, gathered all he had learned about affiliate marketing and the approaches would-be marketers took when attempting to promote products to sell and came up with three categories of affiliate marketers.

1. The Unattached Affiliate Marketer

In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate has no apparent link to the online product or service they want to promote and sell. Unattached affiliate marketers do not know the niche or sector, and often there is no connection to the customer. 

With this type of affiliate marketing strategy, the affiliate is simply looking to take advantage of the company’s reputation to get prospective customers to click on their affiliate link. The company has already laid much of the groundwork for this strategy. 

This model type suits the affiliate who is not interested in carefully cultivating customer relationships and building trust. Instead, the goal is to obtain as many clicks as possible and high conversion rates.

The apparent advantage of this method is that it involves the least amount of work on the part of the affiliate while still having the potential to make good returns and affiliate commission. However, the lack of relationship and trust with the customer will mean that the focus is entirely on income, sometimes leading to unscrupulous practices.

2. The Related Affiliate Marketer

The affiliate has knowledge or expertise within a given field or sector for this type of affiliate marketing. Related affiliate marketers have taken the time to build an audience based on a shared passion for this niche. As a result, companies will feel inclined to offer affiliate products within that niche as there is a potentially rich source of traffic from the already-cultivated audience.

The audience will see the affiliate as a trusted source; they have likely spent years watching the affiliate’s YouTube videos or following their blog post. If the source is trusted, an audience member will be more inclined to buy the product or service and gain additional satisfaction knowing that the affiliate will receive a small commission.

With this model, the affiliate is not necessarily involved with the product or service itself, presenting a problem. For example, an affiliate can fall foul of a substandard product if they have had no direct experience with it. In addition, if large portions of their audience then subsequently purchase the product or use the service, they may be far more reluctant to trust any additional affiliate sites and products recommended by the affiliate.

3. The Involved Affiliate Marketer

Involved affiliate marketers have had direct experience with the product or service and can offer a first-hand appraisal. They usually have a long-standing relationship with the company and are looking to do what they can to expand the company’s reach and prospective customer base.

An affiliate using this model will have an established audience or following who will know them well. The audience may have seen the affiliate use the product or service. They will also likely tell that the affiliate is genuine in their product approval, often leading to higher conversion rates using the affiliate’s link. This type of affiliate strategy model generally takes the longest to achieve.

This model can help the affiliate build a high level of trust between themselves and their audience when successful. As long as they continue only to promote products and services they are involved in, they will likely see huge returns via affiliate sales. Other companies may see this and attempt to forge a partnership with the affiliate.

While the risk is not as high as with a related affiliate strategy, an affiliate cannot guarantee that every person who uses the product or service will have the same opinion and experience. 

How to Become an Affiliate Marketer?

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate marketer, we’re here to help with the best marketing tips and strategies to give you the best possible chance of success.

1. Find Your Niche

You will first need to decide which niche you will base your affiliate business within, a decision influenced by several factors. Suppose you are entering affiliate marketing from a position of strength (you already have a large target audience). 

In that case, you should start with the type of products and service your established audience are likely to purchase. For example, if you’ve built your business on health and nutrition, you might want to start with a similar affiliate marketing niche, resulting in higher conversion rates.

Source: Flippa

If you are looking to start affiliate marketing with no specific audience, you should consider what you would be interested in purchasing as a customer and start from there. You may wish to conduct market research to determine if there are affiliate programs within your chosen niche and try to gauge the level of competition to evaluate whether this is a viable option.

2. Evaluate Market Demand and Competition 

Now that you’ve decided on your niche, it’s time to investigate whether it will be worth the time and effort by determining the market demand and competition. 

Google Trends is an excellent tool to help determine whether there is potential in a product to promote or sell. These vital analytics provide a snapshot of what Google users have searched for over a certain period. 

Source: Google Trends

You can see if products within your chosen niche have an upward trajectory, or at the very least are stable, as this will indicate a consistent interest in the products or market sector. You will also need to evaluate the competition at this stage. 

Your chosen affiliate products and services may stand a good chance of selling, but if there is too much competition in your niche, the results may be disappointing.

3. Choose Your Channel

You have now settled on a niche and determined it is a viable option for demand and competition and a secure route to market products. You must now decide which type of affiliate marketing channels you will utilize to build your audience. 

No matter which type of affiliate marketer you ultimately choose to become, you will need a website and content to populate that website. In addition, prospective customers will need a reason to click on your affiliate links or visit your landing page or website.

There are several examples of affiliate marketing channels, so decide which one best fits your strengths rather than the one you feel will generate the highest level of traffic.

Blogging and Review Sites

Blogging is often the cheapest and easiest way to start affiliate marketing. While its popularity has taken a hit in recent years due to the surge in short-form video and photographic content, it is still a viable option if you are skilled with words. 

You can demonstrate your expertise on a particular subject through a blog to show potential readers (and therefore buyers) that you are a trusted source and that any product or service you recommend will reflect this.

Review sites are also an excellent channel for content. According to Oberlo, 54% of customers still read at least four reviews before buying a product, so these are still a highly viable avenue for your content. 

They will again help to demonstrate expertise in an area. If you have an extensive back catalog of reviews for products you’ve tried, your audience is more likely to trust the higher ratings and any subsequent special deals.

YouTube

If you are confident in front of a camera, you may wish to set up a YouTube channel to try and build your audience. It is no secret that the most successful YouTube personalities have been able to bring in massive revenue through Google ads and partner programs. Still, in more recent times, many have turned to affiliate marketing methods for an additional source of income.

The most significant advantage of using YouTube as your channel is that it is free to start, and the potential audience is enormous. There are videos for everything imaginable on the platform. However, this is a double-edged sword as the sheer number of channels means considerable competition for even the smallest piece of attention.

Polished YouTube videos also take time to produce, and while the channel itself is free, the equipment and editing software you will need to create content is not.

Instagram

Influencer marketing is often subject to a high level of hostility, with many questioning the authenticity of those who make it big on the platform. However, there is no denying its power and capability to drive traffic to affiliate websites.

Short-form videos and aesthetically engaging images are particularly appealing to younger demographics, who are more likely to trust and listen to influencers they trust. There is also considerably less user input and time required on Instagram when compared to YouTube. As a result, affiliate marketing can be formidable in selling online products and services.

Facebook

Facebook is well on its way to dominating all facets of the online space, and affiliate marketing is no exception. It is perhaps more difficult to build large followings on Facebook than on YouTube and Instagram. 

Facebook Groups have a massive presence on the platform, and many will fall within your chosen niche. There is also the option to utilize Facebook ads to help drive traffic to your desired locations, though these can often be costly.

It is also worth pointing out that you need to treat affiliate marketing via Facebook groups carefully. Most members will not care about your promotions and actively resent them if you post too often. As with any affiliate marketing strategy, trust and authenticity are essential if you wish to yield results via this method.

4. Create Consistent, High-quality Content

Now that you have a chosen channel, it is time to populate it with content designed to build and cultivate an audience, otherwise known as content marketing. Aside from blog posts and reviews, here are several other types of content you may wish to try:

• Case studies: They are often more focused than blog posts and tend to study specific topics more deeply. Content creators use case studies to offer a deep dive into products or services they are affiliated with. Use this content strategy once you have established trust and authenticity within your audience.
• Tutorials: A type of content that is perhaps more suited to YouTube, how-to tutorials often generate big audience numbers, especially if the product or service is something that everyone will need. There is an added advantage if the tutorial is an active demonstration of an affiliate product.
• Product comparisons: Compare affiliate products or services to competitors within the same niche. It is ideal to legitimately demonstrate that your affiliated product is the best in specific categories, though the comparisons must be honest to maintain integrity and trust.
• Podcasts: The podcast industry has seen massive growth over the last couple of years. You could consider relating your reviews and comparisons as spoken topics, or you could look to conduct interviews with leading figures in your niche or creators of the products or services you are affiliated with.

Source: Flippa

5. Join an Affiliate Network or Program

You have an established channel. You create high-quality content regularly, and you now have an audience that enjoys your content. You should also have a good understanding of the type of audience you have been able to cultivate in terms of potential online products and services that may be of interest to them.

Join an affiliate network or affiliate program to start reaping the benefits of affiliate marketing. This will allow you to access the brands and businesses actively looking for affiliate partnerships. 

Amazon Associates are one of the leading affiliate networks currently operating, which is hardly surprising given its vast range of products and services. In addition, almost every niche is covered in some form, so this associate program will likely be accessible to most people.

If you have achieved an exceptionally high level of success in your social media following, you may also be eligible for their Amazon Influencer Program. Amazon affiliates are tasked with driving traffic to Amazon’s website in return for generous commission rates that can reach up to 12%. Other affiliate programs that pay include Commission Junction and Rakuten Marketing. 

Choosing the right program for your particular business is a huge decision and can often make or break an affiliate marketing business. Consider the following before making your choice:

• Commission: The ultimate goal of affiliate marketing is to make money, so you will want to know what you will receive for your efforts. Each program’s commission package is slightly different so do your research to find the best deal. You will also need to be aware of any refund policies if a customer refunds via your affiliate link.
• Relevancy: Each affiliate program will have a different portfolio of brands and products. It should go without saying that if you are a relevant or involved affiliate marketer, you should choose the products or services most relevant to the content you have been producing.
• Payment logistics: There are generally two forms of commission; flat rates and recurring rates. Flat rates are typically linked with products, with the commission being made per sale, whereas recurring rates are associated with successful subscription renewals for a service or website. 
• Creative assets and brand websites: Some brand websites are more appealing than others. Some brands put a lot of traction into helping their affiliates by providing banners and coupons to draw attention to your links, so you should also investigate this. At the other end of your affiliate link is a landing page or website — if the affiliate link lacks quality, it could put off potential buyers and lose you a commission.
• Cookie lifetime: A slightly more nuanced consideration is the number of days a cookie will remain on a user’s computer from the moment they first click on your affiliate link. Some cookies have a lifetime of a day. So the user must go through to purchase within the day for you to receive a commission. Some cookies remain valid for up to 30 days, giving a big window of opportunity to secure the sale.

6. Generate Traffic

You now have everything in place to become an affiliate marketer. All that remains is to maximize your potential earnings through the traffic that comes to your website or landing pages. 

If you have built an established audience, you will already have a firm footing from which to operate, generating traffic through every new blog post or video. Now you need to increase the level of traffic generated:

• Email lists: You should start to populate this early on. It lists people who have consented to you using their email addresses for marketing purposes. These lists can be used to send product and service updates, newsletters, and any new affiliate deals you may be part of that may interest them.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Effective SEO is vital for any form of marketing. Keywords within your blog posts and metadata, or tags on your videos, need to be carefully geared toward and linked with your affiliate products to give search engine users the best possible chance of coming across your website.
• Paid traffic: If you have just started to bring in an affiliate income (or your YouTube videos are monetized and bringing in revenue), you may wish to reinvest some of this capital into paid traffic through ads. It is not a guaranteed method of increasing affiliate clicks, but it can be an effective way to increase traffic to your website or landing pages.

Is Affiliate Marketing Worth It?

Affiliate marketing is not a guaranteed avenue to monetary success, but there are some great reasons to try it and some not-so-great considerations.

Affiliate Marketing Pros

Perhaps the most notable advantage of affiliate marketing is that there is quite a low barrier to entry. You do not need to build a complex and multi-faceted business from the ground up, and you do not have to worry about product development and improved service updates and features. You need as many eyes as possible on those products and services.

Source: Ethical Direct Sellers Association

The risk is relatively low initially, and while you may need to invest in some video equipment here or there or web hosting, there are no painful overheads to bear. You don’t own the products or services, so you have no responsibility for them should things go wrong.

Lastly, the monetary rewards of affiliate marketing largely correlate to how much time and effort you put in. Affiliate marketing offers freedom and flexibility, whether you see this as a full-time income or just a little extra spending money.

Affiliate Marketing Cons

The low barrier to entry can also be a disadvantage. It has resulted in many markets and sectors being oversaturated in terms of available affiliate choices for an audience member. As a result, you will need to put in a very high level of work to ensure they click on your links and not someone else’s.

While you do have control over the products you choose to promote, you don’t control how your audience will perceive them. One lousy recommendation could set you back a long way in terms of your credibility and trust with your audience. You will also have very little say in the commission rates.

Source: The Balance Small Business

This lack of control can also result in shady practices such as ‘clickjacking.’ This is where an individual hijacks an affiliate link and redirects it toward their setup, thereby stealing your commission. Some affiliate programs are also quick to exploit those who don’t conduct their due diligence through loopholes in payments and other unethical practices.

Summing Up

The affiliate marketing industry is not going to go away any time soon. The relationship between companies and their affiliate marketers is often hugely beneficial to both parties. As such, the likelihood is that affiliate marketers will make their presence felt even more than they already do.

Content creators hold a lot of leverage. Bloggers, video creators, and (like them or loathe them) social media influencers are looking to jump on the affiliate marketing bandwagon to diversify their revenue streams. It’s time for you to do the same.

At Flippa, we have committed to bringing buyers and sellers of businesses together via our online marketplace for over ten years. As a result, we are now the market leader in helping entrepreneurs and business owners to buy and sell digital real estate. 

Flippa can offer expert guidance in making sure you can maximize your earning potential when selling your business. If you are looking to increase your business portfolio or have a business you are considering selling, contact us today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Affiliate Marketing and How Does it Work?

Affiliate marketing is when you share a product or service on a website, blog, podcast, or social media platform to earn a commission from the sale of that product or service. When someone purchases after clicking on the affiliate’s one-of-a-kind link, the affiliate receives a commission.

Is Affiliate Marketing Worth it?

Yes. Statista predicted for the affiliate marketing sector to grow from $5.4 billion in 2017 to $12 billion in 2022. As it is a low-cost or no-cost endeavor, businesses can profit from it easily.

How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?

There are a number of ways you can make money with affiliate marketing but the key is to provide content that matters. Include promotions for your own products within the content and make the most of the traffic you have already.

What is an Affiliate Program?

Affiliate programs are agreements in which an online merchant site pays a commission to an affiliate site for sending traffic to it. These affiliate websites put up links to the merchant’s website and get paid based on the set agreement – usually based on how many people click on the link to the merchant’s site.

Since nearly everyone shops at Amazon, Amazon Associates is one of the easiest ways to get started with affiliate marketing programs.

But just because getting started is easy, doesn’t mean you’ll get rich overnight.

Building a successful, predictable affiliate business off the back of Amazon can take years of trial and error to get right. And a single rate cut to destroy it if you’re not careful.

Luckily, we’re here to help you jump ahead with this guide to Amazon Associates and tips for building a profitable and resilient Amazon affiliate business.

What is Affiliate Marketing with Amazon?

Affiliate marketing with Amazon means referring visitors to your website to Amazon products through a special tracking link that helps you get credit for the referral.

If the person you referred makes a purchase on Amazon within 24 hours of clicking your link, you’ll receive an affiliate commission for your role in the sale.

The beauty of the Amazon affiliate program is that the person you refer doesn’t need to buy the exact item you recommended for you to earn a commission. Instead, you can earn a percentage of the entire order value that results from your referral.

How do you get people to click your links and buy your recommendations? Amazon affiliates promote affiliate links through a variety of content types, including social media posts, YouTube videos, product reviews, roundups and comparisons, gift guides, and more.

Benefits of Being an Amazon Affiliate

Amazon isn’t only the world’s largest affiliate marketing program, but it’s the easiest one to start off your journey as an affiliate marketer. Here are a few reasons why:

• Everyone shops at Amazon. By early 2020, over 80% of adults in the United States had become Amazon Prime members.
• Brand trust. Amazon is the United States’ second most trusted brand after the US Postal Service.
• Highly optimized checkout flow. For Amazon merchants running ads, their average conversion rate is a whopping 10% – compared to an average 1.3% among other ecommerce sites.
• Massive range of products in every niche. Amazon sells over 12 million products, so there’s sure to be something in there for your audience.
• Fast and reliable payouts. If you’ve generated revenue for Amazon, you can expect timely and predictable payouts.

Sounds like a good deal? Here’s how to become a successful Amazon affiliate in 7 steps.

How To Become a Successful Amazon Affiliate in 7 steps

Becoming a successful Amazon affiliate takes more than filling out a form. You have to develop a strategy to make your business successful, even if you’re starting small today.

Here’s how to become a successful Amazon affiliate:

1. Learn the programs policies and operating agreements
2. Research and create your marketing channel
3. Become an Amazon affiliate
4. Create and promote your affiliate links
5. Get your first payout
6. Optimize your content with the Earnings Report
7. Scale your Amazon affiliate operation

Let’s get started.

Step 1. Learn the program’s policies and operating agreements

The two official sources of Amazon’s policies include the Operating Agreement and Program Policies. Here are the key points you need be aware of as an Amazon affiliate:

• Include a compliant disclosure on the page where you’re promoting affiliate links, which doesn’t entice the reader to use your links (i.e. using language such as “support this site”)
• Link to Amazon only from public locations, such as an approved website or a public social media profile. Amazon links in emails and ebooks are prohibited.
• Make 3 compliant Amazon commissions in your first 3 months in order to stay an active part of the program.
• Don’t try to refer friends or family through your links. Not only is it against Amazon’s policy, but Amazon is clever and you won’t get commissions for these sales.

With that in mind, it’s time to pick your niche and create your first marketing channel.

Step 2. Research and create your marketing channel

You can promote Amazon affiliate links on a website, a social media profile, YouTube channel, or any number of other public marketing channels.

But the most popular way to promote Amazon affiliate links is through your own affiliate website.

Before you set up website hosting and buy a domain name, you’ll need to decide which niche you want to enter based on its earning potential and level of competition.

To pick an affiliate niche, you’ll want one of these three formulas:

1. High volume, high commissions. This is the most competitive type of affiliate marketing, in niches like web hosting, SaaS products, and finance.
2. Low volume, high commissions. This is a bit of a sweet spot, but usually relies on finding untapped niches that most people won’t realize is profitable and involves a bit of risk in case the niche doesn’t work out.
3. High volume, low commissions. This is where you’re selling consumer goods, and the commissions are low but you can compensate for that by selling a lot of product.

At Affilimate, we’ve found that Amazon affiliate websites tend to fall into that last category. To achieve monthly revenues of $10,000 per month, most Amazon affiliates need over 100,000 monthly visitors to their commerce content – which is a lot of traffic for beginners!

But you can start affiliate marketing with a goal of $1,000 per month and achieve that with far less.

Once you’ve chosen a niche, it’s time to create your marketing channel. Choose a domain name, set up some web hosting, pick a blogging platform like WordPress, and start writing content that targets affiliate keywords.

After you begin to receive your first traffic and clicks, it’s time to become an Amazon affiliate.

Step 3. Become an Amazon Affiliate

To stay in the Amazon associates program, you need to generate at least three orders through your affiliate links every 90 days.

That’s why you actually shouldn’t apply for Amazon Associates with a brand new website or social media account. You’ll want to be confident you’re getting enough traffic and clicks for those first couple of conversions to be in the bag.

Already got an established site? Here’s how to become an Amazon affiliate:

Start on the Amazon Associates signup page and then:

1. Provide your account information. If you’re already logged in to Amazon, this will prefill with your address. Then click Next.
2. Share your list of websites and mobile apps. Amazon wants to know exactly which traffic sources you’ll be using to promote your affiliate links.
3. Fill out your profile. This includes payout details and tax information that Amazon needs to understand how to 
4. Get access to Associates central. This is where you’ll see your new commissions and how many clicks Amazon is receiving from your website.
5. Make your website compliant. Make sure you’ve included a disclosure on each page on your website where you plan to promote Amazon links.
6. Create and promote your first Amazon affiliate links. Finally, it’s time to create links, send traffic, and earn commissions.

Here’s more on that last step.

Step 4. Create and promote your Amazon affiliate links

Once you get accepted to the Amazon affiliate program, you’ll be able to activate your account and get access to Site Stripe.

Site Stripe is a widget that shows up at the top of Amazon. It lets you generate affiliate links for any page on the website by choosing the link type (Text, Image, or Text + Image) and then pressing Get Link:

If you’re going to be putting Amazon links on your affiliate website, my recommendation is to use the Full Link option. This is because you’ll be able to track Amazon affiliate links on a page-level by creating unique Tracking IDs.

Plus, it’s infinitely easier when you eventually sell your website on a marketplace like Flippa for the buyer to replace your Tracking IDs with their own.

Now that you’ve got your affiliate link, it’s time to promote it.

Some of the best ways to promote affiliate links include:

• Writing product reviews and roundups people can find through SEO
• Building out a resource page on your website with your favorite products
• Using other channels like Quora, Twitter or Instagram to promote affiliate links
• Share deals and coupons through an email newsletter (without including affiliate links directly in your emails – which is against Amazon’s terms of service!)

Finally, if your website gets meaningful traffic from multiple countries, you may want to consider localizing your links. In essence, you’ll increase your conversion rate by ensuring that readers from different countries are routed to the correct Amazon store.

Amazon does have a built-in option for this called One Link. But there are also third-party alternatives to One Link like Geniuslink which give you more control over the user experience and can help you diversify your affiliate income by offering alternative buying options.

Step 5. Get your first payout

Once you’ve generated the required three sales in 90 days, you’re probably wondering when you’re going to get paid.

Amazon’s minimum affiliate payout is $10, which you may or may not make from those first three sales. Once you reach that threshold, Amazon pays out on a two month delay. For instance, commissions generated during January are eligible for payout in March.

To find your pending payments, click your email address and then Payment History:

There you’ll be able to see any commissions you’re owed for the next payout period:

To make sure you’ll be paid promptly, be sure to have your tax information and payout details all filled out before the monthly transfer happens.

Step 6. Optimize your content with the Earnings Report

Now that you’ve got some commissions under your belt, it’s time to start optimizing your content. Under Amazon Associate’s Reports tab, you’ll find a few different ways to look at your earnings and adjust your content.

For example, if you want to know which Amazon product categories are most profitable for you so far, you can use the Earnings Report and group by Category:

In this example, you can see that Camera, Photo, & Video is the most profitable category. So this person may want to create more content about those categories.

You can also run reports by Tracking ID:

And if you took my advice about creating one Amazon Tracking ID per page, you’ll be able to see which articles are earning the most on your website.

In general, the key ways to optimizing an Amazon affiliate website are:

• Find profitable, high converting products
• Understand which types of content convert best
• Create more of those content types about those products
• Rinse and repeat

The simplicity of this model is why so many people recommend Amazon for anyone who is just getting started with affiliate marketing. But it also comes with unique challenges when it comes to scaling your operation.

Step 7. Scale your Amazon affiliate operation

As I shared earlier, growing a large Amazon website quickly turns into a numbers game. More content, means more traffic, means more clicks, means more commissions.

But what are some strategic ways to get more bank for your buck without going broke on content writers? Here are my top tips:

1. Spend time optimizing existing content. You can double or triple your Amazon commissions just by optimizing your existing affiliate content. Try different styles of buttons, comparison boxes, anchor text, and images. Popup plugins are another popular way to give readers one last chance to click before they leave the page.
2. Promote high-converting products in multiple formats. Found a great product that converts well? Include it in a number of different roundups and reviews. You can even re-use bits of content across articles or repurpose this content to podcasts or vlogs to save on costs.
3. Create multiple websites in the same category. Once you’ve found a profitable category, you can create multiple pieces of content across multiple sites and rank for all of them. 
4. Offer Amazon alternatives when possible. Amazon’s commission rates are not as high as they once were. Even if Amazon is your preferred merchant, you can offer multiple retailers (which is in line with Google’s product review updates as well).
5. Hire a VA to help you. Trying to do everything yourself is only going to take you so far in the Amazon game. Getting a virtual assistant on board doesn’t have to be expensive and you can start with just a few hours per week of help.

If you’re just getting started, ignore this advice for now. Your first goal as an Amazon affiliate is making your first commission. Then your 100th. And then your first $1K.

Don’t spread yourself too thin until you’ve started to generate predictable monthly commissions, no matter how small.

Is the Amazon Affiliate Program Worth It?

These days, over 80% of brands have an affiliate program. Is Amazon going to be the best one for you as you build out your affiliate content business?

The answer is: it’s complicated.

Amazon’s conversion rate is astronomical compared to most other online retailers. The sheer amount of data and resources they’ve dedicated to achieving this is practically a modern marvel. Amazon affiliates regularly see conversion rates of 5-10%, compared to typical ecommerce values which average less than half.

But conversion rate isn’t the entire story. Average order value, average commission, and the ability to build a relationship with your affiliate partners all play a huge role in building a resilient affiliate business.

Then there’s the fact that Amazon’s commissions are constantly shrinking. Many in the affiliate industry speculate that this program will disappear one day, leaving a lot of site owners in the dust. And you don’t want that to happen to you.

Whether It’s Now or Later, Always Diversify

My recommendation? Always choose an affiliate niche where you have options to diversify from Amazon later on. Find out more information on affiliate marketing programs that will grow your revenue here.

Learning affiliate marketing is hard enough when you’re also trying to learn SEO, conversion rate optimization, and how to run a website. Adding on top the complexity of selecting affiliate offers, using numerous affiliate portals, and optimizing for each one could be too much for beginners. But don’t put all your eggs in the Amazon basket long term.

Choose niches where you see your competitors promoting retailers besides Amazon, especially in their most popular content. This is a strong clue that alternative offers are also generating significant revenue for the site – and could for yours as well.

Diversified revenue streams not only keep your business safe from future rate cuts, but look great to website buyers as well.

So go forth and build your successful affiliate website! The commissions are yours to be made.

Being relatively new to the Flippa marketplace, as a trend from my experience, web properties showing 6 to 12 months of revenue are purchased quickly, which led me to believe there was something interesting here to pursue.

For context over the importance of getting involved with an Amazon business here are 10 facts according to BigCommerce:

1. 9 out of 10 consumers price check a product on Amazon. (source)
2. 2% of Echo owners have purchased a product via Alexa. (source)
3. Amazon sells more than 12 million products. (source)
4. Amazon sells over 1.1 million home improvement products. (source)
5. 95 million people have Amazon Prime memberships in the US. (source)
6. $1.4K is the average spent by Amazon Prime members each year. (source)
7. FBA gives sellers a 30-50% increase in sales. (source)
8. Amazon shipped over 5 billion items worldwide in 2017. (source)
9. More than 50% of all Amazon sales come from third-party sellers. (source)
10. 80% of sellers also sell on other platforms outside of Amazon. (source)

How Do Amazon Affiliates Work?

On a high level, an Amazon Affiliate site is simply a blog that links to products for sale on Amazon.

The first step is choosing a niche to write content about on a WordPress blog. Once you have your niche and an Amazon affiliate account setup, you simply look for products to write about.

When readers click through Amazon linked products after reading your articles there is a cookie installed on their web browser. Normally, affiliate cookies stay active for 30 days, but with Amazon the cookie duration is 90 days. This long cookie duration means if a reader clicks through your blog’s link and purchases anything in 90 days from Amazon, you get a commission on that item. The logic is that you are sending Amazon high quality buyers who have already done their research and are ready to make a purchase and that you should share in the profits if a purchase is made within that 90 day window.

With the average Prime member spending $1,400 per year on Amazon and $350 in the length of your cookie duration, this is a pretty strong business model.

From my experience, the most successful Amazon affiliate blogs heavily focus on search engine optimization (SEO) to build up a strong foundation of organic traffic from Google. If you can manage to build strong organic traffic to your Amazon affiliate site, you will begin to generate steady revenue from commission, but this can also lead to additional revenue streams if you’re smart about it.

Revenue Stream: Sponsored Posts

When I first learned about Amazon affiliate blogs on Flippa, I was really impressed by the 90-day cookie duration and helping people learn more about products to buy. However, after actually operating my first Amazon affiliate blog, I learned there are multiple profitable revenue streams that can be taken advantage of in addition to affiliate commissions.

Once you’ve hired an SEO expert, downloaded the YOAST plugin on WordPress, and started producing keyword rich content, you’ll start to get inquiries from people in your niche.

For example, if you’re blogging about gardening equipment on Amazon and linking to corresponding products, people who are selling those products often begin to pick up on bumps in sales and tags on social media. In my experience tagging on social media when sharing new articles about products on Amazon attracts these Amazon sellers the fastest.

Once you’ve made contact with these sellers, you can begin to do sponsored posts on your blog each month. Setting up a relationship directly with sellers is easy and allows you to set up a baseline for monthly revenue. When you’re first starting out with a simple Amazon seller sponsorship, something like $100 for 4 articles per month in addition to commissions is a great start. This builds a base to hire a writer.

Revenue Stream: Display ads

In addition to sponsored posts and commissions from sales on Amazon, display ads are a great source of revenue.

In my experience, Google Adsense produces the most dynamic and targeted ads for readers on your blog. Making sure the display ads are targeted is extremely important to increase your click through rate on the display ads. Clicks are what will really generate a lot of revenue for your blog so making sure the ads are targeted is important. With that said, many bloggers will join different ad networks depending on their niche to increase the targeted ads from advertisers. There are hundreds if not thousands of competitors to Google Adsense but many prefer Google based on their size of advertisers, the ease of implementation, and their targeting features. 

Bonus: In addition to adding Google Adsense to your Amazon affiliate blog, you can also sell ad space to advertisers that reach out. For example, if there is an Amazon seller in your niche that is interested in sponsoring written posts, you can up-sell them on additional display ads that you approve of. Once they send you a display ad that doesn’t ruin the aesthetic of your blog, you can add it into your code directly, hire a developer on Upwork to do it, or download a plugin to help implement the manual placement.

If you don’t want to deal with manually implementing the ad, you can join something like BuySellAds where a snippet of code allows you to approve ads directly from advertisers. 

In Conclusion

Overall, Amazon affiliate blogs are an extremely versatile business to buy on Flippa. If you can find one that has been able to generate solid monthly revenue for 6-12 months and has healthy organic traffic through SEO, definitely give it a try. Many entrepreneurs that I’ve met run a handful of these affiliate blogs and use their sponsored post revenue to pay for hiring writers. Once you have a writer to create product reviews and articles about the Amazon linked products, you can really scale quickly. 

Bonus: The highest quality writers I’ve ever hired for my Amazon affiliate blogs have been from the subreddit /r/HireAWriter. Reach out to users directly with the messaging feature on Reddit and hire as quickly as you can obtain sponsored posts from Amazon sellers.

But while the commission rate deduction has personally hit me on my health-related sites, I think overall, what happened served as a wake-up call for the future to diversify and gain more control over affiliate partnerships and revenues.

That’s why a number of affiliate marketers quickly began to look at alternatives to Amazon’s affiliate program in their given niches. 

While some alternative options like Shareasale are obvious choices, there are times when making the switch isn’t even worth the time invested, or it can even hurt your sales.

Here is a guide on how to find non-Amazon affiliate programs that convert well as well as a few notes on when it makes sense to switch.

I will also show you some strategies that you can apply today to increase your revenues on your affiliate sites monetized with Amazon.

When Does It Make Sense to Diversify Your Revenue Streams?

Diversification is critical in every business, and most seasoned affiliate marketers don’t rely on just one network or offer. 

However, the process of diversification takes time and can drag you into a never-ending loop of searching for new offers and testing them out.

While the timing of the commission cut from Amazon was unfortunate with the COVID-19 crisis on the rise, if you want to run a real business and not just make a few bucks with affiliate marketing, you cannot pour all your trust on an external company.

While Amazon Associates has several great attributes, such as an excellent conversion rate combined with a vast range of product offerings, and the fact that it pays for the aggregated products on shopping carts bought by the user, it isn’t all sunshine and roses.

The company has a history of permanently banning accounts for light reasons and the lack of an affiliate manager is a massive downside for high-level affiliate marketers, as they are looking for reliability, and eventually, the chance of negotiating higher commissions for more significant volumes of orders referred.

However, these downsides factors, added to the low commission rates, shouldn’t necessarily make you jump on a different train right away. There are some factors to consider when changing your affiliate links to other programs or networks from Amazon that should weigh on your decision one way or the other.

Commission Rate vs. Conversion Rate

While most affiliate programs in the same niches have a better commission rate than Amazon, often on other networks, many of their landing pages are outdated and will hardly convert sales. Even if the commission rate is 80%, it will still not be worth it for you to switch as you are making fewer sales and the numbers simply don’t add up.

While it’s very niche dependent and this word of advice has to be taken with caution, the sweet spot to make it worth your while is usually a minimum 10% commission.

This is because even when the landing page seems to be converting well, it will hardly have the same level of the conversion rate of Amazon simply because Amazon is such a behemoth and generates so much trust to consumers. The lower conversion rate on Amazon will often outweigh the higher commission rate that you might obtain with a smaller platform.

How to Diversify Your Affiliate Commission Without Burning Out

I know quite well that changing all of your links within just the seven days notice given by Amazon Associates was overwhelming, especially if you run a portfolio of sites like I do.

Something that I’ve been doing to keep myself sane, and recommend to others who have a diverse portfolio of sites, is to first change the links for the #1 recommended program in product roundabouts.

In this case, you could change the link to a non-Amazon affiliate program just for the editor’s choice product and possibly for the second choice, too, because that’s where your visitors will probably click and makes up for the majority of your affiliate revenue.

Direct Affiliate Commission Partnerships

Amazon’s commission cut can become a blessing in disguise. Being forced to reorganize your business is a pain, but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the most useful things that you can do right now that will pay incredible dividends in the future is reaching out to some suppliers in your industry, seeking a direct affiliate link.

Many companies, even if they’re big and established, often didn’t even think about creating an affiliate program yet, and will be willing to do so for you if you can show them the potential that it brings to the table.

The great thing about this strategy is that you will have almost no competition when promoting these offers.

Consider Adding Display Ads

Display ads, like the one offered by Ezoic or Mediavine, can be an additional way to increase the EPM of your pages that you might have overlooked.

On one of my sites, I had ten informational posts that, despite getting thousands of visitors each month, had an astoundingly low EPM. 

I tried adding display ads, and I started making an additional $250-300/month from them.

While counterintuitive, adding advertisements to your pages will not necessarily decrease your affiliate revenue, but could easily increase your overall revenue. 

While they may distract your visitors, adding ads won’t often make a big difference to overall conversion rate. I’d suggest you test ads, particularly on your pages monetized with Amazon Associates, if you can’t find better paying affiliate programs.

Focus On Recurring Programs

B2B affiliate programs often pay recurring commissions. This makes it notably more appealing than other cases.

Even if your website is focused on B2C (i.e., home furniture), you can find software apps about home and furniture design that can be helpful to professionals in that field and still be relevant to your audience.

Pivot to eCommerce

Something many affiliate site owners are doing is creating a separate drop shipping store and linking from their reviews post to their eCommerce site, essentially becoming an affiliate for themselves.

You can even include an eCommerce store in your actual affiliate site if it makes sense.

While it isn’t something I would personally do, it’s admittedly a viable option that many smart marketers are making a killing with.

Add an Exit Opt-in Popup

A strategy that helped me increase revenue on one of my affiliate sites almost overnight is adding an exit-intent opt-in popup which is shown when someone is leaving a page.

While I initially tested this concept with an email list form, I noticed that for some pages, it was more profitable to send the visitors directly to an affiliate landing page rather than to a data collection point.

That’s the kind of unused capacity in your business that you should be tapping right now.

To set this up on a WordPress site, you simply need a tool like Thrive Leads, OptinMonster, or Elementor Pro.

Focus More on Building a Brand

While many of us affiliate marketers got started with a small niche site, which made us realize that making money online was possible, the route to long-term profit seems to be in creating a strong brand within your niche.

Reviews and comparison posts on Amazon affiliate sites aren’t actually that much more helpful than the reviews directly on Amazon for any given product, they are simply organized in a pleasant manner which helps users make a determination on what to purchase.

While outsourcing content to a cheap writer and getting it to rank high on search can be a very profitable business model, it is increasingly less valuable now that the web is filled with this kind of content.

Creating a true “brand” means building a relationship with your site visitors. A relationship built on trust can be cultivated with reliable comparison posts and helpful emails sent via a newsletter.

A great way to speed up the process of building such a relationship is an email list which you can use to nurture and genuinely develop your brand in the long-run.

Having an engaged email list will not only give you an asset on which you have total control and will be yours in case of SEO or PPC swings, but it will also increase the worth of your site as buyers are willing to pay a premium for it if you ever decide to sell your business on a site like Flippa.

“Is It Even Worth It?” My Experience Walking Away From Amazon

Now that you read through the article, you might be wondering, “Is it even worth taking the time to update all of the links in my posts?”

I know this because I asked the same question myself.

Last year I started a new affiliate site in the health niche. I simply ordered 5 long-form pieces of content, built a couple of links, and then left the site sit for several months.

To my surprise, this small niche site started ranking for several high-competition keywords. It started making about $90/month via Amazon, nothing game-changing, but still nice to see given the little bit of work that I had put into it.

While I knew I could have probably make more with other affiliate programs selling the same category of products, I thought it wasn’t worth my time for a site that was just making $90 a month.

When Amazon updated their commission rates from 4.5% to 1% last month, I decided that it was time to test things out as that $90 was about to fall to about $15, which barely covers hosting fees at that rate.

I updated the first and second place product recommendations in my most trafficked posts with a direct partnership affiliate program and updated the others with brands that I found on Shareasale and Commission Junction.

To my surprise, two weeks later, I ended making $332.46. With just one affiliate program. For a grand total of about $370 earned in just three weeks.

That’s the same exact site that was earning me $90 through Amazon the month prior. With no additional improvements or changes besides changing the affiliate links I was able to more than triple my revenue.

Now, that’s a jump for sure, and it also increased diversification in my revenue sources! But take this information with a grain of salt. 

There are lots of programs that convert so poorly that you might as well use Amazon instead. It’s a matter of continuous testing until you hit the right one.

Conclusion

Amazon Associates’s commission rate cut isn’t the end of the world. 

While it happened once before just a few years ago in 2017, it is now a more critical wake-up call than ever to affiliate marketers and digital publishers to diversify their revenue streams and gain more control over their business’s income.