Affiliate linking.
So, another lesson from the guy who knows nothing.
Buckle up your seat belts- it is learning time.
Biography of a nobody day 49. February 18th 2021.
All my free time today has been spent getting to fully understand affiliate linking. This post will be super useful (hopefully) to those of you who also have a website or a blog. If you aren't interested in that then skip to the very bottom where I will do a quick update on the rest of my day.
I will say- this is a beginners guide written by a beginner. I am new to this too. I may have some things slightly wrong- so always do your own research- this is just meant to give you a zero to something understanding. With that in mind- I hope this information I have gathered is useful to you!
What are affiliate links, in a sentence?
Links to other businesses that you can earn a commission from.
Why should you use affiliate links?
There is a really simple answer here- To earn money from your website at no cost to you or your readers. You get paid a commission for purchases of a product or service from a business for each sale made to someone directed from your website to theirs. easy. It is less experience ruining than things like Adsense and can be far more lucrative depending on who you are affiliated with and what percentage they pay.
For example, as an Amazon affiliate- If I review a book then leave a link at the bottom for you to buy it, and you do, I would get paid a small percentage of the money you paid as a commission. It doesn't cost you any more to buy via an affiliate link- I earn a small reward from Amazon's profit for the sale.
If you are already recommending products or reviewing them- which then encourages people to buy that product when they otherwise may not have... Well, it makes sense that you earn money from that.
A normal link from your website will not work though- it needs to specifically be an affiliate link.
Ok. Affiliate links... How do I get them?
Well, that depends on the company. Using Amazon as an example again- they simply have a link to their 'Associates program' at the bottom of their homepage- under the title 'Make money with us'. Click the link and the whole process including registering a bank account to be paid into and filling in your tax info will take around 10 minutes- if you have that info to hand. If you already have an amazon account the process is even quicker.
Once you are signed up you can request links to the products you want and then add them to your site. It is that simple.
I found this article by Laura Iancu (An awesome blogger) super helpful as regards common mistakes you can make when attempting to integrate Amazon affiliate links to your site. A simple example is that if you don't make at least three sales within the first 6 months your affiliate account will close and your links will cease to work. You also can't use your own affiliate links to earn your own commissions... Damn.
A lot of online businesses have affiliate or associates programs. If you just look at their site you can often find it in their menu. If you can't then try emailing them- it may be that they are very niche and don't get many requests from people to link to their products. The more niche a business or product that you are affiliate linking to the more likely your commission percentage will be higher. The more traffic your page has- the more likely you will be able to negotiate this percentage.
How much can I earn?
Once the link is up it is a form of passive income for you- and these passive incomes can be extremely lucrative. Here is another great read by a blogger called Ryan Robinson. He explains how he earned over $20,000 from his website and around 80% of that was from affiliate and associate links.
What do I need?
Not much to be honest. A bank account and a website. I have used Amazon as the main example above as they sell a massive range of products and a lot of people link easily to them. They also do not have 'traffic checks' for you to register with them. Some affiliate or associate programs require your site to have high volumes of website clicks (traffic) per month in order to qualify. Amazon does not. Meaning that even a new site like mine can start earning a commission.
How does the business know I supplied the customer?
Cookies are the most common way with bigger businesses, those annoying little pop-ups you get on most websites that declare that they are collecting some of your information for whatever reason. Well, all websites do it to some degree- even if it is just to keep you logged in to an account you have made on it. Some cookies are temporary- the cookies from an Amazon associates link, for example, last 24 hours. This is amazing for a couple of reasons- The first is that if the person clicks on the link then exits without buying the item right then- as long as they purchase it within the next 24 hours from the click then you get paid. The second reason this is amazing is that you don't just get paid for the item you linked them to- you get paid a commission for all items they buy in that time.
You should now be earning money!!
I hope that helped! I have set up affiliate/associate accounts with a few platforms now. I plan on going back through some of my blog posts where I previously just added normal links to products that I loved and replacing them with the relevant links to earn myself some commission. That is the best thing about the links in my opinion- I would only be earning from things I wanted to recommend or link people to anyway (and I have been doing) because I love them. To earn a little money out of that is pretty cool and if this site makes some cash then I can spend more time writing. That is the dream in the long run I think!
The rest of my day (Diary)...
As you can imagine a lot of my free time was used to put all of that together. It has rained most of the day too so Alex and I couldn't take Rusty for a walk. Instead, we watched Harry Potter films. Well, the first two- I think the rest may be a little scary for her. I covered her eyes in any bits that weren't fun... I mean crap that bit in the dark forest is pretty chilling for a kids film! She has now decided that one of Rusty's chewing sticks is her want and she has been turning me into a frog half of the day- then turning herself invisible for the rest of it. It has been super cute. Since we didn't need to leave the house we have been in our pyjama's most of the day!
Now I am an Amazon associate- it makes sense the first affiliate link that I write would be on this page- so here goes:
Amazon has started to offer, finally, different series of films in digital boxsets on Amazon Prime. Playstation now and various other streaming services have been doing this for a while- but my main streaming account is Amazon... so this excited me. This is why Alex and I have been watching Harry Potter- I bought the HD digital boxset of all 8 films today and we have been watching them! I hardly need to advertise Harry Potter to you- I grew up with the characters so I love the films as most 90s kids do. If you don't own them then this is actually a really decent deal- so give it a go.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. (You actually NEED to use this statement)
If you use the following associate link: https://amzn.to/3kdqCwk Then I earn a little bit of commission! Woop Woop!! ... I think for digital films it is around 5%? So get your links on your site sorted!!
Thanks for reading, I hope the post helped!