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For those new to affiliate marketing, we’ve put together this helpful blog with 4 easy steps to help your content start working for you.

You’ve been working hard to create content for your website and traffic is now starting to pick up. You may be ready to take your website to the next level – but what does that look like? If you feature various products in your content, monetizing your website may be a perfect opportunity and a great place to start! Affiliate marketing is a viable pay-for-results model that is an easy way to get started. For those new to affiliate marketing, we’ve put together this helpful blog with 4 easy steps to help your content start working for you.

First, what is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing, also known as performance marketing, is when a publisher promotes or recommends a product to their readers and receives a commission from a brand upon successful desired actions from consumers (i.e. applications, approvals, leads, etc.).

Most people believe that only the brand (advertiser), publisher (affiliate) and consumer are needed in an affiliate marketing formula, but there is a fourth component to make the equation truly successful.

An affiliate network or platform is of paramount importance, as it can act as a powerful connection between a wide range of products from different brands and a wide range of affiliates or publishers that can promote those products.

As an example, Fintel Connect has the largest affiliate network in Canada that focuses on financial services.

Now that you have an understanding how affiliate marketing works, let’s get you started with the four key steps to help you prepare your site for successful affiliate partnerships.

Step 1: Find your niche

Does your website currently cater to a specific niche or are you trying to attract everyone? If your answer is the latter, then we recommend you try and find your niche before continuing on.

According to Link Assistant, determining who your niche is will be the foundation of your affiliate business. Without a specific vertical or direction, your website may struggle in the search engines, but with focused content, there’s potential for your business to grow.

Choose something you’re really passionate about as this will help you think like your audience and be in their shoes. You’ll also be able to understand what their problems are and understand what products will resonate well with them.

Hot tip: Think long-term when designing your site. You want to be able to promote a variety of products on your website that align with your audience.

Step 2: Be mindful of the products you choose to promote

With your niche, you now know what products will be of interest for your audience. Smart Blogger suggests you promote products that you already love. Your audience trusts you and would appreciate your genuine love for the product that you’re recommending.

If you don’t know much about the product before promoting, we recommend trying the product out first. That way you’ll be able to understand if it will align with your website and readers.

Once you know what products you want to promote, you can reach out to the affiliate network that supports that brand to join their program. This will be free of charge and the best option if you intend to grow the number of brand partnerships you have in the future. Affiliate Networks have a host of different products and merchants (brands) to choose from, making them the ideal platform for your affiliate marketing.

Step 3: Create high quality content

Your website will perform best with high quality content that’s suited for your audience. Start by producing blog posts and reviews that would be of value to your audience.

Brainstorm what some of their problems may be and create content that will help solve those problems. Think of creative ways to integrate affiliate links in your posts and website.

With quality content, this will also help bring more traffic and awareness to your website. Your website will continue to grow as you produce high quality content.

Hot tip: Ensure you’re up-to-date with the latest news and trends within your industry. Keeping up with the latest news will allow you to be a leader and expert within your industry.

Step 4: Test tracking and performance

Now that you have your affiliate links set up on your website, you can test your links to see how they’re performing. Analyze and understand which links are receiving clicks and conversions and try to understand why. From your findings, use this data to adapt – improve opportunities and optimize strengths.

Next Steps

Become an affiliate and building affiliate partnerships can be a lot of work, but if you’re passionate about what you’re producing on your website, then it won’t feel like much effort at all.

To start monetizing your website, keep in mind these four steps as you’re starting your affiliate partnerships. The most important takeaway is to find your niche and produce quality content that your audience would be interested in.

We hope that you’ve found this blog helpful and that you’re ready to get started.

If you’re interested in working with financially-focused brands, we can certainly help and welcome you to sign up for our network by clicking here!