Affiliate marketing with social media is one of the fastest and most enjoyable ways to get started making money online.
When you find a quality affiliate product to promote you can sidestep the many hours of work involved in creating a compelling product and crafting a sales page that converts.
Simply send traffic to an offer as an affiliate and you get paid every time that traffic converts.
Although affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to get started if you just get an affiliate link and start hustling it around social media you will be missing out on plenty of sales, traffic, and good will with your audience that you could gain by taking a different approach and creating value first.
Facebook is trying to keep sales related posts out of the news feed so if you post an affiliate link directly to Facebook it will not preview properly.
Even on social media sites like Twitter you will get poor results if you don’t promote your affiliate link properly.
Here are 7 ideas to help you get more traffic from social media so you can create more value and make more money with affiliate marketing
1. Create an Affiliate Redirect Link
A raw affiliate URL is easy to spot and since it looks sketchy many people simply won’t click it.
http://ad9719fta-bp9w9dmisqhl1v05.hop.clickbank.net/
If you create a re-direct you can get a much cleaner link that attract more clicks.
Here’s an example of a .php redirect to my Facebook Marketing website fbPower:
https://marketingstrategyhq.com/click/fbpower/
The file that is doing the redirecting is named index.php and is placed in the fbpower folder on my server.
Here is the exact code inside the index.php file that makes this redirect possible.
2. Deliver Quality Content First
Instead of constantly promoting products and services start by creating and sharing great content that your audience will enjoy.
You can get great results by delivering compelling content and then promoting your affiliate link at the end of your content.
Your content could be any different form:
- A Blog post
- A Facebook post
- An Email Newsletter
- A YouTube Video
- An Infographic
- A Podcast
You should buy and use any product you promote. If you sell yourself on a product first it becomes much easier to then recommend that product to other people with your affiliate link.
Once someone is on your site they should have the opportunity to join your list. I recommend using a light-box plugin to capture subscribers.
3. Link Images of the Product You are Promoting
Images attract clicks.
Take a screen grab of the page you are promoting and then link that picture to the page with your affiliate link.
4. Use Social Media to Grow Your Email List
The best way to use social media to do affiliate marketing is to use social media to build your email list, and then making affiliate promotions via email.
Social media sites are interested in selling advertising and maintaining high quality content on their sites so by promoting affiliate offers directly on social media you are running the risk of having your account banned.
By building your list with social media you mitigate this risk and maximize your conversions.
The bigger and more responsive your email list is the more traffic you can send and the more money you can make.
Give tons of great value for free to gain the trust of your audience and respect that trust by only recommending quality products and services.
If you use Aweber you can also get your broadcast emails to post to your Twitter stream and Facebook page.
If you want idea for growing your email list check out this post about how to get more leads.
5. Be Smart About How You Shorten Your Links
Certain link shortening services do not allow you to use affiliate links.
Bit.ly does not allow clickbank hop links, neither does goo.gl, and several other URL shortening services do not allow this either.
However, the service tinyurl.com does.
6. Only Promote High Quality Offers
By promoting a high quality offer everyone wins.
The customer wins because they are getting an awesome deal on powerful information.
The affiliate wins because they get a healthy commission for sending the traffic and referring the sales.
And the product creator wins by earning money for the hard work they put into producing an awesome product.
7. Set up Evergreen Autoresponder Emails
Autoresponders (I use Aweber) can be a powerful tool for turning your new subscribers into trusting readers who will click the links you recommend and consider the products you recommend.
Set your autoresponder up with 7 emails set to deploy one week day after another for the first 7 days after someone joins your list.
You can even turn these 7 emails into an eCourse and turn them into a lead magnet.
This is a great idea since an eCourse has a high value and this gets people thinking about your emails as highly valuable from the start.
I created a free Twitter tips eCourse and my subscribers love it!
Conclusion
Are you making thousands of dollars with affiliate marketing yet?
The affiliate marketing strategies above help me and my affiliates make sales every day!
How you ever sold a product with social media? Share your social media marketing success story below.