Looking to begin affiliate marketing but don’t know where to start? Affiliate marketing can be a great way for content creators to make passive income. From starting out to making money from Instagram and blogging, here is a beginner-friendly guide to affiliate linking:
why me? Hi there! My name is Maddy, and welcome to my online space. I’m an outdoor guide and freelance writer/photographer. I’m dedicated to creating free resources for both beginner outdoors-people, and beginner content creators. These free resources are made possible entirely by paying subscribers of the Hello Stranger Newsletter.
Join the newsletter today to connect with thousands of like-minded adventurers and get gritty and honest adventure stories delivered right to your inbox (aka read my diary).
How to use Affiliate Marketing as a Beginner Content Creator:
Oh hey! to make it extra meta, this article contains affiliate links. Don’t worry, I’ll point out where they are and how they work.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Put simply, affiliate marketing works in that marketers or content creators can share a custom link recommending a product. If the reader decides to make a purchase based on your (the marketer’s) recommendation, you make a kickback at no additional cost to the purchaser. Affiliate marketing works in monetizing recommendations.
How much money can content creators expect to make affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is often presented as an easy way for content creators to make passive income by recommending products they love. In reality, affiliate marketing takes a lot of ground work to implement. Realistically, it will take time before you will see results. In addition, according to a survey conducted by Influencer Marketing Hub, almost 60% of affiliate marketers make less than 10k a year from affiliate marketing.
It’s worth noting that the number of affiliate marketers making less than 10k a year from affiliate marketing is likely higher. A survey like this is subject to response bias. The people most likely to answer a survey on Influencer Marketing Hub are likely savvy marketers. Also worth noting is that 60% of affiliate marketers likely quit after 1-2 years. It would be interesting to see what the correlation between income and time spent in affiliate marketing looks like.
In short, don’t expect to make a majority of your income from affiliate marketing when you’re just beginning content creating. However, after several years of content creating using affiliate linking can result in higher income. Either way, affiliate linking is likely to be best used as just one of your income streams as a content creator.
From building your content, to affiliate linking strategy, here are the best strategies for affiliate marketers just starting out:
1) Build a brand on solid, useful content
It is impossible to make any money from affiliate linking until you have built up a platform to market from. The two primary ways to do this are on social media, or on a SEO-driven blog like the one you are reading now.
I recommend using both strategies. Social media is likely to reach fewer people, but be more effective. If a content creator is using social media effectively, they are often a trusted resource to whom their audience feels a personal connection.
An SEO-driven blog can reach a much larger audience, and articles you write are likely to be read for several years after publication. While conversion rates on blogs are lower initially, the volume of eyes per post is higher over the post’s lifetime. The post is likely to generate clicks and leads for years, not days. Keep in mind that most blogs are unable to join most affiliate marketing programs until they hit 10,000 monthly website views.
Building a brand, whether on social media or as a blog, takes time! The best thing that you can do is start. Don’t be afraid to publish imperfect content. If you wait to only post perfect photos or videos, or only publish perfect blog posts, you’ll never start at all. More importantly, you’ll never get to the chance to learn from your early mistakes and find your voice.
Strategies for building content on social media and in blogging:
The two most important things to keep in mind when starting out as a content creator are to focus on providing useful, interesting content and to pick 1-3 topics or niches. Choosing a niche is important; ideally, a reader can browse your page and tell within seconds what to expect from your blog or social media. In addition, the only way to gain regular readers and views is to provide interesting and valuable content.
For more on effectively creating content for a travel blog, follow the link below.
Learn how to start a travel blog in 2024 from scratch!
2) Choose an affiliate program
Once you have content ready and regular readers, it’s time to start thinking about affiliate linking programs. One of the most popular affiliate linking platforms for both social media and websites is Avantlink. Through Avantlink, you can apply to a variety of affiliate linking programs.
Some brands have affiliate programs you can apply to directly through the brand itself. This works especially well. For example, I use Sellfy.com* to sell and market my digital products like eBooks and presets. It’s a platform I find easy to use and would recommend to any content creator, and its affiliate program offers a fair commission rate. It was an easy pick to join this affiliate program, and it works effortlessly into my creator guide content series. Oh, hey! That’s what you’re reading now.
*this is an affiliate link. Here, you can see I am recommending a product I already like and use. By placing a link to the e-Commerce site I use in a blog post made for content creators, I am guaranteed to reach people who are likely to want to sell their own digital products in the future. I would not, for example, include affiliate links to outdoor gear in a post like this.
Why not to use Amazon’s Affiliate Program:
One affiliate program that pretty much universally has bad reviews is Amazon’s affiliate program. Amazon’s affiliate program is one of the most accessible to smaller creators, but does not compensate fairly. Here, you’re likely to put in a lot of effort for very little reward. Rather than signing on to Amazon’s affiliate program, your time is probably better spend focusing on creating quality content until you can apply to a program with fairer compensation. Alternately, consider creating your own digital products. We’ll talk more about this below.
READ: Stop Influencing for Amazon
3) Develop an affiliate linking strategy
Once you’ve chose an affiliate program, it’s time to develop your affiliate marketing strategy.
Consider the affiliate programs you’ve chosen, and what sort of content allows you to effortlessly link to that content. For example, if I’m affiliate linking for Sellfy.com, the platform I use to sell my products, I might write an article like How to Create, Market, and Sell your eBook. Another good strategy is to develop a content series and determine what affiliate links will work well within that series.
For example, if you’re an outdoors content creator doing a Oregon Road Trip, you might come up with 3-4 blog topics you can write about that trip and repurpose that useful blog content for Instagram as well as share the BTS (behind the scenes) of your trip. Topics might include…
- 10 must-see stops on an Oregon Road Trip
- Best Coffee Shops on the Oregon Coast
- The Ultimate Oregon Road Trip Packing List
Throughout both the blog posts and Instagram, you can use affiliate links to make money recommending the products that you use. This is especially easy when implementing packing lists.
Note: In my beginner’s guide to travel blogging article, I talk about the importance of high quality images. Using high-quality images of yourself using gear is a great way to enhance your affiliate linking strategy. This way you can link to the gear pictured.
4) Implement a Newsletter
While a blog and social media presence is a great place to start when implementing affiliate linking, a Newsletter can help drive sales. Some newsletters do not allow affiliate links in the email directly. No worries! You can easily backlink to recent articles and blog posts that do contain affiliate links.
Newsletters are a great way to access your readers directly, and offer something that social media doesn’t: you actually own your email list. If social media goes down forever tomorrow, you still have access to your readership (and job security!) through a newsletter.
The best traditional newsletter programs are Mailchimp and CovertKit. I use neither. Rather than a traditional newsletter, I maintain a Substack blog Hello Stranger Newsletter. You might say “wait Maddy, why do you have two blogs?”. The blog you’re reading now and my Substack blog are two related but very different blogs. Here on the WordPress blog, I publish exclusively educational content and resources designed to reach readers via organic search (AKA Google). This blog is made to answer questions and doesn’t require familiarity with my content.
Hello Stranger Newsletter offers insights into my personal life, where I’m travelling and hiking, long-form narrative essays, and often backlinks to this blog where appropriate. Because I work as an indie writer, running a newsletter this way makes more sense than the traditional newsletter. In addition, Substack makes it possible to easily monetize your writing itself.
5) Share Genuine Recommendations for things you already use
The best way to make money from affiliate marketing is to share recommendations for products you already use. This way, your recommendations will come across as more authentic, because they are! You may be able to apply directly to the brands you love affiliate programs through Avantlink, or you may need to check their website for more information.
Many brands will have affiliate program information linked in the footer of their website.
What works better for affiliate marketing: Instagram or blogs?
On traditional SEO-optimized blogs, affiliate linking is one of the most common methods of monetization, and is a great way to make money from blogging without cluttering your website with ads. However conversion rates tend to be low. In addition, you’ll likely need at least 10,000 monthly blog visitors before you qualify for most affiliate programs. This means you’ll need to spend time building a up content before implementing an affiliate linking strategy.
However, on blog posts specifically focused on product reviews you may see a higher conversion rate, but less readers. Put plainly, you might see more people make a purchase, but less people will read the article.
On social media sites like Instagram and TikTok content creators are likely to see a higher conversion rate. This likely has to do with the nature of the platform. On WordPress, SEO-driven blogs like the one you’re reading now, readers are usually there to get an answer to a question. As a result of this, readers are only likely to make a purchase if that purchase helps in answering their question. On social media platforms, the viewer has a more personal relationship with the content creator or influencer. Because of this higher trust the viewer more likely to make a purchase based on a recommendation.
Size doesn’t matter on social media when it comes to affiliate linking! Content creators with smaller followings can have higher conversion rates than those with large followings as their recommendations seem more personal.
a quick note about creating content and affiliate linking:
While you might make decent commission on affiliate linking through social media, commission is not a fair trade for content creation. Ultimately, It’s up to the individual content creator to decide what fair compensation is for them. For example, for high-value products I really love with decent commission rates, I’ll occasionally work in exchange for product + commission. I only do this when I am confident that I can make decent sales and commission.
In general, no matter how big or small your following on social media, the work you put into content creation is worth more than you could possibly make in commission for sales. If you take too many partnerships in exchange for low value product + commission, you’re likely to actually lose money in the long term. I’ll talk at the end of this post about better ways to use your time to actually make money than working in exchange for commission.
For this reason, affiliate marketing on social media is only truly effective when marketing products you already love and use.
Is Affiliate Marketing Worth it for small content creators?
Yes and no; in general, content creation when you’re starting out is a lot of unpaid work. You have to really, truly love it. I still spend evenings on weekdays writing blogs and working towards independent writing and content creation full-time.
Affiliate Marketing can be a great way to make a little bit of passive income if you’re already excited about content creating, but don’t expect it to pay the bills. This is especially true when you’re just starting out. I’ve been working on this blog seriously for about a year, and have made around 500 USD in affiliate linking (I’ll update again come spring as most of my hiking content becomes seasonal again), which is about average for a newer blog. I’ve been active on social media for longer, and in the same time frame made just a little more than that from affiliate linking on Instagram.
That being said, this fall is the first time I’ve really dove into affiliate linking strategy, so the results remain to be seen.
My affiliate linking updates (I’ll continue to update this for your reference and to help you set realistic goals for your blog:
- March 2024, about six months after a full SEO audit of my blog, implementing affiliate linking, and publishing 6-10 new blog posts per month: hit 20,000 monthly pageviews, $250 in passive affiliate income monthly average
Better ways to make money as a content creator than affiliate marketing:
While I haven’t had fantastic results from affiliate marketing as a small content creator, I’ve had great results creating and marketing my own products. I launched my photo presets last spring, and with just 20k Instagram followers made enough to pay rent for two months in a day. Since then, income from photo presets has been more intermittent, but a reliable passive income stream.
In addition, I sell eBooks and guides to exploring the Midwest. This has also been a great source of passive income, though it took quite a bit of effort to write and create these books. Overall, I would recommend a content creator with less than 10k monthly website views and a smaller Instagram following focus first on digital or physical products. Hold off on affiliate linking until your reach is greater.
Again, I use Sellfy.com to easily sell and market digital products (I actually sell my handknits through the site now too, easier than Etsy!) and would recommend that for any small creator. Sellfy is also cool in that if you’re enjoying the platform, you can easily join the affiliate program. (Like I did, meta!).
free resources like this oneare made possible by paying subscribers of theHello Stranger Newsletter.Join the newsletter today to connect with thousands of like-minded adventurers and get gritty and honest adventure stories delivered right to your inbox (aka read my diary).
Love learning how to use affiliate marketing for beginners? Here are some other articles you’ll love reading:
- Check out How to Create, Market, and Sell your eBooks
- Learn how to start a travel blog for beginners
- Read about editing iPhone Photos for Instagram
thanks for reading & good luck on your content creator journey!
share this article:
