Do's and Dont's for Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is quickly becoming a multi-million dollar business. Promoting other companies’ products or services, or allowing them to advertise yours, extends the overall audience reach and significantly enhances sales. It can also create passive lines of income for years to come. If you have a decent following for your blog, it may be time to add affiliate marketing to your monetization strategies, but be careful. You want to do it well. Otherwise, it could damage your reputation or become a giant hassle. Take the time to do it right. Keep these dos and don’ts of affiliate marketing in mind.

If you have a decent following for your blog, it may be time to add affiliate marketing to your monetization strategies, but be careful. You want to do it well. Otherwise, it could damage your reputation or become a giant hassle. Take the time to do it right. Keep these dos and don’ts of affiliate marketing in mind.

1. Be ready to work hard, learn, adjust to the changing landscape, and to invest your time. You need to write quality content (ideally a minimum of 1500 words every day)
2. Build your site and post quality content on it regularly (see above). Focus on creating a quality web site or service that people need and where you are looking at the long-term business model. This works whether you incorporate affiliate marketing or not.

If you want to maintain a steady flow of traffic returning to your site, avoid posting content that can be remotely considered ‘spammy.’ Any content that is irrelevant to what you usually write about, or something that your audience does not expect, would automatically get this label. Spam content would definitely result in large amounts of traffic but poor conversion rates. Companies could then become apprehensive about working with you or in a worst case scenario, even remove you from their program. 

Prior to signing up for an affiliate program, you will most likely be required to agree to an affiliate terms of service document that will lay the ground rules for what you can and can’t do while promoting the company.

These typically include guidelines around promoting their competitors in adherence with their brand or also referring your own sales. Be sure to follow up on these agreements and reference them any time you’re unsure. For instance, affiliates may often bid on search engines such as Google or advertiser’s branded keywords. If you’re going to take part in this type of activity, please make sure it’s OK first. This can often increase the brand’s costs in paid search and also remove

Violation of terms will result in deduction of commissions or removal from the affiliate program entirely.