How to Make Passive Income With Affiliate Sales on Your Blog
If you have a view, voice, or opinion, then you’ve got something to blog about. Now more than ever, people are converting their passion into profits by blogging about their personal perspectives. When times are tough, and money is tight, blogging is a great way to get into the side hustle mindset. Why? Because it’s relatively cheap to start, and there are tons of ways to make money on the side from blogging.
For example, affiliate marketing is a no-cost, effective way to put extra cash in your pocket. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but there’s no doubt that affiliate marketing can make money, especially if you’re looking for passive income. If you’re a blogger and haven’t taken advantage of affiliate marketing, then you might be leaving money on the table. Here are the facts about what affiliate sales are and how they can make you some decent dough on the side.
What is Passive Income?
Before getting into the nitty-gritty of affiliate marketing for your blog, it’s probably a good idea to get clear about what passive income is. As the name implies, passive income is money received without chasing down clients or putting in a huge amount of work. In a perfect scenario, passive income means you’re making money in your sleep. But don’t make the mistake of thinking passive income equates to avoiding hard work. Passive income is most profitable when you’ve got a solid blog attracting high traffic, and that takes effort. Not to worry. Read on for more details about building an affiliate sales-friendly blog.
What are Affiliate Sales?
If you have a blog (or thinking about creating one), you have the potential to persuade and influence. Part of your power as a blogger is directing visitors to retailers in your niche, which is essentially what affiliate marketing is all about. Depending upon your subject matter and traffic, you can earn extra income by placing affiliate links related to your message on your blog.
Affiliate links are hyperlinks on your blog that go out to a retailer such as Amazon or Etsy. When a visitor to your blog clicks on one of these links, you receive a commission for their purchase. To illustrate, if you’ve written a blog post about SEO for accountants, you could link to a popular accounting software that will earn a commission per each visitor click.
Caveats to Affiliate Marketing
The realm of affiliate marketing can be lucrative, but it isn’t the land of sunshine and lollipops. First, it takes time to build a website that attracts a healthy amount of traffic. Additionally, not all affiliate sales are created equal. Some retailers have low commission rates and some products from retailers earn more than others. For instance, current Amazon affiliate commissions are at 10% for luxury beauty care products purchased from an affiliate link, while the rate is a meager 2% for televisions or video game purchases. This means that an affiliate link on your blog for a luxury lotion for $25 would earn you $2.50, whereas a same-priced video game would profit you only .50 cents in commission.
Furthermore, you’ve got to pay attention to cookies. If you’ve ever wondered why you see a load of advertisements for sneakers on non-related websites after prowling the web for the best kickers, cookies are to blame. Cookies are bits of data retained on a browser that enable websites to retain visitor activity, and they track your internet surfing behavior.
In terms of affiliate sales, cookies are a big deal because there are varying restrictions on how many days a cookie is held in a browser that could (or could not) win you a commission. For instance, Etsy has a thirty-day allowance for cookies. Therefore, if a visitor clicks on an Etsy affiliate link from your website and makes an Etsy purchase within thirty days of that click, you’ll earn the commission. However, if their purchase is made on the 31st day, the affiliate sale is lost. For comparison purposes, the average Amazon tracking cookie lasts only 24 hours. Clearly, it’s best to choose affiliates that allow for longer cookie terms so you can land the commission within the longest time period of a visitor’s click.
How to Create an Affiliate-Friendly Blog
It’s not terribly complicated, but it does require time and effort. The number one necessity for establishing an affiliate-friendly blog is to have an online presence that attracts traffic. This requires devoting your time to adding quality content on your blog that gets ranked on search engines (such as Google) and serves up information that visitors crave. It’s not always easy to accomplish this, but if you’re blogging about topics you’re passionate about, the process can be enjoyable.
The steps to creating an influential blog that is a ripe environment for strong affiliate sales are mostly contingent upon your point of passion. You can earn visitors’ interest via your commitment to providing valuable posts that sway and engage your readers. All this said, your perspective and point of view are key.
If you work to produce an online platform with valid points that attract your readers’ attention, then the potential for affiliate sales on your blog can yield big earning potential. Your blog is about your preferences and personality at the end of the day, and your voice matters. So you owe it to yourself (and others) to dive deeply into the world of affiliate marketing to shepherd your visitors towards products or services that relate, render results, and solve problems. Your website audience will thank you for the referrals, and your wallet will thank you for the extra cash!
