Commerce is fundamentally a system consisting of a huge number of elements: product, distribution, logistics, procurement, quality assurance, marketing, support, and so on. The list is ridiculously long because this is one of the most complex sections of business out there.
At the same time, the entire concept of sales can be boiled down to procuring a product or service at a lower price and selling it at a higher price. Click To TweetWhen you look at it this way, commerce is quite straightforward.
Another highly important part of the mix is affiliate sales. Next to directly selling your product yourself, you can let others do that for you and reward them with a commission. It’s a win-win combination: you turn a profit with no investment or extra effort, while the affiliate receives commission without handling the product and almost no risk.
Traditional Affiliate Programs vs. Digital Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs as a concept have been around as long as commerce itself. We’re not history buffs, but chances are there were ancient Egyptian coin sellers that hustled for someone else and took home the commission.
With the explosive rise of the Internet and digital sales (eCommerce), affiliate programs have seen their Renaissance. It has never been easier, more convenient, and profitable to run affiliate programs on your own private or professional platforms to make money.
Many people even turn to these types of business activities as a side-job, which has the potential of growing into a full-income salary job. For this reason, we have seen the rise of interest in affiliate programs. Logically, we also saw an increase in people doing this type of business, too.
You can see Instagram influencers doing a lot of this work. Many influencers charge a flat fee for a promotional post, but some work on an affiliate basis. For example, an Instagram influencer might include a discount code for their audience, which any users can use in the promoted online store. If a customer purchases a product with this code, the customer is happy because they got a discount. On the other side, the business is happy because they made a sale, and the influencer affiliate is happy because they earned a commission.
Monetizing your WordPress Blog with Affiliate Programs
You can monetize your WordPress website in many ways. As soon as a WP site starts growing, owners try to find ways to take advantage of it and make money from their site to let it grow even more.
Some WordPress website owners even start websites solely to earn money, while some start seeing it as an opportunity or a new idea further down the line.
Whatever your status may be, the fact remains that you can most definitely make money with a high-traffic WordPress blog.
When it comes to value, affiliate programs are one of the highest-paying forms of website monetization. Of course, there are many other ways to earn a living running a WordPress blog. Still, it’s affiliate sales that will give you the highest commissions and payouts.
One of the most important things to keep an eye out for is the relevancy of the affiliate products to your website’s content. If your blog is focused on environmental issues and anti-consumerism, you might not do great by joining an affiliate program and selling plastic children’s toys. The connection of your affiliate product to your website’s topic will have a direct impact on your affiliate sales and earnings.
Best Affiliate Programs for WordPress Blogs
If you think your website is a good match for affiliate sales of a particular product and you think your readers can turn into customers, it’s time to sign up with an affiliate program.
Depending on the niche of your website and the info about your audience, you can narrow down the best picks for affiliate sales programs that you can run on your WordPress site.
Here, we present to you some of the best affiliate programs that you can sign up for:
1. Amazon Affiliate Program
The Amazon affiliate program is the number one affiliate sales system in the world. It has millions of promoters worldwide and it helped Amazon become the number one online store.
You can join in and reap the benefits of selling cool Amazon products in a few easy steps.
The registration process is really easy and quick and you will be able to add products to your site instantly. After your website is confirmed as an affiliate, you can browse through Amazon products for which you believe your audience will be crazy about. When you find the perfect product, simply click to get a link and then paste it onto your post or page.
For WordPress, text-only and image-only widgets are available in the Amazon Affiliate Program. To increase your sales and conversion rate it’s better to do a deep overview of the product yourself. Let your audience rely on your recommendation instead of the Amazon banner.
If you tell a great story, it’s much easier to sell a product. Plus, with Amazon having the reputation and credibility it has, you’ll have much higher trustworthiness, too.
2. eBay Affiliate Program for WordPress
Just like Amazon, eBay has its own affiliate program. When you sign up for eBay’s program, you can simply fetch links from any of the products available on the site and earn a commission from sales.
If you want to incorporate eBay products into your WordPress site to monetize it, many plugins can help you do so.
If you’re running a website for primarily non-US audiences, you might be better off joining the eBay affiliate program than Amazon’s. Amazon works mostly for the US and Western Europe and is not so popular in Eastern Europe, for example. Mind your target audience and compare the best options concerning them.
3. ShareASale Affiliate Program
ShareASale is another amazing commission-based affiliate program that will help you launch the earnings of your WordPress website. They are one of the most experienced affiliate companies in the digital realm because they’ve been around since 2000.
When you sign up to work with ShareASale as an affiliate, you will have the opportunity to pick among a wide array of products from their library. No matter what type of content your WordPress website deals in, you will surely find the optimal products to promote.
Also, unlike some other affiliate programs, ShareASale offers a great payment mode. You can get paid more frequently and more conveniently by choosing whichever method suits you the best.
4. Clickbank Affiliates
Clickbank works similarly to ShareASale, but it hasn’t been in the industry for quite that long. Just like it’s a more experienced competitor, Clickbank offers a very versatile and competitive library of product collections and items to choose from.
However, the drawbacks of Clickbank include the fact that there are no digital payment methods available for earnings withdrawal. There are max limits put on referral sales as well.
5. Rakuten Marketing Affiliates
Rakuten is one of the most reliable online marketplaces with affiliate programs out there. When you sign up for Rakuten as an affiliate and get approved, you will get access to some of the most popular brands in the world. This can also serve to increase the popularity of your own website by linking it to names that ring bells.
The process of signing up, getting approved, and starting your sales is less simple than with other programs, though. You will have to sign up to sell each brand individually. You will also have to wait for the approval process to pass. If you’re planning on focusing on one brand only, this is not such a problem. If you want to present a rainbow of similar products by different brands, it can be quite time-consuming and annoying.
What to Expect
It’s important to keep aspirations high and expectations low. If you’re just starting out in the industry and you haven’t made a noise in the digital space yet, you can’t expect miracles when you join an affiliate program.
The amount of sales you will make on your WordPress blog with affiliate programs directly corresponds to many factors. Namely, its about your number of visitors, audience engagement, and the relevance of your website to the affiliate product. If you nail all of these factors, you have a chance to earn a decent amount of money with affiliate programs.
You should also remember that the environment of digital affiliate sales has become really competitive. There are thousands of websites cropping up every day trying to get their piece of the cake. In order to differentiate and stand out from these, you need to have a solid plan on upping the quality of your own website.
Also, remember that it’s possible that affiliate programs might not be suitable for your website. Not all readers are customers, and you can expect a particular conversion rate based on your current traffic. The best thing to do is to test it out and see how it goes in the first few months.