As an affiliate marketer who likes to blog I’ve been a big fan of affiliate blogging for some years now. Earning an income from affiliate marketing through blogging is definitely not without its problems. But it can be an enjoyable way to earn a living if you choose a topic you have a passion or interest for.

Before I started earning an income through blogging, I tried many tactics and strategies, and even blogged about topics I had zero interest in (or knowledge about)!

One blog in particular springs to mind and it was a blog about mushroom harvesting. At the time I was desperate to start earning online and so chose a topic which was pretty uncompetitive. This was in order to give me an edge on getting free traffic. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and I learned a hard lesson trying to sustain a blog about something I cared nothing about! I wouldn’t recommend it!

Affiliate Blogging – What Not To Do

Although I did rank my blog on Google for its main search terms, I struggled to keep it going and it quickly dropped off the rankings. Writing posts was a pain too. Each post had to be researched throughly before I started writing, since I knew nothing of the topic. So I would definitely recommend choosing a topic you are at least interested in and in which you can keep writing about for the long term.

Otherwise it’s just too difficult to sustain the necessary effort to see off your competition and create a following.

Having chosen a topic you think you can enjoy writing about, potentially for several months (or even years), it’s time to choose a domain name for your website. You can choose any domain name you like, and you should feel proud of your name of choice.

Affiliate Blogging – Domain Name Choice

However, I’ve always gone after building niche sites based on keyword research, as this can give you a head start in terms of free traffic. Since you’ll need traffic to get traction from a blog, this is the next step. The domain name I chose for this site is based around the keywords “affiliate marketing mentors“. Since affiliatemarketingmentors.com was taken, I opted for affiliatemarketingmentorsonline.com. It contains all my keywords (in order) and is congruent with my topic.

This choice was made after some keyword research using Google’s keyword planner. This keyword was chosen based on monthly views and competition on the search engines. Because it got some monthly views, and was fairly uncompetitive, it seemed like a good choice.

To find a good keyword for your domain, type your main keywords into the planner and look for longer tail derivatives which have low competition on Google. You can learn more about this in my ebook Niche Blogging For Profit. See also how to build a niche website.

Affiliate Blogging: Creating Lots Of Content

It took a fair while for my content to start appearing on Google, so don’t expect miracles without a fair amount of effort upfront! Even today, I need to work hard on content promotion. There’s a few plugins which can help you speed up the process of obtaining traffic, but initially, I would start with Yoast SEO to help you write SEO friendly content. In addition, you can use Google’s keyword planner to find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.

If you create a lot of content using the long tail keyword strategy, you have more chance of getting ranked on Google (and other search engines) because there’s less competition. If you go for shorter tail keywords in your article titles, you’ll be competing with many more other articles just like yours. See also short tail and long tail keywords.

Find long tail keywords based around your main keyword for your site and write lengthy content for them. Use the Yoast SEO plugin to help you write in an SEO friendly way. Over time, Google should pick up your content and start giving you some free traffic. The amount of traffic is a large part of the key to success as a blogger. This will depend on a number of factors such as:

• Your domain age
• Your site’s authority (standing with Google)
• Backlinks – how many, where from and the timespan of your link profile
• Content – “content is king” as the saying goes. Make sure it’s good so that it will stand the test of time. Make each post at least 1000 words for the best results, preferably more.
• Your SEO – search engine optimisation of your site and content (use the suggested plugin)

Affiliate Blogging: Blog Promotion

Although it sounds nice to have Google send you a bunch of traffic for free, don’t count on this happening. Depending on your particular niche, this can take months. Initially websites will likely be held in a “sandbox” period by Google and so you may not see traffic from Google for some time.

If you choose a particularly competitive niche, you’re even less likely to receive free traffic without a lot of work. Giving your blog posts a boost yourself is therefore a good idea, otherwise nobody will see them. When nobody visits your blog posts, it’s harder to Google to assess how they react to them and therefore harder to gauge whether to rank your content on the SERPS – search engine results pages.

So don’t rest on your laurels after posting a piece of content. Posting content is only half the job. You need to actively promote your content to get traction from your blog posts. After several months of doing this, you should see natural traffic coming from all the links you have build, and all the posts you are sharing. Plus, by that time you should also see some organic traffic from Bing, Yahoo and other search engines, if not from Google. Here’s the best free blog plugins for WordPress I have found to help with syndicating my content cheaply:

• Social media share buttons: helps your visitors share your content
• Revive Old Posts: lets you automatically syndicate older and new content via social media
• Post planner: does the same thing and you can queue up old content to be shared automatically
• Yoast SEO – helps you write SEO friendly content
• Push engage – lets your visitors sign up to receive alerts for new content on your blog

Backlinking

Yes back linking is one of the best things you can do to boost your SEO score with Google and get more traffic for free! Back linking is one of the least enjoyable things I have done and so I outsource this task to the professionals.

Still, there’s some back linking you can do yourself and this involves reaching out to other bloggers in your niche and offering something in exchange for a backlink to your website.

Since back links are so valuable to bloggers, you’ll need to write some awesome content for other bloggers for them to offer you a backlink. You can do this by finding guest post opportunities online. You can also do blog commenting; find blogs which are suitable for your niche and comment on their blog posts. Some will automatically link back to your site as you do this.

If you create some awesome content on your site, you may even get people asking you for guest posts. I suggest focusing on your content is the most valuable thing you can do as an affiliate blogger. With good “evergreen” content, which stands the test of time and offers huge value, you should get people naturally linking to your content, as they find it. This is the best “signal” to Google that people are enjoying what you are writing. If you rush content, hoping to get a lot of content out there quickly, you may overlook this vital element of affiliate blogging.

Monetising Your Blog

There’s a couple of main ways you can monetise your blog. However you monetise your blog, the money doesn’t come until you get traffic and in large numbers, so much of your blogging success will depend on your content and your ability to draw a large crowd over time. So picking a subject you love and can sustain is paramount.

Still, your monetisation method is pretty important, if you want to make any money from blogging. The two main strategies are advertising and affiliate marketing. With advertising you place adverts on your content and earn from ad clicks from your visitors. Each click is only worth a tiny amount, so you need thousands of clicks daily in order to make this worthwhile.

Affiliate marketing is the other monetisation method and most bloggers will promote some kind of affiliate product to their visitors on their blog and through an email marketing list. Ideally find a product which is lucrative to promote, in your niche and which you can get behind and believe in. See also subscription affiliate programs and high ticket affiliate programs.

AI Blogging

There’s also artificial intelligence programs now which will write your blog posts in a matter of seconds! I personally don’t like this as I enjoy writing and creating content.

If a robot could write a blog post like this in a few seconds, what chance have I got s a blogger! But, still I am human, or so you think! 😉

Besides, robots have no sense of humour do they!? So how could they possibly compete?