Affiliate marketing is an effective way to grow your business. However, the affiliate marketing scene keeps changing, requiring new approaches to adapt. This is a practical guide on the best new affiliate marketing strategies for publishers and advertisers. Follow this guide and watch your earnings grow!
Best affiliate marketing strategies
Affiliate marketing involves promoting products in exchange for commissions. You’ll advertise a product and get paid for each conversion, which can be a sale, signup, download, or any other action. It can be lucrative, but you’ll need a sound affiliate marketing strategy to make it work. What are the advantages of an affiliate marketing strategy? Improved earnings, a more engaged audience, and higher-quality content are just a few to mention.
Below are the best affiliate marketing strategies you can adopt to boost your earnings:
1. Find the highest-rated and relevant affiliate programs
The most crucial part of affiliate marketing success is choosing the right programs. You need an affiliate program with high-paying offers. You need to promote relevant products that resonate with your audience and increase your chances of getting conversions.
Consider the affiliate program’s commission and if you’re okay with that. The higher the commission, the better. What are their payment terms and methods? What exactly constitutes a conversion? Be sure of these details before joining a program.
Preferably, promote products from brands that already have a solid reputation. This makes convincing people to buy the products easier, as you can cite many testimonials and reviews as proof of their quality.
Adsterra offers high-paying offers across several niches, such as iGaming, VPN, E-commerce, and Software Utilities. With $87 million in annual payouts to publishers, Adsterra provides ample opportunities to make money from promoting products.
To Contents ↑2. Use AI in affiliate marketing
Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently all the rage, disrupting and rewriting the rules of many industries. Applying AI in your affiliate marketing campaigns is helpful, e.g., by using ChatGPT to generate marketing copies that’ll get conversions. AI can help you find the best buzzwords, phrases, and sentences to promote products and earn commissions.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, recently unveiled o1, a large language model (LLM) capable of complex reasoning. This new model, available via a paid subscription, is much better at generating marketing copies than the base ChatGPT model. Its more advanced training makes it better at imitating the human mind and writing words people can relate to.
However, avoid using only AI to generate marketing copies and blog posts because this may constitute spam, and Google’s April 2024 update brought significant penalties for websites creating automated content to game search rankings. Instead, combine AI with human editing and proofreading to create original content. AI won’t do all the work for you, but it’s a force multiplier for your marketing efforts.
To Contents ↑3. Performance-based commissions
Performance-based commission is a compensation structure in which publishers make money based on the actions they generate, such as sales and app downloads. Publishers with higher performance levels are rewarded with bigger commission rates, incentivizing them to do more.
Look for programs that offer performance-based commission. This structure helps you increase your earnings in the long run and encourages you to put in effort to drive conversions. It’s better than a flat commission structure where you’ll earn the same percentage or fee even when outshining other publishers.
4. Focus on Nano and Micro-Influencers
Collaborating with social media influencers helps you generate sales for a product. You can focus on nano- and micro-influencers, i.e., influencers with a smaller yet loyal following. Micro-influencers charge more affordable rates than big-time influencers. Their follower count may be smaller (1,000–100,000), but they have highly engaged audiences that heed their recommendations.
According to Upfluence, micro-influencers have average engagement rates of 3.9% on Instagram and 18% on TikTok, compared to 1.2% and 5%, respectively, for mega-influencers with over 1 million followers. Focusing on nano- and micro-influencers helps you achieve more with less marketing budget. Offering commissions encourages these influencers to create high-quality pitches that boost product sales.
To Contents ↑5. Use content marketing
Content marketing entails creating and sharing high-quality articles, podcasts, videos, and other media to build an audience. It’s a long-term strategy in which you create a steady stream of content to build an engaged fanbase. Then, you’ll leverage this fanbase to promote products and earn commissions.
The key to content marketing is providing relevant, factual, and quality information to your audience. Research what your audience searches for and write in-depth content to answer their questions. Aim your content to solve a problem for the reader instead of giving them generic information.
79% of marketers say blog posts are an effective content distribution strategy, so you can focus on blogging as your primary content marketing strategy. Social media is another productive content marketing channel, proven by most marketers being active on social media.
To Contents ↑6. Optimize your website for conversions
Optimization is crucial when driving affiliate conversions via a website. Create relevant, well-structured content to attract your desired audience. Speed up your website by limiting the use of external scripts and removing any unnecessary visual elements. Your website’s text and images should be optimized for mobile displays, which account for most online traffic.
Insert relevant keywords across your website’s content to boost your chances of ranking high on search engines. Include internal links as much as possible to help search engines index your website effectively. Create new content regularly to build audience engagement, which you can convert into revenue with Adsterra.
To Contents ↑7. Use email marketing
Email marketing is one of the best types of affiliate marketing strategies that’ll help you stand out. You can email an audience directing them to buy a product. This email will state the product’s benefits and why the reader should choose them. It can include a discount, nudging the reader to buy the product while it lasts. The key is building a highly engaged email audience that’ll trust your product recommendations.
Marketing emails should be personalized for readers, e.g., by inserting their names in the subject line. Personalization makes readers feel esteemed and more likely to respond to your suggestions.
To Contents ↑8. Promote products on social media
Social media is another of the best affiliate marketing advertising strategies. You can insert affiliate links in social media posts and convince your audience to follow the links and buy products. As usual, the key is promoting products to a relevant audience, e.g., promoting a smartphone to a technology-inclined audience.
Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are popular platforms for posting affiliate links alongside high-quality images and videos. TikTok is best known for short videos, but it recently launched a new 30-minute video format that can be leveraged to deliver high-quality content.
You’ll first build an audience by creating regular, high-quality posts and seeking mentions from established social media pages. With a sizeable audience at your fingertips, you can earn money with Adsterra ads.
To Contents ↑9. Build trust with your audience
Trust is an indispensable affiliate marketing strategy. Sufficient trust is necessary for your audience to respond positively to product recommendations. The higher their trust in your brand, the more willing they are to buy products you recommend.
Building trust with your audience is similar to building trust with someone you know. Create relevant content and provide factual information that delivers good results for your readers. When they get factual solutions to their issues, they’ll be more willing to get information from your website or social media page.
As AI evolves, Google has increasingly focused on E-E-A-T to ensure users get trustworthy information. This abbreviation stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, the four criteria for boosting authenticity and building long-term rapport with your audience. It entails demonstrating expertise by providing factual information, having author profiles to demonstrate authoritativeness and trustworthiness, securing your website to prevent impersonation, and actively engaging your audience on social media.
Adsterra lets you advertise your website to the right audience and build long-term trust. Get connected to the best traffic sources across iGaming, Entertainment, Apps, Utility, and other verticals.
To Contents ↑10. Use clear calls to action (CTAs)
A promotional message isn’t complete without a call-to-action (CTA), such as “Buy Now,” “Sign Up,” “Download Now,” etc. After narrating the benefits of a product or service, you should end it with clear instructions on the next step to take. This way, the reader knows precisely what you’re recommending and decides their response.
You can insert a distinct CTA button to clarify the instructions. This button should be at the end of a promotional social media post, article, or email.
11. Offer exclusive deals and coupons
Nothing entices a reader like knowing they’re getting a good deal. The human mind has a natural fear of missing out, and you can leverage this trait to give customers exclusive deals they won’t want to miss. Find discounted products and use the discounts as the primary selling point. Offer coupons to convince your audience that they’re getting something valuable. Coupons, exclusive offers, and discounts significantly boost affiliate conversions.
12. Focus on SEO and keyword targeting
Search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword targeting are as important as ever in a world where people now generate content with artificial intelligence. This new phenomenon has caused a glut of content on the web, so you need effective SEO to stand out from the crowd.
You can use SEO research tools like Google Trends and Semrush to discover trending queries in your niche. Then, you’ll write content that answers these queries, increasing the chances of getting recommended when people search for them. Insert relevant keywords in your articles, but avoid “stuffing” them in unnatural places. The keywords should flow as seamlessly as possible with your written content. SEO is one of the best affiliate marketing strategies for beginners and experts to get great results.
To Contents ↑13. Participate in affiliate networks
Affiliate networks link merchants to skilled promoters. You can join various networks to find the best deals from different brands. High-quality networks like Adsterra give you access to the best offers while you focus on creating content and promoting your offers. Less time spent on seeking affiliate deals means more time to dedicate to your promotional efforts.
14. Promote products with recurring commissions
Seek products that pay recurring commissions, e.g., a software subscription that pays a commission with each renewal. Recurring commissions help you earn more money for less effort. You can convince a few people to purchase a subscription and get a steady income whenever the subscriptions are renewed.
Popular niches that offer recurring commissions include web hosting, VPNs, cell phone plans, and business software. Pursuing these niches helps you build a stable income source in a very competitive affiliate market.
15. Test new affiliate strategies
We can say that the best affiliate marketing strategy is to always test new approaches. The affiliate marketing sector experiences rapid changes, requiring new strategies to keep up with the competition. For example, using AI to create marketing copies and images is a new strategy most marketers should test.
If your current email marketing strategy isn’t working, change the tone and length of your emails and monitor the results. If your current SEO strategy is lacking, target new keywords to see if you’ll generate better traffic. Don’t hesitate to adopt new strategies to get the best results. Fortunately, Adsterra empowers you to increase your traffic and test different strategies. Join now and leverage our network to build an engaged audience.
To Contents ↑Affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid
1. Publishing low-quality content
Content is your primary product as a publisher. Unfortunately, many publishers overlook this mistake and create bland content that brings little conversions. You should avoid this mistake by giving your all to creating content.
Write informative content that answers a user’s query and leaves them anticipating more. Include illustrations to make it easier for readers to understand. Cite sources for your figures so readers can verify and trust you more. One high-quality blog post beats 10 average blog posts in generating affiliate conversions.
2. Ignoring mobile optimization and site speed
Mobile devices constitute over 50% of online traffic. Unfortunately, many publishers work on PCs and neglect to optimize their sites for mobile displays. Avoid this mistake because it’ll sink your website traffic. Every text and visual element should adjust automatically for mobile displays.
Speed is another critical factor publishers often overlook. However, slow website speed can cause people to turn away from your website. Target a load speed of under 3 seconds to increase the chances of retaining visitors.
To Contents ↑3. Selling but not helping
Publishers often focus too much on selling products rather than helping their audience find a solution. They talk too much about a product’s features instead of how it will help readers solve a problem.
When writing marketing copies, imagine yourself as the reader and consider what problems you want to solve. Suppose you’re promoting a VPN product: it’s not enough to talk about how a VPN protects them online and helps them bypass geo-restrictions. You need a real-life example, like “Disney+ isn’t available in your country, but this VPN lets you change your IP address and watch your favorite Disney shows.”
To Contents ↑FAQs about affiliate marketing strategies
Yes, affiliate marketing is an effective way for publishers to monetize their audience. These crucial strategies help publishers generate high conversions and earn significant commissions.
The first step is finding a suitable platform that’ll give you access to high-paying affiliate offers. Adsterra is an excellent example of a platform that gives publishers access to high-quality offers across many niches. Find out how to get started with affiliate marketing and boost your income.
