Affiliate link placement is probably one of the top 5 most important components of affiliate marketing in general.
Where you post your links can make or break your sales and because I have gotten a lot of results and failures from learning this material, I want to show you where you should actually place yours to get the best conversions. Use my testing and knowledge to more intelligently place your affiliate links and you will likely get better results from it (I did).
I’m going to basically give you:
10 areas where you’ll want to post your affiliate links and it’s within:
- Your blog/site.
- Your YouTube video description.
This is typically where you’ll be doing most of your affiliate marketing from. Whether it be:
- Writing affiliate product reviews.
- Or creating YouTube videos with affiliate marketing intent.
- Or funneling traffic to either of those sources with pay per click networks.
Those 2 places will be your main HQ for affiliate link posting.
And for beginners or those who are confused about this stuff, get my affiliate coaching to begin this journey the right way, because at least 50% of people who do this stuff, incorrectly do this.
What I mean is, never post your affiliate links in places like this:
- In YouTube comments on other people’s videos (You’ll get reported).
- On blogs that don’t belong to you (Your comment will be trashed/spammed).
- On Forums you don’t run (You’ll get kicked out of the forum).
- On social media pages that don’t belong to you (You’ll get reported and banned of the social media page).
I see tons of people making this mistake and they all come down to putting your links in places that don’t belong to you. It’s sneaky, it’s desperate, there’s no value in it and it doesn’t work.
This is basically spamming and ethical affiliate businesses never engage in this stuff, do don’t make this mistake that many affiliate marketers make.
Here are the 10 places where you should be posting your affiliate links:
- In your blog once within every 100 words (or more).
- In YouTube video description (and mentioning to click the link once every 30 seconds).
- In images you make with bullet points, and call to action links.
- In call to action links in general.
- After telling a story about how your promotion helped you (perfect time to pitch it).
- After providing a list of pros for the affiliate product.
- After writing a summary of the product you are promoting.
- Seeing when most of your traffic is leaving your page and placing your affiliate link at that end point (advanced).
- Seeing when most of your YouTube viewers are leaving your video and pitching your offer then (advanced).
- In an exit pop up (advanced).
I’ll be talking about each specific strategy and explain why it works. With the exception of the last 3, the first 7 strategies are typically easy to implement for beginner affiliate marketers, so keep in mind that you don’t have to do all 10 of them.
Details on where to post your affiliate links (every option explained):
This is where we’ll jump into why every single one of these strategies works and will increase your affiliate sales.
1) In your blog once within every 100 words.
I consistently preach how blogging is one of the best ways to do affiliate marketing and specifically, you’ll be promoting stuff on that blog in 2 circumstances:
- When you blog about how to solve a particular problem and pitch your offer on that page.
- When you review a product you’re promoting and pitch it through your affiliate links on that page.
In these circumstances, a great model for WHEN to post your affiliate links is once every 100 words. It’s not spam and it typically makes sense to include MOST of the affiliate links on the blog as anchor text.
In this case, you are not forcing people to click it or are in their face, but rather, passive and giving them the freedom to click the link.
2) In your YouTube video description (and actually saying the link is there).
I used to screw up on my affiliate marketing efforts on YouTube and it was mainly due to the fact that I didn’t tell people to actually click on the link in the description! I no longer make that mistake, and neither should you.
Typically, most people don’t stick around for more than 30 seconds on a video (unless you’re really good at retaining attention), and what I typically do, as a rule of thumb is quickly mention that the link in my YouTube video will take them to so and so if they’re interested. Saying it every 30 seconds is, like blogging not spam and sporadic enough to help them remember.
You really want to guide your viewers to know where to go if they want to buy your affiliate promotion and mentioning it on YouTube videos is critical for your conversions.
This is especially the case when you do YouTube videos that review products. Make absolutely sure to tell them where to go (your video description) and it will 100% raise your click rates and sales.
3) In images that have bullet points and call to action links.
When people read content on a blog, most of them will skim through the content to see if they find something interesting and images with bullet points and call to action links on them will get clicks and attention.
Here is an example:
This is an image on a review I do for my main promotion that is Wealthy Affiliate.
- Notice how simple the bullet points look.
- I also provide my image.
- I also provide proof my stuff with income reports.
- I provide a pretty stand out button to click at the bottom of the image.
- The whole image is itself an affiliate link.
- It gets clicks, sales and works.
- Making this type of image is fairly simple and it gets conversions.
In short, you’ll want to make images like this if you want to increase your conversions.
4) In call to action links in general.
Call to action links always get more clicks than those that don’t. I already explained what call to action links are in my post on increasing affiliate sales, but here is an example:
“So and so diet really works for me and plenty of others. Click here to see more success stories of how well this diet works for others”
That’ll get clicks because there’s curiosity involved and people love to see proof that something works.
5) After telling a story about how your affiliate promotion helped you.
I always say that one of the best ways to sell an affiliate product is to tell a story. In that story is a perfect time to post your affiliate link to it. Here is an example:
“I had a problem with so and so for many years and then by using this product (your affiliate link is posted there), I managed to solve that problem. In this review of this product (again that’s where you post your affiliate link), I’m going to show you how that worked and why I’m not the only one who this is working for either.”
I’m being very simple here, and when you write your own story, be more descriptive to trigger positive emotions in people. If they feel the product you’re selling them works, by showing it helped you, it’ll help the odds of the sale rise (but of course, be honest and ethical about it!).
And if you don’t own the affiliate product, read this.
6) After providing a list of pros for the promotion.
The more pros people see about a product they are considering to buy, the more likely they are to do it and once you engage their emotions with enough pros, post your affiliate link within those pros to improve the odds it gets clicks.
7) After writing a summary of the affiliate product.
Again, most people will SKIM your content and look for the quickest ways to absorb it. One area they will likely NOT skim is a summary of the product where they will feel they’ll be able to get all they need from that section, so in that section, post your affiliate link.
Typically I advise people explain what the product they are promoting is, provide the pros and cons and then summarize it and in that summary, also throw in the affiliate link there.
8) Posting your affiliate link right where most people leave your page (advanced).
Even if you’re not advanced, I still want you to read this because it is very important to get right:
- I learned an awesome skill from one of my affiliate coaches where he basically showed me:
- How to take my blog pages which were promoting an affiliate product,.
- See what the average reading time of the readers was using Google Analytics.
- Calculating how many words they read for that reading time (there’s a simple calculator for that).
- And placing the affiliate link in the section of the blog where this would happen (typically a large image, like #3 on this list).
Just checked out my video above for details on how that works because it’s quite genius and it has helped me get more sales.
9) Pitching your affiliate offer in YouTube videos right when people usually leave (advanced).
This strategy is literally the same thing as #8, but applied to YouTube. You can make annotations and messages within your video to pop up at certain times within the video.
YouTube offers it’s creators the ability to how long the average viewer sticks around for each video they have, so what you can do (use my video tutorial above for this) is find a YouTube video where you promote an affiliate offer, see the analytics of when the average user leaves that video, and at that time frame, post an annotation in the video to remind people to click the link.
It won’t work 100% of the time, but it will help improve attention spans and clicks on the link in your description.
10) Post your affiliate links in an exit pop up (advanced).
The reality is, even if you do everything right and properly post your affiliate links where they will get the most amount of attention and clicks, MOST of your audience will still leave your site for a number of reasons and this is where you’ll have one final chance to get them to buy, and that is through an exit pop up.
You can use services like Elementor and Thrive Leads to do this and while it’s advanced, it will help you retain some traffic and sales (and that adds up). In my exit pop ups, I typically do this:
- I’ll make something that looks like an image with bullet points (like #3) and put an affiliate link there.
- I’ll also make a VERY short, 2 minutes or under video promoting the offer one last time and giving people an affiliate link underneath it.
And this really works. My main Wealthy Affiliate review on my other sites has generated $1,000’s in commissions thanks to this exit pop up option alone.
Remember, affiliate link placement is one part of other important components:
Above all else, you are seeking to get trust from people who read your blog or watch your videos and do get that done, you need good quality content. If you seek to create cheap looking reviews with poor content, none of these strategies will work and/or they will just be minimized.
Good affiliate link placement is secondary to good content, so make sure that is your main mission, and then they will work together to make you more affiliate conversions!