How to Blog Your Way to Affiliate Marketing Success

I’ve been blogging for over 16 years and at least half of my affiliate marketing success comes from that, which to date is around $700,000 (if not more).

For the many years I’ve done affiliate marketing through blogging, I’ve seen the many wrong ways to do it as well the few right ways it should be done if you want to make money with it, and that’s what I’ll be teaching you to do in this post.

There is a short formula to the process and here it is:

These are the 5 steps to blogging your ways to affiliate marketing success:

1. Pick a niche topic for the blog that you love a lot.
2. Create the blog site (Ideally through WordPress).
3. Create at least 30-50 keyword targeted blog posts over a 6 month period on the niche subject.
4. Promote affiliate marketing products throughout the blog as it grows and gets traffic.
5. Scale your blog profits by expanding further beyond into other realms (YouTube, Pinterest, pay per click, ect…).

This is the summary but of course, as you read further, I’ll dive into each step to thoroughly explain them.

When it comes to blogging and honestly anything affiliate marketing related, this particular sequence is the one I’ve found to work consistently and make me affiliate marketing sales and in a moment, I’ll be detailing my own blog examples that have made me money following these steps.

This sequence of steps works and it’s one of the ways I’ve proven that blogging is not dead (and why it’s growing).

1) Pick a niche topic for the blog (that you love a lot):

This is the first and most important step that I find most people get wrong, and I’m not exaggerating that claim. People either:

• Have no clue what niches are.
• Have a clue about it (in rare cases), but still pick the wrong ones.
• In perhaps 5% of cases do people actually pick the right niche for them.

When it comes to making money with affiliate marketing through blogging, if you don’t get this step right, forget about it altogether, because blogging success requires a lot of writing and a:

• Lack of knowledge on the niche.
• Let alone having the passion for it.

Is the #1 reason bloggers fail to take their blogs to a level that is making them little or even a full time income. I’ve been in that position more than once and I want you to learn from my mistakes.

I can promise you that if you pick the right niche for yourself to start an affiliate marketing blog on, that at least half of the hard work is already complete, and you’re going to substantially increase your odds of success.

So let me run you through the process of how to pick niches:

1) Write down a list of topics that you:

• Know a lot about.
• Love (this is important).
• Have experience with (could be negative experience too, that counts).

2) Take the subjects you wrote up and narrow down each one into a niche. Here’s a few examples:

Let’s say you wrote up pretty basic topics that wouldn’t be considered niches. Here is a good flow of how to turn them into niches:

• Health and fitness (too broad). How to do marathon running (that’s a niche).
• Wealth (extremely broad). How to make money blogging (that’s a niche).
• Love (Way too broad). How to rekindle the love in a marriage (that’s a niche).

In other words, try to make your subjects green like I did. Of course the examples I’m giving you are based on my own choices.

You will want to take your time because again, the choice you make with niches and starting an affiliate marketing blog on them is the most important thing right now, so take your time and choose it carefully.

If you need my coaching with niches, either:

• Leave a comment below.
• Or join up with the Wealthy Affiliate program where I provide:
• 1 on 1 coaching in affiliate marketing included.

And if you want to see more examples of niches:

• Here is a good list of niches I found in 2021.
• Just as well, here’s outdoor niches that you can choose from.
• Here are high ticket affiliate marketing niches as well.

3) Narrow down which remaining niches are popular and evergreen.

You need to have a blog on a popular niche topic (that is also an evergreen niche ideally). That’s how you’ll get traffic and that’s how you’ll make sales. Based on the list you chose, see which of the remaining topics are popular.

• If there is only 1 left, that’s your niche.
• If there’s more than 1 left on your list, choose the one you love the most, and that’ll be your niche.

2) Create the blog site (Ideally through WordPress):

The easiest part of the blogging and affiliate marketing process is actually creating the blog. That really doesn’t take up a lot of time when you know where to go and where to make your site from.

I’m biased so I’ll suggest you join up with Wealthy Affiliate and use one of their free sites that they offer.

3) Create 30-50 blog posts that target good keywords over a 6 month period on the niche subject:

This part of the sequence is the one which will take up most of your time, and probably give you most of the headaches, writer’s block and so forth, but it’s essential to your blog’s affiliate marketing success, so read this part carefully.

A blog’s success is determined by the following factors:

1. The niche and it’s popularity.
2. The speed of the blog’s loading and quality (you get that from Wealthy Affiliate).
3. How well you write your blog’s content (based on how well you know it).
4. What kinds of keywords you research and use for the blog.
5. The time and age of your blog (you have to give this at least 6 months).
6. The amount of blogs you actually write (30-50 is a good measurement). And in this case, you’ll want to write up on the niche subject such as addressing common questions, reviewing products, and so forth.

99% of bloggers (and affiliate marketers who do it through it blogging) fail because they never have these 5 things down or even come close to reaching that goal.

It’s also why I keep saying that affiliate marketing is not saturated. But because you’re here and reading from people like myself who have screwed up and recovered, you now know better.

But yes this is what is required to see success with your blog.

The goal of the 6 month period and the other things I mentioned is that Google (which is ultimately where you want your blog to get it’s traffic from) will only really respect your blog after that period and give it better rankings. Until that period hits, you’ll want to get to that posting level (30-50 blog posts).

And the more of them you write, the more traffic the blog will get and eventually, the profitability of your affiliate marketing blog is determined by the traffic it gets (the niche traffic that is).

So for example:

1. John chose a niche in how to rekindle marriage.
2. It’s a very popular topic because of the high divorce rate. You can bet people look for this subject on Google.
3. John write at least 50 blog posts on ways to rekindle marriage and subjects similar to it.
4. John also reviews popular marriage counseling books (it’s a good way to fill the 30-50 blog post quota).
5. John’s blog received 20,000 visitors a month by the time his blog is 12 months old. With that kind of traffic, John can make a lot of money with affiliate marketing (the next step coming up).

I promise you this: If you can pick the right niche you love, then this process will be way easier. That passion will help you produce that good content in mass and it will put you ahead of the 99% of bloggers who never get close to that point.

4) Promote affiliate marketing products on the blog as it begins to get traffic:

Traffic for a blog is a snowball effect in that the more good blog posts you pour out, the more traffic you’ll get, and this is why you first need to get over that 6 month period mark.

But once you do and the traffic does start to come, then it’s time to start making money with it, which in our case is promoting affiliate marketing products. And here, there’s a bunch of options available.

Depending on the niche subject you chose will determine which network/s you should sign up with.

Here is how much you can make:

If we’re using John’s rekindle the marriage example, 2 come to mind:

• Clickbank.
• Amazon Associates.

John can promote a marriage solution kind of eBook from places like Clickbank and get paid $20 a sale (among other things).

With $20,000 visitors coming to his blog seeking advice on fixing their marriage, John would probably be able to sell a 1,000 copies of that eBook a month, giving him a healthy $20,000 a month in affiliate commissions (I’m not even joking about these numbers, it’s possible when you follow all of the rules I gave you).

Because John properly aligned his niche passion and experience and made good content on it, is why he is now rewarded with a lot of traffic and a great passive affiliate income from it.

And from my personal experience, here are just some of the niches I’ve made affiliate sales with (some full time incomes):

• Restoring hair loss.
• Helping people with knee pains.
• Relationship fixing eBooks.
• Fitness programs (specific kinds).
• Affiliate marketing topics (the subject itself).
• Outdoor niches like camping, hiking and more.
• And more.

5) Scale your blog profits by expanding beyond the blog itself:

Your blog’s only limitations are that it can only really get traffic from 2 sources:

1. Search engines.
2. Social sharing across email, social media and other realms.

But beyond these 2 areas, exist other realms, like YouTube, other social media channels, and ads, all of which offer the ability for you to expand further beyond the blog’s limitations.

As a blog starts to make money, you can grow the affiliate business further (and blog) by expanding into the following types of things:

• YouTube affiliate marketing.
• Pay per click affiliate marketing.
• Pinterest affiliate marketing.
• Email marketing.
• And more.

The way to understand which route to go is to examine which of your blog posts are getting the most popularity/traffic and to scale them in the other realms. For example:

If we take John again and his marriage fixing blog, out of the 50 or so blogs John wrote, his top 5 get 90% of all the traffic and talk about specific subjects on marriage fixing or products he reviewed.

John can take those 5 subjects, make YouTube videos on them and get even more traffic and sales for his affiliate business. This is a good way to describe “Scaling” and it’s something to consider doing before, during or after your blog starts. I personally do these types of things as my blog is in the process of growing.

John can also create pay per click ads, and funnel people into his blog that sells the affiliate marketing products and scale his already $20,000 a month he makes in affiliate earnings further to $30,000, $40,000 and beyond using this.

7 pros to using blogging to make money in affiliate marketing:

1. It’s very beginner friendly (I recommend starting here).
2. It costs very little to do this form of affiliate marketing.
3. Blogs are still very profitable ways to do affiliate marketing.
4. The competition in most niches is far less than you think (meaning you have opportunity).
5. Getting to a passive income level with this method is possible.
6. The 5 part method I showed you above works across niche subjects.
7. You own your blog so you can’t really get shut down like on other places (YouTube, social media, ect…) unless you do something illegal on your blog.

4 cons to using blogging to make money in affiliate marketing:

1. Takes a lot of time to start up (6 months and up).
2. No guarantee that your blog will succeed (follow my suggestions to improve that).
3. Fear of SEO penalties possible (if you do things right, you shouldn’t worry about this).
4. Writing tons of content is very difficult if you’re not into writing or interested in the niche.

I wanted to add these pros and cons to give you a realistic view of what could happen before you get started. The steps I gave you in this tutorial are however filtered to help you get a good blueprint of what to do right from the get go, so you don’t really have to experience these cons.

More notes on blogging and affiliate marketing:

Is blogging good for affiliate marketing?

Yes blogging is one of the best ways to do affiliate marketing if you are just a beginner in this business.

How do I start an affiliate marketing blog?

First you need to make a free site through WordPress or buy an official domain name, set up a site with a similar platform, then focus the blog on a niche topic you are interested in, and then review products related to this niche on the blog and promote them as an affiliate.

How much do affiliate bloggers make?

Most affiliate bloggers make very little money but the top success stories earn six figures in this business.

Which blog is best for affiliate marketing?

A good blog platform would be WordPress and a good theme to use for affiliate marketing is Generate Press.

With that said, if you read this tutorial and are curious and anxious to get into blogging and affiliate marketing, once again, I suggest this:

• See the Wealthy Affiliate program I talked about earlier.
• See my coaching offer in affiliate marketing (and blogging).

I can certainly assist you in this process, but at least now you have the frame to know how to successfully achieve affiliate marketing success through blogging.