How to Add Additional Revenue Streams and Increase Your Profits

Introduction To Affiliate Marketing For Newcomers

CHAPTER FOUR

I’ve been excited to get to this chapter of the course, as over the years I’ve noticed that so few small business owners are maximising the full income potential from their brand's blogging efforts.

Now there are a couple of ways that it’s possible to add additional revenue streams to your business, but in this module we’ll mainly focus on affiliate marketing.

4.1 Introduction to Affiliate Marketing with Amazon 

So before we go any further, let's make sure we're both on the same page about what affiliate marketing is.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is when you drive traffic to a certain website/business that generates leads and or sales. And when that transaction takes place as a result of you sending that traffic there, then you'll get a percentage of that sale.

Amazon is a great introduction into affiliate marketing as it’s a platform that most people are familiar with, trust, and feel comfortable buying from.

It’s also pretty easy to get signed up to Amazon, however, there are some things you do need to be mindful of though, namely that: Amazon will close your affiliate account if it hasn’t generated any sales within 90 days of being created.

That being said, there are lots of reasons why I love Amazon, check a few of them out below.

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Top Tip: Get your traffic up to at least 200 unique visitors per day before applying for your Amazon associates account.

Reasons Why I love The Amazon Affiliate Network

4.2 Introduction to Affiliate Marketing with Shareasale

There are no shortage of affiliate networks that you can join, that being said, some are more difficult to get accepted to than others.

The more high profile brands that are represented by a network, the harder it is to get accepted into their affiliate programme.

And that’s why I love Shareasale for beginner affiliate marketers, as it introduces you to smaller Indie brands and makes it much easier to get accepted to the network and engage with brands.

Check out this video below where I share with you how to quickly and easily navigate the platform so you can find great affiliate opportunities for you.

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Top Tip: Just as you can find brands to affiliate for on these networks, you can also apply to add your brand to affiliate network so that other brands and bloggers can promote you. 

Reasons Why I love The Shareasale Affiliate Network

4.3 How to increase your affiliate sales quickly and easily 

If you want to enjoy a steady stream of affiliate sales you need to develop a plan for how you will get your affiliate offers in front of your audience repeatedly - without being a salesy pain in the ass.

Below I share with you some of my favourite ways for sharing my affiliate offers frequently and repeatedly.

  • Break up your content with affiliate banners and other graphics - make sure these link bank to your affiliate offer with your affiliate link
  • Link to products within your text - I like to do this within the body of the text like this, but also to have more blatant links like this: click THIS LINK to check out my xx
  • Post images with links to your affiliate offers on Pinterest - this never used to be possible but over the last years Pinterest have relaxed their rules around promoting affiliate offers
  • Link to your affiliate offers when mailing your email list
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Top Tip: Make a spreadsheet and Google drive file where you can keep easy access to your affiliate links and your affiliate graphics/banners

One thing it's important to remember is that there are still rules and regulations around affiliate marketing, namely disclosing that there are affiliate links within your post.

The best way to do this is to make sure on your terms and conditions page you disclose that you do occasionally promote affiliate offers, and if a sale is made you, may receive a commission.

Check out my affiliate disclaimer below.

It can be tempting to go ham once you discover the potential of affiliate marketing to add additional revenue streams to your business. But I highly encourage you to choose your affiliate offers wisely and only promote products or services you've used personally or can stand behind.

Why?


Well you don't want to damage your credibility or lose sales to your own business by trying to encourage people to buy low quality/value products that you yourself wouldn't want to spend your money on.

4.4 How to Track Your Affiliate Marketing Success

It's important that you have a process for how you track and monitor your affiliate marketing success. This is especially important if you're using a number of networks or have signed up for lots of different programmes independently.

That being said, this doesn't need to become something that you're obsessed with. I'd recommend that you check your affiliate sales once every fortnight.

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Top Tips: An average affiliate payout on physical products is between 2-5%, and many affiliate networks have a cap on your earnings before they pay out. This is often between $50-100, so as a new affiliate it may take a while before you reach the payout threshold.

How to create custom affiliate links

In order to be able to see how the traffic you sent converted into sales, it's critically important that everytime you add a link to one of your affiliate partners, you use your customised affiliate links.

Sometimes there is only one link that you use for everything. Other times you'll need to customise your link for that particular product, but in that case there's often a link generator where you add the parameters, and the link is created for you.


Key takeaways from chapter #4

  • What affiliate marketing is, and how you can use it to add additional revenue streams to your business
  • How to get signed up with Amazon and Shareasale affiliate networks
  • How to track your affiliate sales and how to create your custom affiliate links

ACTION TASKS

Start paying attention to how other brands and bloggers are using affiliate marketing to generate additional sales. Pay attention to the link placement, link structure and the products that they're using.

Well done, you just completed chapter #4

If you completed this chapter, you'll understand what affiliate marketing is, my two favourite affiliate networks, and some of my top tips for how you can use these platforms to increase income and revenue streams from your brand blog.