How to make money on social media with affiliate marketing?
What if someone asked you if you wanted to make money doing what you already do every day? Well, prepare your answers, because it’s not a fantasy. You can actually earn money through the use of social media. Find an affiliate marketing program and start making money.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a way to make money online by sharing links to your followers and fellow internet users. You register at an affiliate network and choose an offer you want to promote online. Then, you generate a unique affiliate link that ensures that the money will go directly to your account. Once someone takes a certain action, like downloading an app or filling out a contact form, you get the money. If it’s done the right way, it’s a win-win situation – you win by gaining income and the advertisers win by getting their products promoted to a wider audience.
Getting started
Once you start reading about affiliate marketing, it can get overwhelming. That’s why we’ve prepared a step-by-step guide on how to start making money on your social media accounts:
- Set up an account on an affiliate network and enter your data. It should take you no more than 5 minutes.
- If you haven’t found a niche audience yet, think about a subject that you’re passionate about and join social media groups that share the same interests. Create posts and share offers that might seem attractive to other users. If you already have an audience, don’t be afraid to experiment with different formats. Infographics, videos – there’s many free online tools like Canva or WeVideo to help you with that.
- Browse through the offers and find an affiliate program that could really interest your audience. Pay attention to filters – what kind of topic is going to interest your audience? You can choose from categories like fashion, business, entertainment etc.
- Once you’ve chosen the best affiliate offer, time to start using the available social sites to share your affiliate links.
- Once you get a customer to take a certain action – you get paid! It can involve placing an order, filling out a questionnaire, or simply clicking an ad.
- Keep on growing your social media accounts and make more and more money!
Social media marketing strategy
You don’t need a huge traffic base to start your career in affiliate marketing. The only necessary thing is knowledge of the social media platforms that suit you the best..
Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms in the world. It has a huge potential when it comes to gaining audiences for your affiliate campaign. When thinking about Facebook, what works best is focusing on groups. The best way to get traffic is to find a niche group of people with shared interests or qualities, who might want to buy a product. Learn how to use Facebook groups for business and get specific audiences to take part in your campaign.
You can also use affiliate link cloakers that will help you avoid Facebook’s limits when it comes to posting affiliate links. Bots can pose a severe threat to your income source, so to overcome that, use HideLink. This free tool made available to every MyLead user, helps you mask your affiliate links by setting a safe page – a landing page, which will be the final destination for the bots using your link. The actual users will be brought over to the website of the advertiser.
Another way to promote the brand is using Google forms on Facebook. This tool is becoming more and more popular lately. You create a survey, which the user has to fill out to use your affiliate link. Even though it’s an extra step they have to make, it boosts engagement and makes you look more trustworthy and reliable.
Since we’ve mentioned Facebook, let’s not forget about its younger cousin – Instagram. By publishing interesting stories, you can encourage people to make your affiliate marketing on Instagram successful. All they have to do is use the affiliate link you’re offering them. Your Instagram followers are much more likely to take your suggestion when you show them what personal experience you have with the product and what benefits of it you enjoy. Add a link to Instagram story to quickly redirect the users to your website.
Even though you can’t post affiliate links on Instagram posts, you can still put it in your bio. Remember to notify your followers about it by calling it out on your stories.
You can also use paid advertising that is available through Instagram. Instagram ads are not free, but they’re a great way to quicken up the process of gathering an audience.
When designing your graphics, you can find the best stock photos for Instagram online and for free. Check out Freeimages and Pexels. Remember that unique content does better on social media, so create something new, even if you’re using photos available for free. There’s plenty of online tools to help you make your own, professional images. If you’re looking for an easy graphic design platform, the classic option is Canva and if you’re looking for something different, try out Figma.
Comments
If you keep thinking ‘Where to promote affiliate links?’, they can also be inserted in the comments section of any social media platform. YouTube, TikTok – don’t be afraid to experiment with different platforms and see where you can find a perfect audience for the product you’re promoting. Remember not to spam links and insert them in an obnoxious way. It has to be subtle and natural to really have an effect.
If you’re an active creator on YouTube, an interesting new take is putting the affiliate link in the pinned top comment of your own YouTube video, in addition to the one in the description. Research has shown that a big percentage of the audience only scrolls down to read the first couple of Youtube comments. If you put your link there, they’re much more likely to see it and therefore – use it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssYm3zUbcWI The best way to get started with affiliate marketing, just like any other discipline, is to go through a learning curve. Thankfully, there are many tutorials available that give you all the information you could need. No reason to wait, so why not give it a try?
