Best Practices for Affiliate Sites

Affiliate marketing represents a strategy that many bloggers and content creators use to generate additional income or even as a primary way to earn money. Often these conversions depend on the information of a given product or service through a promotional blog article. Developers or web designers have an acquired advantage. The reason is simple. By working directly with customers, your influence will be much more significant when suggesting products or services for the project you have in hand.

Affiliate links are based on trust

Trust works in two ways for affiliates. They should not only generate confidence in their readers, but they must also have trust in the products and services they are promoting. For web designers and developers, getting a customer to press an affiliate link generates even more confidence in the equation. Although it is a small part of the whole business, it can significantly impact the relationship with the client and, in the long term, project success.

Initial planning and debate

Shortly after adding a new customer to your portfolio, you should write about the products and services you recommend and reveal your affiliate relationship. Explain to your customers how the affiliate links you have sent them work. You should also send an alert about these links to anyone who has already entered your website. You do not need to put it for each one. Still, you can, for example, set a note in your privacy policy or somewhere visible throughout the entire web page. As an example, you can add something like the following text in the footer, next to the copyright text: “Please, bear in mind that the links shown on this website may be of an affiliate kind. By clicking on them, you will not pay more for your purchases, and you will help us maintain this website.”

Seting off as an affiliate

There are many niches in which you can consider starting your affiliate business in. One of the most lucrative ones include Amazon affiliates, hosting affiliates, finance or even casino affiliates. It is okay to have agreements with multiple companies to be their referral if your main affiliation company agrees. That is because each one can provide different solutions for your client. For example, if you choose to become an Amazon affilaite than it would probably make most sense to limit your site to Amazon products, but if you’re in some other niche such as gambling then it makes much more sense to list multiple companies and their casino sites. Eg. AskGamblers casino affiliate website could help you improve the standard of your gaming involvement and they even have their own affiliate program!

Creation of the website

When you start managing a client’s project, there are two ways to do it. On the one hand, if you use a specific site, you can think of different forms of handing over your licenses to install plugins and themes and increase the final invoice. On the other hand, the customer could gather all the necessary equipment independently, having more freedom to choose what he wants to include. If you decide on the latter, once it is clear how to do the work, remember to suggest the use of affiliates when managing the purchase of the products.

Continued support in time

Maintain a good relationship with your clients over the years. They will need to increase the size of their business at some point, requiring your services to improve the hosting plan. These arrangements allow you to recommend particular products and make suggestions. If you come to this point of trust, the easiest thing for the client would be to ask you for a web link to buy the necessary service. Indirectly you could earn more money on the affiliate channel.

Use affiliate links when blogging new articles

When you write a new article for your blog, new clients and those you already have in your portfolio could read your news. In these cases, it is interesting to add affiliate links to the publications that focus on providing solutions to possible problems for your customers. It would be best if you published articles that are helpful, practical, and can increase the spectrum of users. A word of warning about adding banners with affiliate links to your posts and sidebars. If you have a blog, but one that only serves to generate new customers, you can make the mistake of altering the attention of your potential customers. Be clear about the purpose of your website, and do not make readers regret having entered the blog.

Use affiliate links as an additional resource on your website

You probably want to add a page on your website to show some links to resources from other websites where your readers could find helpful information. It may happen that there is not much traffic from that page. Still, it is an excellent option if you want to direct your readers’ attention towards these sources of information. For example, suppose a veteran customer asks you about a new plugin. It’s preferable to have it in the resources section. In that case, you can quickly provide the answer and tell them that if they decide to buy it, you have a link at their disposal. Also, having links for this section in the main menu may not be a good idea. Think about what your visitors would do when they access the web. As we said before, you might send more than one link to your clients. Still, suppose they want to have them handy elsewhere. In that case, an excellent place to display them is in the footer, which is easily accessible.

Bring your affiliate income to life

As we have already mentioned, web designers or developers have the perfect opportunity to add extra income through affiliate marketing. Once you have established the habit of sharing affiliate links with your clients, it will be natural for you. You will see how your clients accept it comfortably.

How far you can go with affiliate marketing is up to you

In the end, you must choose if you want to include these types of links in your business. It may not be of interest to you, and it is understandable, but don’t let anyone put you off.