How to Promote Affiliate Links? (12 Best Ways)

As an affiliate marketer, getting accepted by a high-paying affiliate program is thrilling, but unless you get people to see your affiliate links, you won’t make any money.

But that’s not a very easy task. Today, every niche is competitive. Your target audience has many voices to choose from, so standing out from the noise is the key to your success with affiliate marketing. Even though your content is the main differentiating factor, promoting your affiliate links the right way will help you reach the right audience fast.

The best way to promote affiliate links is by creating high-quality content around them and attracting relevant audiences organically. When you offer helpful information through the right channels, you get more quality visits to your content pages and build a following.

It’s essential to identify the right channels for promotion.

And for that, you need to know your audience, where they spend time online, and what type of content they prefer to consume.

Here are the 12 best ways to promote affiliate links:

1. Leverage SEO to drive organic traffic
2. Create Affiliate website review posts
3. Craft product tutorials
4. Write roundup posts
5. Create a Resources page and add internal Links to it
6. Promote affiliate links through your newsletters
7. Place Affiliate links inside free info products
8. Promote Affiliate Links on YouTube
9. About promoting affiliate links on social media
10. Promote Links on Pinterest
11. Write sponsored guest posts
12. Use all marketing tools offered by Affiliate Programs

Let’s dive in.

1. Leverage SEO to Drive Organic Traffic

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often not a priority for most affiliate marketers because it takes 6 months to 1 year for your content to rank on Google and start driving traffic.

Yet, SEO is at the top of this list due to the stability and longevity it offers. Once you rank on Google, you get a steady stream of fresh monthly traffic organically. Organic traffic brings in the best quality of visitors with a greater inclination to click on and buy from your affiliate links – and SEO is instrumental to it.

Though SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, it’s not limited to search engines alone. Any of the affiliate marketing platforms that you choose have a component of SEO to them. For example, using the right keywords on Pinterest is essential for your success on that platform.

Along with keyword research, you must take care of off-page SEO activities and finer technical SEO aspects like Page Speed Optimization.

Also, SEO takes a lot of effort and a bit of budget too. Many beginner affiliate marketers refrain from it, while others make huge gains from the bounty of quality traffic they get from it months later. You choose your gang.

Most of the steps we discuss in the subsequent sections will drive the best results through SEO.

2. Create Affiliate Program Review Posts

Affiliate programs offer affiliate links not just to the products but also to the program itself. You can use these links to generate affiliate sign-ups to these programs and generate revenue from it.

The best way to do that is by writing review posts for that program. You can join any of these top affiliate programs for beginners and pen down your thoughts about it.

Most new affiliate marketers are constantly looking for quality programs. They read reviews before signing up with one and if you offer them a detailed breakdown, you will rank well on Google and make more sales.

But make sure you are truthful with the review. Even though you want people to sign-up with a program to earn a commission, never lie to them. Be transparent with your review and cover the cons of the program as thoroughly as the pros so that your readers make an informed decision.

3. Craft Product Tutorials and Reviews

Often, affiliate marketers are in dilemma, they need to create informational posts to generate traffic or affiliate posts to sell more. Product review posts help hit both birds with one stone.

From the SEO perspective, these posts do really well as Google prefers to rank informational content over sales pages. But at the same time, you can promote affiliate links with a no-follow tag after the comprehensive review.

In a product review post, you pick only one product and present a thorough analysis of it. It’s ideal if you have used the product yourself. That way, you can add a personal touch to the content with photos of you using the product and also provide more information than Amazon reviews available publicly.

It’s worth stressing about images a bit. When you add legit images that you clicked, something in the Google algorithm recognizes that. Google can probably tell the difference between the images you own and stock images. It prefers content with owned images because it’s more authentic.

4. Write Round-up Posts

Round-up posts are similar to product reviews with the only difference being that you cover many products in a round-up post.

Roundup posts can be around product categories, price ranges for products within the same category, ranking posts, etc. Here are a few post titles to explain what each of these roundup post types serves and how you can promote affiliate links through them.

1. Product Categories

You need to pick a theme for these posts and identify products around them. Here are some examples of what these posts look like:

• You can’t ignore these 10 items while camping.

In this post, you can cover any 10 items like shoes for camping, cooking stoves, knives, flashlights, etc.

• These 10 machines will make your cleaning easy.

In this post, you can cover smart home devices, automated vacuum cleaners, post-wash utensil holders, etc.

2. Price Range

Under this roundup post type, you use affiliate links for a single product category across different price groups. For example:

• 10 coffee tables to brighten up your living room

Add affiliate links to coffee tables under this category ranging from $100 to $1000 or more.

• Top 10 gloves for winters

3. Ranking Posts

In these posts, you include affiliate links for products preferably in the same category and price range, and rank them in an order based on one or more traits. Towards the end, you declare one product the winner because it ticks more boxes than others.

For example:

• You need just this one blade for all your camping purposes

Write about 10 blades and cover them in detail individually, and end the post with a summary table with a comparison.

• Going Kayaking? This suit will keep you dry.

5. Create a Resources page and Add Internal Links to it

One of the best ways to promote your affiliate links is by putting them all together on a resources page. But you don’t just list them, rather, add some nice images to make each item more clickable. Here are a few examples of quality resources pages.

This page might not generate good organic traffic because it rarely ever meets the search intent. The purpose, however, is to drive traffic to it from other pages on your website.

You do that by adding internal links the right way to the resources page.

Suppose a visitor finds your blog post on Google titled – Which mobile phone works best for hikers? On visiting your domain they get a full product analysis and like your content and style. And then, if somewhere on the page they find another titled – Here are all resources I use in my hikes, they will click on it and land on your resources page.

Once there, they will check out other products. And because they came from an informational blog post, their purchase intent is high.

Ideally, the link to the resource page must be in your Nav menu because that’s where eyes wander off to first. But include the link within your content with a relevant anchor text to generate more high intent traffic.

6. Promote Affiliate Links Through Your Newsletters

Most people never buy on their first visit to your website. They take time to trust you enough before they click on your affiliate links, especially for high-ticket affiliate products. But at the same time, your first-time visitors will forget about your website the moment they leave it.

You must aim to keep new users engaged on your domain for a long time while trying to get their emails before they leave. Once you get their contact details and approval to send emails, you can promote your content through newsletters. And those who forgot about your website will be reminded of it when they check their mailbox.

If you have compelling content and newsletter design, they will click on one of your latest articles and visit your domain again. With each iteration, your probability of making sales increases.

You shouldn’t promote your affiliate links directly through your newsletter though – no one wants to visit Amazon from their email until they have to clear their cart. Rather direct visitors to helpful content that has your affiliate links.

7. Place Affiliate Links Inside Free Informational Products

Informational products are PDFs, eBooks, Whitepapers, etc. that are made available as downloadables in return for contact details or money. Each such product covers one topic relevant to your niche in deep detail.

Info products are efficient lead-magnets, they are instrumental to generating leads in the form of newsletter subscriptions. New info products can be shared with existing users through newsletters.

Make sure your products solve a common problem in your niche. These detailed guides must be holistic and well-designed.

You might get many downloads as it’s a free product – so if you include affiliate links in it, you will get clicks on them because the affiliate product is relevant to the problem you address in the downloadable asset.

However, never create these products just for the sake of promoting affiliate links. Always offer helpful information that your audience will like, affiliate income is just a corollary of the value you add.

8. Promote Affiliate Links through YouTube

YouTube is the second most used search engine. For physical action-oriented search queries, people often prefer to watch a video. For example, my recent search on fixing an electric cooker at home was on YouTube because I wanted to see it happening. Sure, a blog with images would help too but a video would make it easier.

This platform is a great way to promote affiliate links. Even if you own a blog, you must leverage YouTube for generating quality referral traffic to your domain. As with a blog, if you add helpful content, you will get a lot of traction there, even for YMYL niches.

YouTube is an excellent platform for product reviews, unboxing, and tutorials. You can promote affiliate links for free in the video description or the YouTube card for maximum traction. It’s a common practice to promote affiliate links in the first comment of the video too.

9. About Promoting Affiliate Products on Social Media

Most social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are not conducive to affiliate marketing. Over the years, they have tried to keep their audience from exiting their domain to sell more ads to them. They do that by limiting exposure to posts with outbound links.

I would not recommend you to promote your affiliate links on social media – not just due to lack of traction but because the juice is not worth the squeeze. Even if you post content religiously, you still can’t generate an organic income. Content gets outdated within a matter of hours unlike blog posts and YouTube videos.

Social Media can be a good choice for affiliate marketing without a website but it’s not worth all the time and effort it takes – the only exception being Pinterest.

10. Promote Affiliate Links on Pinterest

Pinterest is the only social media platform designed to send people out of their domain. This platform lets you create pins which are basically images hyperlinked to a landing page.

Unlike Instagram, Pinterest’s images are clickable. Also, you can add direct affiliate links on Pinterest. You get to create boards to target different audience segments within your niche.

You can learn more about the platform and how you can promote affiliate links there in our guide to affiliate marketing on Pinterest.

11. Write Sponsored Guest Posts

So far, we discussed some best places to promote affiliate links for free, but sponsored guest posting requires you to pay the hosting website.

Now, why would you create content for another website and promote affiliate links through it? Because your website doesn’t get many visitors just yet.

If you want to get more organic views to your affiliate links, you might consider publishing content on a website with higher domain authority and more new monthly users than you.

But since you get to leverage the clout the other website has and use their brand image to your monetary benefit, you are expected to pay them.

This method can help you accelerate your affiliate income while you build Google rankings.

Once you find a website for guest posting, write an email telling them what you have to offer. Be clear with the topic you want to cover, its traffic potential, and the fact that you want to include an affiliate link. Most websites have clear guidelines on sponsored posts but if they did not mention their charges for sponsored posts on their write for us page, ask them upfront.

12. Promote all Affiliate Link Formats

Most affiliate programs offer a variety of affiliate marketing tools – Banners, search boxes, deep links, etc. You want to promote affiliate links in every form available. And here’s how you can do that.

• Promoting affiliate banners

Affiliate banners are large size images that you can embed on your blog or landing pages. These high-quality images get a lot of eyeballs and improve click-through rates.

Your affiliate program will offer an embed code. If you are doing affiliate marketing with WordPress, you can use the Custom Code block to materialize the banner with the embed code.

• Promote search boxes

Search box affiliate links allow your visitors to find products on your affiliate program directly from your blog. They help users to find products faster while earning you a commission.

The ideal place to promote search boxes is the blog sidebar.

Fiverr’s search box, for example, looks like this:

• Promote deep affiliate links

Deep links are affiliate links to specific product pages or categories. You can use these links to create roundup posts and associate a deep link with each product that you recommend.

Best Practices of Affiliate Link Promotion

These 6 factors will fine-tune your affiliate promotion efforts:

1. Focus on adding value

I can’t stress this enough – you must offer helpful information that helps your reader and followers solve a real problem. Do not think of selling unless you have at least 30 purely informational content pieces.

Even after that, you can’t just flesh out one affiliate post after another. You must keep adding value and include affiliate links only where it makes sense. Never force-fit it.

I want you to first build your brand, build trust that may or may not convert into sales in the future. We all are in it for the money, but if that’s your prime motivation, your chances of succeeding are slim.

2. Do not add direct affiliate links on platforms you do not own or you did not pay for.

Early affiliate marketers had it easy and they somewhat ruined it all for us. Most people now recognize affiliate links. They are wary of clicking on it unless the content that supports the link adds value to their lives.

I would never add affiliate links on social media posts, forums, or anywhere else other than my blog. It’s the only platform I own and have direct control over. I can add an affiliate disclaimer to tell people that I am making money through their actions with no extra cost to them.

This, in my opinion, is the best way to build trust and promote transparency.

3. Link to products that align with your brand value

As a new brand, you do not have the clout to promote high-ticket products even if they fit your niche perfectly. You have to build your brand name and trust before that.

Aim to promote affiliate links to only those products that do not cost too much. But at the same time, do not link to low-ticket products that cost $20 because you will barely make anything with each sale.

Go for products that cost $100-$150 – that’s the sweet spot.

4. Cloak Affiliate Links

Affiliate links provided to you are a garbled fusion of alphanumeric characters – you can’t promote them as are. You need to use neat links that tell your audience where they land, indicate that they are affiliate links, and are easy to decipher for the human eye.

Link cloaking lets you do just that. With that, the hover URL that visitors see is different from the landing page URL. In case you are wondering, cloaking is legal, it doesn’t attract Google penalties either until you add a nofollow tag on it.

I would recommend using Pretty Links to cloak your affiliate links. I found it to be the easiest to set up and it offers an intuitive plugin interface.

5. Connect your Channels

As we discussed in the previous subtopic, there are many channels for the promotion of affiliate links. You can start with any or all of those channels but make sure you connect them all.

This step will provide more avenues to consume your content for your visitors. The more touch-points you get from customers, the faster they recognize your brand and the more sales you make.

For example, in your Facebook business profile, make sure to connect to your website. Also, add links to all your social media handles in your YouTube video descriptions.

6. Add an Affiliate Disclosure

An affiliate disclosure tells your visitors that you might earn a commission if they buy anything through your affiliate links.

It is a legal mandate to add the disclosure on every blog post that promotes affiliate links. You are also required to disclose companies you have affiliate ties with, on your Affiliate disclosure page.

FAQs

Can I promote affiliate links through Google Adwords?

Affiliate marketing through Google Ads is not recommended but there’s an alternative. You can advertise your blog posts or downloadables that contain affiliate links. Your Google Ads manager account can get banned if you try to promote direct affiliate links multiple times. 

Can I promote affiliate links on Facebook?

Facebook allows direct affiliate links but you may find the click-through rate to be too low. People recognize affiliate links and won’t click on them till they trust you. You first need to build a brand and add value to your Facebook group before people consider your recommendations.

How to promote affiliate links for free?

Here are 11 ways to do that. You can do that through:

1. SEO
2. Affiliate Website Review Posts
3. Product Tutorials
4. Roundup posts
5. Resources Pages
6. Newsletters
7. Free info products
8. YouTube
9. Social media
10. Medium
11. Forums

Can you post affiliate links on YouTube?

Affiliate links are allowed on YouTube. You can add them to your video descriptions, in-video cards, and video comments.

Can I promote affiliate links on Quora?

Direct affiliate linking is not allowed on Quora but there is a way around it. In your Quora answers, you can add a link to your blog post with affiliate products. Aim to add value through the questions relevant to your niche. This way you stand a good chance of driving relevant traffic to your blog. Not just Quora, this is true concerning promoting affiliate links on forums like Reddit too.