Affiliate Marketing: The Most Profitable Way to Make Money Online

Affiliate Marketing: The Most Profitable Way to Make Money Online

According to a source, there are more than 170 million blogs..

Most of these blogs get less than 1,000 visitors per month, and the harsh reality is, they fail to actually make a decent living from their blog. In last few years, blogging has got more popularity but the fact which is still unchanged is most bloggers never make money!

Internet is flooded with articles like “The secret to make $5000 per month easily with a blog” but people are still struggling and they never see the income that they were promised.

If you are a Good writer and your blog has good traffic, you should try Affiliate Marketing. It’s the best and probably the easiest method to make money online. Through Affiliate Marketing, Bloggers like Zac Johnson and Harsh Agarwal have made more than Million Dollars online. If you are new to Affiliate Marketing, this article is for you.

Before I start, I would like to make one thing clear:

Earning Money Online is not easy. It need constant effort so you won’t find any magical tips in this article that will help you to get rich overnight. If you want to be a millionaire in just 1 day then this article is not for you.

This article covers the following topics:

What is Affiliate Marketing?
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Different Types of Affiliate Marketing
Why you should try Affiliate Marketing?
How to find Products to promote?
 
Strategies and Practices to become a good affiliate marketer

So many bloggers are using Affiliate Marketing but everyone is not making money. Some have failed while others have succeeded. So you can make money from it or not entirely depends on many factors like your Blog’s traffic, Your promotional strategies, your content, your commitment etc

What is Affiliate Marketing?
According to the Definition of WikiPedia

Lets try to understand Affiliate Marketing in simple words. Basically, you promote products or services of any company on your blog either by posting a banner or by writing an article. You get a commission when the visitor sent by you makes a purchase.

Affiliate Marketing is the Quickest way to make money online because it doesn’t need any investment. You don’t have to create any product yourself for promoting it. Your task is to link up a buyer with seller. If your referred user makes a purchase, you will earn commission. Isn’t that interesting?

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
When you Sign Up as an Affiliate, you chose a product that you want to promote. Seller provide you a unique affiliate code that you can use to refer traffic to their site. Almost all affiliate programs offer ready made links and banners. You just need to copy the code and paste it on your blog. When your visitors click on these links or banners, they are redirected to the seller’s site. If they purchase a product or subscribe to a paid service, you earn a commission.
It’s your unique affiliate ID through which a seller track your performance.

Different Types of Affiliate Marketing
It’s a misconception that you need to sell products all the time to make a commission. In affiliate marketing, you can also earn without selling a product. Lets have a look at its different types:

Cost Per Sale(CPA)
CPA stands for Cost Per Acquisition. In CPA marketing, you make a commission only when a visitor referred by you purchase goods and services from the Merchant.

Cost Per Lead(CPL)
You make a commission when a visitor referred by you completes a form on the Merchant Web Site.

Cost Per Click(CPC)
As the name suggests, you earn a commission when a visitor on your blog clicks on the Merchant’s banner or link and thus visits the Merchant’s Web site.

Why Every Blogger should try Affiliate Marketing?
I recommend Affiliate Marketing because it’s much better than Google Adsense for blogs which has good amount of traffic. The reasons why I support Affiliate Marketing are listed below:

Passive Income
In any regular job, you get a fixed salary as long as you work. This is not the case with Affiliate Marketing. If your marketing skill is really good, you can earn even when you are away from your computer.

No Investment at All
The beauty of affiliate marketing is, it allow you to promote products which are developed by others. It means you don’t need to hire employees or open an office. Marketing on internet is really cheap as compared to offline world so investment is either null or very small.

Anyone can Join
The word “Free” always attract new bloggers. For Joining any affiliate programs, you don’t need to pay anything so everyone can try it.

Global Reach
Internet gives you the opportunity to reach people all over the world which gives you the opportunity to earn big.

No Tension at All
When you develop your own product or start your own business, you need to work on many things such as customer support, delivery of product etc. However, in Affiliate Marketing it’s the seller who does that for you.

List of Best Affiliate Marketing Networks
For getting better result in Affiliate Marketing, you need to choose best product to promote. Below given sites are considered best for affiliates:

Commission Junction
ShareASale
Link Share
One Network Direct
Amazon Associates
Flex Offers
Click Bank
Commission Soup
How to become a Successful Affiliate Marketer
 
Affiliate Marketing is an excellent way to make money online but it’s highly competitive as well. If you want to become a successful Affiliate Marketer, you will have to learn how to promote products, what works and what doesn’t, know the market needs etc
I am sharing some strategies which works best in Affiliate Marketing not only for me but also for other people.

Affiliate Marketing Tip #1 – Choose your Merchants Carefully
The first mistak a lot of affiliate marketers make is that they choose merchants on the basis of who pays the best commission. Remember, when you promote a product on your blog you also promote the company who is selling that product so it’s important to choose the merchant wisely. You never want your visitor to go and purchase a product on your advice and then come back with disappointment. If you do so, you will lose the trust of your visitors.

Before choosing any Merchant, try to know about its reputation, the quality of products, customer support etc. The next factor which is important is the sell-through-rate. If it’s good, it indirectly means the merchant converts better.

Affiliate Marketing Tips #2- Selection of Niche Also Matters
If you can’t drive traffic to your blog, you can’t earn money with affiliate marketing as well. Selection of Niche also matters a lot because competition on internet is fierce. Normally a niche with few competitors works best. But if you have picked a niche which is already dominated by professional affiliate marketers, you won’t be able to make money with affiliate marketing. Some example of such niche are mortgages, credit cards, lawyers and so on.

Affiliate Marketing Tip #3 – Always Promote Best Products only
Before recommending something to your readers, make sure that the product is best and it has the quality to impress you. Never recommend anything that you wouldn’t buy yourself.

To be a successful affiliate marketer the product you are promoting should be relevant to the content of your blog. For example- If your blog is about blogging, you can’t promote health products.

Affiliate Marketing Tip #4- Don’t fill your Blog Only with Affiliate Links and banners
I have seen many bloggers overcrowding their blog with affiliate links and banners. That’s certainly a bad practice. By doing that, you can never get better results specially in Affiliate Marketing. Neither Google nor visitors like a blog or website overcrowded with affiliate links and banners.

Affiliate Marketing Tip #5- A Personal Recommendation Works Best
When it comes to sales, personal recommendation works better than banners or links. However, before writing any review or recommending any product to your readers, try it yourself and write your honest views.

Affiliate Marketing Tip #6 – Use Different Traffic Sources to Promote Products
Most affiliate marketers use very similar promotional approach. They either put ads on their blog or write a recommendation article. This approach works well but you can try other method to send traffic to sales pages. It will increase your chances of making money online.

One way to send traffic to sales pages is by using Google Adwords. Just make an Ad in your adword account and use your affiliate link in the target url of your Ad. You can earn money through this method but you will have to measure the conversion regularly so that you can end your campaign in case, the campaign cost goes higher than campaign profit.

Affiliate Marketing Tip #7- Always Track your Affiliate Campaign
In order to know what is working and what is not, it’s quite important to track your affiliate campaign. You can do split testing to measure the performance of your campaign. Changing a few things can increase your profit. I will recommend you to use your own conversion tracking software.

Affiliate Marketing Tip #8 – Promote the Product which is in Demand
You should only promote a product which is in Demand. If you are promoting a product that is low in demand you will never get any sales. So spend few hours and do some research before promoting any product.

Affiliate Marketing Tip #9 – Keep yourself Updated
Affiliate Marketing is a competitive filed so people always come up with new techniques. So it’s important to keep yourself updated with new techniques, methods and tools otherwise you will fall behind.

Affiliate Marketing Tip #10 – Make your Affiliate Link Look Natural
Normally, an Affiliate Link look like “http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=530757&u=884521&m=50165&urllink=&afftrack=” . Visitors may not click on such kind of links because it doesn’t look like a natural link. If you want your users  to click on your affiliate links, try to make them natural.

A natural looking link of same affiliate link is “https://learne-world.blogspot.in/recommend/ininbox” . I bet, people will now show more interest in clicking such links.

If you are a WordPress user, you can do this by using plugins. A free plugin for accomplishing the same task  is Pretty Link Lite. If you are looking for a Paid Plugin, I will recommend you to use Affiliate Link Manager Pro.

Also Read – How to make money from Amazon Affiliate Program by Shashank Gupta?



If you are not able to make money online through Google Adsense or any other Ad network even after driving lots of traffic to your blog, I will highly recommend you to try Affiliate Marketing. In this tutorial, I have provided complete information about Affiliate Marketing.

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How to use LinkedIn Pulse for Driving Traffic to your blog?

How to use LinkedIn Pulse for Driving Traffic to your blog?

One of the most overused phrase on internet by bloggers is, “Content is the king”. If that’s the case, then why isn’t every blogger is able to drive traffic to their blog? Well, for starters, perhaps you aren’t promoting your articles properly (not writing the right type of contents can also be the case).

Traffic is the one thing bloggers can’t live without. Today, We are sharing a new method of driving traffic using LinkedIn Pulse. If you are not able to drive enough traffic to your blog, you must check some of our old posts which are listed below:

In February 2014, LinkedIn opened up its publishing platform to it’s members, meaning anyone can publish articles on LinkedIn. It was interesting to know that even first time writers were able to get featured on the Pulse and get ten thousand views or more. I became interested but When i tried to publish a post on LinkedIn first time, I found that there’s a little bit of confusion about what “Pulse” really is. This is because LinkedIn hasn’t provided enough details about “Pulse” anywhere.

LinkedIn Pulse is accessible to everyone in English Speaking countries which makes it interesting for serious bloggers and seo experts. They see it as a source of traffic. To check whether it’s helpful or not, I started experimenting with my own account. I published my first post on LinkedIn few days ago and surprisingly got many new followers and email subscribers.

As it’s a new way of driving traffic to your blog, I am sharing this method through this post.

How to Publish your First Post in LinkedIn?
First of all, visit linkedin.com and log into your account. If you aren’t already registered, register a new account.
In LinkedIn Dashboard, you should see “Publish a Post” button. Just click on that button. If you can’t see any such button, visit https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/new .
Upload an interesting featured Image which can draw user’s attention.
write an Interesting and Eye Catching Title for your Post. A good title is necessary for drawing the attention of users. Ordinary titles go un-noticed most of the times.
If you are done with Uploading Featured Image and Writing an Interesting Title for your post, provide some details about your post title. Make sure that the post is not too long. Too Long posts go un-noticed in LinkedIn Pulse.

Tips to Make your LinkedIn Post Go Viral
1. Write Post on Popular Topics
One of the most important thing for getting better result in any kind of business is to target the right audience. It’s important to note that LinkedIn’s audience is mostly composed of business professionals and career oriented individuals who are interested in finding new opportunities. Out of topics like Careers, Business, Self Improvement, Technology, Sales & Marketing, SEO, Current events and Productivity, the most popular is “Careers“. After researching for few days, I came to know that more than 40% posts published on Pulse were related to Careers. Follow Channels to stay on top of topics that interests you.


Suggestion: Try to publish post related to Careers for getting best result on LinkedIn.

2. Try to use Interesting Headlines
Headline is the most important part of any article. A survey shows that most of the viewers read your complete articles only when they find your article’s headline interesting. For example, out of two titles i.e. “How to correct your blogging mistakes for doing well” and ” Are you doing the same mistakes that all dumb bloggers do?“, the later appears more interesting and thus will do much better among viewers. If you want to get your post noticed, you must use Interesting Headlines for your articles.

Suggestion: Use Interesting Headlines for your articles to get noticed.

3. Write Shorter Articles rather than Longer Ones
There is a lot of debate over whether you should write long or short posts. Few bloggers recommend you to write short articles while others recommend you to write Long articles containing complete details. However, LinkedIn recommends writing shorter posts for getting best results. Long Posts are recommended only to those who already have a large audience.

Suggestion: Shorter articles are more successful in LinkedIn. so, try to write short articles containing only relevant contents. Once you get a large number of followers, you can start posting Long articles.

4. Choose Interesting Featured Image for Best Results
I was researching about some posts that got featured on the Pulse. I noticed that few of these articles consisted of boring headlines and absolutely spammy contents. Then how that kind of post emerged as the featured one? The answer is, due to interesting featured image. For example-In one such post, the author used the image of a beautiful woman.Actually, it was that featured image which got enough clicks to get featured on the Pulse.

You can find free images at pixabay.com. If you are looking for some free tools, try using Pablo and Quozio.

Suggestion: Use Interesting Featured Image to grab the attention of viewers. Here, I am not asking you to use the image of beautiful woman or something like that because it can be the reason for blocking your LinkedIn account.

5. Be Controversial
Try to be Controversial or disagree with popular opinion. For example, If you have found a post on Neil Patel’s blog which says “SEO is necessary to rank your keywords on Top”, try writing a post on LinkedIn with title “Neil Patel’s Statement about the necessity of SEO for ranking is wrong”. It has been seen that controversial posts interest viewers more as compared to normal posts.

Suggestion: As you now know, Controversial posts get more engagement, try being controversial.

6. Tweet to LinkedIn’s Editorial Team to get Featured
LinkedIn’s publishing platform is getting popularity day by day. More than hundreds of articles are published on LinkedIn daily, so there are chances that sometimes your article might not get seen by LinkedIn’s editors. They want to feature only high Quality articles on the Pulse, so if you think that you have written something really good and it hasn’t been noticed and featured within first few days, you can directly tweet your post to LinkedIn’s editorial team. The twitter handler of LinkedIn’s Editorial Team is @LinkedInPulse.

7. Choose the right Content Channel
Getting your article featured on right content channel can send you lots of targeted traffic. Some of the LinkedIn has more than even a million followers that can view your articles. The content on your blog will decide whether they will be converted into your subscribers or not. You can view all LinkedIn channels at https://www.linkedin.com/today/channels

Suggestion: First of all, visit the channels which are relevant to what you write about. Read all featured posts and see what they write about. After researching for few days, start creating and publishing your articles.

8. Follow People of your field
LinkedIn has a facebook like feature. When you publish something new, all people following you get a notification about your post. It increases their chances of viewing your post. Following more people of your field on LinkedIn can thus become helpful. If you are new to LinkedIn, try following more than at least 100 people before publishing any post.

9. Promote your LinkedIn Article outside LinkedIn
If you have a decent sized following outside of LinkedIn, promoting your article outside LinkedIn can really help. What i have noticed about the LinkedIn pulse is, the featured posts are sorted on the basis of number of views. It means, the featured post placed at top has undoubtedly the most number of views. If you have large number of followers on other social networks, you shared post will be viewed by your followers which will increase your post’s chances to get featured.

10. Add Links to your Site or any Landing Page
In your LinkedIn post, you can add links to your website, blog, any landing page or squeeze page for bringing LinkedIn viewers to your site or blog. If you have any resource page or any good landing page, I would highly recommend you to add links to these pages rather than your homepage or social media account.

Wrapping Up
Normally, I prefer SEO traffic over the traffic driven from Social Networking Sites because SEO sends targeted traffic on regular basis but social media doesn’t. However, I decided to write this post because LinkedIn pulse If used properly sends targeted traffic to your site.

If you haven’t tried this method yet, try it now and share your honest views about this method.

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