Affiliate marketing is in many ways the ideal for those working from home. You don’t have to create items to sell online. You don’t have to buy inventory and fulfill orders. Your only obligation is to market the product or service offered through the affiliate program.
Furthermore, you can choose from a wide range of affiliate programs, and you can pursue more than one at a time. That’s why affiliate marketing is a great way to make online money. Let’s learn more about how to work from home as an affiliate.
Choose a Compatible Product or Service
Affiliate marketing today requires authenticity. Don’t recommend something you haven’t at least tried. Ideally, you’re recommending a product or service you use. On the flip side, your affiliate marketing attempts will fail if you’re promoting something that is not in line with your image.
For example, a Mommy blogger promoting menu-planning tools to save time or kid-friendly apps is reasonable. If she advertised freeze-dried food or anti-virus software, there needs to be a very good tie into her overall brand if you don’t want it to hurt your image. On the other hand, camping and outdoors blog could hawk everything from freeze-dried food to GPS software, while promoting baby products would turn off their readers.
Develop a Marketing Strategy
Most people who join multilevel marketing programs quit after they’ve sold the product to their closest friends and family. You’re not going to succeed in affiliate marketing if that’s your default approach. It is rarely good enough to post the link on your blog and assume ten or twenty percent of your readers will click on it.
One option is creating a blog post about trying the product or service. You’ll get extra points with readers if you’re doing a comparison post since you clearly aren’t endorsing one specific product. A comparison between X and Y will also attract people in the later stage of the sales funnel. A side benefit of this approach is that you can promote a variety of products and services, one or two blog posts apiece.
Another option is sticking with a small set of affiliate products. You need to create content to market it. You can create one post when you initially get it and comparison pieces. Then you need to move on to content marketing or logical tie-ins if you want to continue to keep it in front of your audience.
You can then work from home as a marketer, promoting your posts via social media and interacting with readers to increase engagement. Build an email list and cross-post with other bloggers.
Pay Attention to the Fine Print
Bloggers can get into trouble if they don’t disclose their affiliate relationships when promoting a product or service. Make certain that you disclose the fact that you’re sending them to an affiliate link. This may be a disclaimer next to the “buy” or “signup” button, or it may be a notice somewhere on the website.
Be aware of any rules you may be agreeing to abide by when you sign up for an affiliate program. For example, they may not allow you to sign up for the affiliate program if your blog or website content is considered hostile to advertisers. Other affiliate programs require you to post privacy policies and disclosure policies on your website. Google requires all affiliate links to have a no-follow attribute. That will result in a penalty that downgrades your website in search results.
Don’t Try to Do Too Much
Your website or blog will come off as spammy if you’re mixing and matching affiliate links and online ads. You’ll also turn off readers if every post consists of marketing content. Focus on creating quality content, and tie-in affiliate links where applicable. Unless you’re doing a “top 10” list or “X versus Y” article, limit yourself to one affiliate link per post and don’t promote your affiliate links in every single post.
