Do you own a blog? You probably do, given that you’ve ended up here on this article… which also means you have used, or are using Adsense on your site.

Adsense is cool. You just add some code into your sidebar and get paid for impressions! No catch… right?

The problem with Adsense is, unless your site is getting more than 10K page views a month, earnings are negligible. Even past 10K, it would be a while till you see real pay. There’s a reason some call it ‘welfare for webmasters.’

Luckily, there’s another way to make good use of your blog, and you won’t need an avalanche of traffic every month to get it. Keep in mind this isn’t the only way, but it’s certainly the most convenient for many, including myself.

Affiliate Marketing: Why You Should Try It

You know how salespeople in some retailers make money on each sale? They get paid a commission, and when the items are highly priced, such as with fridges and furniture, the payments can reach hundreds of dollars. They make the sale and get paid for it, but they don’t go through the hassle of manufacturing and transporting it.

Imagine that model, only done online.

In affiliate marketing, you are one of those salesmen, except you aren’t an employee and you can promote as many items as you want. Anytime someone buys a product through your influence, you get paid a commission.

The advantages of affiliate marketing are more numerous than the previously mentioned salespeople. You have no hours, no manager, and you can choose which items to sell. Most importantly, whereas the salesman’s audience is limited to whoever walks into the store, online you have the whole world as your market.

Do I Need Tons of Traffic?

Obviously, getting a lot of traffic is helpful to any goal you’re chasing with your blog. But with affiliate marketing, each visitor has a chance of clicking on one of your links and buying a product, which means even 1000 visitors a month can make a big difference in your earnings.

In fact, by structuring your blog around promoting a certain niche, you’re paving the way for better traffic: after all, hiking enthusiasts are more likely to buy a backpack on a recommendation from a hiking site than anywhere else. Chances are, your current traffic is good traffic. You just aren’t making the best use of it.

What’s the Potential?

 

 

Kinsta’s WordPress hosting affiliate program is now live! Get 10% recurring commissions + signup bonuses. ? https://t.co/PV2gY92VP8 pic.twitter.com/UNL4xEnuV9

— Kinsta® (@kinsta) November 21, 2017

This all depends on the type of blog you have, and again, your metrics.

Well made affiliate sites can make anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars a month. Some blogs push high-priced items, like laptops and such, while others go for everyday things like mugs and lamps.

Selling laptops means you won’t need as much sales, but at the same time, those sales won’t come as often as if you were hawking mugs instead.

The biggest affiliate program, Amazon Associates, offers 5-10% commissions depending on the product category. Seeing as Amazon sells, well, everything, pretty much any blog can use it.

It’s not the only choice though. Thousands of companies have affiliate programs, from Apple to eBay. Even smaller companies, like hosting platform Kinsta (see tweet) have

To get an idea of what affiliate marketers achieve, check out Matthew Woodward’s income report for October 2017. He’s made more than $10K per month for a while now.

I would also check out some of these stories:

Wealthy Affiliate $6800 June income report

$3800 Euros in July, $1348 This Week

My First $1,000 in One-Off Affiliate Commissions

Where Do I Start?

If you’re looking to enter to affiliate marketing, I would suggest joining a site I’ve found great success with: Wealthy Affiliate. It’s an all-in-one training platform with courses on affiliate marketing and pretty much everything else to do with making money online. I’d highly suggest reading my review on it for the full story.

The next step would be to find an affiliate program to join based on your niche. There’s not much I can do to help you specifically, but a strategy I’ve found useful is to simply type “product+affiliate program” into Google and seeing what comes up.

Beyond that, the challenge would be to write useful content around the chosen product, and organize your site around your new goal of affiliate income. Again, this is what I recommend checking out WA for.

It takes time, but patience is key. Affiliate marketing is extremely popular, but so many seem discontent with it. This isn’t because the business “sucks,” but because of a lack of patience. Once you earn your first few dollars, it’s all downhill from there.

Are you considering entering affiliate marketing? Have you tried it already? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!