How to convert Affiliate link clicks to actual sales

Last Updated on June 9, 2021 by scottkandh

One of my biggest hurdles on my blog is to actually convert the clicks that I’m getting on ThirstyAffiliates and convert them into actual sales. 

If you like this post, please consider enrolling in my free Blogging Mini-Course. (disregard the note about subscribing, I need to update this pin).

This post contains affiliate links, I’ll make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click through and make a purchase.

Before I get started to provide you with the seven steps to getting started in affiliate marketing, I’m going to provide you with an overview of my ThirstyAffiliate links to illustrate that there’s one important step I’m missing >> Converting those clicks into sales.

ThirstyAffiliate clicks table – 1,631 Total clicks (since January 2021)

There’s money to be made as a blogger by participating in affiliate marketing.  The stats from Statista say that by 2022 the U.S. affiliate marketing spent is due to reach $8.2 billion dollars, which is up from 5.4 billion that was recorded in 2017.  Now to me that’s a promising number that I would like to be a part of, wouldn’t you (by participating in Affiliate Marketing). 

There was a post written called:  Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success

Within that post there was an outline of seven steps to learn about affiliate marketing. 

1. Decide on a platform.
2. Choose your niche.
3. Find affiliate programs to join.
4. Create great content.
5. Drive traffic to your affiliate site.
6. Get clicks on your affiliate links.
7. Convert clicks to sales.

This post covers these 7 steps but most importantly, places emphasis on the very last step of actually converting clicks into sales.  So I’m going to do some very diligent research on that topic so that hopefully by the end of the month when I celebrate my one-year anniversary of blogging I’ll have something to show for my efforts and more than just the $19.90 I’ve earned so far. 

What is affiliate marketing?

It’s nothing more than you’re the middleman by promoting someone else’s products and if someone buys from your recommendation to their link, you get a share of the commission.

Your goal as a blogger is to help make the sale by leading your readers to their site. 

When you join an affiliate link, the merchant provides you with the text or banners to use to make the sale.  Every image also comes with a unique code so that the sale can be tracked to whom made the sale. 

The files that get clicked are stored with a file called an affiliate cookie.  The cookie has two purposes: 

1. Help the merchant determine who made the sale so they can give you your share.
2. It’ll hold an expiration date which varies from merchant to merchant. 

You need to manage your expectations. You won’t earn the big bucks right off the bat, but don’t let this discourage you.

The success of others tells you that with hard work, time, and the right knowledge, you too can potentially reach those levels.

The seven steps of Affiliate Marketing

Follow these seven simple steps.  I’ll be covering each of these steps in detail. 

1. Decide on a platform.
2. Choose your niche.
3. Find affiliate programs to join.
4. Create great content.
5. Drive traffic to your affiliate site.
6. Get clicks on your affiliate links.
7. Convert clicks to sales.

Step #1: Decide on a platform

You can do affiliate marketing on any platform that you choose.  Stick with a platform that you use the most.  For example, in my case it’s my blog (PinArtwork), Pinterest (PinArtwork Blogger), and Facebook (PinArtwork Facebook Group).  Other avenues at your disposal are Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and plenty more.   No matter which platform you decide to use, you’ll need to ensure that you disclose that you have affiliate links somewhere in your description (I’ll get to that in a moment). 

If you’re interested in building a blog, please see my Free Blogging Mini-Course.  It’ll provide you with a 7-Step Blog Launch checklist to get your blog up and running in 7 days. The mini-course is provided with a lot of information and organized from many of the posts that I’ve written for my blog. 

It provides information to get your blog/website running in tip-top shape for the best page speed, performance, and structure. 

Not only that there are separate lessons for learning about Pinterest and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).   SEO is paramount to bring traffic to your blog. 

You must disclose the fact that you’re including affiliate links. The Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) requires you to be transparent when receiving income from an endorsement.

If you’re using a blog, I like to ensure that I have at the top of every post (that has affiliate links).  And in some cases, I may put it there even if there are no affiliate links so that it’s not overlooked). 

This post contains affiliate links, I’ll make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click through and make a purchase.

I’ve heard that ThirstyAffiliates puts it in your post automatically.  I have the program and even though I have it set to update the post/page with a notice I have yet to see the statement above (unless I’ve manually placed it there). 

Since you’re more than likely to get clicks from a blog as opposed to a YouTube video. I’m going to provide you with examples from my blog. 

Step #2: Choose your niche

If you’re contemplating starting a blog today you’ll be facing an enormous amount of competition.  Here’s some staggering stats about the number of bloggers.

• The number of bloggers in the USA is expected to grow to 31.7 million in 2020. There are more than 500 million blogs that exist in 2019.Jan 6, 2021

• Tumblr has more than 440 million blogs.
• WordPress has about 60 million blogs.
• Blogging has grown by 12% since 2015.
• At this moment, there are roughly 1.9 billion web pages. Judging by the growth rate, we will be hitting 2 billion in less than a year.
• The average blog post is 1151 words, that’s a 42% increase in the last 5 years.

So your best chance of success is to niche down as much as possible.  Here’s some great advice about choosing your niche.

“Choose a topic that focuses on a specific category. For example, the topic of “food” is an enormous category. Rather than tackling that, try something more specific, like grilling food.

Keeping your topics tight can help you build a more focused audience and potentially help you rank higher in search engines.

That’s what I did when I built my first site. Instead of talking about “dance” or “hip hop,” I decided to limit myself to just breakdancing. Despite not knowing anything about SEO back then, I managed to rank for a few key terms and generate ~3,000 organic visits per month.”

After you’ve built traffic to your blog, expand into other areas.  For example, a major blogging event for bloggers is called Blogtober.  It’s held annually every October.  The goal is to write one blog per day, every day.  There are no rules, it’s a great chance to write outside of your niche, and to draw traffic to your blog.  On my blog, this is my biggest Pinterest board – Blogtober.

Step #3: Find Affiliate programs to join

There are different types of affiliate programs to choose from.  The affiliate program that you decide to join depends on your niche.  A large number of merchants can be found through the Affiliate program ShareASale. 

If you go to my blog post Affiliate Links on PinArtwork, you’ll see most of the Affiliate programs that I have on my website that pertain to web hosting related products. 

The easiest way to find Affiliate programs is by doing a Google search.

My favorite source for many affiliate links is ShareASale. Here’s a list of 52 affiliate links that you can use. These are just some of the few that are available and are more popular than the others. Visit 44 of the Best Affiliate Programs That Pay the Highest Commission that discusses 44 of these 52 Affiliate programs. The affiliate programs that I’ve put in the boldfaced font are the ones that I would recommend to use for bloggers.

1. 3dcart
2. Amazon
3. Amazon Associates
4. AWeber
5. Awin
6. BH Cosmetics
7. BigCommerce
8. Bluehost
9. Boatbookings
10. Capitalist Exploits
11. Cheapflights
12. CJ Affiliate
13. Clickbank
14. Constant Contact
15. ConvertKit
16. Coursera
17. eBay
18. Fiverr
19. Flywheel
20. GetResponse
21. GreenGeeks
22. Hammacher Schlemmer
23. Hostgator
24. HubSpot
25. Invoice Ninja
26. JVZoo
27. Kabbage
28. Kajabi
29. Kinsta
30. Leadpages
31. Momondo
32. Murad
33. Optin Monster
34. Pabbly
35. Sage Financials
36. Sandals Resorts
37. Scentbird
38. SEMRush
39. Sendinblue
40. ShareASale
41. Shopify
42. SiteGround
43. Spocket
44. Target
45. Teachable
46. TripAdvisor
47. Typeform
48. Unbounce
49. Volusion
50. Wix
51. WP Engine
52. WP Rocket

I’d recommend that you stick with the companies that actually have a valid Affiliate program. 

Step #4: Create great content

If you want your affiliate site to succeed, you need to create high-quality content where your affiliate links fit naturally.

Part of the dilemma that I’m having is that I have two posts with high-quality content, but the affiliate links don’t match up very good at this point. 

One thing to do is to go the extra mile with the product that you’re trying to push.  When doing a review on it, purchase the product, test it, and explain why it works so good.  The bottom line is that you need to ensure that the content you’re trying to sell is solving the problem that your visitor is having.  .

Step #5: Drive traffic to your Affiliate site

You’ve created great content and the next logical step is to have people read what you’ve put out there so that they can now in turn click on your affiliate links.

There are three strategies to consider:

.1  Paid Traffic
.2  SEO    and
.3  Build an e-mail list (list building). 

Paid Traffic

If you’re a new blogger I don’t recommend paid traffic.  That can easily cost more than what your making as a blogger so I would recommend that you decide if you want to lead traffic through your Search Engine Optimization methods or building up your e-mail list.   

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Optimizing your blog with SEO Tools so that you get a high enough ranking to bring you traffic based on your structure, and keywords that you have within your posts/pages. 

If you want to learn more about SEO, sign up for my Free Blogging Mini-Course with four lessons that discuss SEO Tools. 

Build an email list

This is the best method that you can make money for your blog by building up your e-mail list with contacts by having very well-placed lead magnets, opt-ins, and freebies.  You need to have a good sales funnel. 

The more leads that you have leads naturally to more clicks and sales. 

You have control of your e-mail list that you can use a blogging program like ConvertKit or Constant Contact to send e-mail promotions directly to your subscribers.  I don’t know the exact law surrounding e-mails with bloggers, but don’t rely on using your personal email program to send and receive your e-mails.  That could be detrimental, go with one of the two (or another) that I mentioned.  You should contact your subscribers at least once per week to keep them abreast of any new content and serves as a reminder for them to “You all come back now, you hear!”

Affiliate email promotions can be sent directly to your subscribers but don’t forget to add that all necessary disclosure statement.

This post contains affiliate links, I’ll make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click through and make a purchase.

It takes quite a while to build up your e-mail list.  Because you need to persuade them to sign up to your website and in return, you need to offer something valuable to them in return.  Even with well-intentioned lead magnets, people may still not subscribe. 

At the present moment, I’m waiting to hear that I got approval for an Affiliate link with a program called Link Building Strategy by Amy Porterfield.  I’m hoping that I can get approval first, and then I’m going to buy the product so I can take advantage of an affiliate link promotion. 

Amy Porterfield is the one in charge of the program and has excellent marketing skills.  I want to build on her expertise and lead magnets to build my e-mail following. 

Step #6: Get clicks on your affiliate links

There’s an art to placement of your affiliate links.  I recommend that if you want to get clicks for your affiliate links is to take one of the two courses I mention below:

1. Carly does a good job of explaining this in her course:  Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers. 
   
   
2. Another good course that I recommend is called Wealthy Affiliates.  Either of these is a great start.  You might be able to pick up a lot of free tidbits with the Free version of Wealthy Affiliates. 

This is an approach that I haven’t tried yet, but could easily do with some of my Affiliate Links by comparing them like PC Mag does with a comparison table. 

PC Mag takes a different approach and uses a comparison table with buttons:

Up until Step #6, I’ve mastered affiliate links.  Like I mentioned earlier, since January 2021, I have received 1,631 total clicks to the various affiliate links on my site.  To the best of my knowledge, ThirstyAffiliates will tell you the clicks to a site but won’t provide you with the number of sales that has generated.  The easiest way to check to see if you have any profit from your affiliate links is to check your PayPal account (which is normally used by most affiliate programs). The whole reason for writing this post is to build upon Step #7 and put 100% focus into making some goals to make that conversion happen.

Step #7: Convert clicks to sales

There are two things that need to happen in order to convert clicks to sales.

Obviously, the first part of the conversion process is for visitor to click through to where you’re promoting the item.  This is the part where you are in total control, and you can use the suggestions from Affiliate blogging courses in Step #6 to improve your chances of getting your affiliate links clicked upon.

Beyond that in the second step of the conversion process is where you hope for your visitor to go to the merchant that you provided the link so that they checkout. 

One of the comments I recently read on a Facebook post talked about the topic of focus and even has a focus blogging challenge.  My next blog post will be about creating a focus blogging challenge (in particular, Step #7). I don’t want to end this blog post without making a slight reference to why your blog should have a focus.

Should my blog have a focus?

It’s best to focus on creating content that solves a problem or makes their lives easier in some way. This is one of the best ways to build credibility and establish yourself as a reliable source in your niche. Besides, it’s a lot easier to craft a quality blog post when you know who you’re writing to and why. Jan 8, 2021

Unknown

Somewhere within this framework of comments below is the place where dreams come true. 

Unfortunately, affiliate marketing takes time. The things to do are:

Focus your approach on making affiliate sales so that they become the norm on your site/blog.

It won’t happen overnight, take advantage of SMARTER goals to look at your goals, set new ones, and continue adjusting and reevaluating your Affiliate goals until the day when you start to see a steady income from your affiliate marketing. 

Focus first on making your first affiliate sale. As your site grows, set new goals, and continue experimenting. As time goes on I’ll be adding more to this section of the post.

One of the things I’ve recently learned is that if you make a video for an affiliate link, that people are 10 times more likely to click on a video as compared to a static image. It’s quite a lot of work to make a video, you need:

• The software to record your video (you can use Zoom so long as your video is less than 40 minutes).
• An outline sketched out ahead of time before doing your video.
• Practice a few times doing your video. The more comfortable you can be from getting away from your notes the better. That’s why the practice part comes in handy. It may be better to be brief in your outline rather than reading verbatim from your notes.
• Once your video is done, the best thing to do to conserve space is to embed the video.

I’ve only got one video underneath my belt, so I’ve got some work ahead of me to explain my affiliate links. The plan I would recommend to you is to take a look at your affiliate clicks and start from the top down with the ones that have the most clicks. Make videos from #1 down to where you want to draw the line. Now if they convert into sales, don’t stop there, keep going. Maybe that’s the trick to turning clicks into sales.

I will be adding the Seven Steps of Affiliate Marketing as a new lesson all by itself in my Free Blogging Mini-Course so that it’s easy to follow and the main heading will be the highlighted part above with the different steps within the group.