These days there are thousands of ways to earn some money in life. Some of them are good ideas, and some are just downright wrong and illegal! But if you’re a tech-savvy individual and you’ve got a computer, one legitimate way is through blogging.
The Web comprises of around one billion websites as of the time of writing. Many of those sites generate revenue for the site owners. If you’re planning to start a blog, you can join the many people that monetize it and eventually earn a living off the proceeds.
If you’re keen to start a new blog on your favorite subject, you’re doubtless interested in learning how to monetize it too. Keep reading to find out more about the wonderful world of affiliate linking!
What is affiliate linking?
Any website, regardless of whether it’s a blog or not, will have links to external sites on its pages. When your site visitors click on those links, you don’t know what pages they look at on those external sites.
Sometimes you might link to websites that sell products and services. For example, if you have a blog that reviews electronics, you might link to places that sell TVs or hi-fi systems from your blog posts.
If your reviews lead to those people buying the products and services you talk about, that’s great! The only thing is; you don’t get any financial recompense for your efforts. This is where affiliate linking comes in!
Instead of having direct links to those e-commerce sites, you would use affiliate links instead. They are special web links that contain a reference number in the URL. It’s a special ID that relates to you or your account with the affiliate linking service.
When your visitors click on those links, they then get diverted to the website or product page you linked to. They still browse and buy products from the target site as usual. The only difference is a tracking cookie gets stored on their computer.
As long as they have cookies enabled on their system, the affiliate linking service will know what the visitor has bought. Once the checkout process gets completed, you can then receive some commission on the sale!
What are the best affiliate linking services to use?
There are quite a few on offer. Examples include Amazon Associates, TradeDoubler and AffiliateWindow. There are also some affiliate insights sites you should check out too. They serve as a place to learn about up and coming services that suit particular niche markets.
Are you going to use blogging platforms like WordPress? If so, you can also install plugins that automatically convert some of your links to affiliate versions. But you can only use them with specific affiliate services.
What tips can you offer to increase conversions?
There are a few things to help increase conversions from your affiliate links:
- Make sure your blog design is responsive. In other words, it should adapt to different screen sizes and devices;
- Write your content to interest your readers, not your wallet. Don’t copy and paste product marketing information. Make your content objective;
- Consider writing guest blog posts on other sites that link to related articles on your website.