How To Monetize Your Profitable Blog With Affiliate Marketing

Many of you arrived here from a Google search asking, “how to monetize your blog with affiliate marketing?”

We intend to be the source that gets you to the Greek, showing how you can monetize your blog and achieve big revenues with affiliate marketing.

Blog monetization, also known as making money blogging, is a feature of blogging that is not as talked about.

We usually talk about how to start a blog, or how to build a profitable blog, but when it comes to the money – it is all about monetizing your blog.

Today we are going to look at how to monetize your profitable blog with affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a profitable industry, and it has more affiliates and revenues every year.

If you want to get into the game of affiliate marketing through blogging, then this article will walk you through the steps you will be taking to win the game of affiliate marketing.

Let us get started.

Build A Blog Based on a Profitable Niche

Building a profitable blog takes some real ability.

Thankfully, we have already covered many of the basics in our article on how to start a blog.

The point of building a blog is not always to make money.

Some people want to share their ideas with the world.

For many of us, however, making money blogging is important.

It is why we got into the blogging business.

For these people, we want to be successful, and this how-to guide takes you there.

It all begins with building a blog based on a profitable niche.

Whether it is fashion, travel or tech, there are hundreds of profitable niches for your blog.

You will want to write a good 100 articles or so, to get started.

You should also format your blog with a pleasing look and appearance.

The reason you do this is because, when you do end up applying to your affiliate programs, your application goes through an affiliate manager.

Some affiliate programs have instant approval, while others do not.

So, as you build your profitable blog, be sure to make your blog look beautiful.

A well-established blog gets accepted by affiliate managers every time.

Find Affiliate Marketing Programs That Correspond to Your Blog Niche

Now that you have built a blog with articles, your next step is to find affiliate programs that correspond to your blog niche.

There are hundreds of lists of articles on Google about top-selling affiliate programs.

In addition, there are many niche-specific affiliate program lists that you can find.

Generally, you can find affiliate programs for any niche.

There are also affiliate programs that you should promote, regardless of what you blog about.

It is recommended that every profitable blog feature a “how to start your blog” article.

In that article, you can recommend web hosting platforms such as BlueHost and WP Engine.

You can also recommend email marketing platforms such as ConvertKit and OptinMonster.

If you think doing SEO makes sense for a profitable blog, and we do agree, then you can also recommend Semrush or Serpstat.

Most profitable blogs have niche-specific content, and content about blogging in general.

Join some profitable affiliate programs, and that gets to the next step where we talk about how to monetize your content strategy.

Do Keyword Research and Mind-Mapping to Determine What Content to Write

After you have been accepted into your affiliate programs, the next step is to determine what content you want to write for you to make money blogging with affiliate marketing.

We recommend doing keyword research.

We recently wrote a big tutorial on how to do keyword research for your blog, and we think you will benefit from reading it.

With Quick Blog Profit, we like to use mind-mapping tools as well as Excel spreadsheets to manage our content strategy.

First, we build a content calendar on Excel, that has the titles of the blogs we would like to write, as well as content deadlines.

The mind-mapping software we use is called XMind, and we also recommend MindManager.

For these tools, you can plan out your content, producing interesting articles to write and grouping them based on logic.

You might find that a 10-Step article makes sense, and then you outline each step, with sub-topics as other articles that you would then write.

Each article would include affiliate links – special links given to you by the affiliate manager – that can be tracked.

When you post these links, anybody who clicks on the link and makes a purchase would cause you to earn a sales commission.

Without the affiliate link – say, using a regular link – you would not make any affiliate commissions.

Write Content That Ranks on Google for Relevant Keywords

The next step is all about writing excellent content that ranks on Google.

Your keyword research might uncover 100 or more article topics for you to write.

Remember, blogging consistently is the key to blogging success.

You want to write content that would lead to a reader becoming a customer of your affiliate products.

Calling to mind search intent, be sure to remember that there are 4 types of searches on Google:

Informational
Navigational
Commercial
Transactional

Write blog content for each of these types of searches and be sure to include your keywords from your keyword research.

If you are having trouble producing articles to write, then do many Google searches about your topic.

Note the articles that perk up on Google, and then add them to your content calendar.

Write Top 10 Lists, How-To Posts, Reviews and Guides to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

If you really want to make progress with making money blogging, then there are certain types of articles to write.

Top 10 lists, otherwise known as listicles, can be profitable for many bloggers.

In these articles, you list the top 10 products for a certain category.

For example, you could have a blog on technology and then list the top 10 smartwatches available for purchase.

These top 10 lists work for every niche, and they really bring in money.

Also, you will want to write how-to posts – such as this blog post you are reading.

You will also want to write guides.

There are Beginner’s Guides, in-depth tutorials, and thorough articles that cover your topic in-depth.

When you author these articles, you will be able to monetize them with affiliate programs easily.

Do not forget to write product reviews, as these can generate enormous quantities of sales.

You can also write comparison posts, such as WP Engine vs Kinsta, and those work well for commissions, too.

Promote Your Best Posts on Google with Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

The next step is to take your top 10 lists and promote them on Google AdWords.

Google AdWords is Google’s search engine advertising platform.

Generally, you can expect to pay around $1 for each click to your blog.

People love reading top-10 lists, and they buy from them very often.

When you advertise your money-making articles, you will be able to earn a return on ad spend, or ROAS, between 2-4 times your advertising spends.

So, if you spend $2,000 a month on ads on Google, you can expect to bring in $4,000 to $8,000 a month in revenue.

Google is not the only way to post articles.

You can also do a PPC campaign on Pinterest and get comparable results with cheaper clicks.

A PPC campaign on Pinterest can send readers to your top-10 list, and from there to the merchants where you have an affiliate relationship.

A shortcut is to start affiliate marketing with Amazon.

Be sure to get your 3 sales before you start posting your links.

Amazon says that you need 3 affiliate sales in the first 6 months, or they will close your account.

After you get those 3 sales, you can make a lot of money from posting top 10 lists to your blog and filling them with Amazon products.

There is no limit to how many top-10 lists to create.

You can also advertise text links on YouTube through the Google AdWords platform, and I have heard that this method can be very profitable as well.

Use Pinterest to Build Traffic to Your Blog Posts

Pinterest is an excellent way to gain traffic to your blog posts.

Some blogs say that Pinterest causes up to 40% of their web traffic!

What you do is create Pinterest Pins, which are vertical images with text that lead people to your blog.

As we said before, you can do Pinterest advertising for a low cost.

Also, you can make Pinterest pins for each blog post, and post them on your Pinterest boards.

You should have about 10 Pinterest boards, and each board has 10+ images on them that link to your blog.

Pinterest is an excellent tool for gaining new readers, and the traffic converts about as well as Google AdWords, whether you are advertising or posting organically.

The key to Pinterest is to post regularly, at least with one pin for each blog post, and earn Pinterest traffic by posting consistently.

Leverage Email Marketing to Send Articles with Affiliate Marketing Offers to Your Email List

No post about monetizing your blog with affiliate marketing can be complete without email marketing.

Email marketing tools such as ConvertKit and Constant Contact are must-haves for affiliate marketers.

As you build your blog, you build your email list as well.

When you have thousands of subscribers to your blog, you can send them affiliate offers, as well as blog posts containing affiliate offers.

Many affiliates say that their email list is as profitable as 100 blog posts, or more.

Some say that email marketing – sending email messages to your email list – can cause 30% of your blog’s income!

Regardless, email marketing can be very profitable.

The way to integrate email marketing into your blog is with opt-in boxes.

Many email marketing companies have this feature, and you can also go with OptinMonster to gain new subscribers and build your email list.

Do On-Page SEO Optimization to Rank Higher and Gain More Earnings

Finally, the topic of SEO comes back to front and center.

If your blog posts are optimized for SEO, then you will rank more articles, and you will earn more money.

The tool we like to use for this is All-in-One SEO Pro, which starts at $99 a year.

It is a WordPress plugin that gives you all the tools to optimize each blog post and get the green light on your post.

When you optimize your articles for SEO, with title tags, meta tags, alt tags, and the #1 keyword throughout the text, you will get major bonus points with Google.

Also, you will want to include internal links to other blog posts on your site.

The more your blog is inter-linked, the higher your site will rank, and that can cause more affiliate earnings!

You can build backlinks to your articles, and this gets a big boost from Google in the rankings.

This is an excellent example of off-site SEO.

You can also use tools such as Serpstat, which has a 7-day free trial, to do further SEO analysis of your blog and its blog posts.

Summary

Monetizing your profitable blog with affiliate marketing can be an excellent strategy.

It starts with you building your blog with a profitable niche.

Then, find affiliate programs that correspond to your niche.

Next, do keyword research to determine what articles to write.

Then, write content that ranks on Google for your keywords.

Write top-10 lists, how-to posts, and guides.

Promote your best posts on Google AdWords with PPC.

Use Pinterest to build traffic to your blog.

Leverage email marketing to send affiliate offers – especially articles with affiliate offers – to your email list.

Finally, do SEO for your articles to see even greater results.

Now that you know how to monetize your profitable blog with affiliate marketing, get started by signing up for some affiliate programs to start making money blogging!

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