7 Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers

Two questions I often get asked when working with bloggers1 ... 1. I don't have a product I can sell online.  2. I have a product but have little or no budget to advertise my product. Let me introduce you to the benefits of affiliate marketing and what you can gain as a blogger by tapping into this type of marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. For a more detailed explanation on What is affiliate marketing and why you should use it on your blog 

So let's cover first if you have a product what are the benefits to using affiliates to help sell it. 

Cost - With affiliate marketing you would be paying people a set percentage of the price of the sale. These percentages can vary depending on the niche and products being sold. Anything from 2-3 % right up to 100% but the most common would be 50%. 

Risk - Affiliate marketing is considered very low risk as you don't pay anything out if the marketing doesn't work. All the risk is on the affiliates who will invest time and money to get results.

You don't have to invest in a strategy that might not work out. 

Time & Energy - Choose an affiliate network which can handle everything for you, so it becomes very hands off once set up. Sites like Clickbank , ShareASale and JVZoo are two great networks which do this really well. More details on this on my resources page

Diversity - When affiliates advertise your product / brand they will use various forms of marketing thus giving you a wider reach. Some of the most popular forms are SEO(Search Engine Optimisation), Social networks, Blogging and Email Marketing. By doing these all yourself would be expensive and time consuming. If you set up a landing page on your blog then this in turn drives traffic back to your blog too.

Let's now cover the benefits of affiliate marketing for bloggers that don't have their own product.

Popularity - Affiliate marketing is becoming hugely popular with the big brands as well as small ones, with companies such as Amazon using affiliates to boost their growth. With affiliate programs now in most niches there's always something you can find to promote to your readers.

So it's a great place to start earning an income using your blog 

Market Research - If you are not yet ready to produce your own digital product yet, why not promote others in your niche there are two reasons this is good to do. You get to earn commissions from them and at the same time work out what others are doing before producing your own product and competing.

Additional Income Streams - Another great reason to promote affiliate products in your niche is to gain additional income streams. Promoting products that complement your own is an ideal way to maximize the income from your existing customer base.

Conclusion - Adding affiliate marketing to your blogging strategy is definitely a great way to increase your customer base and also piggy back on other successful bloggers already in your niche. Dismiss it at your perrell !