For most bloggers, blogging is a passion and something they genuinely enjoy doing. Sharing their stories, skills or knowledge with the rest of the world is a satisfying process and most bloggers do it purely out of love. Making money is usually not the primary reason to start a blog. However, the truth is there are ways for you to earn money on your blog. So, if you already have a blog and are considering to monetize it, or you’re just thinking about starting one, you need to hear about affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is one of the essential ways in which a blogger could earn money from his blog. Here’s how it works: by promoting a product on your page, you earn a commission from every sale that’s coming from your blog. All you have to do is choose an affiliate program and wait for the magic to happen.

Now, let’s dig a little deeper into the process of making money on a blog using affiliate marketing. Here’s what you need to do.

The Foundation

Before you start thinking about making money with your blog, you need to be sure you’re blog is ready for such a huge step.

In essence, you need to have the following covered:

• an up and running blog

• quality content

• an audience base

In other words, you can’t (you can but you shouldn’t) start a blog today and jump on affiliate marketing tomorrow. You should have a firm foundation for monetizing your blog. In case you need help with editing or proofreading your content, WoWgrade is a useful resource to check out. Once you feel your blog is strong enough, you can take the first steps towards affiliate marketing.

Determine the Niche

When you’re thinking about setting up an affiliate program and monetizing your blog, your regular readers need to be your number one priority.

Affiliate marketing shouldn’t influence their reading experience in a negative way. This means that you have to be careful when choosing an affiliate program or network.

Before choosing who or what you want to promote, make sure stay within your niche and be industry specific. That includes:

• products or services related to your blog’s core topic

• people and companies within the same niche

This is the only way for you to maintain the quality of your blog and not deteriorate it with unrelated content.

If you know which industries and niches you want to promote in order to earn money, it’s time for the next step.

Sign Up

Now you’re ready to find an affiliate program and sign up for it.

Look for products, services or people you want to promote and connect with them. Once you choose who you want to promote, the official affiliate marketing process can start:

1. You apply to the advertiser and they agree to have you promote their product or service in return for a commission.
2. The advertiser gives you a link which allows them to keep track of the traffic coming from your blog.
3. You find different ways of including this link into your blog.
4. Your readers follow the link and you earn a commission for every purchase they make.

Sounds like a piece of cake, right?

Well, although it is quite a simple process, you still need to walk the extra mile to actually promote the link the right way, making it both natural for your readers and useful for you and the advertiser.

To put it simply: you want to earn money, without making your readers roll their eyes.

Ways of Placing the Link

The link to the affiliate product is your next concern.

Where on your blog should you place it? Which blog post is suitable for doing it? How should you promote this product or service?

The truth is, there isn’t a universal formula for a successful affiliate link placement. There are, however, several useful ways of doing it that are widely recommended.

Keep reading and consider the following methods for affiliate marketing link placement.

• Update Existing Content

The first thing you should do once you get your hands on the affiliate link is to revise all your previously written and published content.

Find those blog posts which are somewhat related to the product or service you’re trying to promote. Once you do, insert the link where it fits.

• Banner ad

If you feel like your readers could truly benefit from the link you’re recommending they follow, you can include it in your blog sidebar as an ad banner.

Keep in mind every blog visitor will see this ad, so make sure it adds value to them. If they find it useless, they might be annoyed.

• Recommended

A great way to include the link into the content you’re publishing on your blog is to make it a part of a post as something you recommend.

For example, if you’re writing about content marketing, you could add an affiliate link to  Grammarly.com as a useful tool for making your content impeccable.

This way, you’re staying relevant to the content while promoting the link.

• Tutorial

A tutorial post on How to do something is another great way to include the affiliate link.

People love detailed guides and step-by-step explanations on how to make something or accomplish a goal.

You can write a tutorial and make the product or service one of the central features to help them succeed.

• Reviews

A product review is very similar to plain paid advertising, so you need to be very careful about it. You don’t want your readers to think you’re trying to use them to earn money.

However, if your readers trust you and you honestly find a product or service to be of great use, write a review post about it. It will definitely drive traffic and sales to the advertiser and you’ll earn a nice commission.

Final Thoughts

Affiliate marketing is a great way for you to earn money as a blogger and monetize everything you’ve been investing in making your blog a quality source of information and entertainment. The process of setting up an affiliate relationship is simple. Your only job is to find subtle ways of promoting the link.

Remember: keep your readers informed and don’t let your content suffer just for the sake of the affiliate marketing. Be creative and find ways of having it all: satisfied readers and successful affiliate marketing.

Author’s BIO:
Linda Grandes ia a full-time blogger at Studyton.com and a true expert in writing. She is interested in a variety of topics starting from education and ending at modern art. That`s why the idea of her blog cannot be narrowed to one topic as well. Linda also has vast experience in editing texts and knows all the angles of academic and professional writing thanks to her productive cooperation with Studicus.com. Linda is a passionate traveler and she is eager to learn new things and meet new people from all walks of life.