It’s easy to see why everyone loves affiliate marketing. If you look at the stats, the industry is an absolute goldmine. According to research, affiliate marketing is worth around $12 billion worldwide and has an annual growth rate of 10%.
However, unlike other multi-billion dollar industries, anyone can join affiliate marketing for free. All you need is a place to share affiliate links and willingness to work hard on getting people to click them.
Getting users to click your affiliate links is a matter of discussion in and of itself. Today we will talk about the former point—where to share the affiliate links.
Using a website is the obvious choice so we won’t talk about it much. Still, we do recommend using a website, especially for your first affiliate campaign. Combining a good site with other platforms can give incredible results.
Without further ado, let’s talk about alternative platforms for sharing affiliate links.
Social Media
Using social media for your affiliate campaign is great because of the versatility.
If you don’t mind spending a few bucks, you can use targeted ads and get your links to an insane number of people in a matter of hours. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to precisely pinpoint your target demographic. On average, internet users spend about 2.8 hours per day online, with the hefty 80% going to social media.
You can also go the social media influencer path and build authority through socializing and posting quality content. This way you get a loyal following to which you deliver links.
Ideally, you would combine these two approaches and get an enormous number of loyal followers.
Email lists are one of the most popular tools among affiliates.
Using emails to promote your affiliate links has an advantage in that emails are difficult to ignore. If an email gets to your inbox, it sits there until you open or delete it. It’s much more difficult to passively ignore than ads.
The disadvantage of emails is that you can’t reach a wide audience quickly. You first need to build your email list. Once you build it, though, you have a comprehensive list of subscribers interested in the product you market. Getting conversions is child’s play after that.
You could also buy an email list, but this rarely pans out, and we don’t recommend it.
Podcast/Vlog
Podcasts and vlogs are the platforms of tomorrow. As affiliate marketing evolves and spreads, users want more than just to get served links. That’s why you need to establish a personal connection before you get clicks.
Using a multimedia platform does this. It makes users feel closer to the creator. If you’re a charismatic person, you can establish a connection between you and your audience. Many vloggers now share affiliate links beneath their YouTube videos. Likewise, thousands of podcast owners give out promo codes in their recordings. These are both very effective strategies and you should use them if you can.
Forums
This one is a bit tricky. Some people get puzzled when you mention using forums to share affiliate links.
You can share links wherever you want. You just have to be an established member of various forums to do it effectively. Even with forums, you need credibility to be a successful affiliate.
Even though you’re forum posting, think of ways to give value to the users. If you do this, there’s no reason they shouldn’t click your links.
Conclusion
There is no one best platform. You should choose any platform that works for you. You should just remember that affiliate marketing is all about improving your strategy and providing value to the consumer. Combine what we’ve talked about here with a good affiliate marketing strategy and you’ll have no problems succeeding as an affiliate.
If you’re interested in pursuing an affiliate career, check out the graphic below. It’s an excellent place to start learning about the business.
