How to Monetize a Website With Affiliate Marketing

You’ve created your business website and you’re bringing in customers. Did you know that your website can also bring in passive income through affiliate marketing?

Let’s take a look at how you can become an affiliate and monetize your website in new ways.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a system where you refer someone to an online product in exchange for referral commissions.
If you are selling products or services then your primary method of making money will be through the sale of these items online.

But if you write blog articles about your goods and services you may also be able to supplement your income by adding links to affiliate sites. This allows you to offer services or products that complement the subject you’re writing about that don’t compete with your own offering. You can also include affiliate links to general services that you believe in as part of your website footer.
Affiliate marketing is a great opportunity to generate income from the traffic your content generates.

How To Find The Ideal Affiliate Program For You

It can be tempting to use a “shotgun” approach to finding your ideal partner—randomly choosing any affiliate offer to see if you can make some money—but this is really a waste of your site’s potential.

Instead, it’s important to choose wisely to maximize the money you can make.
For example, if your blog or website is about creating websites, you might consider joining a domain registrar’s or a hosting provider’s affiliate program. This means you’d partner with this advertiser to sell domains, hosting, or SSL certificates to the people who come to your site and learn about these things and want to use them to build a website.
Similarly, if your blog is about sports, there are numerous sports clothing, memorabilia, and ticket vendors who have affiliate programs that would be the perfect offering for your visitors.
Think about your content and then look at merchants in the various affiliate programs that may complement your content. Go explore a couple of the major affiliate platforms such as Commission Junction, ShareaSale, or Impact Radius. You can look through the advertisers there and find ones that have a connection to your site’s content.

Other Things to Consider

While planning your marketing efforts, consider how the affiliate platform pays out affiliate income. Depending on your country, the cost of getting paid can vary dramatically. You may find the same affiliate offers payments using numerous platforms, so can choose the one that offers the best rate for you.
Successful affiliate marketers also choose the right offers for the right content on their sites. The smart ones have been known to look at the higher-paying affiliate commissions for certain items and then write their content to appeal to that audience.
The most effective way to do affiliate marketing is by carefully selecting the vendors you promote. Do not sign up for programs without considering if your website visitors would be truly interested in the products.

Choose partners that offer items that fit into what your website is about. If your site is about all things digital, then laptops and web hosting would be appropriate to find and have success. Adding an offer for pants (while it’s true everyone wears them) would not be a wise choice for your business.

The Decision is Made . . . What Next?

Once you have narrowed down your affiliates selection, it is time to A/B test the offerings and regularly update your listings. You should also test the offers and not just choose the ones that pay the highest. You will often be more successful with a vendor who pays a smaller commission if, for example, they have more sales due to better products or pricing.

Affiliate programs constantly update banners and text links, so it’s also important to keep up with these materials. And you’ll want to watch for new vendors who sign on and old vendors that rotate their advertising to improve conversions, update offerings, and announce specials. Keep up with these changes and you’ll improve your income potential.

Namecheap’s Affiliate Program

If you feel that Namecheap’s products or services would add value to your site and you’d like to spread the word about us to your audience, consider joining our affiliate program.
We’re always happiest when our affiliates are successful, so after you join the affiliate program, we suggest checking the following articles:
Where to Start After Joining An Affiliate Program
Where Can I Find More Information About Affiliate Marketing