How can I promote affiliate products like a pro? This is the question I get asked a lot. That’s what prompted me to create this fully detailed article.
With full assurance, if you read till the end of this article, you will be able to promote affiliate products like a pro.
But, here’s the thing, I won’t be talking about paid methods, I will only explain the free ways of promoting products.
So, let’s get started,
How to promote affiliate products like a pro
When it comes to promoting affiliate products, it all comes down to strategies and TRAFFIC….
….yes, traffic.
When I say traffic, I mean the people coming into your website (you know this right?)
So let’s get into the main strategies. I want to share everything I know about promoting affiliate products with you. So if possible, take notes, ok!
Quick tip on paid traffic
I know I said I won’t be talking about paid traffic, but I just want to make this clear.
If you want to promote affiliate products using paid methods it is advisable to use a sales funnel.
That way, you would be building your email list while promoting affiliate products. This is the best book to learn about building a sales funnel, and you can check out this course if you’d like to be taught by the experts.
Method 1: How to Promote Affiliate Products like a Pro – Blogging
This has to do with promoting affiliate products with a blog
This is one of the easiest ways to start promoting affiliate products. Why? Because it requires little (or no) investment to start.
You can create a free blog on many different platforms (like systeme.io, blogger, WordPress, etc.) and start blogging for free.
But I’ll recommend you create your own website using bluehost.
It’s not free, but it comes with a lot of benefits.
How to promote affiliate products inside your blog
By now, you should have your blog up and running, it’s time to promote. If not, go create one fast.
Now that you’ve done that, it’s time to learn how you can promote affiliate products inside your blog and earn commissions.
Blogging is my favorite method for promoting affiliate products because…..
……there are many options and ways to promote products with your blog. Let me share them with you.
1. How to posts
This is one of the best ways to promote affiliate products, think about it. Someone needs help doing something with the product you are promoting.
You craft a step by step guide teaching them how to do what they are struggling with.
Once they start reading, they have no choice but to follow you step by step. You can tell them to buy the product in step two, and because they are following you, they will do it.
It’s really an interesting way to promote products, don’t you think?
So, if you are promoting a product, start asking yourself:
- What are people (who need this product) searching for?
Once you have an answer, craft a step by step tutorial teaching them how they can get to their desired result.
2. Banner ads
If you have a blog, then you might already know about banner ads. The thing is you can only use banner ads when you create your own website.
Those platforms that allow you to create a free website don’t allow you to create banner ads. That’s why I recommend you create your own website.
If you are promoting some affiliate products, you will be given banner ads that you can place on your blog.
Whenever someone notices the ads on your website, click and buys, you’ll be given a commission.
Normally, the banner ad is made up of HTML or CSS code that has your affiliate links in it. That’s how the owner of the products are able to track that the sale is coming from you.
If you are an affiliate marketer on ShareASale, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
3. When offering services (materials needed)
If you have a blog and you are offering services alongside. You can be making some extra commission recommending products to your customers.
Here’s how it’s done.
Let’s say you offer web development services to your clients….
….. You can recommend VPS servers (like vultr) and domain name registrars like Godaddy or Bluehost to your customers since you are going to be needing them for your services.
Or let’s say, you are a voice-over artist….
…….you can sign up for an affiliate program similar to the services you are offering and recommend them to your clients.
So besides the money you make for offering the services, you can be making money from the affiliate programs too.
4. Reviews
Reviews are a really cool way to make affiliate commissions, this is because the people searching for reviews are willing to buy.
Let me ask you, when do you search for product reviews?
Of course, it’s when you want to buy something. You search for reviews to hear the opinions of others
Basically, you want to know another person’s opinion of the product you are about to purchase, right?
So when you write reviews, you are more likely to make sales, because people that will be reading the reviews are already willing to buy. They just need a little push.
So if you are trying to promote a product, why don’t you write a review?
5. Comparisons
If you want to promote products on your blog, comparisons are also a great way to do it.
You can write an article comparing the product you want to promote with another product.
A really smart thing to do is to become an affiliate for both products, that way, you will earn a commission irrespective of the product the reader ends up choosing.
Examples of this type of article are 1 vs 1 article or comparing a group of products together.
6. Top lists
When blogging you can promote affiliate products by writing a top list post
Top 10, or 20 tools for email marketers, top 15 tools for youtubers, the list goes on.
Just be creative here and talk about your affiliate products.
You can even signup as an affiliate for all the tools you talk about in the list, to earn even more.
7. Recommended section
This is one way most affiliate marketers use to promote products on their blog.
When your visitors want to know about all the important tools they should be using, they can go to your recommended section and get all the tools in one place.
To do this, you need to dedicate a special page for your recommendations, and add it to your home menu….
….so that anyone can get access to the page without too much navigation.
Quick tip for adding affiliate links
When you start blogging, you will discover that adding affiliate links can take a lot of time.
To reduce the time wasted adding affiliate links to your blog posts or articles….
…… you can use an auto affiliate linking plugin like pretty links or auto affiliate links
Method 2: How to Promote Affiliate Products like a Pro – Pinterest
Pinterest is an image search engine, this means that when you create pins on Pinterest, it can continue getting views for a long time.
To promote affiliate links using Pinterest, there’s a really important thing you need to do.
Note: This is where most people make a mistake
Some people go to Pinterest and link directly to their affiliate links, no one likes this (plus it can get you banned)
So, here’s what you need to do.
Create a sales funnel
NO! I’m not here to teach you some really complicated stuff, I’ll make it as simple as possible {promise}
As an affiliate marketer, you need to create a sales funnel, so that you can build your email list, while recommending products to people.
We are going to be creating a simple sales funnel called an affiliate funnel. The function of this affiliate funnel is
- To introduce your audience to your brand and
- To build your email list.
I learnt about sales funnels from Russell Brunson in his book dotcom secrets, check it out.
So how can you create a sales funnel?
To build a sales funnels, you can use Clickfunnels, or systeme.io
For this example, I will be using systeme.io because it is cheaper than Clickfunnels and you can start with a free account.
Create a free account on systeme.io if you don’t have one yet.
Next, create a two-page sales funnel
Page one will just be to tell people about a free thing they will be getting by joining your email list. And on page two, you will be thanking them for joining your email list.
Now you are probably asking “how are we going to promote affiliate products on Pinterest?”
Don’t worry we are getting to that in the next section.
How to promote affiliate products using Pinterest?
By now, you would have created your sales funnel to capture leads using systeme.io.
This is where the promotion comes in. when people join your email list, you can start promoting products to them using email marketing.
And you can even redirect them from that page immediately to an affiliate product.
Here’s how it’s done:
You give people something for free on that landing page, once they give you their name and email, you can redirect them to an affiliate product from the thank you page.
Now you’ve created your landing page to build your email list, you have to drive traffic to the landing page, right?
That’s where Pinterest comes in
Drive traffic from Pinterest to your landing page for free
Normally, you have to pay to build your email list, but with this method you can build your email list using Pinterest, and even earn a commission.
So to drive traffic to that landing page, you have to create beautiful looking pins using canva for free.
Go to canva, create lovely pins and pin them on Pinterest while linking to your landing page.
Method 3: How to Promote Affiliate Products like a Pro – YOUTUBE
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, behind google of course.
So creating a YouTube channel should be added to your list if you want to promote affiliate products.
But how can you promote affiliate products on YouTube? Let’s dive in
Reviews
You can promote affiliate products on YouTube by creating a review for the product you want to promote.
Why does a review work so well?
Reviews work so well because they are targeting buyers. People will only search for “Bluehost review” when they want to create a website, right?
So, reviews are perfect for promoting affiliate products on YouTube.
What should I talk about inside the review?
It comes down to understanding search intent. Ask yourself “what will I like to know about a new product before I buy?” and talk about those things.
But just try to add the benefits of the product along with the features, that way your viewers will be able to make a better decision.
Step by step tutorials
Nothing beats a step by step tutorial, whether it is on YouTube (with video) or on your blog.
Whenever you teach people something in a step by step manner….
…. about the product you are trying to promote, you are guaranteed to always make a sale.
This is because they will be following every step you lay down for them.
Unboxing
Unboxing was made popular by YouTubers (the richest and youngest YouTuber reviewing toys to be specific)
He is one of the richest YouTubers, but he doesn’t make most of his money from the YouTube partner program.
If you check his YouTube channel, you will discover that he unboxes toys and reviews them.
But where the main thing happens is the description of each and every video. They are usually filled with links (affiliate links).
This is to show you the power of unboxing and reviews on YouTube.
The best part is, you don’t even need to have a lot of subscribers to do this….
…..because YouTube ranks each video based on performance not the number of subs you have.
Comparisons
Creating a comparison video on YouTube is very easy. You simply pick two products and talk about them throughout the video.
You can even become an affiliate for the two products and place your affiliate links in the description of the video.
Whenever someone watches your video and click on your links to purchase any of the products you talked about, you’ll get a commission.
The reason why I love YouTube so much is that you create the video only once and your video can continue getting views forever.
But you have to learn some ways to optimize your videos. Basically, you should always strive for a really good thumbnail.
You can create a beautiful looking thumbnail on Canva for free.
Method 4: How to Promote Affiliate Products Like a Pro – Email Marketing
This is another wonderful way to promote affiliate products, if you learn this strategy really well, it can help you a lot.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is simply the process of marketing using emails, that’s it. Very simple.
You write emails, promote a product or service and get paid. That’s it.
Here’s the strategy
You build your email list, nurture the list by giving them value and start sending promotional emails to the people on your list.
What is email list?
An email list is simply a list of emails. So when I say your email list, I mean the emails of different people that are on your list.
How to build your email list?
The best place to create build your email list is getresponse, they have lots of features that will help you to build your email list fast.
There are many ways to build your email list but, the main idea is to give people something for free, in exchange for their emails.
You can offer them a free eBook, software, course etc. but just go with a free eBook if you are just getting started.
How to create an eBook to build your email list?
You can create an eBook using WordPress on your laptop, just try to make it something valuable that people will love.
Then create an eBook cover on canva for free, they have different templates that you can use.
Next
After you have created your eBook. Build a landing page on getresponse.
On your landing page, make sure you add the eBook cover that you created on canva so that people can see a visual representation of what they are getting.
The last step to building your email list is to get traffic to your landing page. To get traffic, you can run ads to the page or use other cool methods for getting organic traffic.
Method 5: How to Promote Affiliate Products like a Pro – Social Media
Finally, to promote affiliate products you can use social media. Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are filled with traffic.
They have lots of users and on Facebook, there are thousands of groups in different niches. Why not tap into the goldmine of traffic and start getting free traffic.
So here’s how you can do it.
Facebook strategy: How to promote affiliate products on Facebook
Before I share this strategy with you, there is something important you need to know.
It takes time to get traffic from Facebook, and please don’t spam anyone with your affiliate link.
The strategy I am about to share with you is legit and it works.
Here’s how it’s done
Join relevant Facebook groups in your niche, and become the light in that group.
How to become the light in any Facebook group?
It’s really easy to become the light in any Facebook group. You do this by giving out free information to people in the group.
When you become the light in a Facebook group, people will naturally check out your profile.
So, before becoming the light on those groups.
Make sure you create your sales funnel as I told you earlier, and add the landing page link on your Facebook profile.
Alternatively, you can create a post talking about your free gift and pin that post on your profile….
….so that when people land on your Facebook profile the first thing they’ll see will be your free gift.
As people start checking your profile from all the groups you are adding value to, they will see your free gift, and they will join your email list.
How to promote affiliate products on Instagram and twitter
Personally, I don’t use Instagram to promote affiliate products but if Instagram is your thing you can duplicate the Facebook method I shared with you earlier and use it on your Instagram and Twitter account.
CONCLUSION
So there you have it, five powerful ways to promote affiliate products like a pro. I’ve shown you exactly what you can start doing today to promote products. Go now, start promoting and getting commissions.
Here is another cool way to promote affiliate products using eBooks. Go and read it.
Now that you’ve gotten to the end of this article, it’s your turn. Tell us more strategies that weren’t mentioned here so that other people can learn how you’ve been promoting products.