Affiliate Marketing FAQs for Bloggers

How are you doing with the Affiliate Marketing challenge? The challenge is wrapping up this week, but there’s still time to learn and apply the challenge to your blog. I pulled some of the frequently asked questions as they pertain to affiliate marketing and put them together here in a blog post for your reference.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s products on your blog. When a reader clicks on an affiliate link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission.

Can I  make money with affiliate marketing?

Absolutely! Affiliate marketing should be one of your online revenue streams. It’s a great way to monetize your existing and new content. Personally, I earn a good chunk of income each month from affiliate marketing because of my top trafficked blog posts. This goes back to the point of the #BoostYourBlog10K challenge and why it’s so important to get your page views up! Without a good amount of page views it’s going to be extremely challenging to make money through affiliate marketing.

Will I get rich from affiliate marketing?

Short answer: probably not. Long answer? Well, it depends on how much work you put into it. It’s not as simple as signing up to be an affiliate and dropping a link on your blog. There are levels to this! That leads to the next question.

Do I need 10,000 page views to start affiliate marketing?

No, but more traffic will help. Let me explain: More traffic equates to more eyes on your content. This means more opportunities to build trust with your readers. When your readers trust you that means you’re an influencer in their eyes. What do people do when they trust you? They listen when you make recommendations and ultimately they end up purchasing from you.

So back to getting rich from affiliate marketing. You can not just drop an affiliate link and expect to get rich quick. You have to continuously work on creating a brand and a community. You can’t have one without the other!  

Where can I sign up for affiliate marketing?

There are lots of different affiliate marketing networks for bloggers. We have a few suggestions in the Affiliate Marketing Networks challenge.

How do I include an affiliate marketing strategy on my blog?

There are affiliate products for every type of blogging niche. Putting affiliate links on your top trafficked blog posts just makes good business sense. If readers are already searching google and finding your blog you might as well monetize those posts! For specific pointers to incorporate an affiliate marketing strategy on your blog head over to the challenge in the community.

Is affiliate marketing a good fit for pet bloggers?

Yes! Pet blogging is an easy niche to monetize because there are so many different products and services you can sell via affiliate marketing. Just because you’re a pet blogger doesn’t mean you should sell everything pet related. Think about your specific niche and what would resonate with your readers.

Do I need a tax ID or business bank account to start affiliate marketing?

You may not need these right out of the gate to start earning money from affiliate marketing. However, if you truly want to treat your blog as a business and take it to the next level then you really need to establish an EIN and a business bank account. You can find more info on this in our challenge here.

Which blog posts should I monetize with affiliate links?

Not every single blog post you write has to be monetized. We recommend adding affiliate links to your most popular blog posts. If you’re already receiving a lot of traffic on those posts, why not make some money?!  For more tips on monetizing your page views, check out the Week 2 Challenge: Monetize Content and Boost Page Views.

Should I disclose that my blog post includes affiliate links?

Yes, absolutely because it’s the law! The FTC requires that you disclose all affiliate links. Your blog should have a blanket disclosure statement that is on a separate page (and obvious to find)  in addition to a brief statement on each blog post that includes an affiliate link. We recommend checking out the FTC website for specifics on this topic.

Should affiliate links be “no follow?”

Yes because you could potentially be “dinged” by Google if you don’t. Google doesn’t have a problem with blogs containing affiliate links, as long as there is plenty of quality content to go along with it. The lesson here? Don’t be spammy and fill an entire post with tons of affiliate links! Add them where it naturally makes sense but also link to your old content or content from other relevant blogs. 

You can learn more about no follow links by watching this video.

To catch up on all of the challenges head over to the BlogPaws community and be sure to join our private SLC Facebook group.
So what questions do you still have about affiliate marketing? Leave your questions in the comments below.

Aimee Beltran is the Director of Community Education for BlogPaws. She also writes two blogs, Irresistible Icing and Irresistible Pets with her Chihuahua, Chuy. Aimee is passionate about her mission, “create an irresistible life you can’t resist!” She loves anything with glitter, kayaking, and spending time at the beach.

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