Bloggers can definitely make money and affiliate marketing for bloggers is a great way for beginners to get started. This post will walk you through the basics of affiliate marketing for bloggers including some great ideas on how to promote your affiliates and make money.
This post includes affiliate links. If you make a purchase using an affiliate link I may get a few bucks, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. To learn more, read the Affiliate Disclosure.
Why did you start blogging? Is it just for fun, for self expression and sharing your personal experience? Or did you start a blog with the intention of making money – either as a side hustle or to replace a full time job?
Either way is great, and if you’re looking for ways to monetize your blog, keep reading!
How do Bloggers Make Money?
There are almost as many ways to make money as a blogger, as there are bloggers. One of the most popular methods, and easiest for a beginner to get started with is Affiliate Marketing. This post is going to dig into the basics of affiliate marketing for bloggers.
Let’s look at other ways to make money as a blogger too for a minute. This will give you more ideas to think about as you create a longterm strategy and plan to reach your financial goals with your blog.
To earn money with your blog you must first be clear who your ideal reader or avatar is. Who is she? What problem or concern is your blog designed to help solve for her? As extension, what will you offer in return for payment that solves that problem?
Here are some profitable ideas for you:
- Create products to sell such as ebooks, printables, planners, templates, journals, cookbooks
- Build courses complete with videos, tutorials, and workbooks
- Offer virtual services such as meal planning, makeup tutorials, graphic design, garden planning
- Develop coaching, consulting or counseling programs to support breastfeeding moms, new homeschoolers, brides-to-be, homeowners, midlife career changers, dating divorcees, new vegetarians
- Allow advertising on your website with an ad network such as Google Adsense (not recommended) or waiting until you have enough traffic to qualify for the better networks such as Monumetric or Mediavine
- Recommend existing products, courses and services that your readers will love through affiliate marketing
What is Affiliate Marketing?
With Affiliate Marketing, you recommend a product, course or service to your readers with a unique affiliate link. When your reader clicks the link and makes a sale, you earn money.
Affiliate marketing is a great way for a beginner blogger to monetize a blog. You likely don’t yet have your own products, courses or services to promote. You may not want to litter your beautiful new website with ads that pay very little per month.
Even when you do have your own creations to sell, you may not cover every possible thing your reader may want to purchase.
For example, as a food blogger you may create cookbooks to sell, but you probably won’t create your own line of cooking tools. That’s a perfect opportunity to use affiliate marketing. And you can recommend your favorite cookbooks with affiliate links while you develop your own.
Most affiliate programs will include professional images, banners and sales copy that you can use to promote their product. Affiliate marketing is a great opportunity to learn how to sell. You will use those marketing skills later to promote and sell your own products, courses or services.
How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers
It’s easy to get started with affiliate marketing, and like anything else, it will take some time before you start seeing the results you want. There’s no reason not to start affiliate marketing for bloggers on day one.
As you begin to consider which affiliate programs you’ll join, be clear who your ideal reader or avatar is. Who is she? What problem or concern can you help her solve with your blog and by extension, with the products, courses and services you recommend?
It’s tempting to skip over this part. It’s easy to just rush forward with a vague sense of who your audience is, but I encourage you to do the work and get clear. Every element of your blogging business will be easier and more profitable, if you get clear on this first.
Read Easy Guide to Choosing a Blogging Niche + Free Workbook
You don’t need a ton of traffic and a big list to get started, but your website should be live with at least 5-10 posts, plus your About, Contact and legal pages in place, before you start applying.
Required Affiliate Disclosures
You must include the appropriate legal disclosures before you begin promoting affiliate programs on your blog. You will need to disclose at the beginning of every blog post that includes affiliate links, as well as have a separate page that details your affiliate policy. Further, Amazon requires very specific language in order to stay in their program.
You need to comply with each affiliate program’s policies as well as the FTC (Federal Trade Commissions) regulations.
I recommend creating a reusable block that discloses your use of affiliate links, includes a link to your affiliate disclosure, and appears at the top of every blog post. Scroll back up and you’ll see mine at the top of this post.
Even if you don’t intend to include an affiliate link when you first write the post, you may go back later with a new affiliate program and add it in. It’s easier to just cover yourself on every post, and not have to worry.
Include Amazon’s specific language in your footer, as well as on your Affiliate Disclosure page:
This website is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
When you add an affiliate link to your post, you can select “sponsored” from the dropdown which lets search engines know. Some people also add an asterisk or put (aff link) in parentheses with every link. On social media you may need to include the hashtag #ad or #afflink. Again, check with the program guidelines.
There are plugins that handle some of this, but less is more when it comes to plugins, so I recommend taking care of this part manually.
Legal Support for Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers
For help with your Affiliate Disclosure, Privacy Policy and other legal pages for your blog, I recommend the FREE course Legally Blogs to get you started.
These courses and templates are all crafted by Lucrezia Iapichino, an experienced lawyer and blogger, and are highly recommended.
Even better, the Legal Bundle Value Pack includes FTC, GDPR and CCPA compliant templates and easy-to-follow instructions on how to get them customized. You can have all your legal pages ready and your blog legally protected in less than half an hour.
Get these disclosures in place before you start applying to affiliate programs. You will also need to disclose your Privacy Policy. Some affiliate programs will deny your application without these pages in place.
Read Why Your Blog Needs the Legal Bundle Value Pack
What are the Best Affiliate Marketing Programs for Beginners?
When you’re starting out with affiliate marketing as a blogger, go with what you know. With your ideal reader in mind, what products do you currently use that would help them solve the problem they came to your blog for. That’s what you should recommend as an affiliate. You’re likely making recommendations and suggestions already, so you should be getting paid for it.
Considering your niche, make a list of your favorite beauty and fashion brands, your favorite kitchen tools and cookbooks. What supplements and protein powders do you prefer, what books do you read? What were the must-haves for your baby or toddler? Which homeschooling curriculums do you love, what courses made a difference for you?
Read Easy Guide to Choosing a Blogging Niche + Free Workbook
Stay on topic though. If you’re a beauty blogger, for example, and you start promoting a web host, pet food company and your favorite gardening tools, it’s going to be clear you’re just trying to make a buck and you’re not focused on your reader. Worse, you’ll fail to drive consistent traffic because it’s not clear what your blog is even about.
Now go visit those brands online, scroll down to their footer and look for a link to Affiliates. Or do a Google search for “favorite brand” and the word “affiliate”. Find their programs and apply to join.
Many brands use affiliate networks to keep things simple on their end. These networks are a great way to find the brands you want to promote and even discover new ones.
Free Blog Post Template
Affiliate Marketing Networks for Bloggers
Affiliate marketing networks are another great way to get started. You join a network first, and then apply to the program you would like to promote. Joining the affiliate marketing network is easy and then you’ll find some programs are harder to get into than others.
Have a look at these popular affiliate networks:
- Share-a-Sale
My favorite affiliate network, very easy to get started, with lots of great programs to choose from in every niche - Awin
Popular global network with programs for every niche, requires a $5 entry fee, which you get back - CJ Affiliates
Another good network that’s been around a long time - FlexOffers
Great affiliate network with programs in every niche - Clickbank
Worth a look, but I haven’t used this one yet - Rakuten
Formerly known as ebates
In these networks, you are the Publisher and the brands are the Merchants or Advertisers.
If you’re going to start with just one, I recommend you join Share a Sale now, and then look through the many thousands of merchants to find the ones that best fit your niche. They are organized by categories and you can also search by keyword.
To learn more about why I recommend this network read Why the ShareASale Affiliate Network is Perfect for Bloggers now.
When you apply, you’ll need to share what your blog is about, who your readers are and how you plan to promote the products. Some programs are very beginner-friendly and will accept you easily. Others will reject you, but you can always reapply later when your following is larger. It’s a bit of trial and error.
Read Best Affiliate Programs for Mom Bloggers in Parenting, Baby, Kids Niche
Amazon Associates Affiliate Marketing Program
Amazon Associates is very popular for beginners just getting started with affiliate marketing. Everyone knows Amazon and they sell millions of products that can serve every possible niche.
If your reader follows your Amazon link and buys the product you recommend or ANY other product, you get paid. That’s the incredible part about this program – you only need to get your reader to Amazon and you’ll earn off any qualified purchase they make! It doesn’t have to be the specific product you link to.
Because Amazon doesn’t need you to promote them, their commission fees are low (between 1-10%). And their program policies are very strict.
You must have 3 qualified purchases with the first 180 days after you apply to the program in order to be officially approved. These sales cannot be made by yourself, nor friends and family. Seriously, Amazon tracks everything and they know if your purchases come from an IP address that you frequently connect with. Creepy, I know.
You cannot share your Amazon links anywhere they can’t track it, such as in private groups, emails or DMs.
If you join Amazon Associates before you have steady traffic to your blog, you need to get creative to get those first 3 sales before 180 days. I joined it very early, so after I created my first post containing Amazon links, I shared it in Facebook blogger groups where we helped each other out by making a small purchase off each other’s blog posts.
Depending on your niche and your ability to promote well, there is still plenty of money to be made through Amazon.
Ultimate Bundles Affiliates Program
The Ultimate Bundles Affiliate Program is a great place to start for beginners, and can be much more profitable than Amazon and much quicker.
Ultimate Bundles offers products for many different niches and audiences. There are launches throughout the year, as well as evergreen bundles to promote. It’s free to enroll!
Some of the topics included in Ultimate Bundles are:
- self care
- work at home
- gardening and sustainability
- homeschooling
- healthy meal planning
- DIY and creativity
- bloggers’s toolkit
- productivity
- women’s wellness
Is there anything on that list that would be helpful to your readers? Then get yourself enrolled with Ultimate Bundles right now! You’ll earn 40% of every bundle you sell, and later if you contribute to a bundle, you can earn 70% commissions.
One of the best things about the Ultimate Bundles affiliate program is the training opportunity. They give you calendars, swipe copy, countdown timers, banners and marketing training. All the tips and tricks to help you succeed.
What you can learn promoting Ultimate Bundles to your audience you can later apply to other programs as you become an expert affiliate marketer.
How does Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers Work?
When you enroll and are accepted into an affiliate program, you will have access to unique affiliate links for your use alone. You share these links and when a reader clicks one of your affiliate links, it places a cookie (a small bit of code) in their browser. If they make a purchase within a certain period of time you will earn a commission on their sale.
Every affiliate program is different. Cookie periods may range from 30 days to a full year. Commissions may be a percentage of the sale, 40% seems to be average for most programs, or a flat fee.
Amazon’s commission rates are very low at 1-10%, but they have millions of products to promote, so it can still be profitable.
In some programs, commissions are granted based on the last link clicked and in others, it’s first click.
Choose affiliate programs for products, services and courses you can truly get behind and promote with confidence. Ideally you have used them yourself and can recommend from experience.
In addition you can consider the following attributes of different affiliate programs:
- long cookie expiration periods
- high commission rates
- short payout time
- marketing materials for you to use including graphics and swipe copy
- free trial or discount for you as the affiliate and/or for your readers
- support and training on how to successfully promote
Most affiliate sales commissions are paid to you via PayPal, so be sure you have an account set up before you start applying to affiliate programs.
Free Blog Post Template
Where to Include Your Affiliate Links
First, read the terms and guidelines for each of your affiliate programs to be clear what’s allowed and what isn’t. Amazon is the strictest program I’ve seen. Most other programs allow a lot of freedom and encourage you to share your affiliate links far and wide. It benefits them too, after all.
Share your affiliate program links across your website on pages and blog posts. Create posts specifically about the products, services and courses you recommend, and link to them when they appear naturally in other related posts.
Get started with email marketing for a direct line to your readers. Read Best Email Marketing Services for Bloggers.
With most affiliate programs you will be able to share your links:
- in your email broadcasts and sequences
- within your ebooks, PDFs and courses
- on Pinterest
- in your own Facebook group
- on share threads in other Facebook groups – check the group rules first
- as part of your recommended resources page or resource library
- in videos, podcasts and Lives
- directly to your clients and audience in person, on calls, or during webinars
How to Promote Your Affiliates and Make Money
With clarity about your ideal reader or avatar, you’ll know where and how to reach her, and you’ll only recommend products, courses and services that will solve her problem.
For most programs, it’s OK to share your affiliate links on social media and emails, as long as you disclose in the post that it’s an affiliate link. Check the specifics for each program though to be sure.
Get creative with your affiliate marketing plans. Use your blog, email marketing, social media, Facebook group, podcast, YouTube, anywhere you are promoting, your affiliate links should be.
Read Why Email Marketing for Bloggers Matters (and How to Start for Free)
It can be very effective to share your affiliate links as part of a personal review or testimonial on your blog or by video. You can share how the product, course or service made a difference in your life, how it solved a problem for you that relates to a problem your reader also has. Doing a comparison review is also effective.
If you work directly with clients or sell courses or ebooks to your audience, be sure to include your affiliate links. This is the format that I find works the very best. Someone who already knows, likes and trusts you enough to hire you or buy something from you, is very likely to further purchase products and tools you recommend.
You can promote on Pinterest by creating pins that link directly to your affiliates, as long as the program allows. Follow Pinterest’s rule though and do not used cloaked or masked links. In other words, use the raw affiliate link not a Pretty Links or shortened version.
Amazon Associates does NOT allow sharing links anywhere that they can’t trace them, so don’t share in private Facebook groups, in emails or embedded into PDFs, etc. I only promote Amazon links on my blog.
How to Manage and Organize Your Affiliate Links
Keep your affiliate links organized alongside the rest of your blog related information. Trello is a very popular system for bloggers to keep organized, but I keep it simple and use Google Sheets. I have a sheet with all of my affiliate programs organized in one place, with the raw, or original, links from each of the products, courses and tools I recommend.
Pretty Links Plugin
I also use a free plugin called Pretty Links with WordPress. Pretty Links lets you change the original link into something that looks nice, pretty even, and branded.
For example, there’s a great course by Cate Rosales that I recommend for additional training on this topic. It’s called Affiliate Marketing, Simplified! and my affiliate link looks like this https://sweetandsimplelife.teachable.com/courses/affiliate-marketing-simplified?affcode=182796_arrgixw3
My Pretty Link for the same course is https://singlemombloggers.com/affiliatemarketingsimplified
Much nicer, right? It could be even shorter if I wanted to abbreviate to /ams or something, but I like to use full names. That’s just my style.
Still, even at this length, I can easily remember it and share it. On my own blog, I share it as a simple text link, like this: Affiliate Marketing, Simplified!
Pretty Links makes it easier to share your affiliate links on social media, in emails, in private messages and even verbally in person or in a Live. Again, always check with each program so you know where you’re allowed to share. Do not use Pretty Links to change any Amazon affiliate links as that’s against their terms.
Pretty Links also adds a dropdown in WordPress editor where you can click Pretty Link and then search which link you want to add to your text. That makes it so much quicker and easier to add affiliate links in every blog post. It also tracks the number of clicks each link gets, which you can view in your dashboard.
How Much Money Can You Make with Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers?
There’s no limit to how much money you can earn from affiliate marketing. Realistically, you’ll only make a few bucks from Amazon at first before that slowly starts to increase. With consistency, you can look to make a few hundred dollars per month during your first year of blogging, and possibly thousands by year two.
Some bloggers will far exceed those averages, while others will struggle to make their first $50. Setting clear, realistic goals for yourself is the first step. Continue creating great content on your blog that solves a problem for your specific ideal reader avatar. Use social media, Pinterest, email marketing and SEO to drive traffic, and you can reach those goals.
I know bloggers who earn $10K/month, and more, and affiliate marketing makes up a big part of that income.
Read Best Social Media for Bloggers to Grow Traffic and Make Money
Before you ask, yes you can make money even if you don’t blog about blogging! This is a common misconception which arises from the fact that most beginners follow a lot of blogs about blogging. We are your mentors and we do earn money from affiliate marketing, but you should also be following the leaders in your niche.
There are successful six-figure bloggers in fashion, beauty, travel, cooking, parenting, finance and other niches. Those bloggers are making many thousands each month with affiliate marketing.
In fact, there are more readers for you in those niches than there are in the blogging niche. Because while everybody eats, not everybody blogs.
Read Best Affiliate Programs for Mom Bloggers in Parenting, Baby, Kids Niche
Income you earn from affiliate marketing, and other monetization sources on your blog, is taxable income. Put aside approximately 30% of all earned income for taxes. Keep track of business expenses as well. Consult with a tax expert for more information and specific recommendations for your financial situation.
Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers Additional Training
To learn more about this topic and become successful at affiliate marketing, check out Cate Rosales’ course Affiliate Marketing, Simplified!
Leave a comment below and let me know what’s working for you around affiliate marketing.
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- Start a Blog the Right Way: Easy 7 Step Guide
- Best Resources for Bloggers (Including the FREE ones!)
- Easy Guide to Choosing a Blogging Niche + Free Workbook
- Why Your Blog Needs the Legal Bundle Value Pack
- Why the ShareASale Affiliate Network is Perfect for Bloggers
Heather Cottrell is a single mom blogger, business coach and marketing professional. She started her first business and blog in 2005 as a health coach, and years later evolved into a WordPress web designer and business coach for women wellness coaches. In 2020 Heather launched Single Mom Bloggers to help stressed moms create freedom with a blog or business to make money working from home. Learn more about Heather Cottrell here and at HeatherCottrell.com.
Thank you for all this fantastic information, I am new to blogging and trying to fully understand affiliate marketing. I am struggling with my 3 qualified amazon purchases. Would love to know what blogging group helped you get started.
There are lots of groups for bloggers! There’s mine, for one, at facebook.com/groups/singlemombloggers and Blogging Newbs, Becoming a Blogger, Boss Girl Bloggers, Blogger Education Network, etc. Good people in these groups, and others, and if allowed, members may try helping each other out with the first 3 Amazon sales. I would recommend as well not to overdo the Amazon links until you’ve been approved, because if you’re not, you can reapply but then you need to change all the links.