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I absolutely love affiliate marketing and the role it can play in people’s businesses. Both digital and bricks and mortar businesses can thoughtfully add affiliate marketing as a revenue stream but there are some things to consider before you begin. I’ve made thousands of dollars in affiliate income BUT I’ve also made some significant mistakes that have impacted my ability to grow that income. Recently I decided to do an audit of my business, how I was making revenue and some of the areas where I recognized an underutilized opportunity. Affiliate marketing income has dropped off for me and in doing my audit I’ve recognized some issues. I thought I would share what has worked in the past, what’s not working and some strategies to consider using for bringing affiliate income into your business.
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Mistake #1 Misaligned Affiliates for Your Brand
This one is HUGE. In fact, one of the reasons why I created The Brand Building Lab was to be able to share my favorite tools and resources aligned with building an online business. Those affiliates never felt like a good fit for my personal finance content and I was concerned about that business content eventually taking over my personal finance brand. Why? Because I still had personal finance content that I wanted to share. This mistake also relates to the positioning of your brand. In my case, I never talk about credit cards in my personal finance content. I’m not anti-credit cards but they are a financial tool that I don’t use. So, I use credit card affiliates on my website even though they can be incredibly lucrative. Instead I use win-win affiliates such as: Qube, Ibotta, or refer to affiliates where my audience can click to see a favorite book (this would be Amazon) to make a purchase. Basically, the affiliates have to make sense for your brand.
Mistake #2 Not Building Out Evergreen Content
In order for affiliates to convert well it’s really important to build content around the affiliate. What does this look like?
- Posts/Podcasts/Videos that explain the affiliate
- Posts/Podcasts/Videos that break down the benefits of the affiliate
- Posts/Podcasts/Videos that share pros and cons
- Posts/Podcasts/Videos with follow ups on the affiliate
By the way, posts could refer to actual website content, videos, social media or all these combined. It’s my view that using a mixed content strategy is key.
Mistake #3 The One and Done Approach
If you’re sharing your affiliate too infrequently they won’t convert into sales. Think about it, in order for YOU to take an action you may have to hear a “sales pitch” or be connected with an affiliate several times. Or, because you’ve only shared your affiliate occasionally not enough people will be put in front of your affiliate to convert into significant earnings. You have to unapologetically share your favorite affiliates in a way that is NATURAL to your content. It can’t feel salesy.
Mistake #4 Lack of Intention Around Affiliate Marketing
I was a long-time member of a large blogging community centered around a course. I had several friends who made significant amounts of money with the affiliate for that blogging community. They literally built out content ALL YEAR LONG that leveraged that affiliate. Then when it was time for people to purchase the course those friends made crazy money. Seriously, crazy money. They were so intentional about sharing this and other helpful affiliates on their platforms. And it showed.
Mistake #5 Not Understanding How Cookies Impact Affiliate Marketing
No, I’m not talking about the delicious dessert treat. I’m talking about electronic cookies that remember browser clicks on your affiliate links. If you’re unfamiliar with cookies, I’m going to break it down below.
- Cookies remember who clicks on your affiliate link (super simplified explanation). They remember the IP address of the digital device that the user was when clicking on their affiliate link.
- These cookies can remember that IP address for a period of time defined by the affiliate program. Here is the range of times that affiliates may use.
- 24 hours-Amazon affiliates
- 7 days-a lot of travel affiliates are in this range
- 30 days
- 60 days
- 90 days
- 365 days-Unicorn affiliate program
- Forever cookie-Unicorn affiliate program
Remember how I mentioned that I had friends who created content for their favorite affiliate throughout the entire year? They really understood how the cookie associated with the affiliate work and that played heavily in their affiliate strategy. These people understood how long their affiliates may take to make a spending or sign up decision with their favorite affiliate.
Mistake # 6 Promoting In-Kind Affiliates for Too Long
In-kind affiliates basically pay you in credit. For example, maybe you love a favorite shoe brand. The affiliate might give you credit towards more shoes vs. cash. You can learn a lot of lessons from promoting in-kind affiliates but ultimately unless they’re FOOD affiliates there’s a point where you may want to reach out to the affiliate team (you can do this) and change the affiliate so that you’re getting paid in cash. There’s a couple of reasons for this:
- You get taxed on affiliate earnings both in-kind and actual cash.
- Cash is king and can be used to reinvest in your business, pay your bills, have fun with, etc.
- Ask yourself why you’re uncomfortable sharing affiliate that pay cash money?
Mistake #7 Focusing On Too Many Affiliates
If you’re trying to grow your affiliate income one major mistake many people make is focusing on way too many affiliate programs. Don’t do this. Focus on a maximum of 7-10 affiliates that make sense and that you can share over and over again. Having too many affiliates creates dispersed focus and makes it harder on the content creator to build income with the affiliates. If you’re sharing 20 affiliates doesn’t that feel overwhelming? Create a spreadsheet of a maximum of 7-10 affiliates of products that you use constantly. On that spreadsheet note the following:
- The cookie duration for the program
- What the payout is
- How often the payout happens-End of the month, 60 days, etc.
- How you’re paid-direct debit, check (this is so weird to me) etc.
Mistake #8 Focusing on Just One Affiliate
Don’t put your eggs all in one basket. When COVID hit, a large number of programs shut down their affiliate programs across niches. AirBnB had no one traveling so having an affiliate program didn’t make sense. Credit card companies paused their programs because so many people lost jobs that lending services IN GENERAL changed. Or, maybe you accidentally violate the terms of service. Amazon Affiliates experience this quite a bit.
Mistake #9 Not Disclosing You’re an Affiliate
This is a broader issue. If you’re not disclosing that you’re an affiliate and may be compensated for your recommendation you’re legally out of compliance with the terms of disclosure in these internet streets. In fact, a best practice is to have a disclosure in the following places:
- On your website-You’ll see this on my website after the first paragraph in italics
- During a livestream-If I’m sharing an affiliate I always disclose that relationship in my comments.
- On social media-If I’m sharing an affiliate on social media again, I disclose that it’s an affiliate.
Mistake #10 Sharing in the Wrong Places
If you’re an Amazon Affiliate in particular, you are not supposed to share that affiliate link with your email list or in “enclosed” spaces such as a closed Facebook group. Spend some time understanding the rules around the affiliates you would like to share and where you’re allowed to share it and stay in compliance. Amazon, in particular, scrapes data to make sure that affiliates are complying with terms of service. If you think that you can do what you’d like to do…sooner or later you may be hit with a non-compliance notice and no longer able to participate in the affiliate program.
Mistake #11 Not Sharing Your Affiliates With Your Email List
You’ll see me referencing email lists pretty often in the content on this site. Email lists are fantastic for helping your community connect with your favorite affiliates and how they can be useful to them. You can share links to podcast episodes, videos that you’ve shot on YouTube, comments shared on social media, reviews that you’ve done. Again, DO NOT embed Amazon Affiliate links, in particular, in those emails. That is not in compliance with that specific program.
Building a Passive Income Revenue Stream
Affiliate income is a fantastic way to build passive income into your business. It may take some time to figure out what affiliates are a good energetic fit for:
- You
- Your audience
- Your content
Building passive income over time can really help change the trajectory of your business. Affiliate income can create opportunities to say “no” to projects that don’t serve you well. Building out affiliate income and product related income can change what you say “yes” to in your business. During COVID having constant affiliate income coming in and product sales allowed me to not stress out as I hunkered down during lockdowns. This is a strategy that I highly encourage digital business owners to focus on as they build out the content for their brand.
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