Sell Affiliate Products On Your Blog

This post was most recently updated on July 31st, 2016

You can sell affiliate products on your blog using many different methods.

I’ll discuss some of the most common methods here.

I don’t suggest you try to use all of them if you’re fairly new to blogging. Instead, start out by learning how to do one of them fairly well before going on to explore others.

Now, the one method I do suggest that all bloggers use is to build an email list.

I’ll discuss this in more detail as method #4 in this article.

List building really is the most important thing you can do to sell affiliate products on your blog.

That’s because it gives you the chance to talk to your readers on an ongoing basis, rather than just hoping that they become a customer the very first (and quite possibly, the last) time that they visit your blog.

Before we get into list building, though, let me outline the other common methods to sell products on your blog.

1. Review Posts

You can write reviews of affiliate products.

Write a blog post about your favorite camera.

Give the pros and cons.

Pull in some real testimonials that you find.

The best thing to do is to talk about your personal experience with it.

If you can demonstrate what you’re talking about on a video, that’s really interesting to people.

People like to know what other people encountered when they used the product.

They especially want to hear it from you.

They don’t want to hear a slick talking promotional guy or gal, who are obviously getting paid to say how great something is.

This is why review posts is such powerful a powerful way to sell affiliate products on your blog.

People want to buy from real people… like you!

“My 3 List Building Machines”

Do you struggle to build a list of subscribers for your business?

David and I rely heavily on what we call “list building machines.”

They’re absolutely free access, and you probably use some or all of them already, but just didn’t know how to turn them into the “list building machines” they can be.

Get our FREE Guide on how to use these “3 list building machines” with a zero budget, and with incredible effectiveness.

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2. Banners

Banners are just little images that link to a sales page.

In the print world, they call them “space ads” because the advertiser pays the publisher according to the amount of space their ad takes up.

Banners can work really nicely if you don’t have them plastered everywhere on your blog.

Less is definitely more when it comes to banner ads on your site.

If you have 2 or 3 banners on your sidebar, people will notice them much more than if you have 30.

It’s like driving your car down the Westside Highway in Manhattan.

There was a time when there were billboards everywhere.

I never even noticed them because you just turn a blind eye to a massive onslaught of advertising.

Since they cleaned up the look, and now there’s only an occasional billboard, I find myself curious to see what it says.
It’s the same on your blog.

Bizzillions of banner ads on your blog… sidebar, header, footer, pop-ins, popups, fade-aways and all the rest will just make your visitor dizzy.

If she doesn’t just bounce away from your blog altogether (great chance of that)… she’ll probably turn a “blind eye” to all the annoying ads you’ve posted everywhere.

If you put one or two here and there, strategically and sporadically, they’ll get more notice and even some clicks!   The best place to have your banner ads is actually within your review post, so that people have an opportunity to buy your affiliate product while they’re reading your review!

Get Your FREE Copy of
“My 3 List Building Machines”

3. Link Ads

People often advertise on their blogs via link ads.

The affiliate programs, in this case, are not single products, but large affiliate networks like Google, Amazon and others.

This sort of affiliate marketing is best done on store-front sites, rather than personal branding blogs.

Affiliate “link ads” include text link ads, in-links and rotating ads like Ad Choices and Google Ads, as well as product carousels like the ones that Amazon has made extensive use of.

I won’t get into the exact differences between all these methods, but will summarize use affiliate links that your readers can click on to display an ad for a product that they might be interested in.

These affiliate links are not usually congruent to the exact subject matter being discussed in your articles.

You might be writing about recipes and affiliate text link promoting a dating service appears on your post, or on the header or sidebar.

For this reason, among many, I don’t like link ads of any type, really.

They may be okay for blogs or websites that get extremely heavy traffic, such as a news site or, as I said before, a store-front site.

But for the average blogger, the tiny earnings you might get from these random ads are not worth compromising the integrity and branding of your blog.

After all, one of the main things we try to accomplish on personal branding blogs is to build relationships and stimulate engagement with our readers.

This is a personal connection, not a mass marketing ploy.

Link ads only detract from the sense of community and interaction that most bloggers are trying to develop through personal branding and attraction marketing methods.

4. List Building

Many bloggers don’t think of “list building” as a way to sell affiliate products on their blogs.

They think that “closing the sale” is the main purpose of their affiliate blog.

Actually, the best way to do affiliate marketing on your blog is to offer great content without ever asking for people to buy any of your affiliate products.

While this may sound counter intuitive, I’d ask you to think of it like this.

When you get an opt-in offer to join somebody’s email list, you typically see a place to enter your email address and click some sort of a “submit” button.

You clearly understand that the blogger is offering you something for free, maybe an ebook, and is asking you to opt in to her list as a condition for obtaining it.

But savvy marketers have learned that using a “2-step opt-in” process is much better than that single process.

In a “2-step” process, you are asked if you’re interested in a topic like “how to do produce great videos.”

There might be a button below that offer that says something like “click here to learn more.”

When you click to “learn more” you are asked for you email address to proceed to the training.

The reason that works so much better is that you’ve already convinced yourself that you’re interested in learning more, and that’s why you clicked the “learn more” button.

Because of that action-based “mini commitment” that you’ve already made, you’re far more likely to enter your email address to receive the free ebook or whatever is being offered, than if you had to make that decision in only one step.

For the same reason, building a list on your blog is far better than selling an affiliate product.

Get Your FREE Copy of
“My 3 List Building Machines”

That’s because, by offering great content on, let’s say photography since we began this article with the example of a photography affiliate blog… by offering great content of photography and then asking people to join your photography email list, you will get far greater response than if you ask them to actually buy something.

Once they’ve taken that first step of joining your list, they’ll be able to get your emails all about photography.

Some of those emails will ask for them to buy a camera or other photography equipment.

The first step, the mini-commitment to your authority in this niche was already made when they signed up for your list.

The second step… the actual purchase of your photography affiliate products will occur much more naturally now, since they’re learning about these products from a trusted source… you!

Not only are people on your email list much more likely to actually make purchases from you, but they will do so repeatedly.

Why?

Because, they’ll be getting offers from you via email on a fairly regular basis.

And because many of your emails will continue to be just good and valuable information without sales offers, so that you continue to build the trust and authority with your readers.

For these, and other reasons, you can sell affiliate products on your blog most easily and most often by making list building your top priority.

If you want to find out some of my power techniques for building your list, I suggest you grab my newest guide on the subject called “My 3 List Building Machines.”

Do you struggle to build a list of subscribers for your business?

David and I rely heavily on what we call “list building machines.”

They’re absolutely free access, and you probably use some or all of them already, but just didn’t know how to turn them into the “list building machines” they can be.

Get our FREE Guide on how to use these “3 list building machines” with a zero budget, and with incredible effectiveness.

CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW To Claim Your Copy.

“My 3 List Building Machines”

Now, I’d love to hear about your favorite method for selling affiliate products on your blog.

I’d especially like to hear how you incorporate list building into the process.

• Bio
• Blogging Magic

Donna Merrill

Donna is a well known blogger and creator of "Blogging Magic" - an intensive guide to blogging. "Blogging Magic" is for beginners who are trying to figure out how to bring their blogs to life with tons of visits, comments and social media interaction. It's even for advanced bloggers looking to reach new levels of authority and engagement with their audience.