14 Short and Simple Affiliate Marketing Tips

Who else wants to see the best affiliate marketing tips together in one place? I know I do.

That's why I decided to do my homework and create a list of 14 short and practical tips for affiliate marketers.

Whether you're a beginner, an intermediate, or an expert, you'll find valuable information that will help you take your affiliate marketing business to the next level.

Let's get rolling.

1. Understand Your Audience

Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger, famously said:

"The most important element of copywriting that works is how well your message matches up with the way your prospective customer views things."

That's why you must know your audience as much as you can. 

The things they hate.

The things they love.

The movies they watch.

What they buy.

Everything you can.

When you understand your audience in such a way, you can develop more powerful marketing messages to increase your sales.

Affiliate marketing is no different from any other type of marketing. 

The more you know about the people you're serving, the more you'll sell.

2. Be (Actually) Helpful 

Most marketers tend to be sales-y. 

They don't care about their audience. 

Those who decide to be helpful have an unfair advantage over their competition. 

In other words, instead of pushing people out, you should focus on pulling people in.

How? 

Providing value through content. 

Help your audience solve their problems, build trust first. 

By taking this approach, you will be able to become an authority in your space, and the sales part will be much easier.

3. Write Evergreen Content

Some people believe they should always create content around trendy topics. Although that approach can help you get traffic in the short run, it can kill your business in the long run.

Trends change pretty fast. 

If you only create content around current trends, your content will get buried sooner or later.

Instead, you should focus on creating content that solves your audience's problems. 

That way, your content will be evergreen and reach more people in the long run.

Think about problems your audience needs to solve continuously and build content around those problems.

4. Know Your Legal Obligations

Affiliate marketing has its legal obligations, and you need to understand every single one if you don't want to get into some legal issues.

For instance, the U.S. FTC (Federal Trade Commission) states:

"If a blogger or social media maven receives any sort of monetary or product incentive to promote a brand, product or service, then he is required to disclose that relationship."

It means that if you're selling affiliate products, you MUST tell your readers you're doing so. 

Every time you promote an affiliate product, you should tell people you will receive a commission if they decide to buy.

Many bloggers don't know that.

This is not only a tip but also one of your legal obligations as an affiliate. It will not only help you avoid legal issues but will give you credibility.

You must be aware of the rules of the game. 

Visit FTC's website routinely to stay updated.

5. Recommend Products You're Familiar With

One of the biggest mistakes within the affiliate marketing industry is that most people promote products they have not even used.

Even though you can start getting some sales with that approach, your business will fall sooner or later.

People can easily detect when someone is promoting something just to earn a dollar. 

If you don't sincerely trust what you're promoting, your audience will perceive it, and you will lose credibility.

Of course, you don't have to buy every product you promote, but do your homework and research the company to ensure it delivers actual value to customers.

• Read customer reviews
• Try the product yourself
• Watch video tutorials

Learn everything you can about your chosen company.

Doing so will provide you with moral authority, increasing your communication power.

6. Focus on conversions, not traffic

Popular belief states that you need to focus on getting more traffic.

"Traffic is the lifeblood of your business," they say.

True to some degree, but traffic is useless if you're not getting sales from it.

It doesn't matter if you're driving 1 million people to your website every month. If none of them are buying something, you're wasting your time.

That's why you need to focus on conversions first. 

Then, focus on traffic. 

It's much better to have 100 visitors and ten buyers than 1,000 visitors and one buyer.

7. Understand Your Audience's Spending Limit

Some people are willing to spend more than others.

When you understand how your audience views the world, you can offer products they will realistically buy. 

If your audience is composed of doctors or professional people, for example, they will probably be willing to buy more expensive products than people with lower incomes.

Identify the spending limit of your audience, and then offer products within that range. 

This way, you're more likely to increase your conversion rate.

You can also promote products at multiple price points.

For instance, let's say you're targeting architects and find out that their spending limit is $3,000 per month. 

In other words, they would never pay more than $3,000 for a product every month. 

You can build your catalog of affiliate products that, in total, cost $3,000 or less.

For example:

• Project management software: $99/month
• 3D modeling software: $999/month
• CRM software: $500/month

You can create individual pieces of content promoting these products. Since you already know your audience's spending limit, you can be more confident about your strategy.

8. Use The "Nofollow" Tag

Google doesn't like affiliate marketers. 

You can get penalized if you add too many affiliate links on your site, according to some sources.

In most cases, you should add the "Nofollow" tag to your affiliate links. This tag tells Google's spiders you don't want them to "follow" that link. 

Here's a complete guide on how to add the "Nofollow" tag to your links.

9. Create a "Tools I Recommend" page

Once your audience trusts you, they will likely buy whatever you recommend. 

That's why it's highly recommendable that you add a "Tools I recommend" page to your website. 

There you'll add all the tools and resources you use. 

Many of those tools will have an affiliate program, so you will receive a commission when someone visits that page and decides to buy one of the recommended tools.

Pat Flynn and Chris Ducker are great examples of bloggers implementing this strategy.

10. Create The Best Piece of Content Ever Created

The best approach you can take when it comes to content marketing is always to create the best piece of content ever created around a particular topic. This way, your competitors will never stand head and shoulders over you.

Of course, that's not something easy.

Putting together a content masterpiece might take hours and hours of work. But doing so will pay off in the long run.

For instance, Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko, knew that many SEOs wanted to put together all of Google's 200 ranking factors in one place. 

However, no one could.

Or, at least, no one did.

Some of those people managed to collect 50 ranking factors.

Others put together 150.

But no one put together the complete list.

So Brian went one mile further and managed to create: "Google's 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List."

It wasn't easy, but Brian's hard work paid off. 

This post ranks # 2 for the keyword "Ranking Factors," and it has racked up thousands of social shares.

The good news is that most people are sluggish. 

They aren't willing to pay the price. If you always commit to creating the best piece of content on a particular topic, your competitors won't be able to compete with you.

11. Write an Honest Review

Generally speaking, people tend to judge a business based on what others say about it. 

And you don't need to take my word for it.

According to some studies, 58 out of 100 people will decide to trust a business based on online reviews.

You can take advantage of that fact by writing an honest review about the product you're promoting. 

By giving your testimonial of how that product has helped you solve a particular problem, you'll encourage others to buy.

12. Implement Email Marketing The Right Way

Econsultancy states:

"Email marketing was ranked as the best channel in terms of return on investment, with 68% of companies rating the channel as 'good' or 'excellent.'"

To succeed in this business, you need to implement email marketing.

But there's a misconception about this term.

Most people believe that "the money is on the list."

But that's not quite right.

If that were the case, spammers would be rich. 

So, where's the money? You ask.

The money is in the RELATIONSHIP with your list.

You'll eventually start making more sales if you put your audience first and consistently provide them with tons of value.

13. Create Content Around "Money Keywords"

There are two main types of keywords:

1. Regular Keywords
2. Money Keywords

Examples of regular keywords are:

• "How to write a blog post that converts."
• "How to write a blog post faster."

Examples of money keywords are:

• "Buy writing course."
• "Best blogging courses."

As you can see, targeting money keywords is a very powerful strategy because you capture people at the point of intent. 

In other words, people who search for "buy writing course" are ready to buy.

That's why you should figure out what your money keywords are and then create the best piece of content ever created around those keywords. 

14. Attend Industry Events

The best way to network with influencing people in your industry is by attending events. 

Many companies organize affiliate marketing events every year where you can learn from like-minded people. 

This is an excellent way to shortcut the learning curve and grow much faster.

Examples of notable events are:

• Affiliate Marketing Symposium
• CPAconf Affiliate Conference
• LeadsCon

Here's a complete list of the affiliate marketing conferences available in 2022.

Your Turn!

Affiliate marketing can be challenging. 

It's a highly competitive field with lots of nuances. If you aren't careful, you can lose time and money. 

Even though this isn't a comprehensive list of all the tips you need, it's a solid starting point for new affiliate marketers.

The good news?

You don't need to implement all these tips at once.

Start with one.

It's all it takes to improve your results. 

Meet the author

Joran Hofman

Back in 2020 I was an affiliate for 80+ SaaS tools and I was generating an average of 30k in organic visits each month with my site. Due to the issues I experienced with the current affiliate management software tools, it never resulted in the passive income I was hoping for. Many clunky affiliate management tools lost me probably more than $20,000+ in affiliate revenue. So I decided to build my own software with a high focus on the affiliates, as in the end, they generate more money for SaaS companies.