Affiliate marketing is still one of the leading ways to make passive income. It can even become a big source of revenue for your blog. The key to maximize affiliate marketing income depends on producing valuable content and engagement with readers. However, affiliates are only paid when a buyer ends up buying from your affiliate links. This post discusses affiliate marketing tips for beginners who want to maximize their affiliate earnings.

Let me remind you.

Affiliate marketing is not as simple to execute as it appears. Basically, it’s about promoting someone else product over a commission rate. So, the idea is to convert readers into buyers on your blog. If you want to increase your affiliate earnings then you will have to compel readers to take some sort of action on your website. It can even be a newsletter subscription, a purchase through your affiliate links, or even joining your Facebook group.

When you persuade people to take action on your blog, affiliate marketing becomes easier. To achieve such results, you’ve to engage with your readers.

Do you want to start a blog and make money? Use my comprehensive tutorial to create your own blog from scratch. This guide has helped many new bloggers with their new blogs. It’s time to go blogging.

Well, there are some fundamental tips for affiliate marketing which you should follow. Affiliate marketing is also one of my income sources. From past two years, I have learned smart affiliate marketing strategies from experts in this field. Trust me, it has helped me so much!

It’s time for you to learn how to be a successful affiliate marketer.

23 Affiliate Marketing Tips For Beginners To Pay Attention

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. It means that if you make a purchase through affiliate links, it will help me earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. 

To help you generate better results, here are some best affiliate marketing tips for beginners. Just go through these affiliate marketing techniques and determine what changes you should make on your website.

As said, it can be a great income source only when done properly. There has to be a proper affiliate marketing strategy in hand. However, Using these tips will help you get significant results.

If you have recently started a new blog then you must read how to rank your new affiliate site on google. This is the most comprehensive guide full of SEO strategies.

Let’s get started with the first affiliate marketing tip.

1- Choose a niche first

Every now or other day, people emphasize on choosing a niche. The main idea is to be specific in what you promote on your blog. The reason is that when you start a blog, you build an audience. Choosing a niche will help you cover a topic in detail with a variety of content for your audience. One main topic can be divided into other sub-categories. People will also identify you and your blog as the main content source. In that way, whenever you recommend something on your blog, readers will respond.

They will more likely to read more from you about products you promote.

• The products you use
• How using certain products benefit you
• What are the pros and cons of using such products
• Is there any drawback of using the product?
• What was your personal experience of using the product?
• Are you satisfied with the monthly subscription to a product or service?
• How affordable is it?

All it starts with covering a niche and building an audience.

If you are just promoting everything that comes to your way then you’re making it complicated for yourself, and the readers.

Initially, pick the categories that resonate best with your niche.

There are sites that are totally dedicated to affiliate marketing. Look at the examples below;

BabyGearLab is a website for babies. It includes all the content related to pregnancy, babysitting, nursery, baby essentials etc. Almost everything about babies!

Nootriment is another supplement review website. They write content for targeted keywords and use affiliate links everywhere.

Likewise, there are affiliate marketing websites for gadgets, dog foods, finance, frugal living, kitchen essentials, parenting etc.

Choosing a focused niche site is more profitable in terms of affiliate marketing.

Related post: How To Make $1000 Per Month With Amazon Niche Site

2- Know your audience

One of the common missteps of new bloggers is that they don’t really know their audience. So, the most important tip to do affiliate marketing is to only promote products that your audience is interested in buying. Dig deep into knowing the needs and wants of your audience.

Consider all the reasons why someone is following your blog or social media channels.

What help do they need from you?

Make sure the affiliate products you’re promoting solves their problem.

If you write about beauty products, don’t put up affiliate links for cat foods because you are a pet owner or possibly cat foods convert well. The readers who are coming to your blog for beauty tips and beauty related products are not interested in cat food.

The bottom line here is to understand your audience needs.

Think about what products can solve your reader’s problems?

How your blog can be a trusted source?

3- Plan Keyword Search

A quick keyword research can bring you free Google traffic, and affiliate sales. Once you’ve found out affiliate products to promote on your blog, conduct a keyword research. Imagine if one of your keywords starts ranking on google then you can get direct traffic from Google without any marketing tactics.

I would definitely recommend using a paid tool for keyword research.

I personally use KWFinder and can’t recommend it enough. KWFinder is one of the best keyword research tools that helps to find out best performing keywords. Read my complete KWFinder review.

4- Produce valuable content

As far as my experience in blogging, I would emphasize on valuable content creation. Trust me, it’s getting harder to engage with the audience if the content is trash. Make sure, you invest time and hard work in generating great content for your blog.

Whatever you write, make it useful, informative and helpful for your readers.

If your blog fails to fulfill the audience needs, they will immediately navigate to someone else blog. As simple as that.

You don’t really want that, right?

Always create great content for your readers. Don’t give them a reason to leave your blog page. The valuable content will have the potential to compel readers to stay on the page and read your advice. If you write book reviews, then your reviews should be balanced. It should cover all the reasons why one should either buy or not buy a book. People would like your opinions on the book. So, your review needs to help your readers.

Make your content a go-to source for readers to make informed purchasing decisions. Give actionable takeaways so that your readers feel comfortable clicking on your affiliate links.

Related post: Ten Tips To Write A Perfect Blog Post That Gains Readers Attention

5- Follow SEO practices

Keyword research isn’t sufficient if you don’t really follow SEO tips on your blog. Learn to optimize your content with keywords. Make content SEO friendly. Emphasize more on creating content that Google loves to show on front pages.

If you’re a complete beginner, take help with Yoast WordPress plugin. It’s by far the best plugin to make your content SEO friendly. However, other SEO practices also include getting backlinks from relevant sites, writing unique and fresh content, using short sentences, appropriate use of keywords etc.

Related post: How To Do SEO For Your Blog Posts – The Complete Beginner’s Guide

6- Plan an affiliate marketing strategy

Creating an affiliate marketing strategy is an essential step to become a successful affiliate marketer. The best affiliate marketing strategy involves choosing a niche market, finding the businesses, providing creative promotional materials, building a strong brand, using different traffic sources etc.

It may not be as simple for new bloggers.

But, having a plan is an important factor. You can start with choosing relevant affiliate products, picking the right content formats, ideas to increase engagement with readers, content promotion strategies and implementing the effective affiliate marketing techniques.

Use these 7 best ways to promote affiliate products on your blog.

7- Pay Attention To Legal Guidelines

You can’t ignore the legal tips for affiliate marketing. This is another affiliate marketing tip for beginner bloggers.

Nowadays, affiliate networks have made it compulsory to abide by the legal guidelines. If you are new to affiliate marketing, you should pay attention to areas of compliance to avoid any future violations.

I highly suggest reading this ultimate legal guide for bloggers from a lawyer and a business coach. She also shared legal pages you must need on your site.

Everybody who uses affiliate marketing has to follow FTC disclosures. It’s important to make the disclosures crystal clear for the audience. FTC decided that if you’re not displaying affiliate disclosures on your website, social media or any other online platform then you’re deceiving your audience.

Read the whole guide to understand, and follow FTC rules.

8- Don’t forget to add affiliate disclaimers

Just a reminder to add affiliate disclaimers whenever you promote any affiliate product on your website or social media channels. For example, make a clear affiliate disclosure when you add affiliate links in your blog post.

Emily from myadabtablecareer has added an affiliate disclosure below her pin image in this post.

Some other places where you can mention the affiliate disclosures.

• Add disclosure in the privacy policy
• Use a disclosure in the sidebar
• Include a disclosure in your blog post
• Mention #aff, #ad, or #affiliate when promoting affiliate links on social media channels.
• Add affiliate disclosure in your emails.

Recommended: Don’t risk your blog without using affiliate disclaimer whenever required. I suggest this professional affiliate disclosure template by a lawyer and a business owner. Simply get it and add your name, website and simply, upload it on your website.

9- Choose affiliate products wisely

When it comes to discussing affiliate marketing tips for beginners, it’s important to talk about affiliate products. When choosing products, be careful. Because you cannot risk your audience trust for the sake of the commission. Sometimes, promoting irrelevant and poor quality products can lose your readership. It’s very important to read more about the quality of product, durability, rates, shipping etc.

Join these high paying affiliate networks to find affiliate products.

10- Work with quality affiliate networks

When applying for affiliate networks, consider following things.

• Quality of products
• Commission rates
• Affiliate management support
• Promotional materials like banners, ad, images etc
• Payment methods
• Cookie period

Furthermore, you can always ask other affiliate marketers for a review. Ask their experience working with a specific network.

11- Try different affiliate programs

If one affiliate program doesn’t really work in your favor, try a new program. Maybe, the new affiliate program offers better products or this is what your audience is looking for. It’s not really plain to read your audience minds and find out what products they typically buy. So, trying different programs can help to increase your affiliate income. Or, maybe find a relevant program that has a better payout, creative promotional ideas, discounts, coupons etc.

Related: Join these high paying affiliate marketing programs for free!

12- Only promote products which you’ve used or tried

This must be the number one tip for new affiliate marketers.

When you start out, only choose products which you’ve personally tried, and used. As you use the product, you will have more confident in recommending it to somebody else. For example, if you’ve read a book it becomes easier to write a review of that book. Or, if you’ve bought a service, or used any paid blogging tool, it gives you a clear understanding of how exactly was your experience.

I use Namecheap for buying domains and it’s excellent. I also use Tailwind for Pinterest scheduling and I will try it on Instagram too.

Now, when bloggers ask my recommendations, I can easily guide them. I do mention pros and cons of using a certain product. Click here to find my favorite blogging tools and resources.

To get success in affiliate marketing, you have to win reader’s trust.  Give an unbiased opinion. And, this will only happen if you promote products that you have already used.

You can still ask for samples before you become an affiliate. Or, you can use a trial feature before using any paid tool or subscription. I would still recommend investing money in trying out the products yourself.

For example. Freshbooks gives you a free 30-day trial before you pay for it. The tool is amazing for bloggers, freelancers, and small business owners. It keeps your business accounts, payments, and billing on track.

13- Build engagement with your audience

If you just keep on throwing affiliate links on your blog then it won’t possibly work. Start building engagement with your readers. Speak to them in the natural tone. Connect with them directly through your writing style. Write content that encourages readers to make a comment and discuss. Adding questions also increases engagement.

Tip: Include a compelling ‘click to action’ at the end of the posts which should invite readers to interact.

If you’d like to interact with other bloggers, and help each other promote then you can join my Facebook group. The Blogger’s Camp is a free community where we ask questions, collaborate and promote each other.

14- Get repeated visitors

The chances of affiliate sales increases when you’ve repeated visitors to your blog. It’s common that we don’t generally buy at the first choice. We often do comparisons or research before we make an informed purchasing decision. The best affiliate marketing tip is to hook your readers on their first visit.

Try to gain repeated visitors on your blog. When people will visit your blog over a repeated period of time, they will trust you more. The high possibility is that they will end up buying products, you recommend, on their second visit.

Related: How To Get 0-1000 Daily Blog Visitors

Are you interested in an affordable affiliate marketing course? Check out From Zero To Superhero course

15- Use content marketing strategies

Other than implementing SEO, it’s essential to follow content marketing techniques. You need to bring your content in front of the right audience. If your audience is most active on social media, use Facebook ads to drive traffic to your website. Consistent posting on Facebook can also bring you leads.

Pinterest is another great platform to promote your business and products. It’s the platform used by more than 200+ users. It is also a traffic-generating platform.

Many blogs and businesses use content marketing to drive traffic to their websites which ultimately gives a boost to their affiliate sales. Basically, you provide informative, entertaining and educational content to your audience with the aim of getting clickable action from them.

Related post: 61 Crazy Blog Traffic Ideas Ideas For New Bloggers

16- Be trustworthy

It is crystal clear that you need to be trustworthy to become a successful affiliate marketer. The audience should have trust in what you say. Your content, ideas, and products should be of high quality so that it doesn’t tarnish your blog reputation.

The uniqueness of your blog content will certainly make you stand out. Thus, establishes trust in your blog.

17- Make evergreen content

One of the best affiliate marketing tips is to write evergreen content. It should be timeless. As a blogger, you have different types of content to choose from.

But, evergreen content is the powerful style that has the potential to drive traffic for the long term. This type of content won’t fade away easily. Make sure you produce at least 4-5 evergreen blog posts that include affiliate links.

Here’s an insight from Zac Johnson.

“Affiliate marketing is always going to be here and it’s going to make money as long as you continue to focus on the value provided and user experience”

18- Affiliate marketing takes time – Be patient

This is the most important thing I often advise new bloggers. Whether you would like to increase blog traffic or blog income, the key is to be consistent. Don’t be impatient as you may get easily unmotivated. Some bloggers make $30 in their first month of affiliate marketing while few bloggers claim to make $1000.

Things work differently for everyone.

Just follow your own track, and stick to your goals.

19- Experiment different affiliate marketing techniques

If people don’t click on your affiliate banners, then use text links more. If your side widget area doesn’t really convert well, try using the resource page for the products you use. This is definitely one of the best affiliate marketing tips for beginners. Test it out!

Honestly, the results fluctuate every month. You will notice months when you make good affiliate income and then, you may have months with less or poor income results. Try experimenting with new techniques and analyze results.

20- Educate yourself – Invest in learning from experts

No matter you’re a beginner, or seasonal blogger there’s always something to learn from experts. Those experts do things that we don’t normally do. They remain updated with trends, events, summits, and changes that happen in the online world.

Save money to make an investment in the quality material.

Take my example. I have been buying Genius blogger’s toolkit from past two years. It includes some excellent resources for bloggers and small business owners. I took Lena Gott’s Blog Traffic Bootcamp course which was amazing. I also took different pinterest ebooks, and courses.

Recommended products for affiliate marketing;

Free Affiliate Partner List For Bloggers

Download this to get 250 of best affiliate marketing programs. It includes some really great affiliate partners which allows you to earn commissions up to $200 per sale and more.

Another one!

Arfa’s Recommendation: Do you want to make serious money with amazon affiliate program? Dale shares effective strategies in her ebook ‘Amazon Affiliate Influence’. If you are tired of only earning $2.54 every month with amazon then this ebook is for you. Loaded with practical strategies and examples, the ebook is an easy-to-read guide. I highly suggest this ebook and be sure to implement her strategies right away. Click here to check out.

21- Reach out to affiliate managers

Here’s another affiliate marketing tip for beginners.

It’s about reaching out to affiliate managers. You become an affiliate to promote someone else product so you’ve got the right to know the details of the product. If the content material is not sufficient, just reach out to them directly. If the affiliate links don’t work, send them an email.

Try to make good relationship with the affiliate manager. They will help you out with many things.

22- Don’t trick your audience – Never!

I keep on repeating the importance of having a loyal audience. It’s your readers who become buyers. These readers trust your content, creativity, and ideas you generate. So, never ever show dishonesty to them. If you are promoting an affiliate product, just mention it.

People still buy because they rely on your integrity, ability, and surety.

I make purchases through affiliate links. Everybody does. As bloggers, we make money with affiliate marketing. It’s how our blogging efforts are paid off.

Just know your audience know that you have added affiliate links.

If you went through a bad experience, mention that.

Do not try to attract the audience with sleazy marketing tactics.

23- Be willing to help others in social communities

Too often people need reviews, and advice before buying a new thing.

In that case, social media communities are genuinely helpful. Try to be there and see if people are looking for any advice. It doesn’t mean that you spam them with affiliate links and force them to buy. It’s wrong!

In fact, help them. Be willing to provide solutions to their queries. And, if they find you helpful they might ask your experience, review and maybe, an affiliate link. So, the point is to be helpful.

Bonus tip

Always stay relevant

Relevancy is the most important term today. Be relevant to the products you choose. Make sure your audience need such products. The products you choose should be relevant to your blog niche. Don’t approach irrelevant affiliate programs just for the sake of high commission rates.

Congrats, you just finished reading a monster post on affiliate marketing tips for beginners.

Hopefully, I didn’t overwhelm you with lots of quality information.

Guess what – I have got you covered! Simply, bookmark this post so that you can back again. Or, definitely pin the image to your pinterest boards.

But, I would love to get feedback on this blog post.

Did you like these affiliate marketing tips for beginners?

What was your main takeaway? I would love to get your input on this post.

Share your feedback, and tips in the comments below.