5 Simple Tips to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

November 15, 2011 - Last Modified: November 18, 2011 by Devesh 4,974

If you’re following me than you know I make most of the money through affiliate marketing. Affiliate Marketing is something that can make you hundreds of thousands of dollars by applying right principles.

I am making thousands of dollars every month just with very few sites. What I am doing is creating blogs that would make passive income instead of creating 3-4 pages niche sites.

In this post I am going to share 5 tips to make money with affiliate marketing.

1. Trust

Building trust with your audience is very crucial step in making money with affiliate products. People are more likely to buy from bloggers/marketers – they know and trust. To build trust with your blog readers, you’d need to provide them real value.

“Whether you like to hear this or not, there is no secret to gaining people’s trust. It doesn’t matter how many things you know or how good you are at manipulating, you can never manipulate people to trust you, you can only earn it, and the best way to earn it is by giving true value.” – Onibalusi Bamidele

If want to build trust than promote the products that would be useful to them, not the ones that will make good YOU commission.

2. Planting Seeds

I learned this tip from the awesome affiliate marketer & blogger, Pat Flynn. In his latest income report he wrote about planting seeds and how he was able to make $17000 (in a month) from BlueHost Affiliates.

3. Create a Resource Page

It was very recently I put the resource page on my blog and it is converting very well. It is the page where you can put the affiliate recommendations to products that will be helpful to your blog readers. The page should be a mix of Free & paid products. Only include the products that you have used and working well for you.

It can be linked from the numerous blog posts, newsletter, pages and social networks. You can also put a banner – & link to resource page in sidebar, to promote it.

4. Only Promote Good Products

I’ve seen many Internet marketers & bloggers promoting all type of products just to make good commissions. One of the keys to become successful in affiliate marketing – is to only promote the good products and the ones that you have used.

What if hesham start promoting products about music or how to learn guitar, it would make no sense because FamousBloggers is all about Blogging & making money online!

Never promote just any product just to make quick cash; it will quickly destroy your credibility as a blogger or marketer.

5. Quality Traffic

All it takes to have few quality visitors to make your first sale. Making money with affiliate marketing requires quality visitors. One of the best strategy to get quality traffic is by doing guest posting like I’m doing here. Here are few more strategies that can drive quality traffic to your blog:

Collaborating with other bloggers in your niche – A sure fire way to skyrocket your blog traffic. Learn how you can collaborate with other bloggers.
Submit your blog posts to Blokube – It is a social blogging community for bloggers & online marketers. Submitting to Blokube takes less than a minute (or may be half).
Join the Forums – There still hundreds of bloggers/marketer that have not started using Forum Boards. You can generate hundreds of visitors with Forums like DigitalPoint, Warrior Forums, etc.
Creating Infographics – This is something that very less bloggers are utilizing. Infographics are very powerful and you can end up getting featured on big blogs.

Still looking to how to get quality traffic? – Go & get the Blog Post Promotion guide now.

Do you have any useful tips to share? Please let us know in the comments below.

[box type=”note”]This post is part of our Blog Contest! If you like it, support the author by sharing it and adding comments. Also make sure to check other entries by visiting the blog contest page[/box]

About Devesh

Follow @devesh

Devesh is a content marketer and creator of WordPress Kube, a WordPress Marketing Blog which focus on WordPress Themes, Plugins, News, Tutorials and Modifications and editor of Zippy Magazine.

{ 82 Responses }

Duane says:

There's NO way anyone can make thousands a month in affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketers only get paid commissions which is alot less than those making profits through sales. Anyone who tell you otherwise are lying to you to make money. Don't trust any gurus at all. I have been trying everything and had not made one penny in commission since 2004. I can tell all of them lie. So please, don't waste your time.
Von Merritt says:

I Believe that it is not nearly as complicated to Succeed at Affiliate Marketing as most make it. I believe that if you do these three things, You Will Succeed:1. Align yourself with a proven profitable product and marketing system. 2. Do every thing you can every day to Promote Your Affiliate Link (i.e. use all the tools like facebook, twitter, youtube, etc.) and finally... 3. Just don't quit! The Most Successful Affiliate Marketers tend to be the ones who have done it the longest... Period.
Trung Nguyen says:

I've never created a resource page for my blog, may I create one as soon as possible and hoping it will work well. Thanks for your 5 tips in affiliates marketing.
Geoffrey Reed says:

Affiliate marketing is the open door, but walking through the door takes a bit more skill and polish than may meet the eye at first. People with funds will tend to try to buy traffic usually using Google. This can work, but the skill it takes is not evident to the newbie. People without funds are faced with learning how to generate free traffic. There are lots of ways to do so, but they are typically slow moving and many get frustrated or stop doing things that could pay off if they persisted. The secret is finding an honorable mentor. Unfortunately that’s not easy either for there are a lot of people who will put themselves forward as such and its difficult to choose whose for real and whose for a quick buck.
Vineet Saxena says:

Trust is the most important factor for affiliate marketing to succeed. People are more likely to buy from you if they trust you.
Navneet says:

Well devesh nice tips and i really think that we should try affiliate marketing but one problem with it is that in all niches we can't find products. We have to manually contact the sponsers and that also for advertising but affiliate marketing,i think thats though enough.
Luke Petersen says:

Wonderful post Devesh! You are so right that there is money to be made with affiliate marketing, but you can't do it without the proper trust! You can't just walk up to someone and expect them to buy something! That is the old school way of sales! It is so much better for people to come to you, for that is a far more likely sale, because they are already looking to buy! What is more, the right products are everything as well, I love how you point this out! Truly awesome info, keep it up! Thanks! - Luke Petersen
Oyedepo John says:

You've said it all, trust is all what you need. And thanks for pointing out the Resource Page, I never think about this before. Nice post.
Tuan says:

Thanks for the tips, Devesh. I started affiliate marketing for about a year but I can't be successful with it. The post pointed out some important reasons I couldn't make it. Probably I planted to many seeds at the same place and forget building trust for them. Fortunately I know what I am doing wrong now. :)
Gumbumper says:

Thanks so much for sharing this information, I going to try it!
valentine belonwu says:

Hi Dev, I agreed with everything you said here because before someone could earn money through Affiliate Marketing, you must build trust with your readers and without trust no one will buy from you. Another good point here is #5, Everybody needs traffic on their site before you could be able to think of making sales or building trust to your audience. My main source of traffic comes from Blokube and also I agreed that guest post is another means of getting huge traffic though I haven't try that myself but will surly give it a try soon ;) Thanks!
- Devesh says:
  
  Hi Valentine, Exactly. If you really want to make money with affiliate marketing, you must build trust with your blog readers. Great to hear - Blokube is your main traffic source. Thanks for the comment, buddy. Have a great time.
Latief says:

The crucial thing is build trust. I'll buy from your affiliate link if I already trust you bro. Its really nice to buy some things from friends, yes I can ask them personally about the product if anything wrong with the products. And because I know where to find you bro. :D
- Devesh says:
  
  Hi Latief, Building trust is very crucial thing. If really want to make money with affiliate marketing, you need to build trust with your blog readers. Thanks for the comment, buddy.
Dino Vedo says:

Great read! Affiliate marketing is super easy to do once you get the hang of it, but it takes time and patience! Good luck! Dino
- Devesh says:
  
  Glad you found it, great. Yeah, making money with affiliate marketing takes time and require a lot of efforts. Thanks for the comment, mate.
James says:

Great tips Dev, My main site is starting to take off. I just need to find a little more time building trust and think the site will do a lot better. My favorite tip, is the resource page. I started on mine a few weeks ago. Mostly researching products that I trust and related to my site's niche. I also decided to remove a lot of the banner adds, and move them over to the trusted resource page and only keep my best sellers and most trusted banners on there. Having to many banners just looks bad and it slows the load time down to much. Thanks for the great tips Dev!
- Devesh says:
  
  Hi James, That's fantastic to hear. Great minds think alike ;). Thanks for the comment.
Philippa says:

You are so right about collaborating with others in the same niche. People get so paranoid about passing page rank onto competitors that many avoid even linking to others. I find this counterproductive, and and it's good to hear that others support contact with others, rather than outright competition at all times!
- Dev says:
  
  Hey Philippa, Collaborating with others in the same niche is great way to boost sales & build relationship with them. Thanks for the comment.
Jym says:

Awesome tips Devesh. Very helpful indeed. One thing I'd add is to give away something extra for free that the other affiliates are not offering... Great way to boost your sales even further! Great post mate, all the best!
- Dev says:
  
  Hey Jym I'm so glad to see you here. Thanks for stopping by & commenting here.
Shiva says:

Nice post Dev, I think it is important that all bloggers and Internet marketers promote only products that are actually useful to their users. I think promoting all and every kind of product just because they make you money can lead to the trust disintegration in your readers and like they say: "Once trust lost cannot be gained". Anyways the Resources page is quite a nice idea and is something that I will act upon as soon as possible. Best of luck for the contest dude.
- Dev says:
  
  Hey Shiva, Glad to see you here.. ! Yeah, one should never promote the products just to make quick dollars. Don't hesitate to contact me if you need any help in creating resource page or anything. Thanks for the comment.
Caleb says:

Building trust is indeed critical and to illustrate this I'll give an example of something just last week: there was a WSO I purchased which ended up making me some decent affiliate earnings. I immediately went back to the thread containing the offer and commented on it providing some evidence of its effectiveness and as a result ppl flocked through my link resulting in more affiliate sales! It was the evidence I showed that convinced them of the TRUSTWORTHINESS of my recommendation. Also, I got to say to anybody reading this that if you aren't building an email list -which again involves getting ppl to trust you- then you really do not want to make money online. All that ppc'ng and buying up ads is good to jumpstart things and give a boost every now and then, but the traffic generated from such activities needs to go to a list building mechanism so those affiliate sales can begin to come in consistently. When someone trusts you enough to subscribe to your list and actually buy something then you no longer have a customer, you have a loyal patron :)
- Dev says:
  
  hey Caleb, I couldn't have said it better, myself. Building trust indeed is critical and it is one the most important aspect of online business. Without building trust with the audience, you can't make good money. ah. that's great example, buddy. Thanks for the awesome comment. Have a great day !!
Shahid Faheem says:

Hey nice article and very informative.Affiliate marketing is the best way to earn money online.Click bank and amazon are the two most trusted websites to go with.Vedio making is the most reliable and fastest way to sell your products.
- Dev says:
  
  Hey Shahid, Glad you found it, informative too. Affiliate marketing is the easiest & best way to make money. Thanks for the comment, Faheem.
Steve Rice says:

Great information and practical advice, Dev. Wish you well in the contest. Shared your work with all my networks. I really like the step about "seeds". This is a little tip of affiliate marketing that I had not thought of. Very useful info.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Steve, That's awesome to hear. I really appreciate that, steve. I think planting seeds is the underutilized way to make more money with affiliates. Thanks for the comment and spreading the word about it.
Martha Giffen says:

Such an informative post! The diagram is really helpful. Shows exactly how to diversify your message. It's quality over quantity every time. Even with traffic!
- Devesh says:
  
  Glad you found it, informative. Thanks for the nice comment, Martha. Have a great time.
Mavis Nong says:

Hey Dev, What a fantastic post. Agreed - trust is so key. When you share valuable information with your readers, it brands you as an online entity that can be trusted and any product or service you promote will be pretty much pre-sold to your visitors based on your existing relationship with them. Thanks for sharing your insights. Best of luck with the contest :) Mavis
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Mavis, Yes, sharing valuable information with readers is the best way to build trust. Thanks for stopping by and commenting here. Have a great time.
anuj says:

Awesome post hommie :) haha, you don’t have to share the same bones with the big dogs! You’re right bro. Make sure you only promote products that will be of great help to your readers or else you get kicked in the ass. Sure, a blogger who wants to earn online must not ignore a resource page. Awesome post once again! You rock.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Anuj, Exactly. One should only promote the products that will benefit their readers. Promoting good products is one of the key factors in affiliate marketing. Thanks for taking time to comment. Have a great day.
Sye Rodriguez says:

I like the idea of being affiliated with products I use and believe in, and that is what I've been doing. I also see the point of staying with the niche you're in. My question is the following. Do you think it is okay for a person to have more than one niche? The reason I say this is because I am in the health niche. I used to wonder if a person could really make money in the health niche as an affiliate. I bought a couple of products on how to market online and have had some success marketing health products as a result of the knowledge. Now I have been marketing those products that helped me to learn. Does that confuse other people about what I'm marketing? Just wanting some feedback. Thank you.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Sye, Yes, actually i think it is better to have more than one niche. This will help you to make more money. By applying right principles, you can make money in any niche (even in health niche). Only promote the good products and the ones that are related to your niche. It would make no sense if you promote a marketing related product on a niche website. Thanks for stopping by.
lemuel says:

Nice list Devesh. Trust is hard to earn but it is easier to achieve if you put a lot of value in every post you make.
- Devesh says:
  
  Very well said, lemuel.
Ana says:

I can't help but agree that you placed trust as number one condition for effective affiliate marketing, Dev. So many newbies ask me why they aren't making much money with affiliate sales and it almost always comes down to developing that special relationship with your readers. Nice touch with the graphic!
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Ana, I am so glad to see you, here. Thanks for the comment. Greatly appreciated. Have a great weekend, Ana !!
Trung Nguyen says:

Hey Devesh, It's really useful tips for all bloggers who wants to make good money online from affiliates marketing. I really make my first money online from affiliates program and I think these tips are needed for everyone. Building trust with your audience is very crucial step in making money with affiliate products. That's not easy work. We must provide for audience the best value things that make them feel useful. And If we can do it, I will believe we can have sale what we promote. Thanks so much.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Trung, Glad you found them useful. Congratulations on getting success with affiliate marketing. Building trust with your audience is the first step in making money with affiliate products. It may sound hard but it's just a lot of work Thanks for the nice comment, Nguyen. ~Dev
Saksham says:

Devesh, Trust is really an important factor. Everything else come after it. The secret to earning is building trust and reputation IMO! Nice post and I am now heading to Pat's blog! Thanks! :) ~ Saksham Talwar
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Saksham, Glad to see you here, bud. Yes, you are right, the secret to earn money with affiliates is - building trust & reputation. Thanks for the comment. Have a great weekend.
Mategyero says:

Point Number two about planting seeds sums it all up and the importance of trust in anything is undisputed! Great post Dev ;-)
- Devesh says:
  
  Glad you liked it, too. Thanks for stopping by & commenting.
Onibalusi Bamidele says:

Hi Dev, I think this guest post is pretty on-spot about affiliate marketing, and you're so right about gaining trust from your readers. I also love the infographic from Pat, and since Pat is currently one of the best affiliate marketers in the space we have a lot to learn from him! BTW Thanks a lot for the feature! I really appreciate it :)
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Onibalusi, Glad you liked it, too. You're always welcome my friend. Thanks for coming here and leaving the awesome comment. I appreciate all your great support, bud ;) . ~Dev
Ming Jong Tey says:

Hey Devesh, I love you mentioned trust. Trust is the key factor in affiliate marketing. No matter how big your list or how much traffic you receive, if the readers don't trust you, they won't buy from you. So, the first step is to establish good rapport and trust with the visitors and subscribers. Resource page is certainly a great way to promote affiliate product. Cheers, Ming
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Ming, That's awesome to hear. Building trust is important step to make money with affiliates, without building trust, you won't able to make any good money. Thanks for the nice comment. Have a great weekend, bud.
Tushar says:

building trust is very important. You need to make sure that your readers never feel cheated and what you are recommending them is the best thing
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Tushar, Building Trust is very important in any business. Thanks for stopping by. Btw. I'm so glad to see you getting back in blogging ;). keep up the fantastic work!!
  - Tushar says:
    
    Thanks. I was itching ti write while i was away from blogging. So came back
Sandeep Kumar says:

Nice post Devesh.... your article is showing that you have done a great research before writing this article... All the five point you mentioned here are true pillar for affiliate marketing
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Sandeep, Glad you liked it, too. Thanks for the comment ;) .
Steve says:

Devesh, great post here, being that I make almost all of my money from affiliate marketing I wholeheartedly agree on your principles. good affiliate marketing is all about building that level of trust and getting relevant and "quality" traffic.it is also far easier to sell when you have products you can really believe in and get behind rather than just any old crap designed to make you a few bucks.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Steve, Yes, Good affiliate marketing is all about building trust with the audience. Thanks for the comment. Btw. - Congratulations on the awesome success with affiliate marketing, steve. Have a great day or hope you had a great day.
James Debono says:

Hi Devesh, Great post and I like the fact that you highlighted "quality traffic" as opposed to any old traffic. Sure, it is great to look at your analytics tool and see great swathes of traffic but if your marketing strategy and landing environment is not set up to convert then in effect you are wasting your traffic. It is much better to focus on quality traffic and increasing conversion rates. Once you have that at an acceptable level put together a strategy to convert other traffic. Thanks James
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey James, Exactly. One should always try to focus on driving quality traffic, because that's what going to make money. Thanks for the awesome comment.
Ileane says:

Hi Devesh! This is excellent advice - my favorite is the suggestion from Pat Flynn. I think people should diversify their content and re-purpose it in as many multi-media formats as possible. Audio podcasting and YouTube marketing are my main focus right now.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Ileane, I'm so glad you found this post, excellent. Yes, diversifying the content is great way to get more eye balls. You're doing fantastic work on creating podcasts & videos. Keep up the awesome work ;).
Terje Sannarnes says:

It should be noted that affiliate marketing is a good way to monetize a website. The most important for an owner of a website is to promote a website effectively and attract high ammounts of targeted traffic to it. Then the next step is to select the best affiliate programs for targeted users of your online resource. I think that great tips on affiliate marketing provided in this post will allow website owners to make more money via affiliate programs.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Terje, Yes, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize a website. I'm so glad you found these tips, great. Thanks for the nice comment and congratulations on making $11k ;) . You did pretty fantastic work in promoting the gem fortunes, product. ~Dev
  - Terje Sannarnes entrepreneur says:
    
    Thank you, Dev. Can I tell you a secret? It was the first time I made a video like that.... :-)
    - Devesh says:
      
      Woot.. you did it very well, Terje. Any tips for those who are yet to create their first video?
Raj says:

it is always recommend to promote the products which you use it yourself on your blog, it add trust to the users and the conversion ratio will be hugely positive..
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Raj, One shouldn't promote the products just to make the quick cash. I always promote the products that I've used myself and found useful. Thanks for the comment, raj.
Azhar says:

Planting seeds is the main step in affiliate marketing.Get those product that are demanded a lot in the market and that create relative links form blogs,forums and article directories.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Azhar, I wasn't aware about the planting seeds until i read the pat's post. Agree, planting seeds is main step in affiliate marketing. Thanks for the comment, mate. Greatly appreciated. ~Dev
David Cornick says:

Devesh, You are right "trust" is so important.What I would also say is that the the posts on any blog have to be well written and relevant,which encourages people (potential customers) to keep coming back
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey David, Quality plays a important role in building "trust" with the readers. Thanks for the comment. Have a great time. ~Dev
Ricardus says:

Trust is very important in every aspect of business and also in life as well.
- Devesh says:
  
  Very well said, building trust is very important in every aspect of business. Thanks for stopping by, Ricardus.
Tory McBroom says:

Thanks for the tips! I absolutely agree with you on the "trust" factor! I like to build trust by regularly engaging with my readers through comments and email. Not only does it help with affiliate sales, but it helps with email open rates and keeps them coming back.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Tory, That's nice to hear. Engaging with the readers is fantastic way to build "trust" factor. Thanks for stopping by, Tory. Have a great time. ~Dev
Mohamed Osam says:

Thanks Devesh, I particularly find #5 (quality traffic) as the most difficult to put together since you don't have much control over. I managed web pages with hundred of thousands of pageviews a day but poor quality traffic, I could barely get even clicks on affiliate links, the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is 0.01% or lower. By the same token, there are a couple of pages I currently manage that makes ~400 pageviews a day in average, but with CTRs range from 2-5% and sometimes even higher, yesterday was 11%. I guess the only thing you could do to have a better quality traffic is to target the right people with the right products. You cannot blog about computer technology for example while promoting auto tires part of your affiliate products.. :)
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Osman, 11% CTR.. that's nice to hear, my friend. I had the same issue in past, that's because i was doing a lot of things wrongly. Anyways, these days I've started focusing more on driving quality traffic by doing guest posting & connecting with other bloggers. Having 100 quality visitors is better than the thousands of non targeted visitors. Thanks for the awesome comment, Greatly appreciated.
Maja says:

In any business trust plays vital role and same is with affiliate marketing.For traffic best way is to optimize your site under some keywords and struggle to enlist your site in organic searches you will get potential visitors, sale of your product will be at the peak.
- Devesh says:
  
  Hey Maja, Exactly. Building trust is very important and it plays a vital role in a business. Yes, optimizing your site for organic traffic & building links is the best way to get quality traffic. Thanks for the comment, Maja. ~Dev

5 Simple Tips to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

1. Trust

2. Planting Seeds

3. Create a Resource Page

4. Only Promote Good Products

5. Quality Traffic

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2. Planting Seeds

3. Create a Resource Page

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