How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog

Rob Fraser here…

I’ve been blogging off and on since late 2010 when I first got started in making money online.  Looking back, my biggest regret is taking major breaks from blogging.  I’ve watched multiple marketers go from obscurity to a higher level of success through blogging 100%.

I’ve blogged from early 2011 to 2012 ish and then took a long break until the beginning of 2019.  I still get people signing up in various affiliate programs to this day from some of my old blog posts so I know the firsthand value in maintaining and growing a blog.

I will also share that my area of affiliate marketing is mostly in the biz op (business opportunity space) or the direct sales type opportunities.  What I’m going to share in this post will apply to network marketing or basic affiliate marketing as well.

It’s not you wanting to promote to earn those affiliate commissions, but the structure of your business on the back end and blogging is one of those structures.

Blogging is a great way to generate targeted traffic and the more targeted traffic you get is the more potential money you can make.  Targeted traffic is simply people on the internet who are interested in what you are blogging about.

In this post, I’m going to focus on what I do in affiliate marketing and specifically, the affiliate marketing business opportunity space or direct sales as some folks call it!

 

 

What Result I Want To Give You?

By the time you read this post, you will know how to do affiliate marketing with a blog.  You will know exactly how I utilize my blog, how to get traffic, and how I document my journey.

I also want to share with you where to learn how to blog and the basics in using a blog for affiliate marketing.

Before I get into affiliate marketing with a blog, I’m going to share this definition of affiliate marketing from Wikipedia:

“Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts”

And let’s define blog from Wikipedia while we are at it

“A blog (a truncation of “weblog“)[1] is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual,[citation needed] occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, “multi-author blogs” (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other “microblogging” systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.”

Getting these definitions out of the way makes it easier to understand what I’m sharing below.

 

So how do we combine affiliate marketing and blogging?

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – Why Consider Blogging

Affiliate marketing is “performance-based marketing” and one of the easiest ways to market affiliate products, programs, and services is to blog.

Blogging is creating content relating to what type of affiliate products, programs, and services you want to promote.  In my case, I specialize in affiliate marketing business opportunities and trading bitcoin and because of this, I will blog about everything relating to what I do.

I blog about different tools I’m using such as different page builders and autoresponders.  I blog about different trainings I’ve gone through like the Affiliate boot camp or what I’ve learned from the One Funnel Away Challenge

I tell folks all the time to consider blogging because it is one of the best ways to get traffic to your websites.  With blogging you can write under your own name of have a branded alias.  When it comes to some of the other methods of marketing, blogging seems to be the easiest to get into.

There are 3 main marketing methods and I’ve lumped them into the “3 C’s” and those 3 c’s are clicks, content, and connections.

Clicks is paid advertising, content is blogging, video, and social media posting, and connections is simply building your network which can be on or offline.

Of the three marketing categories, blogging is the “lowest barrier to entry” and that means it’s generally fairly easy for people to type instead of posting on social media or jumping on camera.

A lot of people I talk to don’t want to be on camera for YouTube and don’t want to bother family and friends on social media.

 

Check out my podcast episode on affiliate marketing with a blog below!

Check out what Sean Ogle from Location Rebel has to say about doing affiliate marketing with a blog…

“Here’s How to Start Affiliate Marketing on Your Blog in 8 Steps:

• Step 1: Create a Website or A Blog
• Step 2: Choose an Industry, and then Niche Down
• Step 3: Research Products in Your Niche that You Can Review
• Step 4: Sign Up for the Amazon Affiliate Program
• Step 5: Find affiliate programs for the other products you want to review
• Step 6: Create content in the form of tutorials, review posts, resource pages or emails and use your affiliate link
• Step 7: Optimize the page and track your rankings in Google
• Step 8: Rinse and Repeat!”

What I’m going to do is basically running down the steps he has laid out and share with you the resources I used to complete each of these steps!

Sean says that step 1 is to create a website or blog!  Great!  Now where do we learn how to do that?

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – Where to learn to blog

As I mentioned in previous articles, Wealthy Affiliate is a great resource to learn how to blog.  You will also learn the basics on how to setup a blog, how to do keyword research, and tons of training on blogging and traffic generation.

Traffic generation is key, because that’s the whole point of blogging is to get people to read it.  If no one is reading, or at least seeing your blog, then no money will be made!

The best piece of advice I can give you here is that you will never feel like you know what you are doing 100%!  Just keep an open mind and always strive to learn new things while simultaneously taking action.  In the Marines, we called this “shooting from the hip” which is taking action and adjusting as you go.

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – How to setup your blog

Learning how to setup your blog can be learned at Wealthy Affiliate as well, however I will say that setting up your blog can be a life-long process!

What I mean by that is along your journey, you will come across different blogs and websites that you get different ideas from.

Case in point, I’ve read a lot of long blogs lately and have seen blogging putting in a table of contents on their blog.  Now, that isn’t a part of the Wealthy Affiliate training (or at least I haven’t seen it yet), but that’s something I’m going to incorporate.

Probably in this very post!

That is what I mean about setting up your blog being a life-long process.  What really helps me not get too overwhelmed when I’m learning and taking action is a framework I’ve discovered along the way.  The framework can be summed up in four words.

Learn, apply, document, and share!

What that looks like is everyday I try to learn something new about marketing.  What I learn can come from any of the programs or courses I’ve purchased and become an affiliate for.

I apply what I’ve learned to my own business by taking action.  If I do not get a result, then I go back to learning something new.  If I do get a result, then I document and share my result.

Documentation can be in the form of blog, videos, social media posts, and etc.

This same framework I apply to my own blogging, YouTubing, and now podcasting!

Wealthy Affiliate does provide the basics and you can get started there, but you will always come across new implementations you may want to use and will always be adjust and improving.

Always adjusting and improving is what marketing is all about!

In step 2 Sean says we need to choose an industry and niche down.

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – Pick a Niche

One of the biggest things I could share with you is the importance of picking a niche.  Pick something that you can talk about a lot, are passionate about, or something you’d like to learn.  I personally feel that blogging about something you’d love to learn is the best route.

In my case, I like to blog about what I’m learning along my entrepreneurial journey with regards to blogging and affiliate marketing.  I talk about how I started, how ugly my blog is, where I’m learning about different plugins, and etc.

This allows the reader to go on a journey with me and literally see how my journey unfolds in front of your very eyes.

People can then come along for the ride and not be in a position to judge.  One thing I have learned about being online is that there will always be someone ahead of you and someone behind you.  You don’t need to wait until you have everything perfect.

There are people you can help who are just a few steps behind you and when you invite them along, you can always provide the next steps for them because you will learn that next step for yourself, and then share it with your readers.

There is a saying “learn, do, teach” and this talks about the same thing.  You don’t need to be miles ahead of someone to teach them.  You just need to be a little bit ahead.  I’ve heard a story where a college professor faked his way through teaching a semester and in the end ‘they’’ asked him how he was able to teach and fool everyone.

He said it was very simple.  The night before his class, he just read the “next chapter.”  Affiliate marketing with blogging is the exact same.  Just learn something, apply it, and if you get a result then document and share it.

Step 3 Sean says to research products in your niche that you can review

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – Review Programs, Products, and Services

One of the easiest ways to use your blog for affiliate marketing is to actually purchase the programs, products, and services you are an affiliate for and typing up a review on them.  Share your experiences, lessons learned, and also compare competitor’s products.

In my case, I review different programs, products, services, and methods to earn income at home with affiliate marketing and soon trading bitcoin.

• Step 4: Sign Up for the Amazon Affiliate Program
• Step 5: Find affiliate programs for the other products you want to review

In step 4 Sean recommends signing up for the Amazon Affiliate program.  Amazon has recently had a huge change to their affiliate program so this may not be an avenue you still want to pursue.  You can check out the huge change Amazon made here on an article from CNBC

Step 5, Sean recommends finding affiliate programs, products, or services that you also may want to review.

In my case, I love network marketing but not traditional network marketing.  This has caused me to find affiliate marketing and specialize in the business opportunity space.

I’ve since found a number of programs, products, and services that I love to promote and blog about!

Find something that hits that sweet spot for you in between something you love, can create content about, and that you love learning about.

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – Join Affiliate Programs

There are many different types of affiliate programs to join out there.  Depending on what niche you pick determines what affiliate programs you will join.

I focus on affiliate marketing and the online business opportunity space so my affiliate programs that I join and promote are all related to programs, products, and services that will help people create their own online affiliate marketing business.

You can go to your favorite search engine and type in whatever your niche is + affiliate program and see what comes up!

For example, if you love dogs then your search would be “dog affiliate programs” and you would type that in without the quotes!

• Step 6: Create content in the form of tutorials, review posts, resource pages or emails and use your affiliate link

In my case, I blog reviews about programs, products, and services that I use and am in.  I also create content around how to implement these different pieces and when I do that always generate interest from others interested in the same things (affiliate marketing, working from home, tools, training, and traffic).

The more content I create is the more interest I will also generate.  This process has taking my YouTube channel to 7900 ish subscribers and growing.  The more videos I created, more people started asking me specific questions about different topics and that would give me ideas for more content.

This is the next step when people start asking you questions because they see you as an authority and will generally rather do business with you over someone who isn’t.

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – List Building

One of my first mentors in affiliate marketing told me this quote that he got from his mentor over and over.  The quote is “I’m in the lead generation business.  Generating leads is what I do” and I don’t know who his mentor is that originally shared that with him, but this is what we as affiliate marketers do.

In the business opportunity space specifically, we (as affiliate marketers) tend to identify and brand ourselves with the companies, products, or services that we are an affiliate for.  I know I have made this mistake in the beginning myself.

We list build or as my mentor said “we generate leads!”  Once you shift your mindset to generating leads, then that is the focus and the money and success will follow.

At the end of the day, affiliate marketing is a numbers game and the more people on your list (or traffic that you own) is the more of a chance you will have at earning a commission through an affiliate sale.

We list build on our blog by having some type of list building software (check out My Free List Building Software or my Power Lead System Review).

Once we have a list building software we then place links around our blog to encourage people to click on them and sign up for our email newsletter.  I also recommend reading 2 Places to learn affiliate marketing fast!

It’s impossible to put everything in one blog post as there is much to learn about generating leads and also following up via an autoresponder.

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – Document your journey

Before I get too deep into how to do affiliate marketing with a blog, I want to talk about some of the reasons why to consider blogging to begin with.

Blogging for me as given me consistent traffic and passive exposure to my affiliate links for the past 10 years.

I haven’t been blogging consistently since I started and, as I shared earlier, one of my biggest regrets is that I took long breaks off.  The biggest piece of advice I can give you is when you start, to just keep going.

There are 3 main ways of building an online affiliate marketing business.  I call these 3 main ways the “3 C’s” and those are clicks, content, and connections.

When I say clicks, I’m referring to paid traffic.  Content is blog posts, articles, press releases, videos, podcasts, and social media posts to name a few.  Connections is simply your network of people on or offline you know.

Blogging obviously fits in the content category and is the backbone of everything that I do.

Blogging is passive marketing and what I mean by that is you are creating a piece of work in the hopes that someone will read it and take action.  Unlike building connections on social media (which is more active marketing), blogging has a low barrier to entry in that it’s not too challenging for anyone to type up a post compared to getting on camera for YouTube or actively networking on social media.

Your blogging efforts grow on itself over time.  Think about if you have 1 blog post on the internet working for you 24/7 through rain, sleet, or snow sending traffic to your affiliate links.

Now compare that to having 100 blog posts doing the same.  1000.  2000.  The point is the more content you have out on the internet is the more traffic (people) you will get to your blog.  More traffic ultimately will equal more income.

 

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – Where to Learn How to Blog

So now that we covered how important blogging is and you want to learn, I want to share where is the best place to learn how to blog (in my humble and honest opinion).

My highest recommendation for learning how to blog would be Wealthy Affiliate.  Wealthy Affiliate takes you from the ground floor basics to advanced blogging.  In fact, Wealthy Affiliate is where I’ve learned how to put this blog together.  Don’t judge as it’s still a work in progress!

Wealthy Affiliate is also a very active community of people that are all blogging and going through the training that Wealthy Affiliate provides as well.  You can ask questions, go through the live trainings, and review the main pre-recorded trainings as well.

I’ve found the best way to blog is to write about what I’m learning about.  I follow my framework (which I will share below) and every day I learn something new and apply it.  If I don’t get results, then I go back and learn something else that’s new.  I then apply it.  If I get results, then I document (on a blog) and share it (social media, YouTube, podcast, email list, etc)

I apply my framework to blogging.  My framework helps me to become better at generating traffic with my blog as well as making it more optimized in the process.  When I say optimized, I mean for the search engines so I can rank high and also for generating leads from people who read my blog.

Russell Brunson in his book Traffic Secrets talks about traffic that you earn and how to convert that into traffic that you own.  Traffic that you earn is from content that you produce.  Blog posts, YouTube videos, and social media posts is all considered content and the traffic that you get from that is traffic that you earn.

Now people just watching your videos and reading your blog posts isn’t enough.  The idea is to entice those readers to click on your affiliate links and opt in to your email list.  Once those readers are on your email list, then you can email them anytime you want, as long as they are subscribed.

Your email list is traffic that you own!

I will also add that it’s not just the blogging skill you will have to learn.  In the beginning you can just start with blogging yes, but you will eventually have to learn list building, email marketing, copy, storytelling, and a number of other skills.

I will say from personal experience that it comes through experience.  In the beginning, I just started and then as I started getting feedback I started to adjust.  I will also say that no feedback is feedback as well.

What we do as affiliate marketers is constantly test, tweak, adjust, and continuously find what works and what doesn’t.  There is no “end place” where you will have all of the information and pieces put together.  This is a skill and lifestyle shift.

In my case, I’ll be blogging, shooting videos, and marketing for the rest of my life.

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – Main Purpose of Blogging

The main reasons I blog are to generate traffic, provide training, review products and programs, and document my journey.  There is always something to blog about and rather than posting on social media all day or on classified ad sites, I’d rather blog.

I use keyword research tools provided by my Wealthy Affiliate account to find out what people are searching for and then create blog posts that answer those questions.  I also get questions from people who have joined me in various affiliate products and I turn those into blog posts as well.

The more blog articles you have out there on the internet is the more traffic you will get.  Traffic simply means people reading your blog.  The more traffic, or people, is the more in potential commissions you can make from people deciding to purchase from your affiliate links.

Niche down and create content that will attract people who would be interested in your affiliate products as a solution to their needs.

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – What to Blog About

As I mentioned earlier, you can blog about lots of topics from reviews of affiliate products, network marketing companies, how to information, your personal story and experiences, and more.

Before getting deep into “what to blog about” I’d suggest figuring out who your ideal client is.  The more you know who your ideal client is and their pain points, problems, what keeps them up at night, and etc is the more you will be able to create content that will attract them.

In my case, I’m obsessed with all things involving getting more traffic with my blog.  If you wrote blog posts talking about getting more traffic to your blogs, then I’d be interested in reading what you got.  Taking that a step further, if you are an affiliate for a blogging and traffic getting course, then I’d be super interested in that, especially if I saw that on your blog.

Do you think I’d buy something like that?  You bet I would!

The best thing to blog about is pain points your ideal clients are having and how your affiliate product provides solutions.  This pre-frames your affiliate products and can create income!

The whole idea is to maintain a “weblog” or a log on the web of your activities and progress.  A log on the web or weblog has since been shortened to blog!  Fun fact!

It doesn’t have to be pretty and as you can see with mine, it’s fairly basic.  You don’t have to be a graphic designer to have an effective blog.

• Step 8: Rinse and Repeat!

This is the stage where I am at.  The more programs, products, and services I join gives me more content ideas and the cycle continues indefinitely.  There is no cap or ceiling to how many things you can be an affiliate for.  Just look at this as online real estate and you are working on growing your real estate on a daily basis.

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – How I Use My Blog

I use my blog to document my journey, review different programs, list build, and to be honest it’s semi therapeutic.  I can look back on some of my old posts and writing style and see how I’ve progressed.  I can vent and express myself different than if I was shooting videos or posting on social media.

I’ve watched a video from Jeff Lerner where he shared that he was completely obsessed with expanding his online foot print above everything else.  Blogging is just that, an online foot print that grows as you add to it.  The larger your foot print, the bigger your success.

On my blog I have links to promote my various direct sales affiliate marketing opportunities.  I write about them and also have banners placed around to promote my different programs.

I use my blog to create content that people who are interested in affiliate marketing would find useful.  On all of my blog posts I have links to click on that will get people onto my email lists.

Affiliate marketing with a blog really is just that simple.  I will say that yes, it’s simple, but it’s not easy.  Continuously coming up with content can be a challenge and it was for me in the beginning.

What helped me was finally getting blessed with the framework of learning, applying, documenting, and sharing.  Once I got that framework in place, then if I wasn’t able to come up with any content, then that was telling me that I need to get back into studying and learning some new things about marketing.

As I mentioned earlier, Wealthy Affiliate is a great place to study and learn how to use a blog for affiliate marketing.  I’d suggest grabbing your free account and connect with the community there.  My blog is far from perfect and in fact, it’s pretty basic but it works.

I apply my own framework to this blog.  Every day I learn something new about blogging, SEO, different features, and etc and as I learn, I apply it.  While I’m applying what I’ve learned, I blog about it and it creates constant content.  There is always someone out there wanting information, especially when it comes to specifics.

One thing I’ve learned is that no matter what the topic is large or small, there is a group of people wanting information about it.  On the internet, there is always people “ahead” of you and always people “behind” you.  The best thing you can do is help (by blogging) the people who are behind you.

Keep doing that and you will start to get traction and more results.

I also use my blog for training, sharing how to information with my team, and to document what I’m currently doing.

• Step 7: Optimize the page and track your rankings in Google

This is something you will learn from Wealthy Affiliate.  I will share a few things about search engine optimization, tracking your rankings, and optimizing your blog posts.

I have been blogging off and on since late 2010.  I have had blog posts that are poorly written, unorganized, and I’ve done everything wrong from an optimizing and SEO standpoint and have still earned affiliate commissions from it.

Seth Godin is another high-level marketer that has a ton of people following his blog and he doesn’t do anything as far as optimizing and following the rules regarding how long your blog posts should be.

There are other factors like networking with other bloggers, if you are building an email list, social media, and etc, that will determine how much traffic your blog gets.

With that being said, I always suggest to do Google searches and look at the pages that come up high in the rankings.  Look at their structure, if they are linking in and out of their blog.  How long are their articles?

A few key points are 1000 work minimum for blog posts.  Try to include a few “inner links,” link to outside high trafficked websites and also have “content rich” blog posts.  Content rich meaning additional videos and pictures to break up the text and provide a cleaner experience.

Don’t “keyword stuff” your blog posts.  Just talk in your natural tone.  In the book Traffic Secrets by Russell Brunson he talks about how you “align” your purpose with the platform you are publishing on.

Publishing is simply producing content.  I “publish” videos on YouTube and I “publish” articles here on this blog.

If I’m wanting to publish on Google, then I have to ensure that I’m creating the best content I can and also giving the users a great experience.  The same goes for YouTube and any other platform you are “publishing” on.

Social media follows these rules as well.  If you are spammy, then you will get a reduced “reach.” If you are being authentically engaging and sharing things that interest people in one way or another, then you will be rewarded.

How to do Affiliate Marketing with a Blog – Additional Resources

In addition to blogging, you will need some sort of lead funnel type software or page builder.  You will need to have follow on and advanced training and a mentor.  Also having an affiliate marketing network to tap into makes things easier.

The Affiliate Marketing Boot Camp as another great place to learn affiliate marketing and get some of the tools you need.

2 lead funnel software or page builders I recommend are Lead Lightning from the Power Lead System tool suite and affiliate program and the second I highly recommend is Click Funnels.

In my opinion Lead Lightning and the upgraded Power Lead System is for folks who are in pre-school up to graduating High School.  Click Funnels is the Freshman in college up to a Doctorate degree.

Where ever you consider yourself on the spectrum is which product I’d recommend for you.  I personally started with Lead Lightning back in 2011 and finally went full time in 2015.  Around 2017, I picked up Click Funnels and read all of Russell Brunson’s books.  I was feeling stagnant and not progressing in my own mind which is why I picked up Click Funnels.

Marketing always changes and it’s stays the same.  As weird as that sounds.  Different platforms to market may come to rise but there are a few basics that never change.

You will also need an autoresponder service such as Aweber or GetResponse.

As a recap, you will need a Wealthy Affiliate account, Lead Lightning/Click Funnels, and Aweber or GetResponse.  I personally prefer Aweber, but that’s just my opinion.  I’ll post about these two autoresponders in depth in the future.

If you are interested in working with me or checking out my perpetual traffic plan, then click here!

Until next time!

Rob Fraser