Easy to set up and great for building a following, the blog is an integral part of the affiliate stacking ecosystem.
While building one that attracts plenty of attention and visitors can take some time, it is the affiliate marketing gift that keeps on giving once its roots have taken hold and it begins to bloom.
How is Blogging Different from a Website?
An affiliate website can be focused on the features and benefits of your product or products. It is meant to be concise and salesy and performs a specific purpose. You may want to add a blog to your website, however, to attract more visitors in the hope that they’ll visit your main pages and be interested in what you have to offer.
There’s no problem with adding a sales pitch or call to action to any blog post and many affiliate marketers do this. The content of the blog itself, however, is meant to be useful and informational. You’re not direct selling but providing value for your audience. And that’s the difference.
For example, you may be selling cycling machines to your visitors on your main website. A blog post could be about anything from eating healthily to the top 10 ways to get fit in the New Year. These aren’t pushing the product but they are posts that people who are likely to be interested in that product will potentially like to read.
The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing Blogging
- The first big benefit of blogging is that it gives you much more scope for creating relevant and attractive content. It gets you away from the straight sales pitch and allows you to build a reputation and relationship with your audience.
- You can experiment with long-form content that answers questions your audience might have in greater depth and which can perform well in Google rankings.
- Search engines like Google also love new content and that can make it easier for your affiliate pages to rank higher too.
- It gives you the chance to invite comments from visitors, makes it more likely that people will link to your site (a strong SEO ranking factor), and can even help you build your social media following when you add sharing buttons.
What Should I Blog About?
Let’s say your affiliate is a subscription food outlet, one that sends all the ingredients along with a recipe for a particular meal out to their busy customers. There’s scope here for side-issue blog posts that individuals might also be interested in. For instance, these types of subscriptions are often used by young professionals. They can be for people who are health conscious. They’ll also be concerned about career development and a whole host of other things.
When you find your affiliate product(s), you need to develop a blog that is closely connected to it in some way. If your focus is too narrow, it can mean you have difficulty coming up with ideas and then you won’t be able to attract an audience. Too wide and you may find it difficult to rank and the people you attract may not be interested in your product at all.
How Long Should Blog Content Be?
Long content is in vogue at the moment and many affiliate marketers are producing posts that are 1,000 to 3,000 words in length. What search engines like Google are looking for, however, are posts that fully answer a users question when they type something into that query box.
Don’t overextend content just to get the word count up. Most blogs have a natural length – if you have a lot to say, all well and good but make it relevant to the title you are working on. In short, stay focused on answering the question you think the user is asking.
Getting Ideas for Blogs
Coming up with ideas for blogs can be easy or hard depending on the niche you choose and the scope there is for content. An easy way to start is with keyword research. Once you have them, type these into Google and see what comes up on the first page.
For some keywords and combinations, you may find there’s a lot of competition. If the content there is already very well written, it may be difficult to rank above it and might be a waste of your time. That shouldn’t stop you from trying. Pages go up and down in the rankings for a variety of reasons.
Check out snippets and questions that come up on the page too and make these the basis of your blog posts. They appear there because they’re the most commonly asked questions about a particular topic and more people are searching for answers.
5 Tips for Creating a Successful Affiliate Marketing Blog
- Build a blog list: It’s much easier to write regular blog posts for your affiliate marketing if you have a list of things to do. Rather than come up with ideas on the hoof as and when you need them, sit down and work through creating a blog list.
- Choose interesting subjects: Don’t blog just for the sake of it but produce content that your audience wants to see. That’s why building a blog list is so important. It’s easy if you’re desperate for content to go off message and publish something that isn’t relevant to your audience or your affiliate product. Resist that urge.
- Post regularly: Search engines like sites that produce regular content so it’s important to get your posts up and published every few days or so. It also gives your visitors and fans a reason for coming back to your blog and helps boost engagement on social media, especially if you add sharing buttons.
- Keep sentences and paragraphs relatively short. One of the reasons for this is that long blocks of text are more difficult to read on a screen. Also think about breaking up your content with images, subheadings and bullet points to make it look more attractive.
- Have an opinion: Don’t just regurgitate what’s already out there, have an opinion about what you are writing. It makes things more personal and should build a stronger connection with your audience. You should, however, avoid anything terribly controversial or likely to offend as it will cause negative reactions.
How to Add Blogging to Your Affiliate Stacking Ecosystem
Learning how to make the most of your blogging platform is critical when it comes to the affiliate marketing stacking ecosystem. Get it right and your blog will feed into all other areas of your marketing just like your main website.
If you want to find out how to leverage blogging, Master Affiliate Profits walks you through the entire process, what pitfalls to avoid and how to create a memorable presence online that you can then feed into your other marketing.
Find out about the MAP affiliate stacking ecosystem course today.
