Three Simple Tips to Maximize Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been kind of my jam lately.
I shied away from it for so long, and I’m kicking myself for that. It’s quickly becoming my favorite monetization method.
If you aren’t a fan of ads or doing outright sponsored posts, affiliate marketing is an awesome option for you.
But even if you do like ads and sponsored posts (which I do!), then you should still be doing it. It’s an amazing passive way to make money.
My friend Kristina are going to be writing an affiliate marketing class soon, and I’m SO excited about it. Because of that, I don’t want to give away too many secrets. However, today I thought I’d share three simple tips that can help improve your affiliate marketing efforts!
and if you like them, be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you can find out as soon as we release the course! 
1. Look at outgoing links
This is HUGE, and I’ve increased my affiliate revenue quite a bit by doing this. Every month, go and look at your outbound links. While many of these will probably be to other sites that aren’t selling something, you can occasionally find links to products or services.
When I first did this, I realized a lot of people were clicking to survey sites I had recommended in a post about my favorite survey sites. I wasn’t sure if any of these survey sites had a referral program, but a few quick Google searches revealed that they did! I quickly signed up for their affiliate programs, put the links into the post, and BAM. I was making more money instantly. Just today, I realized a bunch of people were clicking over to Happy Baby Wraps – I found out they had an affiliate program, so I signed up!
If you are on WordPress and use the plugin JetPack, it’s very easy to see outbound links. This is honestly one of the only reasons I still use that plugin. Otherwise, you can follow this tutorial to track outbound links in Google Analytics.
2. Optimize Top 10 Posts
I think a lot of people get intimidated by affiliate marketing when they have a lot of posts – where do you even start?!
I recommend going into Google Analytics, setting the time frame for the past six months, and then optimize your top 10 posts. First, go through them and see if there’s anything obvious that could be an affiliate link (so if you are writing about your favorite cooking products, it would be pretty obvious to link to those!) Then go through with a separate set of eyes and think “are there any products/services that would make sense to put in this post?”
For instance, in my post “Third Trimester Checklist“, I had no affiliate links for the longest time. So dumb, because it’s one of my more popular posts. So I went through, linked up all the obvious links, and then I tried to find ways to put in other links. For example, at first glance, you wouldn’t think that there wouldn’t really be an affiliate program for a prenatal class. However, my friend, Hilary, actually offers an online prenatal course, so I was able to sign up for her affiliate program and use it in that post. You just have to be creative!
I also recommend swapping posts with a friend – I’ve done this a few times with Hilary, and it always helps to get input from another!
3. Change Font Color
Finally, this one is really simple. Change the color of your links to really stand out! I’ve been on sites before where the link color is the same color as the plain text, and it’s very difficult (if impossible) to even realize it’s a link. You want your links to stand out – make people want to click them!
You can either change your link color in your CSS – look for something that says a { and there should be a place to change your font color. If you can’t figure that out, you can easily change your links colors manually within a post!
BONUS:
Not sure where to start? Here are a few of my favorite affiliate programs (they have tons of different companies they work with. And as you might expect, this are my affiliate links!)
Share-a-Sale – My main sales here are from Grammarly, Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleep Suit, VitaFive, and occasionally VidAngel
Escalate – I use this mainly for survey sites
Dating Divas – if you post about any parenting, marriage, or relationship type content, this is one of the BEST programs out there! They pay a nice 50% referral fee, and their cookie is crazy long!
FlexOffers – I use this to promote SwagBucks (which, if you aren’t a part of, you should definitely sign up now!), Swap.com, and U-Pack
AffiliateWindow – this is how you can become an affiliate with Etsy. You pay $5 to get started, but you’ll get that back 🙂 Being able to be an affiliate for Etsy is an awesome revenue opportunity.
I hope that this was helpful – please make sure to sign up below for our newsletter – especially if you want updates on our upcoming affiliate course!