How to promote affiliate links?

Choosing the right affiliate products to promote is obviously crucial for your success. But so is choosing the right promotional strategies.  As a blogger who wants to monetize their website (or audience, that is) with affiliate links, here’s what you should do:

• Insert affiliate links in your product reviews and tutorials
• Add affiliate links to your resources page
• Place affiliate banners on your website
• Use affiliate links in your newsletters and email sequences
• Embed affiliate links into your video content
• Promote affiliate links on social media and forums
• Link to your affiliate offers directly on Medium
• Include affiliate links to your own products

Insert affiliate links in your product reviews and tutorials

As a content-focused affiliate marketer, you probably already know that you need these two content types: reviews and tutorials. Reviews, which we can lump together with comparisons, are your moneymakers. They target people with purchase intent and bring actual sales. Tutorials together with guides are more for building traffic and authority in your chosen niche.

But you need both to build a brand around your website. Not all of your content should be for profit only. Your key to creating sticky content is to develop a deep understanding of the products you’re promoting. A strong product and user-focus combined with keyword-optimized titles and subheadings is how you get qualified traffic. Without forgetting link building, of course.

Try to cover everything that a potential customer would like to know about the product. Use examples and screenshots and don’t shy away from pointing out potential weaknesses of the product. Share your first-hand experience and tips. Transparency goes a long way.

Finally, insert at least one CTA on the page using your affiliate link. And if you can offer perks such as discounts, you may leverage that angle and ask your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, for example, to get a special deal. Just don’t try to rank for discount-related keywords in the hopes of making easy money. That’s not allowed by most affiliate programs and will only lead to the termination of your affiliate account.

Add affiliate links to your resources page

A resources page can be a list of your top tools and products that you endorse and use yourself. Just don’t go overboard with your list by adding items that you’re not actually using regularly. Include a short description of each product and add your affiliate link to it, preferably one that leads visitors to a free trial. As with all promotional pages, make sure to add a disclosure, too.

Place affiliate banners on your website

While contextual links are usually more effective in driving sales than banners, there’s room for both. Banners have the advantage of being visually appealing.

Below is one of our top banners used by Supermetrics partners based on unique hits.

These are easy to place on the sidebar of your page, header, footer, or within your content. Your affiliate link is automatically embedded into the code that you just copy and paste to your page. 

Generally speaking, the higher on your page the banner is placed, the more clicks you get. On the other hand, visitors with purchase intent usually read your content more carefully.

Because banners look more promotional than contextual links and many visitors ignore them, it’s better to use them sparingly. But they work for other marketing channels as well, for example social media and email campaigns.

Use affiliate links in your newsletters and email sequences 

Sending out emails to your blog subscribers means that you must already have an audience. Creating an email sign-up form on your website is a good starting point.

Your newsletter serves several functions. It’s a way to build a relationship with your readers, distribute your blog content, and promote your affiliate products. In that order, preferably.

Getting a visitor to sign up for your newsletter means that your emails should at least share useful content. And if possible, they should also provide perks such as your own exclusive guides that are not published online or special deals on your affiliate products.

Here’s an example of Ryan Robinson’s email sequence for people interested in starting a blog.

If you decide to create a sequence of emails that you send to each new subscriber, maybe don’t place any affiliate links on the first email. Build trust first. And if you start sending a regular monthly newsletter, for example, one affiliate link per newsletter is probably enough promotion.

Embed affiliate links into your video content

Videos are a good way to complement your written blog content. In fact, it’s possible to repurpose your old blog articles and turn them into videos. And vice versa, of course.

So, how do you embed affiliate links into your videos? You add them to your video description and also mention them verbally in your video. Simple as that.

Promote affiliate links on social media and forums

We’ve written extensive guides on using affiliate links on specific social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok, and forums such as Quora and Reddit. You can find these articles in the affiliate growth category of our Supermetrics blog.

To promote affiliate links in these channels, you need to have an audience consisting of potential buyers. The benefit of social media is that in many channels you can place direct affiliate links in your posts. This is the case with Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, for example.

But success of direct linking to your affiliate offers depends entirely on your audience. And because promotional content is frowned upon by most users on social media, you’re usually better off linking to your in-depth blog posts that contain the affiliate links. Direct sales from social media are rare. That’s why it’s more suitable for driving traffic to your affiliate website.

Not all social media channels and forums match with your affiliate product. For example, TikTok and Instagram are not ideal for promoting Supermetrics. Because they don’t have the right demographic. Although, marketers who use Supermetrics could run ads on those channels. 

On forums like Quora and Reddit, you’re not allowed to place affiliate links in your posts directly. Doing so would be considered spam and result in your account being banned. But you can direct both organic and paid traffic from those forums to your affiliate site.

Link to your affiliate offers directly on Medium

Unlike forums and guest post websites, content-publishing communities such as Medium allow direct placement of affiliate links in your posts. But like all marketing channels, users will ultimately be the ones to decide how much promotion is acceptable.

Stuffing too many links in your Medium articles isn’t going to drive any traffic or sales. But adding your affiliate link at the end of a useful, informative article can be an effective strategy.

Include affiliate links to your own products

Many affiliates also sell their own products such as ebooks and online courses. Adding your affiliate link to a section inside your product where it makes contextual sense is another opportunity for your promotion. Just keep it subtle to avoid turning it into a sales pitch.