One of the things freelance writers struggle with is finding ongoing and consistent work. While it’s entirely possible to earn a living from freelance writing (I’m proof that you can), it’s always a good decision to diversify your income streams.
Now that you are working for yourself, you don’t always want to be hustling and looking for work right?
While building your freelance business should be your focus for long-term and sustainable income, one easy way to quickly grow your income is with affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is basically earning a commission by promoting someone else’s product. As a freelance writer I’m sure there are many online products you’ve tried and liked, right?
Well, if there’s an affiliate program for those products, you can earn a commission every time you mention them on your blog – and somebody buys through your link.
Depending on the product, you can receive as little as 2-4% commission to as high as 70% or more.
I would caution, though, to not look at the potential earnings as the measure of which product you will become an affiliate for.
Ideally, the best way to become an affiliate is to be a customer or consumer of that product. If you naturally enjoy the product, it’s a lot easier to promote it than if you never really used it or know what it’s about.
How Affiliate Programs Work
Now, I personally haven’t joined many affiliate programs, yet. Currently I earn a percentage when people click on my referral link and buy a subscription to Contena, a high-quality freelance writing job board.
I get a unique linking code that I can place on my blog, on social media or in my newsletter – if my email service provider allows it (MailChimp doesn’t love affiliate links).
Last month, I earned $220 from one page on my site that I wrote and placed my referral link in. Now, I know that’s not a lot, but it took me less than an hour to write that post and every week it takes less than 10 minutes to schedule that post on Pinterest.
As a freelance writer, once I get paid for a post I write for a client, that’s it. I’m paid one time for one post.
But with my affiliate post, I earn a commission every month for the same post.
I say that’s easy money!
My Write To 1k Course Has An Affiliate Program
In my goals for 2016 post, I mentioned I wanted to set up an affiliate program for my freelance writing course, Write Your Way to Your First $1k.
Well, it’s up and running! I have several awesome bloggers, freelance writers, course participants and even clients of mine signed up to be an affiliate for my course. And they’re doing great!
I’m so grateful to see the support and loyalty my affiliates have for this course.
You earn 40% for every sale you make, which means if you sell a basic course you will receive $26.80. Not bad eh?
But, it gets better.
If you sell an advanced course, you receive $38.80 and if you sell a strategy course, your earnings are $70.80!
And you know what? The only investment you have is your time to promote my course.
This is easy income you can start earning today!
What if you don’t know how to promote an affiliate product without coming off too salesy?
Because you definitely don’t want to turn off your loyal readers and followers with an overly promotional post or tweet.
4 Easy Ways to Promote An Affiliate Product
There are soo many ways to promote an affiliate product, but I’ll just mention a few to help you out.
1. On a Resource Page
A lot of bloggers have a dedicated page to tools and resources that have helped them out. This is a great place to promote all your affiliate products.
Anna Thurman of Real Ways to Earn Money Online actually has a course page and lists all courses she’s an affiliate for.
2. In a Blog Post
By far, the most popular way to introduce your audience to an amazing affiliate product is with a blog post.
For my affiliates, I’ve written guest posts and done interviews or collaborations to promote my course.
One great way to promote an affiliate product without the whole post just being all about how great the product is, is by having a blog post topic in mind.
Brent Jones did a great job with promoting my course by providing a quick guide to getting started freelance writing. This gave tremendous value to his post while at the same he was able to talk about my course.
What’s great about Brent’s approach is not only did this affiliate post have a quick start guide and an option for a comprehensive guide (by signing up to his list), but he also made sure that I guest posted earlier as a way to introduce myself to his audience.
Saskia Smit went a different way. She interviewed me first as a way to introduce me to her audience. Interviews naturally opened up the conversation about my new course and any new updates with my business.
Later on Saskia included me in a round-up of freelance writers.
Some other blog post ideas that lend itself well to promoting a freelance writing course are:
- How to become a freelance writer
- How to get started making money online
- Income ideas for stay-at-home moms or bloggers
- What the [name of course] taught me
- How to make a full-time living by writing part-time
- 10 great things about being a freelance writer
- Comparisons of different freelance writing courses
As an affiliate to my course, if you are still struggling coming up with blog post ideas, just shoot me an email and we can hash it out!
3. On Social Media
One easy way to promote an affiliate product is to share a tweet or Facebook update. If your audience on social media consists of mostly bloggers, stay-at-home moms or working moms wanting to stay home as well as aspiring writers, then using this method can work.
One of my course participants, Christine, tweets this out to her followers.
https://twitter.com/TheFrugalSingle/status/727319811550789633
And as a way to promote subscriptions to Contena, I made a guide on how to find freelance writing jobs insanely fast and it’s being pinned on Pinterest a lot.
4. In Your Lead Magnet
For the serious marketer, a great way to grow your list and earnings is to place your affiliate link in your lead magnet, or freebie that you offer to visitors as a way to get them to sign up to your list.
One of my clients is putting together a marketing plan to promote my course and he’s going to use a lead magnet – that I wrote for him – to promote my course.
For other bloggers and writers, you can create a lead magnet of all the awesome tools you use to help you succeed in your business. You can mention various tools and courses that have helped you out.
Interested in Becoming an Affiliate and Growing Your Income Today?
If you think you have an audience that might be interested in freelance writing, become an affiliate for my course!
It’s free to sign up and it’s easy to promote.
Over to you – have you ever done any affiliate marketing before? I wanna know about it.
Please pin me!
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