Quora and affiliate marketing can go hand in hand. However, if you’re an affiliate marketer intending to use the platform for product promotion, it’s worth reading Quora’s terms and conditions.
You can’t directly post affiliate links on answers (or questions) on the platform. Doing so will likely get your answers/questions deleted. You also risk losing your account, particularly if you repeatedly post your links.
There’s a way around this though. You are allowed to post links to relevant content which helps you answer questions more thoroughly. So, if you have an affiliate website, you can create content on your site which directly answers certain questions. Then find the answers on Quora.com which you can answer with your content.
Don’t just post your link though. You also need to answer the question and provide some real value on the site. Just posting links to your affiliate content will likely get your answers collapsed and you also risk a ban.
Affiliate Marketing Quora: Spam Policy
Here’s Quora’s spam policy:
“Spam negatively impacts interaction on the platform, reduces trust, and inhibits authentic engagement. The following are not allowed:
- Selling illegal products, services, or technology such as escort services, prostitution, or illegal drugs.
- Selling weapons or controlled substances.
- Promoting illegal streaming links or websites, get-rich-quick schemes, miraculous improvements such as rapid weight loss programs, scams like advance-fee scams, unofficial password or account recovery services, or hacking services.
- Coordinated inauthentic activity such as vote manipulation.
- Posting deceptive or malicious links on Quora, including ones that mimic Quora UI that direct users to unexpected websites.
- Posting the same content repeatedly, or sending the same messages repeatedly.
- Doing any of the following for the purpose of driving traffic to an external site or for monetary gain:
- Posting irrelevant answers or comments.
- Editing existing questions to include links or irrelevant information.
If it’s determined that an account is violating our spam policy, this may result in one or more of the following actions:
- Deletion of content posted by the account
- Edit-blocking of the account to prevent further posts
- Banning the account
Subsequent violations will be treated more seriously than the first one. Multiple concurrent violations will be treated more seriously than one violation.
You can see this policy on Quora’s site here.
Affiliate Marketing Quora: Affiliates
If you’re an ethical affiliate marketer promoting your products through using Quora’s Q & A platform, the policies which are most relevant to you are most likely to be these:
- Promoting illegal streaming links or websites, get-rich-quick schemes, miraculous improvements such as rapid weight loss programs, scams like advance-fee scams, unofficial password or account recovery services, or hacking services.
- Posting the same content repeatedly, or sending the same messages repeatedly.
If you’re selling a specific product or service as an affiliate it is likely to fall into a specific category. For me, it’s affiliate marketing related information which I share. So some of my shares could be deemed to be “posting the same content repeatedly”.
I’ve had a few answers collapsed through posting links to my content in answers on Quora, but I haven’t yet been banned (fingers crossed!). I have also created a lot of content on this site (check out my blog posts here). So by being diverse in the answers you choose and linking to a lot of different content, you can get around this.
Also you should aim to write long and high quality answers. If you only write a sentence for your answer, followed by a link to your site, Quora will likely see this as spamming and collapse your answers. Or if you only paste links in your answers, without answering on the site, it’s much more likely you answers won’t be allowed.
Even if the affiliate program/product you promote is legitimate, Quora might deem it to be spammy, particularly if you’re promoting in a spammy way. So make sure your site has the disclaimers on it and is up to spec with latest GDPR compliance. This generally means having a cookie notice, disclaimer and privacy policy pages set up on your website.
Affiliate Marketing Quora: Appealing A Decision
Once you start posting answers on Quora and linking to your content (when appropriate), you will probably get a collapsed answer at some point. You can appeal this decision and successfully overturn a decision in some cases.
When Quora notification pops up on your feed declining one of your answers, or to your email inbox, you will be given an appeal link. Click on the link and fill out a form to appeal. It’s well worth doing this, particularly if you feel your answer was valuable and the link was a valuable addition to answering the question more fully.
This can happen for a number of reasons but often it’s just a “bot” making this decision. So you can get answers uncollapsed through the appeal process.
While this process can be tiresome, particularly when it happens a lot, it’s worth appealing to get your answers reinstated.
What To Expect
While this strategy is free, it’s also time consuming and frustrating at times. However, if you can make a habit out of this strategy it can give you a nice source of traffic, leads and sales.
Just don’t expect too much to magically happen after only posting a few answers. You’ll need a lot of content on the site to drive a lot of traffic. Many of Quora’s readers would rather stay on the site itself, rather than click off to your website to read your post. So most of the people who find your answers won’t click through to your website. But some will. So it’s a numbers game, the more questions you can answer, and the more relevant content you can link to your questions, the more people will find your website and content.
Some people will read your answers but not check your link. Some will also look at your profile so it’s worth linking your bio up to your affiliate site too.