Start an Affiliate Blog for Affiliate Marketing: Pro Tips

Tips For Starting an Affiliate Blog

The affiliate marketing industry is at its peak right now. People choose affiliate marketing over other income streams for many reasons. Passive income opportunity is one of them; you can generate passive income with affiliate marketing, creating a review blog / YouTube channel. Review blogs are not easy to start with because of the competition. But if you are already familiar with the blogging industry, it should not be difficult for you.

Pro Tips for Starting an Affiliate Blog for Affiliate Marketing

Creating an affiliate marketing blog can be really profitable or a total loss if you fail to do it properly. The number of review affiliate blogs is increasing every day, creating more competition in the market.

There are different marketplaces that work well with websites and niche blogs such as an Amazon Affiliate, share a sale, CJ. 

I prefer amazon for niche blogs, Amazon is one of the world’s largest e-com sites. Amazon affiliate is the most popular choice for niche websites. 

In this article, I will share some pro tips that will help you create a successful affiliate blog.

Everything falls into these three parts:

  • Market Research
  • Creating a blog.
  • SEO (Marketing)

Market Research for Affiliate Marketing

If you can do market research properly 80% work is done! Because it will decide if you are going to win or lose. Marketers use tools like SEM Rush, Ahrefs, keyword planners for market research, and KW research. 

Niche Research: Choosing the right niche that has scope for you to work with. Experts prefer to choose what someone is passionate about, but this doesn’t work every time.

Suppose you are passionate about the health niche, but the health niche is super competitive and going to cost you a lot of money. So, choosing a low-competitive niche that you can work with is the first step.

Product Research: Finding the right products that you can promote is the next step. You have to search for quality products that you can promote in your blog.

Only choose quality products that have good ratings and good reviews. Pricing would not be an issue if you choose a quality product. 

Keyword Research: Your goal is to find some keywords that have low competition on the market but good traffic. An interesting fact is you don’t need a 10k/m traffic keyword.

It can be only 500 traffic per month and still, you can make good money. Google keyword planner is the best free tool for keyword research.

If you have a budget, then you can buy long tail pro software. Always go for long-tail keywords over short keywords.

Competitor Research: Competitor research is a part of keyword research, before choosing a keyword you have to research its competitors.

What are the average words article your competitors have, DA (Domain Authority), PA (Page authority), Average backlinks for the post, it all matters. Choosing a keyword that has low competition will help you to rank quickly. 

Creating an Affiliate Marketing Blog 

Creating a blog requires you to buy a domain, hosting, and set up your site. In this part, I will share what type of domain name to go for and how buying quality hosting matters.

  • Domain name: Back in 2014-2015, everyone was more into exact match domains, a domain name similar to your money keyword. It was believed to have a search engine ranking benefit at that time for exact match domains but not in 2019. 

In 2019 google is giving more ranking boosts to branding sites. You should go for a brandable domain name in 2019. 

  • Hosting: Choosing the right hosting provider will keep your website running smoothly. If your site loads slow, traffic is going to bounce, and a high bounce rate is terrible for SEO. Choose top-level hosting providers like Bluehost, Hostgator, Dream host.
  • Setting up Website: WordPress is the most popular platform for creating niche blogs. With WordPress, you can easily set up and customize your blog. There are free themes available so, if you do not have a budget, you can start free. 

Keep your website design simple, and make sure it looks good. Use a theme that is customizable and nicely goes with your ideas. Install all the necessary plugins. Google is more cautious about user experience. Make sure it is mobile-friendly. 

Here is a theme you can use: Exopress | Multipurpose Personal Blog WordPress Theme by ThemeLooks.Create all the necessary pages (About us, Contact Us, Privacy policy, Affiliate Disclosure). 

  • Start Posting: You can hire someone to write articles for you or you can write by yourself. Hire a freelance writer from marketplaces like Fiverr, Upwork. 

Aim for at least 40,000 words in total for 20 articles, average article length of 1,500 words to 2,500 words. Aim for min 6,000 words for your home page article. 

Your home page article is where you write big content or pillar content combining top 10 product reviews in your niche. Example: “Top 10 Kitchen Knife Review 2019” Do not only post review articles, share guides and tips too. 

Affiliate Blog

Search Engine Optimization in Affiliate Blog Marketing:

There have been some significant updates in SEO for the last few years. There was a time when only posting quality articles on a website were enough for first-page ranking. Because of the competition, only posting quality articles is not enough. 

SEO Tactics For 2022 That Works: 

  • Strong On-Page SEO.
  • Post Quality articles (Min 1500 -2500 words).
  • Maintaining EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trust).
  • Build strong backlinks.

Strong On-Page SEO: 

You may already know some of these on-page SEO tactics. These tactics may be old but still works to this day: 

  • Put a keyword at the beginning of a title.
  • SEO friendly URL (Only keep the KW) 

Not Friendly: yourblog.com/p=15

Not Friendly: yourblog.com/2019-2-6/category/post/kitchen-knife-review-2019

Friendly: yourblog.com/kitchen-knife-review-2019

Friendly: yourblog.com/best-laptops-under-500

  • Put your keyword in the first 100 words.
  • Use internal linking.
  • Give outbound links to high authority sites.
  • Use Long-tail keywords.
  • Make sure your site loading speed is fast.
  • Make sure your site is responsive.

Post Quality and Long Articles:

According to a 2016 study, the average content length for the first page 1 results is around 1,900 words. It was not always like this back in 2011 everyone used to post 300-500 words and 800 words max. Now people publish crazy long articles. I have seen 8,000 words article ranking in the first place while doing keyword research. Posting long SEO-friendly articles is the go-to strategy in 2019.

Maintaining EAT: 

EAT stands for (Expertise, Authority, and Trust). This is a recent update from Google. Now EAT plays an essential role in ranking. Here are a few tips to boost EAT: 

  • Add Author Names & Biographies for All Editorial Content.
  • Work on improving your branding.
  • Only post quality articles.

Build strong backlinks: 

After the Google Penguin update, spam and weak backlinks do not work anymore. Penguin makes sure if a backlink has quality or not. Forget about all old days spammy backlinks techniques: 

Guest Posting: Create backlinks from your niche relevant sites. Free guest posting is tough nowadays, and you may have to spend some money. Must avoid sites that are not related. 

Blog Commenting: Blog commenting is an old-day tactic, but experts claim it works still to this day but only do it from relevant sites. Keep this in mind it’s a no-follow link-building tactic, and you have to keep a balance between do-follow and no-follow links.

Web Directory Links: Building links from only quality web directories. Nowadays, there are only a limited number of quality web directory sites available. Before posting to any directory, check the spam score, keep it below 5%.

Forums: Forums are great to get free links, forums like Quora, Reddit also can drive good traffic to your website. You have to be active in the forums before you share your blog link. Complete your profile and share engaging.

Link Exchange: Link exchange is when 2 similar sites exchange links. Link exchange is only powerful when you can get a link from a higher DA site than you. Not everyone will give you a link for free; you might need to pay. Paying for a link goes against google’s rule, but people are doing it.

There are other advanced techniques like broken link building, infographic link building, Edu Resource Backlinks, Testimonials.

To Sum it up: 2019 is all about quality. The more quality work you can do the higher you will rank. Proper market research and competitor research is a must. Creating a successful affiliate blog takes time. You have to post regularly and work hard.

Affiliate Marketing Ideas For Business Owners

If you are a business owner, you can run your own affiliate program to generate traffic and leads. If you have a budget, I prefer hiring an affiliate marketing agency like MonsterClaw to build a successful affiliate program for you. Doing all the work by yourself will take a lot of time, And if you fail to do it properly, you are going to lose money. 

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