Promoting Affiliates For Blogging Income

Affiliate promotion has been a popular form of blogging income for many years. For some the income from affiliates seem to run into thousands each month, for others, they are lucky to make cents. What then is the key to making a blogging income through affiliates?

Affiliate income can come in two different streams. The first and most common is through the promotion of products on behalf of another organization. A visitor sees your promotion and clicks through and makes purchase. You get a set commission – end of transaction.

Some sites will pay on further transaction either for life or for a set period ranging from seven day to 12 months. This means that once that customer has made a purchase, they are ‘your’ customer and you will continue to earn commission from any sales to them.

The second form of affiliate marketing is similar to the above with a slight modification – multi level or tiered commission. For these programs, you are not only trying to make sales, you are also trying to get individuals to sign up as affiliate marketers themselves. Commissions differ with a tiered structure. You may earn 5% on your sales plus 5% on the sales that any of your  ‘affiliates’ make – sometimes as deep as three, four or five. The percentage of commission may drop after the level.

Benefits of multi level affiliates is that once you have established an affiliate structure, you can sit back and concentrate on building an affiliate network on another product. The blogging income from the first network, called passive income, will continue for as long as your affiliates keep working for you.

The best products to promote are those closely related to your niche. Visitors are coming to your site already to read your content. They obviously have an interest in your subject matter so it makes sense to sell products in that area.

The second key to succeeding with affiliate marketing is to do some promotion, writing about the products through your blogs and perhaps by undertaking PPC campaigns with the product as your choice of keywords.

Affiliate marketing is not for everyone. It can cost you more than you make initially, however once you build up an affiliate base, your income can grow quite well with little follow work required. These days it is difficult to make tens of thousands through affiliate programs, you can however gain reasonable returns.