7 Legit Ways to Promote Affiliate Links in 2023

You have heard the stories of people showing actual income results from affiliate marketing like Adam Enfroy, a 6-figure affiliate marketer.

word image 22 -

Source: Adam Enfroy Blog

And you could be wondering and asking yourself, can I even make a part of what he is earning from affiliate marketing?

Or you are asking yourself. How does Adam promote affiliate links to make such amounts of cash?

Well, we have the secret. Do you want to know it and start making excellent cash from affiliate marketing?

We got you. This blog content will guide you on promoting affiliate links to get a passive income stream for your business.

Ready to learn the secrets?

To give you an overview, here are some tips you will get from this guide towards growing your income with affiliate marketing:

  • You will know what affiliate links are
  • How you can get affiliate links
  • Why do you have to disclose your affiliate links
  • Different ways to promote affiliate links
  • Best tools to use for affiliate link promotion
  • How to drive traffic to your affiliate links

Like Google Ads, affiliate links are unique URLs used to track traffic sent from your website to an advertiser’s website. They have the affiliate marketer’s ID and username.

Affiliate Link's Tracking Parameter and Unique ID

Source: Ppcmode

Your website sends the record to the affiliate program when a potential customer clicks the referral link. So, you can know the number of clicks, sales, and commissions earned.

Affiliate programs can also use cookies to track your visitors’ activities. For example, when one clicks affiliate products, a cookie gets placed on their computer to track their actions.

Note that you’ll only earn money when visitors make a purchase. However, you may sometimes get paid for leads when you join pay-per-click affiliate programs.

Here are the steps to follow to acquire your links.

1. Join an Affiliate Network or Program

Research and join affiliate programs aligned with your interest, content topics, and marketing goals. Some of the top programs include Awin, ShareASale, and Impact Radius.

When you log in to your account, you’ll see many advertisers’ links on the dashboard. So, select the ones you would like to promote on your website.

Be sure that you know the product you want to promote. For example, you could have used the product or know someone who used it successfully to solve pain points.

It is much better to promote products you have used yourself and see first-hand the value they offer. Here is a simple description of how affiliate marketing works.

word image 23 -

Source: JustLearnWP.com

Once you select the links to promote, copy the direct link or HTML code, then paste it onto your WordPress site or blog content.

A WordPress plugin like Pretty Links can make your links look nicer. Here is the difference between a conventional and a cloaked affiliate link.

Conventional Affiliate Link: example.com/?tracking_id=0915309&affiliate=184750

Cloaked Affiliate Link: example.com/affiliate-product-name.php

Your links are now live. All you need to do now is track each link’s success on your affiliate dashboard. Note that how different affiliate programs follow the links vary slightly.

Tracking the Performance of Affiliate Links.

Source: SelfPublishing Advice

As an affiliate marketer, you need to reveal your participation in affiliate programs to your readers. That is according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requirements.

Failure to disclose your involvement in affiliate programs can attract fines and penalties. In addition, affiliate advertisers can remove you from their programs if you don’t reveal.

So, how should you disclose your involvement in affiliate marketing to your visitors?

Most content creators usually add a short paragraph to explain the relationship between the affiliate program advertiser and their content.

To disclose your promotional links, you can also add the short paragraph on a dedicated resources page of your website or at the beginning of your content.

If you prefer conveying the message on a dedicated affiliate link disclosure page, ensure that you list all the affiliate programs you participate in for utmost transparency.

Here is an example of an affiliate disclosure.

Affiliate Links Disclosure at the Beginning of Content

Source: Shanebarker

The strategies you use to promote affiliate links play a vital role in your affiliate marketing success. The good news is that there are many ways and platforms that include affiliate links to promote products.

Here are the most reliable ways to market your affiliate links.

Bloggers who want to monetize their blogs prefer affiliate marketing. That is because they specialize in niches of interest to their audience and can quickly reach online communities.

For example, if you’re running a B2B marketing blog, you know your target readers will be interested in learning different tools that help run their business.

These tools can be for email marketing, CRM, lead generation, eCommerce platforms, etc.

You can then create an informative article related to those tools, guide on using them, and then include the affiliate links within such content.

Make sure your content is valuable and shows readers how to solve their pains with your promotional tools.

Consider adding links to your blog post, video content, or even pop-ups if you run a blog. Ensure that the links are relevant. They should offer value to your visitors.

In other words, feel free to only include the links naturally, and don’t oversell. You can share the links via gift lists, special offers, or product comparisons if you provide a newsletter.

Your blog articles or newsletters get read by an audience of visitors who love reading about your perspectives, insights, and the tools you use as a content creator.

Each blog post should give your readers actionable tips they can apply to solve their pains.

For example, a buyer looking for the best email marketing tool will first need to see value in your content as they compare the different software to use.

To avoid being too promotional, ensure your content is not all about affiliate marketing.

Don’t give your target readers a notion that you’re just writing content to promote products. It will kill their trust in you.

What if you don’t own any blog site?

In that case, you can promote your links in someone else’s blog by guest posting. Other bloggers can also promote the links in your posts by linking them as backlinks.

An Affiliate Link on a Blog Post

Source: Partners.livechart

The following tips and ideas will help you maximize the potential of affiliate links.

  • Integrate the links logically to ensure they are relevant to the posts
  • Add the appropriate number of links to your content
  • Highlight all the links in bold or use different colors
  • Add links for the specific offer and not the homepage
  • Cloak your links to make them look more attractive

Videos are another potent marketing tool for many businesses operating online. Nearly 85 percent of marketers consider videos to engage more target audiences online.

As an affiliate marketer, you can create video content in many niches and add links to the video content. Since YouTube is a popular video-sharing platform, consider using it.

There are a few ways to embed the links into your videos. First, you can include the links in your YouTube video descriptions. Second, use YouTube annotations.

Adding the links to your video descriptions is the easiest way to promote them. When using this tactic, inform the viewers about the links in the description below your videos.

Affiliate Links on YouTube

Source: YouTube

For YouTube annotations, check for transparent boxes that usually pop up at specific times and places within YouTube videos. Then, add links to each box with a call-to-action.

To start affiliate marketing on YouTube, consider promoting your links using video descriptions and YouTube annotations. That way, you’ll get better results.

If you have a podcast or plan to get one, you can have a one-on-one conversation with your audience. Again, it’s a platform where you can promote affiliate links.

Many people are now opting to listen to podcasts. Research by Podcast Insights shows a 61.5% growth in podcasts over the last three years.

word image 24 -

Source: Podcast Insights

More target listeners are now using podcasts than ever before. As a result, you can easily reach a large audience with your podcasts and increase the chances of getting listeners who can buy the products you recommend.

When recommending a product, talk about why you love it and the benefits you think your audience would enjoy.

Give detailed information since the content is in audio format. If possible, recommend products that you’re using or have used. You know their real value for solving pain points.

For example, Loz James, the Founder of Content Champion, uses his podcast for marketing affiliate links. In addition, he shares proven content marketing techniques to help businesses.

How Promoting Affiliate Links on Podcast Works

Source: Buzzsprout

Here Are The Strategies To Generate Affiliate Sales Using Your Podcast.

  • Promote the links by sharing them on your podcast shows. It is a simple marketing strategy, especially with unique links that listeners can easily capture.
  • After talking about the affiliate opportunities in your show, add the links to your show notes so that the audience can access them quickly.
  • Declare the links to your audience. You can even let the listeners know that you might earn affiliate revenue (commission) if they purchase through the links.
  • Leverage your email list to reach more listeners. For example, you can link your podcast to your website newsletter subscribers to engage them in your podcast if you have a website.

4. Automated Emails/Email Marketing

As an affiliate marketing expert, you can use email to share your links with your trusted audience. You have to get many people to join your mailing list.

When the readers subscribe to your mailing list, send them automated welcome messages. That will help you manage relationships with your readers.

Ensure that you understand your target audience to send them relevant links that match their interests. However, don’t get spammy with the links to be on the safer side.

For example, if you have a six-part welcome email series about affiliate marketing tools, you don’t have to litter the part one email with many links.

First, strive to build trust with your readers by sharing with them your story, then finally, give information that you think will help them. Affiliate links are a secondary form of help.

What an Affiliate Email Looks Like

Source: Authorityhecker

Businesses with existing email lists and engaged subscribers can benefit significantly from this method of affiliate promotion, regardless of their area of specialization.

Email is a great way to drive engagement with the target audience.

Since you’re using different channels to promote your affiliate links, you can use emails to engage readers to those channels.

For example, if you have a video you created and has your unique links, you can promote it to readers through your email newsletter.

Your customers need valuable content. Always ensure that is your primary goal for each content type you create.

Then, you can include those links within that valuable content.

5. Affiliate Banners

Another best way to promote affiliate links is by posting them on your website as affiliate banners. While the links can also generate sales, banners are more visually appealing.

You can place the clickable banners in various points on your website, including:

  • Your blog’s sidebar
  • Your website’s header and footer
  • Within your blog content
  • In email messages

Note that you can embed affiliate links in the code you’ll copy and paste into your website page. Therefore, the higher you place the banner on your page, you will get more clicks.

Here is an example of a Bluehost affiliate banner at the button of a blog post.

word image 25 -

Source: Adam Enfroy Blog

Before using banners, ensure that your respective affiliate program provides the feature.

People who often visit your affiliate website with a purchase intent read your content carefully. So, it’s vital to add links within your content besides using the banners.

In addition, banners tend to look more promotional than the contextual links, and some of your visitors can ignore them. For that reason, it’s essential to use them sparingly.

The good news is that affiliate banners work well in other marketing channels, including social media platforms and email campaigns.

Use affiliate banners more on channels where target readers are more likely to engage with your visual content.

Remember your goal is to engage and educate target readers as you draw them to the products you want to promote.

Within Your Digital Products

As your website grows and you begin to offer digital products such as online courses and free eBooks, you can use the materials to promote your affiliate links.

The digital products offer perfect opportunities to include affiliate links in them. However, you should ensure that you place the links organically into your content.

Please don’t make your digital products feel like sales materials, but additional resources to help the readers learn more about your topics.

For instance, if you run an online course that talks about starting an email marketing campaign, you can include a unique affiliate link for ConvertKit into the course.

Since you want the audience to apply the tips you teach them, it’s essential to show them the products you often use to help them get started.

You should show them the products and how they can use them to solve their challenges.

That way, they will be more likely to try the products and give you a chance to make a sale with your affiliate links.

Include affiliate links to the products you recommend. However, you need to be careful when using newsletter platforms that restrict links so that they don’t delete your account.

ConvertKit Commerce is an excellent example of an online platform that allows creators to promote their links through their digital products.

ConvertKit's Page for Digital Products

Social media has become indispensable in affiliate marketing. For that reason, you can promote your affiliate links on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Facebook

You can distribute your unique links on Facebook through a personal account or your online business page. However, ensure that you don’t spam your followers’ feeds with many links.

Your main objective is to convince them to click on the links to make purchases. Therefore, you can achieve that by posting entertaining and intriguing content with links.

An Affiliate Link on Facebook

Source: Neil Patel

Here are the Facebook platforms to promote the links.

  • Facebook Groups

Join a relevant Facebook group that aligns with the products you want to promote. Before you start promoting the links, become a member first. Then, participate, engage, and help.

Members will treat you as a spammer when you start promoting your links immediately after joining a group.

Also, within the groups, you shouldn’t just promote your links. Instead, be helpful in the groups in different ways.

Answer questions readers ask and post other content materials that are helpful and useful for them.

Building engagement, trust, and showing your expertise should always come first before you do self-promotional posts.

  • Facebook Page

If you have a website that’s already running, create a Facebook page and use it to promote affiliate links. So, you’ll use the page to update your audience about your latest content.

You can direct your followers to content that includes your links. Then, after building trust, you can try posting the links directly on your Facebook resource page.

  • Facebook Profile

You must update your profile to advertise with Facebook ads since it expresses more about your life. In addition, it can help you build your trust, loyalty, credibility, and brand.

Once you get followers, you can post affiliate products on your personal Facebook profile. But, you won’t access Facebook Analytics as you would with Facebook groups and pages.

If you have a website, you can include it on your profile. Then, your followers can click through to the site, read the content, and maybe on the way to access the affiliate links.

Instagram

Bliss Kiss Affiliate Link on Instagram

Source: Ahrefs

Instagram posts can help you run paid ads and generate affiliate traffic, especially with many followers. For that reason, you need to start by gaining more followers.

However, when you run ads on Instagram, the posts won’t be clickable. That means you have to send visitors to your bio to access your links and complete a purchase.

Pinterest

Affiliate Link on Pinterest

Source: Social Media Examiner

As one of the best visual social media channels, Pinterest offers many affiliate marketing opportunities to help affiliate marketers drive traffic to their links.

You can take advantage of that opportunity and promote your links. Consider creating pins and boards around the products getting marketed to get the best results.

Twitter

Supermetric's Affiliate Link on Twitter

Source: Supermetrics

Twitter also allows marketers to promote affiliate products like other social media accounts. But since it only allows 280 characters per post, you need to be creative.

Experiment with several copywriting styles to find out what works best for you. You may also accompany your copies and links with images or videos to make them more exciting.

If you want to increase your earnings by promoting affiliate links, you need to invest in the best software tools to optimize various offers on multiple platforms.

Here are some of the tools to help you customize and optimize your links.

An uncloaked affiliate link can be very long and unattractive. Thankfully, there are cloaking tools to help you customize the affiliate URLs from their default formats to new ones.

Besides making the links look attractive, cloaking tools can also make links more traceable. Some of the best affiliate link cloaking tools include:

You can try these cloaking tools and use the one that works best for you.

However, irrespective of the software you use, ensure that your links are attractive and placed naturally within the content.

Placing links just to get sales can make readers very suspicious. As a result, you can lose trust with your target reader, which can affect your business.

ClickMeter's Link Tracking Tool

Source: ClickMeter

Once the links go live, you need to track their performance to ensure results. So, you can use the following tools to track everything happening with your links.

Don’t forget to invest in link optimization tools to have successful affiliate marketing. The good news is that most link cloaking and tracking tools can help you optimize your links.

However, here are the other affiliate link optimization tools to consider.

As affiliate marketing techniques keep changing, it’s essential to keep up with making money online

 . Here are the tips to help you drive more traffic with affiliate links.

If your links look long and unattractive, consider using affiliate product cloaking tools like Pretty Links and Thirsty Affiliates to shorten them.

Differences between Normal and Cloaked Affiliate Links

Source: BforBloggers

The cloaking tools can also help you manage the links and add them to relevant content. In addition, the tools make your link look more professional in a branded manner.

Also, the cloaking tools can help you manage the affiliate links and even add them to the relevant content.

Only Recommend What You Truly Believe In

Recommending the products you have used before makes your affiliate marketing efforts more authentic. Also, it helps you provide detailed information about the products.

Showing your audience the products you love and use regularly will help you win their trust and loyalty. As a result, you’ll be able to make thousands of dollars from it.

For example, if you use an email marketing tool like Glueup, it will be easy to convince a reader to start using that tool.

You know the tool in and out, and to some extent, you can also show target readers statistics of your business performance from the time you started using the software.

Here is an example of Gael Breton, co-founder at AuthorityHacker has been using the Ahrefs tool for more than eight years.

word image 26 -

Source: Ahrefs

If he decides to promote Ahrefs, it will be easy to convince others to use it because he has been using it for years and knows the product well enough to promote.

Tracking the performance of your unique links can help you know who clicked them and what actions they took. That way, you’ll determine the number of conversions achieved.

You can also know the type of content that most of your target readers consume. So, for example, you can create more of those content types and include your affiliate links to them if it’s video content.

Consider adopting the link retargeting strategy to maximize the potential of your affiliate account. It is the most straightforward way to promote your links.

Add Bonuses to Differentiate Your Offer

Make your affiliate marketing offers stand out by giving bonuses to your audience. These are different products you provide alongside the main items to encourage website visitors to buy.

The bonuses will add value to your affiliate offers and increase your conversion rates significantly. Additionally, they build a sense of urgency for your products.

You need to take advantage of endless opportunities and drive more traffic to your links regarding affiliate marketing. So, you don’t have to limit yourself.

Diversify your affiliate marketing deals by placing your links on many platforms, like blog content, product tutorials, banner ads, YouTube videos, and email messages.

As you promote your affiliate offers, ensure that you drive as much traffic to your marketing channels as possible. It increases the chances of readers who engage and possibly buy through the links.

It will not impact your conversion if you promote your links to as many different channels as possible if they don’t have good traffic.

For example, an affiliate marketer like Adam Enfroy can make more affiliate revenue from his blog content alone.

word image 27 -

The blog has 0.5M visitors per month, which gives him more leverage and grows his affiliate sales.

Become Data-Driven

A data-driven affiliate marketing will help you understand your readers. So, if you don’t know the people who read your blog post, make data and analytics your friends.

The good news is that many software tools help you get actionable data to understand your audience better. Alternatively, you can rely on Google Analytics.

Once your fully understand your readers, create marketing content that attracts, engages, and educates them as they solve their pain points.

1. Can I promote affiliate links without a website?

Yes. You don’t need to own a blog or website to promote affiliate links. You can still promote the links on other platforms so long as you have a reliable online presence.

You can share affiliate links on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram as long as you have friends or followers who are inclined to click the referral links.

2. How can I promote affiliate links for free?

Consider joining the sites that allow people to promote affiliate links without paying any fee. Some of these websites include StumbleHere.com and ClassifiedAds.com.

However, if you are skeptical about the free content, you can consider paid ads or promote your affiliate links on social media platforms, such as your Facebook and Twitter.

3. Can I find where the affiliate link came from?

Tracking Affiliate Links on Google Tab Manager

Yes. Every affiliate link has a seller’s URL and a unique affiliate ID that makes it easy to track the link’s source. So, you can use the affiliate ID to find where the link originated.

Thankfully, there are tools to help you track the links, including Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Note that Google is the largest search engine.

Source: Seng Nickerson

Executive Summary

You have now learned what are affiliate links and how you can promote them. The guide has given you the best tools to promote your affiliate links.

To make a good amount of money from affiliate marketing takes hard work and dedication. Use the tips above and create affiliate links for products or services used mainly by target customers.

Create the best content that addresses target customers’ pains and promote it to reach more potential buyers.

Ensure that each piece of content you produce aims at educating target customers and engaging them to take action and click your affiliate links.