Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a cornerstone of online marketing monetization, and it's one of the biggest ways that many bloggers make their money online.

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to turn a passion into something that makes money. But throwing a few links up on your blog will only take you so far. If you actually want your affiliate marketing relationships to pay off, you should consider creative ways to promote your affiliate links that also provide value to your readers.

To do that, take a page out of the content marketing handbook brands are using, start creating interesting and useful content that does the double job of helping your readers make smart purchasing decisions and helping you make more money from your affiliate marketing.

10 Creative Content Ideas for Affiliate Marketing

1. Reviews
One of the easiest type of content you can use to promote affiliate products is reviews. Simply write up your opinion of a product based on your experience. You can describe how you used and how it helps you.

The goal here is to be more thorough and helpful than outright promotional although it is good to explain what you like about the product. You want to keep your readers trust while providing them honest information on what makes buying the product useful. It is clear that the writers recommending the product, but they do so in a way that is more educational than sales y, which ultimately comes off as more persuasive to readers.

2. Product Comparisons
You will answer to the questions of your readers are most likely to have when it comes to choosing what products to buy, like trying to figure out what is different about two competing products in order to determine which one is best for them.

You can answer that question with a product comparison post. As with reviews, you should focus on providing all the information your readers could possibly need rather than pushing the sale.

That is all extremely valuable information to any small business owner trying to make a decision. As such, it both builds trust in the blog and is likely to encourage many readers to click through one of those links and make a purchase.

3. Informational Videos
While test is the most obvious format to stick with when it comes to affiliate marketing, it is much easier to include a link within text than most other formats a lot of people do prefer consuming content in video form rather than reading it.

You should always combine the best of both worlds. Create a video that explains the benefits of the product you are helping promote or do a video version of your review and embed it within a post that provides similar information.

For people that prefer video, and for any topics or products that really lend themselves to making a video like this one did, making informational videos coupled with text can be a great way to promote affiliate products.

4. How to Articles
You should take a couple of different approaches when it comes to using how-to articles for affiliate marketing. You should write articles that describe how to get the most out of a product or make use of certain features or you should use more general how-to articles to point readers toward affiliate marketing.

5. Video Tutorials
Like how-to articles, video tutorials give you an opportunity to show your readers how to make the best use of the product you are recommending. These can particularly be useful if the affiliate products you promote on your blogs are completed to use, like software that has lots of features.

For many types of products, a video that provides a visual walk through can be a lot more helpful to your audience than words that communicate the same thing. With software, knowing where on the screen to look and click is important. And with something like workout equipment, seeing someone use equipment properly can ensure those watching more likely to use it correctly and safely.

As an extra tip here, by including a written version of the tutorial in the same post like you can still optimize the post with your chosen keywords to improve it is SEO and you have plenty of opportunity to include your links. And it is good for your followers too, who have their picture between a video and text, based on their personal preferences.

6. Educational Webinars
Business frequently use this tactic to promote their wares and there is no reason affiliate marketers can not do the same. Consider what informational topics are relevant to the affiliate products you represent and craft an educational webinar around them.

If your blog is focused on Website Designing and your affiliate products are mostly Website Designing and Development, you should host a webinar on "Best Website Designing and Development" that highlights the affiliate products.

Whatever route you take, a webinar requires more of a time commitment than most of the other content types on this list, so you need to make sure you pack that time full of useful tips and information. Webinars are also interactive, so consider ways to get people more engaged, like including surveys or taking questions throughout the webinar.

If you can not work out a similar del with the affiliate company to entice your attendees and track how many customers came from your efforts, you can send a follow up email afterward with affiliate links to any products you mentioned, so you do not lose a linking opportunity.

7. Gift Guide
While it is possible to put a gift guide together that includes affiliate links together at any time, you will likely get the best results if you publish a gift guide around the holidays when everyone's scrambling to find good gift ideas for loved ones.

8. Long form Guides
This is another common content tactic businesses use. They often employ long form guides as a way to collect leads, but where a business is likely to put their guide behind a sign up form, you might be better off publishing it to the open web to get SEO points and make the affiliate links more accessible.

Long form guides are appealing because they pack more useful information than shorter forms of content, so if they are good the readers appreciates getting a huge amount of valuable information for free. That makes them more likely to click on it, share it, and potentially revisit it.

9. Seasonal Content
Many of the topics people care about and seek out vary throughout the year. In October suddenly everyone loves costumes and pumpkins. In July, vacations and days in the sun dominate our thoughts.

Brainstorm all the seasonal trends that relate to the topics you cover on your website and turn those ideas into content that goes up at just the right time for people to be primed for it.

If you have a blog about healthy cooking, write about pumpkin recipes in October and healthy Christmas cookies in December. If your blog is about makeup and skin care, then point people toward the best sunscreens to buy in the summer.

10. List Roundups
Sometimes simply doing the work of curating a list of similar items are valuable to readers. The Wire cutter maintains an ongoing list of good deals, along with more specific lists of products like the best accessories for your iPhone and iPad.

Putting all those products together in one place saves readers the time and trouble of going out and finding those products and deals on their own or missing them entirely due to ignorance. And it pretty well guarantees that they will click on the wire cutter is link if they see something they like.

Content Marketing has gained the buzz it has for good reason. Providing valuable information to readers is one of the best ways to gain their loyalty and steer them toward smart purchasing decisions. Some creativity and work can help you launch more interest in the affiliate products that make your website profitable. Branch into these content types, or see what other great ideas you can come up with. If your content is truly helpful, you are likely to gain more profit from your affiliate marketing because of it.