How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

I never thought this would happen to me.
In 2 years I went from making $20k to $80k, then $150k in 2018 (see my income reports).
I did this by dropping all my SEO clients and tried making money with affiliate marketing (I write tutorials on SEO and website speed). 90% of my affiliate income comes from referring people to SiteGround, a hosting company who awarded me affiliate of the month in July, 2017.
I basically write tutorials on how to make your website load faster while saying “hosting is the #1 factor of website speed, and SiteGround was rated the #1 host in 26 Facebook polls.”
This made my sales skyrocket.
No, this didn’t happen overnight. Yes, I was broke for a couple years while creating content. But it literally changed my life… I moved out of my parent’s house (sigh) into a nice studio in downtown Denver, bought my first car (a Mercedes c300), adopted 2 kitties, and my credit raised 45 points. I also donated $6,000 to GoFundMe campaigns. I’m a humble dude but in affiliate marketing, the numbers do the talking. So, I want to show you how I did it. Enjoy                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Getting Started

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
You partner with a company selling products/services you would like to recommend to your audience. If they buy something using your affiliate link, you get a commission from the sale. There are other types of affiliate programs, but this is the most common – and is also what I do.
About My Blog

• I write about SEO + website speed optimization
• Hosting is the #1 factor of website speed optimization
• I make money by referring people to SiteGround’s hosting
• I’ve spent a LOT of time collecting social media evidence where they were #1 in 26 different Facebook polls, Facebook conversations that support this, and how migrating to them can improve page load times. I also have 100% scores in GTmetrix + Pingdom
• I have about 2,500 visitors/day, 90% is from Google… adding affiliate links to your blog (or videos) is the easy part – getting consistent traffic to them (SEO) is the hard part
• It took blogging full-time for many months with minimal income to see results, but now, I can (and have) stopped working for several months and still collect my affiliate income

About Me (Why I Am Writing This?)
I come from an unsuccessful background of web design/SEO. I blogged because I knew it was good for SEO, but my articles didn’t monetize. I took a leap of faith and dropped my clients to figure out blogging/affiliate marketing. I was good at website speed optimization and knew hosting was the #1 factor. After some research, I saw SiteGround was #1 in most Facebook polls and had a great reputation with generous affiliate commissions. So I wrote tutorials on website speed… how to configure WordPress cache plugins, hosting reviews, and other speed-related topics. Usually near the end of a post I would say “…and here’s why you should switch to SiteGround” with evidence on why they’re the best… polls, tweets, load time improvements, etc. That’s when things got good. Now I have 0 clients and the freedom to live how I want. I wrote this tutorial because I’m actually excited to help people do the same – without the BS.
Largest Factors

• Choosing the right niche and affiliate(s) to refer readers to
• Finding topics (keywords) where people would be interested in a product/service. You do NOT have to just write reviews!!! If you create a YouTube video on “how to connect a tv to a laptop”, drop an affiliate link to an HDMI cable. That’s just one example.
• SEO: getting consistent traffic by writing AWESOME content about your keywords (there’s a phrase “length is strength” in SEO and this paid off big time for me). Maybe you’re doing videos or an eCourse, but I found blog posts WAY easier to update which means less maintenance. The biggest factor by FAR was the time I spent meticulously creating my tutorials… which eventually resulted in a sudden 3x increase in SEO traffic
• Adding an HTML table of contents to EVERY article (encourages longer content, organization, and even a chance to get jump-to links in Google using named anchors).
• Gathering Facebook polls, Tweets, other proof on WHY they should choose my affiliate
• The patience it took to write content for many months even when I wasn’t getting paid

1. Find Your Niche

My career journey went like this: online marketing > web design > WordPress web design > WordPress SEO > WordPress speed optimization. Now I’m getting into affiliate marketing.
While I was doing WordPress speed optimization I noticed lots of people needed it, but very few people supplied it (there were a lack of services and tutorials when I researched Google). I also knew hosting was the #1 factor of website speed factor and these companies paid up to $200/sale. Hosting is a competitive space but the commissions and lack of supply enticed me.
I expanded my SEO blog and started writing about hosting, cache plugins, and other relevant topics… while recommending SiteGround in each tutorial. I added social proof like the 26 Facebook polls where they were rated #1. Each tutorial was super detailed and tons of people found them helpful – many get 100+ visitors/day since great content = higher rankings.
Once I found my niche (WordPress speed optimization), a solid hosting company with a high commission affiliate program (SiteGround) and created tutorials around topics people in my niche would find helpful (and might want to change their host), that’s what got me to $130k.

Once you find a niche with high demand, little supply (do your Google research), and a reputable affiliate offering nice commissions… and you have patience to wait for financial results while creating your assets (I’m talking about content), I encourage you to take the leap.

3. Learn The Different Types Of Programs

One Tier – get a commission when a sale is generated from your affiliate link.
Two Tier – get a commission when you refer other affiliates and they start making sales (think multilevel marketing). An example is WP Engine’s program where I tell my readers about their WordPress hosting, they start making sales, and I earn $50/sale from each sale they generate.
Recurring Commissions – usually happens with subscription services… you continuously receive commissions so long as people are signed up. AWeber and SEMrush do this.
Sitewide Commissions – get a commission no matter what people buy on the affiliate’s website. Amazon’s affiliate program does this.
Pay Per Lead – get a commission based on the number of leads (eg. contact form fill-outs) you send to a business. Be sure setup your analytics to track this and have a solid, written agreement with your affiliate. You don’t want to spend tons of time and get burned, like I have.
Cookies – amount of time after people click your affiliate link you will receive a commission if a sale is generated. Usually 30-90 days but shouldn’t be a deal breaker when choosing affiliates.
Individual Affiliate Programs – this is where you sign up through their website.
Affiliate Marketplaces – ShareASale and ClickBank have thousands of merchants to choose from. It’s nice to login to 1 place and check the performance of multiple affiliates without going to each individual portal on each website. Many programs aren’t part of a marketplace though. I’m a big fan of ShareASale – there are so many companies and industries you can choose from
Amazon Affiliate Program
Amazon’s affiliate program is the most popular of them all. I don’t participate myself (yet) but the majority of affiliate marketers I know use Amazon because… it’s Amazon. You can review products you have used or write tutorials (eg. how to connect computer to TV) and drop an affiliate link to an HDMI cable… just a couple examples. You may want to build relationships with the manufacturers so you can get products before they’re released – giving you time to create a review before the product is launched and capture sales during peak buying times.

• Up to 10% commissions
• Commission % based on categories
• Sitewide commissions (if they buy anything using your link, you get a commission)
• Super high conversions
• Create a custom affiliate link to any product                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            WordPress Affiliate Programs If you’re in the WordPress industry like I am (whether it be design, development, or SEO) I have accumulated quite the list of WordPress affiliate programs. I excluded those I found unsuccessful or pay too little to make a profit from, specifically ThemeForest, Creative Market, and low quality theme stores like Template Monster. Hosting pays well and I wrote a tutorial for SiteGround’s affiliate program and StudioPress themes which are my 2 highest paying affiliates. Those tutorials have tons of screenshots/social proof especially for SiteGround.
  
  • SiteGround –  my main hosting affiliate with a solid reputation on social media (which I use to my advantage). They pay $50 – 100+/sale and award custom commissions based on your performance and whether you’re selling more expensive hosting plans.
  • WP Engine – $200/sale with a two-tier affiliate program ($50 for each two-tier sale)
  • StudioPress – known for being the most quality WordPress themes built in Genesis
  • Elegant Themes – high quality themes with generous affiliate program (50% of sale)
  • StackPath – CDN with 31 additional data centers (Cloudflare has 150+ data centers, but more data centers = faster content delivery). I get around $1,000/month by referring people to StackPath in my cache plugin tutorials. StackPath recently bought MaxCDN and their affiliate acceptance rate is much lower (depends on your potential volume) but most cache plugins converted to StackPath as their recommended CDN
  • Freelancer – refer people to developers, designers, and other freelancers you’ve worked with and make 100% of Freelancer’s project commission for the first 90 days. I get a lot of people requesting WordPress speed optimization services… so I refer them to my developers with a freelancer affiliate link and make $125/month in passive income. You can’t use affiliate links to link to specific freelancer profiles, so I direct people to the homepage via affiliate link and give people my developer’s usernames.
  
  

  4. Run The Numbers

  High Commissions, High Conversions, Low Reversal Rates
  Of course you want affiliates with high commissions, but they should also have a solid reputation with high conversions and low reversal rates (you get $0 if people cancel after signing up). If they’re part of an affiliate marketplace like ShareASale or ClickBank you can see some numbers there. Companies likes Amazon/SiteGround are safe bets, otherwise do your research (or track your affiliate links so you can monitor their performance). Avoid affiliates offering huge commissions since this probably means they’re struggling to acquire/retain customers naturally. This will hurt your numbers (specifically your conversions/reversal rates).
  Why I Didn’t Promote WP Engine For $200/Sale
  I could have promoted WP Engine (hosting company) for $200/sale with no tier program to climb – sounds pretty good right? But when I checked ShareASale I saw their reversal rates were 24%! Just to give you an idea SiteGround’s reversals are less than 10%. WP Engine starts at $29/month while SiteGround’s is $3.95/month, plus SiteGround has a better reputation. I had to climb a tier program to higher commissions with SiteGround, but it paid off long-term

Theme – you don’t need a special theme for affiliate marketing, you probably just need a blog. I recommend StudioPress themes since that’s what Yoast, Matt Cutts (from Google), and I use. Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress also recommends them. One of the biggest mistakes I made was using a theme from Themeforest… since they’re built by independent developers who may stop making updates to their theme. This happened to me and I hear horror stories all the time about people having to switch themes and redesign their entire site. I’ve been using the same StudioPress theme (Outreach Pro) for 3 years. Their themes are lightweight (load fast), SEO-friendly via optimized code, secure, and they have a huge selection of plugins for the Genesis Framework and an awesome community in the Genesis WordPress Facebook Group. They include documentation for setting it up and will serve you for many, many years.

Website Development Help – need help setting up your theme? I’ve been working with the same 2 developers for 3+ years. To hire them, sign up for a Freelancer account, post your job (WordPress theme installation) then invite user i333 or bdkamol to your project. If you want, contact me and I will introduce you to them via email. Both are great developers with reasonable rates, speak fluent English, and I outsource all my programming work to them.

6. Master SEO

If you don’t do everything from my WordPress SEO Guide, at least do these:

• Find a specific (long-tail) keyword in Google Autocomplete that is 3+ words long.
• Research the keyword’s competition to make sure it’s not too competitive (broad keywords with high monthly searches are always more competitive). VidIQ, Keywords Everywhere, and MozBar Chrome extensions are great tools for this, but it’s best to manually research how strong the content is (in the top results) – the biggest indicator.
• Create in-depth content (videos should be 10+ minutes long, blog posts should be 3,000+ words long. Create an HTML table of contents to keep long posts organized.
• Craft a nice title (that people will click on) ideally with your keyword in the front of it.
• Craft a nice description (referring to your video description, or meta description for blog posts which you can do in Yoast, the plugin I recommend if you’re on WordPress).
• Don’t obsess over keyword density, it barely matters. The most important places to use it are your title, description, and if using Yoast, your SEO title and meta description.
• Use some links in your content – internal links are a natural way to build links to your own website, and external links are like citing sources to Google. Both are important.
• Use multimedia – whether it be videos, infographics, or audio clips – people love them!
• Use a solid WordPress theme + hosting (eg. StudioPress + SiteGround) which can save you loads of trouble in terms of website speed, compatibility, security, and built-in SEO.
• Use a rich snippets plugin (I use WP Review by MyThemeShop) to get “stars” in Google.
• Configure Yoast’s SEO plugin, Google Search Console, and WP Rocket (cache plugin).
• When using WordPress, use “post name” permalink structure in Settings > Permalinks.
• Always label images (on your computer) BEFORE uploading them to WordPress, and use a plugin to automatically use the image file name as the image alt text (saves time).
• Don’t go nuts with WordPress plugins. Many of them hurt speed or aren’t maintained.
• Add your blog post’s publish date to search results (makes your content look fresh)!
• Make your website load blazing fast – use Cloudflare’s free CDN, optimize images (eg. ShortPixel), avoid external resources like Google AdSense, Google Maps, and high CPU plugins. Make sure you’re running PHP 7+ (in your hosting account), and clean your database frequently with WP-Optimize or WP Rocket. Avoid EIG hosting at all costs.
• Use SSL (Let’s Encrypt is free) and review Google’s national and local ranking factors.

7. Master Video SEO

And if you don’t do everything from my YouTube SEO guide, do these:

• Find a specific (long-tail) keywords in YouTube autocomplete that is 3+ words long.
• Research the keyword’s competition by looking at how many views, likes, comments, and other signals the top videos have (the vidIQ Chrome extension is great for this). Broad keywords have more searches but are more competitive (always start long-tail).
• Cover the topic extensively – aim for 10 minutes and be concise (scripts/editing)!
• Label the video file (on your computer) as your keyword, and upload it to YouTube.
• Craft a nice title that entices people to click your video, with your keyword in front.
• Write a long description with timestamps, links, and use keyword in first sentence.
• Review the transcript automatically generated by YouTube, and make corrections.
• Upload a custom thumbnail (1280px by 720px) that gets people clicking the video.
• Always respond to comments, and embed the video on your blog if you have one.
• Incorporate your video in your blog, email, social media, other marketing channels.

Otherwise, it’s as easy as adding a link to the video description and asking people to click on it. Coupon codes are a huge bonus (if your affiliate offers this) since often times, you can give people a discount using your custom code, while crediting you the sale, without them even having to click your affiliate link. This results in higher conversions.

8. Discover Your Content Strategy (Blog vs. Videos vs. Course)

Blog Posts – in many tech industries like mine, there are lots of technology changes which requires me to update content. It is MUCH easier to update a blog post than to completely redo a video. Videos are good, but posts can last much longer (called evergreen content).
Videos – add affiliate links to YouTube descriptions and tell people you left a link there. You can’t edit a video once it’s uploaded though, so I had a hard time keep mine up-to-date. It requires more maintenance than posts especially if there’s a lot of change in your industry.
eCourse – same thing as videos where it’s hard to keep them up-to-date, though I’ve never done an eCourse. Udemy is probably your best bet though.

9. Rely On Contextual Links (Not Banners)

Affiliate Links – adding affiliate links in your content (text/images/buttons) is the only strategy I use and is the most popular. People who actually read your stuff are the ones likely to buy something you recommend – they’re probably not going to click on a distracting banner ad.
Banners – after testing them out I decided to take down my banner ads since they looked salesy and weren’t working like my affiliate links did. They’re easy to throw up, but distracting and probably won’t get great results. If you try them, be sure to show specific sidebar banners based on the type of content people are reading on your blog (for posts that fall under my SEO category I would show a banner related to SEO, and for posts under my website speed category I would show a different banner). You can do this using a plugin like Widget Logic.

10. Manage Affiliate Links With Thirsty Affiliates

Thirsty Affiliates tracks, cloaks, and categorizes your affiliate links. Once you’ve signed up for your program(s) grab your affiliate links and add them to this plugin. This can take time if you will be linking to multiple pages on your affiliate’s website (which in many cases, you should). The pro version comes with statistics but I don’t even use it and I’m quite the analytical person.

Cloaking – adds /go/ or another link prefix to your affiliate links. Anytime you use an affiliate link you should use the cloaked version (eg. www.onlinemediamasters.com/go/siteground)
Use Deep Links – these are pages on your affiliate’s website that AREN’T the homepage. For SiteGround’s hosting I link a lot to their speed technology page as an affiliate link. If you’re doing Amazon’s affiliate program you just want to gather a list of products you will be recommending to readers, create an affiliate link for each one, and import them to the plugin.
Thirsty Affiliates Settings – go through the plugin settings and tweak whatever is needed. I left everything as the default but changed my link prefix (the cloaked URL version) to /go/.

11. Nofollow Affiliate Links

You don’t want search engines following affiliate links. If you add them to content using Thirsty Affiliates, it will do this automatically. Otherwise select “Nofollow” when adding affiliate links.

12. Add Affiliate Links To Images

Just a quick reminder to do this – it can increase clicks especially on mobile.

13. Bookmark Affiliate Statistic Pages In Your Browser

Go to your affiliate dashboard(s) and bookmark the “statistic” page so it saves to your browser. This saves time especially if you’re someone who likes to constantly check sales/performance.

14. Setup Text/Email Alerts Whenever A Sale Is Made

This only works if the affiliate sends you an email when a sale is generated. Any time I make a SiteGround sale, I get a custom notification on my phone. It is ENCOURAGING to get these.
Create custom alerts on your phone for affiliate sales – if you use GMail, go to your settings and create a filter so all emails with “SiteGround Affiliate Sale Generated” in the subject line go into their own folder (tweak the subject line to match whatever email notification your affiliate sends you). Then setup a custom alert on your phone using the GMail app so anytime you generate a sale, you get a custom alert (here’s a tutorial for Android and here’s one for Apple). I have different notifications for SiteGround, StudioPress Themes, etc. Makes your day better :)

15. SEO: Keyword Research

The 2,000+ visitors/day I get through SEO is a huge part of my passive affiliate income. My SEO strategy is all about content which starts with keyword research (topics you write about). I suggest reading that article since keyword research/content optimization is mandatory.
Long-Tail Keywords – specific keywords usually with 3-7 individual words in a phrase. They are highly targeted and MUCH easier to rank for than broad keywords (all mine are long-tail). The lower your domain authority (check using OSE), the less competitive (more long-tail) your keywords should be. If you can get more specific and the keyword still shows up in Google Autocomplete, Moz Keyword Explorer and other keyword tools… choose the SPECIFIC one.

Target 1-2 Keywords Per Article – until you can successfully rank for 1 keyword for an article, don’t try targeting 2. Once you get the hang of it and are ready to write an article around 2, choose a secondary keyword that is a synonym of your primary keyword. An example would be “Slow WordPress Site” and “Why Is WordPress Slow.” Then craft your article title/SEO title/meta description to mention individual words of each – while making them read nicely.
Google Autocomplete – go to google.com, start typing a phrase and look at the dropdown autocomplete results. You can use the underscore character “_” to have Google fill-in-the-blank. Just make sure the last character you type is an underscore. Try using plurals and change the word ordering to see different results. This is how I find 90% of my keywords.