Today, it’s all about how critical it is to have something in place to help you manage, update and maintain your affiliate links as an affiliate marketer.

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On our blog, I have done past posts about managing your affiliate links. For affiliate marketers, this is so critical. While my posts have touched on the importance, I have mostly  talked about the tools. There are a few out there and I recommend Thirsty Affiliates myself. In fact, if you use WooCommerce for affiliate products, it works great with it as well.

When I’m talking about managing our affiliate links, this could be either or both: text links and banners. It really doesn’t matter.  What is more important is the number of links you have on your site. But even then, somehow managing those links, from 10 to hundreds of them, will help you stay away from future headaches.

As you can guess, with more than a thousand posts here on our site, we have a lot of affiliate text links scattered in posts. In fact, when I update older posts, if appropriate, I will add some new links there as well.

So What Do I Mean By Managing Your Affiliate Links?

You ma be thinking, okay, so I drop in affiliate links. They are scattered around my blog. I  don’t have any real intentions of removing them. So what the heck?

An Example of When You Need Affiliate Link Management

Here is a perfect example of what I am talking about.

I have one WordPress vendor in particular with several affiliates to several different products of theirs. Those are scattered and duplicated, likely, in dozens of posts. Well, at one point they changed their domain (URL) and as a result, all my affiliate links became broken. Of course they had redirects in place for awhile, so it wasn’t an immediate concern. But lucky for me, I was already using the Thirsty Affiliates plugin so all I had to do was go into each affiliate and change the URL. Sure, that was a little time consuming, but not nearly what I would have faced if I needed to track down each single post that had the link in it. It would have been nearly impossible to make sure each link got changed.

That is the single most important reason to have something like this in place.

Other Benefits of a Affiliate Link Manager

Of course, there are other benefits as well to using something like Thirsty Affiliates. The first is the nofollow link. This is something you typically want to set for all your affiliate links. And with a plugin like this, you can do it globally so each link you create is assigned the nofollow.

Secondly, it’s just easier. Once you have created the affiliate links, it’s easy to add it, either text link or banner, to any post via the post editor window.

So in the end, yes, if you plan on having any amount of affiliate links on your blog or site, best be prepared now than sorry later on. If you are just starting, you are ahead of the game. If you already have tons scattered on your blog, well, this will be one heck of a job to get it all in place. And although I wish I had an easy solution for that situation, all I can say is best of luck.

If you are curious about either the plugin Thirsty Affiliates or how to use it with WooCommerce, you can check out both posts here on our blog.

Till next time.

Thanks to our sponsor!

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Finding That Sweet Spot for Your Affiliate Links
BobWP Monetizer Podcast

 

 

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Today, we are chatting a bit about the challenges of placing your affiliate links strategically.

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When you decide to start affiliate marketing, there are several factors to consider as you dive deeper into it. One of the most challenging pieces of affiliate marketing on your WordPress blog or site is the placement of your links. I have talked about this in posts here and in my workshops, but let’s revisit it and I’ll share with you my own experiences from years of affiliate marketing.

Widget Areas – Look at Them All

Our first tendency is to look at those widget areas. They seem to be crying for content. And when you discover all those marketing tools, such as banners for products or services that you become an affiliate of, the temptation becomes even stronger. It might be in your header, sidebars, footer or even other widget areas throughout your site. But a couple of things come into play here.

* Do you want your site to become filled with hypey, look-alike ads?

* Are people paying attention to those areas in the first place?

Now let me start with a disclaimer. Apparently they work for some people because you will find them here and there throughout their site. As a visitor, we may not know if they are either affiliate ads or regular ads, but in any case, some sites can get them to work. But more than likely, you won’t find the most success placing you ads in widget areas.

Within the Context of a Helpful Post

After much experimentation, I have found my own affiliates to work best within the natural flow of a blog post. I write a post about an eCommerce plugin for WordPress, explaining what it does and the features it has. Typically I do a text link at the beginning of the post and at the end. It’s that simple.

But the key here is to make your post helpful. Provide a solution to solve your readers problem. And don’t tell them the how, but also the why.

Banner Ads Within the Post

Another option is to use those banners, but put them either at the beginning, mid-way or at the end of a post. Again, I have seen successful affiliate marketers do this well.

Be Consistent, But Don’t Overdo It

No matter what space you are in, you will hear people say that they avoid posts that are filled with nothing but affiliate links. My advice? If you keep it limited, and you provide your readers with a solution, it will work for you. But the key is, don’t overdo it. Any post filled with links can be a distraction, so keep it clean and simple.

Always Test

As you probably have noted, there is no silver bullet here. What hasn’t worked for me has worked for others.  The key to all of this is testing the placement. Use a plugin like Thirsty Affiliates so you can track your click-throughs. Or even better, get a heat map through Crazy Egg or another similar place and see where people are clicking on any page. And of course, you can do tracking through your Google Analytics as well. Just make sure you find out what isn’t working and figure it out so you can hit that sweet spot.

Of course, there is so much more to affiliate marketing, including gaining your customers trust, that we will be talking about in future episodes.

Till the next time.

Thanks to our sponsor!

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Monetizing Your WordPress Site – It Starts with Building Your Community
BobWP Monetizer Podcast

 

 

00:00 / 00:09:58

 

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Today, we are talking about one of the most important factors in monetizing your site. That is your audience, your community, you fans.

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In the past, I have talked with a lot of people about monetizing their site. And often  blog and site owners have these grand dreams of cash in mind, and are ready to jump in using the tools and strategies that will make their wishes come true.

But many times, they lack one important piece. An audience.

Community and Fans

Let’s take the example of you and your desire to monetize your blog. First, think about it. When you create a website to sell your services and/or products, you have an idea and you create a site, fully aware that the old saying, ‘build it and they will come,’ is not a reality. You understand that you have to market your product and services. Real hard.

But when you are think of running ads on your site, incorporating affiliate marketing, and other similar money-making attempts, there is a step that comes even before that.

You need to build your community and your fans first.

Those readers need to be nurtured. You want them to rave about your posts and share the heck out of them. You will know when you have reached that stage, they trust your opinion and use you as one of their top resources.

Building that community of fans is critical. And spending time on monetizing strategies before that can often end in frustration and headaches.

Tips on Growing Your Fans

Be Helpful

People gravitate to sites that provide them with an answer. A lot of people are online searching for a solution and when someone finds that answer, you can bet you have just created a new fan.

Serve Your Readers Needs

However you decide to provide content to your readers, whether it’s video, audio, written text or a mix of all, find what works for them. And if possible, be as diverse in those offerings as you can. Don’t jump on a bandwagon because so and so says this media works best. Test it to make sure it fits your community.

Don’t Overwhelm Your Readers

Nothing will stunt the growth of your site faster than starting to monetize every nook and cranny of your site. Suddenly filling every widget area with an ad and scattering affiliate links everywhere won’t cut it. Introduce your strategies over time and if something isn’t working, reconsider it.

Be Social

Get on social. Find the right channels for you. Share content, talk with people and again, be helpful.

Make Your Site Always the End of the Funnel

No matter what you do, remember you want to funnel people to your site. Don’t make your Facebook page a focus that will lose conversions on your site. Or any other social channel. Make sure you have some path that will eventually lead them back to your own site.

Keep Your Site Fresh

If at all possible, have a blog or some other feature that keeps your site refreshed with new content that constantly drives more readers to your site. You don’t have to go crazy and blog every day, but find a groove for yourself and keep it consistent.

Most of All, Be Patient

As you will hear over and over again in our podcast, monetizing your site is not easy and it takes work. There are very few people who hit that sweet spot right out of the gate. Building a community and a fan base takes time. Myself, I have been at it for more than 7 years in the WordPress space. With patience, a little luck thrown in and hard work, you too will find what works best for your audience.

Till the next time.

Thanks to our sponsor!

Today, we are talking about what you can expect from our newest podcast, the BobWP Monetizer.

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Yes, another podcast, but this time bringing you actionable, short tips for your blog or site monetization.

What was interesting when I thought about actually doing this first episode: where do I start? It was crazy. I was looking at all the ways you can monetize. And having taught thousands of people on this, both online and in workshops over the years, there is so much to monetizing your blog. That’s why I want to focus down on specific tips each week, rather than just going on and on and having you listen to 30 minutes of me talking. Instead, it’s to be more like five minutes.

Now when you’re actually thinking about monetizing your blog or your site, You can go down a rabbit hole because, as I’ve already mentioned, there are so many different ways you can do this. And what I really want to bring here is encapsulated our tagline: how to monetize your blog or your web site without the hype and BS.

It’s that simple. Because you’ll hear a lot of that: ‘Hey, you can make money while you’re sleeping.’ Or, ‘Let me show you a way to make seven-figure income within three months.’ Now I know that people have done that. But it takes a lot of work.

Think about it. There’s a select few who actually succeed that quickly. Most people spend months, years working up to this and it’s not an overnight success, like anything else in this world. But again, the show is about showing you ways to do this, how to bring in extra income. That income may grow into a full-time online profession for you or it may support what you are doing in other areas.

In any case, there are so many different ways to do it. And when push comes to shove, you’ve really got to find your own groove. The route you take may involve many different things. It can be services—professional services like coaching or training. It could be providing online courses or memberships with access to specific content that people will pay for.

You can do this through products. There are tons of products out there. I’m talking physical products now, products you have to ship, products you either resell or drop ship. Or maybe you create these products. And then there are products where you download all the software. Hey, in WordPress, we are constantly downloading products. We’re downloading plugins and themes all the time.

You may decide, hey, affiliate marketing’s for me. Or maybe you start selling ad space. Maybe you put ads on your site and monetize yourself that way, or monetize your blog that way. Maybe you use Amazon ads. Now all of this takes a lot of traffic when you’re talking about advertising so that will be something we touch on it more later in the show. And then, like me, you may decide to put sponsored posts and reviews on your blog. That’s another way to monetize your site. Those are the overall broad areas. But with each one of those areas, there’s much more you can do. So that is what we’re going to be talking about.

The key is that you’re going to be testing and trying out things. You’re going to be finding ways that work for you and your blog or your website.

And nothing’s going to be the golden bullet. It’s not going to happen right away. Sure, maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones, but it’s more likely that you’ll try a lot of different things to figure out what works best.

I didn’t want this first episode to be cheerleading: ‘Go! Make money, make money!’ That’s not what’s happening here. But I do want to encourage you to tune in each week because I will bring you actionable tips that may work with your strategies,