Building an affiliate blog that brings in steady, reliable traffic can be tricky if you’re relying on the usual channels to drive your readership. Luckily, there are many ways to generate traffic for your affiliate blog that don’t require you to invest any money upfront or rely heavily on ads or paid-for services to function well. Here are seven easy ways to generate traffic for your affiliate blog without breaking the bank in the process.
1) Choose a Topic Relevant to a Niche Audience
As an affiliate blogger, your most important job is to find a subject that people are searching for and that you can easily produce content about on a regular basis. If you start marketing tips or SEO advice, look at what kind of topics get traction in search engines. Look up popular guides and tutorials in your niche to see how much traffic they get and how many links they have pointing back to them. Here’s an affiliate marketing guide to get you started.
The key takeaway is to think about what your target audience is looking for—and figure out ways you can give it to them via affiliate sales.
2) Make Use of Visuals
While it may be tempting to create content that’s solely text-based, visuals can help break up text and keep readers engaged. Pictures and infographics can also help explain difficult topics, making your affiliate blog posts more informative and enjoyable.
In fact, HubSpot has found that incorporating imagery in marketing emails boosts their click-through rates by 12 percent! So make sure you’re using images wherever possible, even if they’re just a few choice photos of things you love or enjoy talking about. All you need is a smartphone and a simple camera app (like Instagram or Flickr) to get started!
3) Link out
Link out to third-party resources whenever possible. Not only does it demonstrate your credibility as an affiliate, but it also makes your content more valuable. Plus, when you link out and share other people’s content, they will often return the favor and link back to you! It’s a win-win situation.
One easy way to incorporate a lot of links into your affiliate blog is by creating infographics that combine graphics with compelling text and statistics. These can be shared across social media channels and even picked up by blogs in niche industries that want to drive traffic back to their own websites.
This type of marketing requires some design expertise or at least access to graphic design tools such as Canva, Adobe Illustrator, or Photoshop, so be sure you have those tools before attempting infographic creation. When picking images and topics for infographics, always consider image searches on Google and Pinterest because these are two very popular search engines that would help drive traffic back to your affiliate links!
4) Guest Post
If you’re a blogger and looking to make money, you might want to think about guest posting. Find some popular blogs in your niche and offer your services as a guest author. If they agree, send them a few samples of your work, and be prepared to send over full articles (with sources!) on topics that are relevant to their readership. Another way is by adding links at the end of your posts that go directly to relevant products.
5) Leverage Social Media Platforms
Get more traffic by using social media platforms. Facebook and Twitter are great places to start but don’t forget about Google+, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. All of these networks can help you reach new customers who have shown interest in your niche or topic area—or they may even drive people back to your own website.
Take time to experiment with each one and create a strategy that works best for you. Then share relevant content on those sites regularly; those short articles could generate far more traffic than you ever imagined!
6) Track and Test Different Promotion Methods
If you want your affiliate marketing business to grow, you need to treat it like a business. This doesn’t just mean setting up a separate email address and domain name, though those things are important first steps. You also need to develop and follow a game plan for when your network starts growing. Most people fail because they don’t have an organized strategy in place.
They end up simply posting links all over social media, or worse yet, spamming random forums and websites with ads—and not getting anywhere! Start by following a proven system that has worked for other successful marketers who came before you. Think of yourself as a businessman or woman now.
7) Treat it Like a Business!
If you want your affiliate marketing efforts to pay off, you must treat your endeavor like a business. And I don’t mean that in some lofty you should love what you do and work 24/7! kind of way. I simply mean that if you approach affiliate marketing like any other kind of small business—for example, by making a daily or weekly plan—you’ll be able to manage things more efficiently and improve your odds of success.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you have a day job or are primarily focused on building an income through affiliate sales—the core principles apply either way. What’s important is that you commit to taking consistent action, even if it’s just for a few hours each week, and that you see your affiliate marketing business as an entity separate from everything else in your life. Once you do that, the sky’s the limit!
8) Get Involved in the Community
One great way to promote your affiliate marketing business is to get involved in the online community. This could mean participating in forums, blogs, or social media groups that focus on your niche or topic area. Not only will you learn a lot and make connections with potential customers, but you may also be able to get help with specific problems or challenges you’re facing. Many of these communities are happy to share their successes (and failures) with others, so be sure to take advantage of that!
