Has your blog been penalized by Google for whatever reason? Are you looking for another, more sustainable (and Google friendly) way to bump up your online income?
Affiliate Marketing Has A So So Reputation
You may want to consider affiliate marketing. Some think affiliate marketing sounds sleazy, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. If you do it the right way it’s a great avenue to help solve your readers’ problems. And it’s a legitimate advertising tactic for many mainstream businesses. Within a few years, I predict it will be very difficult to find a business that doesn’t have affiliate marketing as part of their ad budget (or at least considered it).
But why should you care about affiliate marketing? Because:
#1- it’s got huge potential to make you money and…
#2- if you choose your programs wisely, you can truly help solve your readers problems
So the next question is, how can you be successful at affiliate marketing in a crowded niche like personal finance? It’s tough to get conversions if everyone out there is offering the same affiliate programs as you. I’m sure many of you have tried a few of the popular ones like Mint or various brokerages and credit card offers. But if everyone promotes them, how do you differentiate yourself?
Stand Out From The Crowd
I suggest you go beyond a banner ad or review post. Start by figuring out a common, but very specific problem in your niche. Then lay out an action plan to solve that problem and weave in affiliate programs as supportive tools. The action plan can be a single post or better yet a series of posts or an entire authority website.
Here’s a few examples to get you brainstorming:
Problem # 1 – How can you save enough to reach your retirement goals? Solution: Lay out various retirement scenarios and a detailed approach to budgeting at different income levels. Affiliate Support: Weave in programs like Mint and brokerages.
Problem # 2 – How do you book an economical trip to Europe? Solution: Create a list of itineraries for different budgets and tips for booking air, land, and sea travel. Affiliate Support: Weave in travel sites, cruises, travel insurance, or even rental houses (like VRBO.com)
Problem # 3 – How to plan a wedding on a budget? Solution: Create a week by week action plan for coordinating the event. Specify when decisions need to be made and tactics to get deals on each aspect. You could even lay out recommended spending scenarios based on how much a couple has to spend. Affiliate Support: Weave in budgeting software, formal wear and dresses, invitations, flowers, photography, Honeymoon travel, and even jewelry!
Getting Started
A good first step is to create a list of problems in your niche. Try going through your blog comments and see if there are any tough questions you’ve helped answer. The tougher the question, the more content you can provide in your action plan! I’m sure if you thought about it, there’s at least one thing you know how to do really well (and that someone else is interested in learning).
Once you’ve selected an interesting problem, start outlining your solution. I like to break out the solution into as many segments of detailed content as possible. For each segment, think about what type of product could help solve that part of the problem. Then go to Google and type in the “product + affiliate program”. There’s an affiliate program for just about everything, so if you can’t find one let me know and I’ll even help you brainstorm! Just be careful that you only choose products that are helpful and you would actually use yourself. Don’t insert products just because you see big commission rates or you’ll quickly lose any chance of building an audience.
Affiliate Post Examples
* Personal Capital Review – A Sit Down With The CEO – This is my Personal Capital review post I wrote after sitting down with the CEO, COO, and VP of Marketing for two hours at their HQ. Because it is unique, it has done a great job in search. It’s thoroughly and insightful, unlike other review posts where the author doesn’t even use the product!
* Motif Investing Review: The ETF Killer? – Another meaty review post I wrote after sitting down with 50 Motif Investing employees in engineering, research, marketing, and the CEO. The review is extremely thorough, and I absolutely love their value proposition of letting individuals become their own fund managers for cheap.
* Prosper P2P Performance Review – Prosper is also based here in San Francisco, and I wrote about my returns after waiting two years to see how things panned out. Most other review posts just slap together something immediately.
All three review posts rank very highly in Google, and so they should. I am an authority affiliate who has actually spent hours sitting down with the very people who work at the companies I review. For Personal Capital, I’ve literally worked in their SF and Redwood City Offices for over 1,500 hours from Nov 2013 – Feb 2015. For Motif Investing, I’ve spent about 200 hours so for in their offices in San Mateo. And for Prosper, I’ve had multiple lunches with their marketing people in San Francisco.
Write great reviews and you’ll do fantastic in affiliate marketing, especially if you use the products (I use all three) and truly believe they will help your readers! You can make good money online as a blogger. You just need to stick around long enough to watch the flowers bloom!
Updated for 2016 and beyond.
Best,
Sam
Honestly, I didn’t even know what affiliate marketing was! This turned out to be a good primer, I think I shoudl read more though and get the whole deal here!
Yup, affiliate marketing is just another form of advertising that many many legit companies take advantage of.
I thought about doing affiliate marketing, I just never pursued it. I will check out your ebook.
I’ve been planning the same sort of thing with my Personal Finance Basic Training series coming soon. I have action steps for people to take with products I not only use myself but I recommend. I think you have to also be true to yourself if you promote affiliate products. Ask yourself, would I or have I used this service myself? If the answer is yes, then it might be a good product to promote as you will naturally want people to know about it.
Thanks for this — I have a Clickbank account, and everything on their home page just looks like sleazy, late-night TV crap. I’m sure it can be better than that!
There are a few hidden gems on Clickbank, but the way the site is laid out (and many of the individual offers) I agree, it does have a very sleazy look to it. But clickbank is just one of a sea of networks. And you’d be surprised though at how many companies offer affiliate programs directly and not through a network. I always look in the footer links for the word “affiliates” and find it more often than not.
Great article on a topic that has become much more important to a lot of us. I only have one affiliate on my website, and make between $20-$75 per month for a post I wrote a year ago. I should definitely start to incorporate more!
Do you feel the need to charge them when they are proving to be beneficial to you and your readers?
It seems that at times the affiliate is mutual helpful to both parties. Your readers like the service, product and continue to trust you.
Hey Amanda, 20-75 on a single post without any effort is fantastic. Imagine if you had 10-20 similar posts.
You’ve provided a lot of good examples of how to solve problems and offer affiliate products to help the visitor. A good way to make affiliate sales is to target the right keywords in your blog posts. I call these “buyer keywords”. People often go online with the intention of purchasing something and if you can show up when they make this decision, it’s a lot easier to make the sale. Some buyer keywords to consider optimizing your content for are “review, comparison, benefits, guarantee, price.” Try is and see if you can make some money.
Regards,
Gary
I think affiliate income is a great way to diversify, especially since there are so many financial products available!
I’ve been able to earn some affiliate income but it’s not something I’ve put a lot of time and thought into, which I probably should. Using it as a way to help solve problems for readers is a good idea. I never really thought about it that way. Congrats on your ebook!
This is great information…in the article and the comments! Thanks for helping out a newb.
Been hearing more and more about it. So far the laws of inertia are winning with me, but that could eventually change. Hopefully I don’t get too late to the party.
This is a great way to attack it. So many of people’s problem in handling their money is that they are not spending it right. People gotta spend money somewhere, it might as well be through one of your links on a product that you have researched and recommend. I plan on doing some product review/endorsements pretty soon because they have helped me a ton in my journey to financial freedom. And I hope they can help others as well. Great write-up, thanks!
Hey Jake, well if you plan on offering something in the future.. I would love to have a chat with you. I work for a up and coming PF tool that is currently free. Check it out if you get some time. If you’d like to get in touch shoot me an email. ryan.paredez[at]planwise.com
Ithink the best way to promote affiliate products is to choose products that you have actually used and which were very useful to you. This is then really more of a recomendation of a useful resource to your visitors, plus you get paid – win-win. If you promote dodgy products (which you could inadvertantlygo if you’ve never tried them) then this could really ruin your reputation.
I really liked this post…as I personally work for a PF Tool that is trying to reach out to other PF bloggers about partnerships/co-marketing. I am still new at all this I guess there always seems to be a price to pay.