How to Grow Your Blog into An Affiliate Machine

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Want to learn how to effectively implement affiliate marketing for bloggers?

Let me let you in on a secret.

For the past 5 years, my partner Tom and I have been traveling the world with blogging as our full-time job.

I’m not going to lie… before we figured out what we were doing, money was pretty tight. 

When we started out on our journey, we were on a small budget and pinched pennies anywhere we could.

While we focused on creating great content for our blog, we also knew we had to start exploring different ways of how to actually start earning from our blog.

At that time, affiliate marketing seemed like one of those things that a lot of bloggers were doing so we jumped on the bandwagon and enrolled in different affiliate programs.

Although we casually made a sale or two from when people would follow our recommendations, our income was still small and inconsistent. 

At one point, we wondered if we could actually make a living from our blog…

Fast forward to today, I can assure you that affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money with a blog.

While it started out slow (accompanied by a whole load of doubts and guessing), affiliate marketing has turned into Adventure In You’s main source of income! 

Initially we were lucky if we made more than a few hundred dollars a month, but now money earned through affiliate marketing is how we fund our travels, finance our lifestyle, and live our dreams. 

Affiliate marketing has allowed us to travel the globe uninhibited, live wildly off the grid and work whenever we feel like it, all while making a consistent income…

What we learned through our mission of monetizing our blog is that affiliate marketing holds huge potential.

But for you to actually earn a living out of it, you need to be strategic about how you implement it. After years of experimenting and trying out different strategies, we figured out a system that helped us triple our affiliate income, allowing us to exponentially grow.

This was when we turned out blog into an “Affiliate Machine” allowing us to maximize our earnings month on month. 

Want to know exactly how we did it?

In this article, I walk you through all there is to know about affiliate marketing and how we turned our travel blog from a small side hustle into a real money-making Affiliate Machine!

Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers Video

Affiliate Marketing 101

Affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful (and common) ways to monetize a blog. Before we move on to how it works, let’s first take a look at its definition.

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s or company’s products.

In more basic terms, it’s finding a product that you like, promoting it to other people, and making a commission each time a sale is made.

A lot of people think that affiliate marketing is as easy as filling articles with product links and hoping that they’ll get rich quickly from it. While this sounds like an easy way to make a living, it doesn’t actually work like this!

Think of affiliate marketing as an ecosystem that provides value for all the 3 parties in the process. In this ecosystem, the 3 parties involved are you (the affiliate), the reader (people who land on your blog), and the brand you are recommending.

It all starts with you, the affiliate. You create valuable articles around a pain point that your readers have. In this process, you recommend products or services that can help resolve this pain point.

For example, you write an article on the best dry bags where you make recommendations to help your readers find the best one based on your years of experience as a traveler.

The reader gets awesome product recommendations from someone who knows what they’re talking about, leading to an educated purchase.

The brand that your reader ends up purchasing from also benefits because they just got a new customer.

With the concept of affiliate marketing, brands are essentially getting free advertising and the chance to break into markets and audiences they would have never infiltrated on their own.

As a way to reward the affiliate for bringing in a purchase, the brand awards you with a commission.

In the end, it’s a win-win situation because you’ll earn a commission from purchases made, build trust with readers from recommending quality products, and build out your blog niche, all at once. 

What’s more, being able to make money by promoting other people’s products is much simpler compared to creating a product or service of your own. 

The fact that it’s all driven by providing value to your readers and helping meet their needs and solve their problems gives affiliate marketing that much more power when it comes to seeing conversions. 

Because of this, it’s no wonder why Affiliate Marketing is one of the most common ways for bloggers to monetize their websites! 

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

So how exactly can you make money by putting links into your content?

When it comes to buying a product, everything starts with the reader. 

More and more, people are turning to the internet for purchases rather than visiting stores to buy things (I mean, who can blame them? A one-stop shop on your computer? Genius!). 

So when a reader decides they want to buy something, they typically take to the internet, start reading blogs, seeking recommendations, and looking for help with the buying process. 

As mentioned, your role is to create valuable content for readers to consume, build trust based on quality recommendations, and give an honest opinion on the products you’re promoting. 

Then comes the brands and companies. After a reader clicks on a product or service that you recommend, they’ll be redirected to the product page, giving the company a chance to convert the reader into a customer. 

And once a purchase is made, a commission, or portion of the amount spent goes to you, the blogger. 

While some companies have their own affiliate platform, not all of them do. 

But this doesn’t mean that affiliate marketing isn’t possible. Instead, there’s a small shift in the flow as these companies rely on a third-party platform (called an “affiliate network”) to carry out affiliate activities. 

It starts the same – with the reader coming to your blog, looking for recommendations. But when they click the product link, it goes through a third-party platform (aka the affiliate network). 

Brands can plug their products into different affiliate networks where they can offer their products and services to affiliates. Thanks to the affiliate network which manages the process, affiliates can track conversions, clicks, and any other metrics you would get with the normal affiliate flow.

So once a reader clicks your link, they are funneled through the affiliate network to the brand or company, and then you’ll receive a commission from the network. 

Some big affiliate networks are ShareASale, Awin, Clickbank, and Commission Junction. 

How to Start Affiliate Marketing as a Blogger

Now that you know how affiliate marketing works, here’s an overview of how you can start affiliate marketing as a blogger. 

1. Find products you want to promote. This means looking for specific items that you can recommend based on your blog’s niche. This is important because the products you recommend need to be attractive to your readers (but more on that later).

2. Sign up for an affiliate program. You’ll be shocked at how many companies and businesses have affiliate programs! One of the biggest affiliate programs is Amazon because it’s easy to use and there’s a ginormous range of products. But you can also find affiliate programs for smaller businesses and individual companies, too!

3. Create a custom link. You must be wondering, “how will the company know when someone clicks on my link and buys from it?” Well, with affiliate marketing, you’ll have your own custom link that you can insert – these track conversions. With custom links, every time someone clicks on a product on your blog and hops to the product page, it will be monitored based on your unique identifier. Aka, this is how you actually get paid.

4. Promote your custom link. This is the process of actually fitting affiliate links naturally into your blog posts, promoting different products, and getting people to click on them. 

5. Finally, track your conversions. Once you start getting some juice with affiliate marketing, it’s important to track the conversions to see what’s working and what’s not. Tracking will also show you how much money you’re making from affiliate marketing and what products really resonate with your readers!

How Effective is Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers?

Sure, you can make a quick buck from brand partnerships here or a sponsored post there, but if you’re looking for a long-term way to consistently monetize your blog, affiliate marketing is the route to take. 

How do I know this? 

Well, a few years ago, Tom and I took almost 2 weeks to hike to the Mount Everest Base Camp. There we were, in the middle of Nepal, packs hitched high on our backs, hats pulled down over our ears…

We couldn’t have been further from work or an internet connection. It was two blissful weeks of just being around nature.

When we returned to civilization after trekking through some incredible terrain, we checked in online and realized that even while we were disconnected to the rest of the world, our blog kept on running without us. 

We weren’t publishing any new content, weren’t working with new clients or tweaking things on the site… We had left it alone for 2 weeks and had still managed to earn over $12,000 in the time that we were away.

Yes, you read that right…

While hiking in Nepal, our blog generated $12,000 passively just from our affiliates. 

I tell this story all the time because not only was it a huge turning point for Tom and I, but it shows the true power of affiliate marketing. The fact that we were able to make $12,000 while we were completely off the grid is a true testament to the effectiveness of affiliate marketing.

Once you have a solid affiliate marketing strategy in place for your blog, it really and truly works. 

What’s more, the affiliate marketing space has been growing over time and will continue to grow. It’s predicted that affiliate marketing in the U.S. alone is set to hit over $8 BILLION by 2022, up from $5.4 billion in 2017.

If you can get affiliate marketing right on your blog, the potential is huge! 

The Key to Successful Affiliate Marketing: Build An Affiliate Machine

While anyone can just easily place links in their content, we believe that Adventure In You’s success was because we not only included affiliate links in our blog posts but because we actually built an entire Affiliate Machine around it. 

I know by now you already might be wondering…“What’s an Affiliate Machine, Anna?”

An Affiliate Machine is a system that works 24/7 (yes, around the clock) to connect your readers to products and services that help them solve a problem.

Affiliate marketing is just one part of an Affiliate Machine, but when implemented along with the other components, the results are astounding.

Take it from me! Tom and I developed the concept of an Affiliate Machine based on our real-life experience growing our travel blog. 

We were struggling for a year and a half after starting Adventure In You, trying to figure out how to produce meaningful content, build a band of loyal readers, and monetize our blog. 

But when we unlocked the keys to an Affiliate Machine and actually implemented these methods on our own blog, we began to see really solid changes!

Now before I start explaining how exactly an Affiliate Machine works, let me first explain how it changed our business.

Take a look at our blog’s income from 2019-2020. During that year, we earned a total revenue of almost $500,000….just from BLOGGING!

Although it took a while, eventually, our Affiliate Machine allowed us to be full-time travelers bringing in a six-figure income passively. 

Because of this system that we discovered, we were able to create our dream life as we visited 40+ countries. Now, we also make more than our old 9-to-5 jobs combined!

It doesn’t matter if we’re racing tuk-tuks in Sri Lanka, trekking to Mount Everest Basecamp in Nepal, living in a campervan in Iceland, or strolling the cobblestone streets of Europe… 

Our Affiliate Machine allows us to still make money even when we aren’t plugged in to our laptops.

Components of an Affiliate Machine

An Affiliate Machine can be broken down into different components, similar to a real-life machine. On their own, each component doesn’t do much, but when they work in conjunction with one another, you start to get something that leads to real results. 

Our FAST Framework that we teach in our Blogging Fast Lane course outlines the different working parts of an Affiliate Machine. I’ll get into each individually later on in the article, but each letter in the framework directly corresponds to a part of the machine.

F stands for Funnel Foundations. This is the buying process that businesses guide customers through when making a purchase.

A stands for Affiliate Mastery. When harnessed correctly, this is the money-making process.

S stands for Search Omnipresence. This sits at the top of the funnel and is when you appear everywhere for important keywords linked to the machine you’re creating.

T stands for Trust Marketing. This is the act of forming a connection with readers and building trust. You do this as a way to keep bringing readers back to your blog, over and over again.

To build a successful blog that makes money from affiliate marketing, you need to have each of these components in your Affiliate Machine. If even one is missing, the entire machine will come to a halt. 

Having a well-oiled Affiliate Machine is crucial to transforming your blog into a consistent money-making entity.

4 Steps to Grow Your Blog into An Affiliate Machine 

By this point, I hope you’ve come to see that affiliate marketing can be a HUGE source of income for you… if you’re strategic about it.

Building and growing Adventure In You took a huge amount of trial and error. 

We tested just about every method under the sun, but the FAST Framework is ultimately what turned Adventure In You into one of the top 25 travel blogs in the world with more than 500,000 monthly visitors…

… and turned Tom and I into six-figure earners. 

Tom and I developed the FAST Framework to help others build an Affiliate Machine that actually gets results. And we came up with it based on our own efforts and what proved to work for us.

In the blogging world, most people start by focusing on their content and start thinking about money later down the line.

If you simply want a blog where you can post your writing and write about topics you’re interested in, that’s fine… but this does not work if you want to make money with your blog.

In the Blogging Fast Lane, we help our students strategize about how to make money right off the bat, then build content surrounding it, and finally grow a following based on their high-quality content.

This approach is what sets Fast Lane bloggers apart from others! 

So here are the 4 steps you need to take to build your blog into An Affiliate Machine. 

1. Get Your Funnel Foundations Right

The first step to growing your blog into an Affiliate Machine is to get your funnel foundations right.

A funnel is the buying process that companies lead customers through when making a purchase from them or an affiliate.

The reason there are so many blogs on the internet but so few successful blogs is because the unsuccessful ones don’t have a strong funnel foundation to take them to the next level. 

Most blogs are typically focused on building traffic, and then once they have traffic then they start thinking about monetizing. But this is often done in a haphazard way which ends up not being very effective.

Readers visit their blog but then they bounce… and end up spending their money elsewhere.

It all boils down to how you think about your blog. 

The bloggers who aren’t making money are struggling because they aren’t thinking of their blog as a funnel.

If you think about your blog as a random place to post content, you’ll never be able to scale it.

But…If you think about your blog as a funnel that takes your readers through a buying process with the aim to convert them to get affiliate commissions, you’ll already one step ahead of traditional bloggers.

This process is what we teach our students in our course which is what sets Fast Lane Bloggers apart.

By seeing your blog as a funnel, it won’t just guide readers your readers through the buying process but also:

• Help you stand out from other bloggers
• Set clear goals
• Have laser focus and clarity
• Provide you with a clear path to success 

Getting your funnel right is the basis of building an Affiliate Machine and succeeding with affiliate marketing.

2. Master Affiliate Marketing Techniques

Next comes the marketing part of things. 

As I’ve said above, you can’t just insert links in a blog post and hope that someone will click them and make you some money.

No, that does not work. 

Instead, you need to be smart and strategic about incorporating affiliate marketing techniques so they’ll work in your favor and help you earn more income.

For the first year and a half of Adventure In You, affiliate marketing was something we really struggled with. While we were placing links in our content and hoping for the best, we weren’t doing anything to provide value to our readers or giving them a reason to click on our links in the first place.

But when we started implementing techniques to improve our affiliate conversions, everything started to change.

One of the biggest techniques to master affiliate marketing is to understand user intent. 

Once you know what kind of content your user is looking for, it’s so much easier to connect with them through your blog posts, build trust, and get them to click on your links.

There are typically three types of articles on any blog, each with a different purpose. 

Inspirational articles are typically full of ideas and information. They typically have a higher search volume but at this stage, readers are simply gathering information and (as its name implies) looking for inspiration.

Navigational articles are for readers looking for an answer or more information. Maybe they’re searching for the best backpacks or are interested in learning the different types of gardening tools. This is where you can walk them through different options and point them in the direction of buying.

Finally, transactional articles are where the conversions happen. These are buying articles where you can review specific products, give readers buying suggestions, and really guide your audience into a purchase that suits their needs.

In order to build your affiliate income, you’ll want to focus more on navigational and transactional articles, where you already know the reader is in the buying state of mind. 

If you put affiliate links into inspirational articles, they won’t do much to convert as your reader isn’t looking to make a purchase. 

On top of knowing what type of content your users are looking for, you should also know what type of products and services your readers are looking for. 

By recommending products that actually matter to the people reading your blog, you’re showing that you understand them and providing them with valuable information. This makes them so much more inclined to click on your links and make a purchase because it directly relates to them.

And since this is true, you actually don’t need a ton of traffic to make money through affiliate marketing! You just need the right type of traffic.

You need to find a way to relate to the readers you already have and provide them with value through the products you suggest.  

3. Get Your Content in Front of Your Ideal Audience (Organically!)

While you don’t need loads of traffic to make some money with affiliate marketing, the more traffic you have, the chances are, the more money you’ll make. 

When your blog appears everywhere for important keywords linked to your Affiliate Machine, you can bet you’ll have a whole lot more readers coming to your blog, which greatly increases the chances of clicks on your affiliate links. 

This is done with a solid SEO strategy.

When someone asks “where can I find your blog?”, you want to be able to say, “everywhere.” 

The thing is, if you have traffic coming in from targeted keywords, that means you’re getting more and more readers who actually care about your niche and the products you recommend… rather than just random people who stumble upon your blog from an article that isn’t that related to your niche. 

With a more strategic approach to your blog’s SEO, you’ll be bringing in the traffic you really want and that will make a huge difference when it comes to making money through affiliates.

As soon as you master the basics of SEO, you’ll be able to drive so many more people into your funnel, fueling your machine, and making it work that much more effectively.

SEO can be complicated, but there are simple strategies you can use that can make a big difference and get your content in front of more new eyes. 

In our Blogging Fast Lane course, we walk our students through the actual process of finding keywords, building strong content, and implementing the tools needed to get your blog showing up everywhere. 

Want a glimpse of what we teach? Check out our free training below where we walk you some of the biggest changes we made to our business that allowed us to thrive.

4. Capture Your Readers and Build Trust With Them

Finally, when you get to the point where you have the readers you want, it’s important to capture them in your funnel. 

You don’t want to be like most bloggers who have readers come and then flitter to other websites.

Rather, you want readers who will come to your blog, stay on your blog, and return to your blog when they’re seeking valuable information that they know you can provide.

So how exactly do you do this with billions of other websites out there?

Well, first you have to build trust with your readers by forming a connection. This is the part of the Affiliate Machine that we like to call Trust Marketing. 

In short, Trust Marketing is where you offer a value gift to your readers (a short e-book, template, checklist, etc.) in your articles.

If they decide to opt in and give you their email address in exchange for the gift, you then continue to deliver value through email automations to help them solve their problems.

Basically, you’re doing 2 things at once: capturing your ideal audience for email marketing and then building trust with them by continuously providing value.

By focusing on continually providing value to your readers based on their interests, you’re showing that you know and understand your audience. This enables you to build trust with them and ensures that the next time readers are looking for something, your blog will be their first stop. 

Many bloggers brush Trust Marketing to the side and don’t realize how essential it is to bringing the entire Affiliate Machine together. 

It’s such a powerful technique because it gives you, the blogger, the ability to drive desired readers to multiple affiliate content and help solve their problems.

Take a look at this case study we did on how we used our Trust Marketing System to 9x our affiliate income for one partner, taking our commission from $50 per month to $1500 per month!

Beyond this, you’re able to actually redistribute your content to an audience you know is already interested in it, increasing the chance of conversions. This also means you have another targeted source of traffic besides just Google. 

This is so important because it’s a win-win for both parties.

They get the information they’re looking for and you get a commission when they purchase through your links! This is all done through the act of building trust, keeping people on your website and converting readers. 

For more on Trust Marketing, check out these articles:

• How to Grow Your Email List
• Lead Magnets: Top Tips on Creating Value Gifts That Convert

Why You Should Grow Your Blog Into an Affiliate Machine

No matter what kind of blog you have, you can apply this Affiliate Machine method and it can have a MASSIVE difference when it comes to monetizing your blog. 

We’ve seen it work over and over again for our students.

In my Mount Everest story, I’ve shown you the tremendous effects affiliate marketing can have. But the thing is, if Tom and I didn’t implement all the parts of an Affiliate Machine, we wouldn’t have come nearly as close to earning what we did.

As I mentioned earlier, just about anyone can insert links in their blog posts and cross their fingers hoping that someone will click on them. 

But, with the entire Affiliate Machine, you can forget about luck and keeping your fingers crossed… 

Instead, you need to trust in the process and realize that this is a method that is tried and tested when it comes to scaling your blog and building it into a successful business. 

It’s a Reliable Source of Income

The best part about an Affiliate Machine is how reliable it is. 

While brand partnerships and sponsored content may have a high earning potential, they are typically one-off and inconsistent. 

Being a blogger isn’t always about getting free stuff. It may seem that way on Instagram, but this is not a great method of actually monetizing and scaling your blog.

With an Affiliate Machine and affiliate marketing, you have the potential to earn consistently from loads of different sources rather than just a single post about these awesome sunglasses you got or a sponsored review for a hotel you stayed at. 

Affiliate marketing is reliable and can be applied on any blog. There will always be a product to promote in your niche, there will always be the potential to earn money, and there will always be ways to continue to grow.

Yes, sponsorships are nice… But isn’t consistent income even nicer? 

On top of that, once your Affiliate Machine is built up, affiliate marketing is something you can rely on. Even if you’re taking time off from blogging or just have too much on your plate one week, you can rest assured that your machine is still working, even if you aren’t. 

One Click Can Be Very Valuable

The thing about having an Affiliate Machine is there are some huge benefits past the point of someone clicking on a link you put in a blog post.

One of the most powerful parts of affiliate marketing is the fact that it uses cookies. 

What this means is that if someone clicks on your link, decides not to make a purchase but comes back to the product later, you’ll still get a commission when they wind up making the final purchase.

This is because affiliate marketing uses cookies, which means that when a user clicks on a link, it stores a cookie on that person’s computer which can be reactivated when they visit the link again in a specific time frame. 

Some affiliates have cookies that last a few hours, while others have cookies that last several months! This means that down the road, you can still make a commission even if the purchase isn’t immediate.

Another great benefit of affiliate marketing is that many programs offer a commission on a total purchase rather than just the item you linked to. 

For instance, we once had someone click on an affiliate link for a $7 travel book on Amazon. From our blog, they were redirected to Amazon where they spent the afternoon shopping around, adding things to their cart. 

When they checked out, the total was $2,500 and we got a commission on that figure rather than just on the $7 product we recommended. How amazing is that?

Not all programs operate this way, but it’s common with Amazon and even booking websites for hotels! If someone books a 3-night stay, you’ll get a commission on the entire amount they spent rather than just money from a single night.

This is what makes affiliate marketing really worth it.

Key to Passive Income

The best reason to grow your blog into an Affiliate Machine is the ability to generate passive income. 

This ties into reliability and everything else I’ve mentioned about why affiliate marketing is great. It gives you the opportunity to make money even when you’re not working.

Passive income is great because, of course, it means more money in your pocket with little effort, but it also unlocks so much more time. 

Because you can earn without actively working, you can stop trading your time for money. 

You’ll have more hours in the day to do what you want. And because you’re earning consistently and passively, you can design the life you want around your own interests rather than around the fact that you need to make an income.

This is why Tom and I love blogging so much and it goes back to why we started Adventure In You in the first place. We wanted to not only profit from our passions, but have ultimate time freedom without being tied to our computers all the time. 

Having a passive income from our Affiliate Machine changed our lives. 

But more than the money, our Affiliate Machine allows us to live the life of our dreams.

It allowed us to create our own schedule and travel the world while still earning money. It gave us the freedom to do what we wanted, whenever we wanted to and we wouldn’t trade that for the world.

Even if you’re not a traveler, passive income can turn your life in a totally different direction. 

Have kids at home? Passive income means more time watching them reach milestones or sitting on the sideline at afternoon games, rather than being stuck in an office.

Love cooking at home? With passive income, you can spend as much time as you want in the kitchen as you no longer need to work that 9-5 job out our obligation.

Want to pick up a new hobby? With passive income you can finally learn Spanish like you’ve always wanted or learn how to knit.

Because you are no longer held back by money, you are able to spend meaningful time doing the things that you want.

One Last Note: Let Your Efforts Compound

The most important thing to keep in mind about affiliate marketing is that it doesn’t happen overnight. 

It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme or a sprint. It’s a marathon that takes time and effort, but once you reach the finish line, you’ll realize it was all worth it.

It takes time to build an Affiliate Machine. It takes time to get your blog out there and get the readers you want coming in every day. You’ll need to craft a funnel, get ranking on Google, build trust with your readers… and then you’ll make money.

But it IS possible. 

Everything that you do on your blog today, tomorrow, next week and next month will have effects down the road. Every little action you take or tweak you make will compound into something much bigger later on. 

You may not be able to see how what you’re doing now can make any difference but trust me, it will. 

If you are strategic about your moves, smart about your content, and always strive to provide value to your readers, your Affiliate Machine will grow stronger and stronger, unlocking ultimate success with affiliate marketing. 

Want to learn more about building an Affiliate Machine? Sign up for our free training!

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