*This post contains affiliate links for which I will be compensated when purchases are made.
If you run a blog, by now you probably know about affiliates, and if you dont.. well you should! It’s a great (and easy) way to earn money for helping your readers connect with products and items they want to buy! You’re already writing about stuff you love and letting your readers in on the big secret, why not help yourself and earn some cash when they purchase your recommendations?
When I first started blogging, I had no idea what affiliates even were let alone how to get started with them and actually start making money. Whether you started your blog one day ago or 10 years ago, if you’re not using affiliate links in your posts yet, the time to start is NOW. You can always go back and add affiliate links to old posts if you’ve been in the blogging business for a while now (I actually do this often with some of my more popular posts as I did not use affiliate links for several years after starting my blog!)
So what exactly is an affiliate link? It’s a personalized link that tracks traffic sent to the shopping site from your blog. Once items are bought through your affiliate link, you get a portion of the payment, depending on how much the brand is offering when you refer business to them. *Tip: Pay special attention to this as each business pays differently and some will pay you a lot more than others!
How do you obtain and use an affiliate link? Affiliate links are easy to grab and enter into your blog. Once you are signed up with a brand’s affiliate program, most brands will post somewhere right there when you login to the affiliate portion of the website, your own personalized affiliate link. Take this link and connect it to your product name you posted in your blog post using the link icon in your wordpress.
Tips for getting started with using Affiliates
- Sign up with some of the most popular affiliate sites to get you started. I use Amazon the most and Ebay quite frequently too. Both sites have soooo many products you can virtually always find the product related to your post to help your readers find and shop the same items you are using and writing about.
- Sign up with big sites that connect lots of different brands and businesses with influencers. I use ShareaSale the most.<—- Notice my use of an affiliate link right there! 😉 Ebay is also great for this, as is LinkShare and VigLink.com. Each have and are constantly adding new businesses that want to pay you some money to send business their way! There are tons of these sites out there, so do your research and find the ones that work best for you and are more targeted towards businesses in your niche.
- Visit some of your favorite brands or sites and often times they will have information listed on how to become an affiliate for them. Anytime I’m writing a post I do this. Otherwise, it’s a money-making opportunity wasted!
- Get Affiliate links for any Blog Post You Write – Get sponsored for that blog post? Ask the sponsor about their affiliate program and get signed up before writing the post so you can plug it in when writing it!
- Don’t forget to include affiliate links in your social media posts. Affiliate links are not just for blogs! Just be sure to add #sp to posts to follow FTC Regulations. Note: All blog posts containing affiliate links should be noted at the beginning of your blog post. (See the first line of this post for my FTC disclosure.)
- Now Make Your Site Shoppable. Now that you’re using affiliate links more frequently, ever notice what a time suck plugging in affiliate links to your site can be? Use the new Shopify WordPress Plugin to turn your wordpress site into an online store front, turning products listed into easy-to-shop items. All your readers have to do is click the item, they will then see the price and are taken to where they can buy it, AND you get paid! Just like that! This plugin works great for businesses too, it’s not just for bloggers!
With just a few clicks, you can now make any WordPress page or blog post an e-commerce site using the free Shopify Ecommerce Plugin.
The plugin makes selling products on your WordPress site simple. In just a few clicks, you can create a Buy Button and add e-commerce functionality (your affiliate links) to let visitors securely checkout from any page on your site.
Visit Shopify.com to learn more!
Happy Blogging!