5 Marketing Side Hustles 2 Make Money!
Your First Sale Is The Hardest And Most Exhilarating!
Medium Non-Members Can Read The Full Story HERE!
What you will learn from this article.
Note to the reader.
Understanding bridge pages with affiliate marketing.
Using Facebook for affiliate marketing income.
Leveraging Medium with affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing with Quora answers.
Google Ads and affiliate marketing.
Indexing affiliate links in search engines.
Note to the reader.
This post is a summary of various affiliate marketing strategies I have discussed before, rolled into one. Maintaining quality consistency can be challenging, therefore, I decided on a compilation of affiliate marketing strategies as a side hustle. Both paid and free traffic strategies I have personally tested and am personally using to this day.
Understanding bridge pages with affiliate marketing.
Before you do anything with affiliate marketing when it comes to generating sales. You need bridge pages because some sites allow you to share affiliate links and others do not!
Either way, it is always better to have bridge pages, especially when you do not yet have your own hosted blogs and websites. You can easily create stunning bridge pages with the following sites.
Google Sites (Google Drive).
Canva One-Page Websites (Free Software).
What is a bridge page? Bridge pages are defined by Google Ads (Formerly AdWords) as websites or web pages with the sole purpose of driving traffic to another site (like your affiliate offer). Below is an example of a bridge page (Canva Website).
The above image serves only as a demonstration of the first part of the website, where most attention is focused. Google sites are also really easy to use as affiliate marketing bridge pages.
It will only require a bit of creativity, design, and curious presentation to create bridge pages. Now, we’re not going to get into the step-by-step design for three reasons.
YouTube Videos.
Google Articles.
Your Best Teacher Is You.
There are literally hundreds of videos and Google content that will guide you on exactly how to create bridge pages with both Google Sites and Canva websites.
But the best teacher will always be you. When you watch videos and read articles to complete certain tasks. Then you will remember how to fish, instead of being handed fish all the time.
Even when you struggle to understand, or especially when you struggle to understand. If you figure it out on your own, then it will be burnt into your memory, and become part of your online knowledge arsenal.
But once you get the hang of bridge pages with Google sites and Canva websites. Please don’t just create bridge pages for as many random affiliate products as possible. Do proper product research.
Check reviews, and see how long the product has been around. Focus on products with dedicated domains, because they are more likely to be around for years to come. Use products with recurring billing.
But most importantly, try purchasing and testing the product to see if it lives up to its claims. And be sure it has a money-back guarantee, we call that a “safety net” with marketing, assuring the buyer their money is safe and returnable.
Using Facebook for affiliate marketing.
Using Facebook with my strategy for affiliate marketing sales comes down to 3 different URLs you can share without getting into trouble. But you cannot and must never share affiliate links directly on Facebook.
Bridge Pages.
Affiliate Niche Storefronts.
Medium Stories.
With Facebook, you must create your own Facebook pages and groups. That way you can share your content with your own groups and pages to maintain consistency and quality.
With Facebook groups and pages, each has one specific area where you include your URLs as mentioned above. Facebook groups (add to pinned posts). Facebook pages (use the call-to-action button) and redirect to the URL.
But you can also share these links in your Facebook feed, without getting into trouble on Facebook. Canva sites, Google sites, Medium stories, and affiliate niche storefront URLs are accepted on Facebook.
Affiliate links are not accepted! Sometimes you might find a post gets accepted with an affiliate link. But beware. As soon as someone reports you (and they will), or Facebook notices it, you’re done!
You need one of the above-mentioned URLs to drive Facebook traffic to your affiliate offers. Please do not deviate from that in an attempt to “make money faster”. Not going to happen!
It will take time to create these bridge pages and even more time to write Medium stories worthwhile reading. Because you must have sufficient knowledge to solve problems and offer solutions.
Leveraging Medium with affiliate marketing.
Medium stories play an important role in the majority of these content marketing strategies, especially when you do not have your own blogs and websites. Because you mainly share the link to your Medium story.
In fact, if you don’t feel like creating bridge pages, then Medium is one of your best options because Medium allows affiliate links. But there are rules with affiliate marketing and Medium, which we will get shortly.
As you can see above, this is like your Medium “superpower”, getting your Medium stories indexed in search engines. The perfect way to get (indirect) search engine traffic to your affiliate offers.
As illustrated, the indexed Medium story is about using Google Ads for affiliate marketing and is also one of my most-read stories currently on Medium.
When you use Medium for affiliate marketing, I strongly suggest focusing on the 4 below mentioned thoughts. Use a quote block (pull quote by clicking the quote icon twice), a cloaked URL (with a specific tool), or using your bridge page.
Quote Block.
Cloaked URL (Pretty Links Lite)
Bridge Page.
Affiliate Disclosure.
Every Medium story you publish that contains affiliate offers, or links to bridge pages with affiliate offers, must contain an affiliate disclosure somewhere in the post. Personally, I include mine in the footer.
With Medium, to the best of my knowledge, you can share affiliate links directly. And I even did a Google search on that, which delivered the below-illustrated confirmation.
But personally, I prefer sharing links cloaked with Pretty Links Lite, or bridge pages of some sort. Because often, not all affiliate links are indexable in search engines. I just prefer sharing indexable URLs.
With using Medium for affiliate marketing, besides the advice you find here. I strongly suggest you read and understand the Medium Rules thoroughly. Because this is just a basic guide through a compilation of affiliate marketing strategies I personally use.
We will get to the cloaking plugin to cloak affiliate links under the last heading of this article” Indexing affiliate links in search engines.”. Because it turns your affiliate offer into an indexable URL, I prefer sharing those on Medium as opposed to direct affiliate links.
But you also want to use the share options provided by Medium, namely Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This is where your own Facebook pages and groups come into play as mentioned earlier.
With the Facebook sharing option on Medium, you can select to share to your Facebook feed, Facebook groups, or Facebook pages you own.
But with all 3 sharing options (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) you also have the option to pin or feature the post on your profile. When you choose to pin and feature your Medium story, that will be the first thing people see when visiting your profile.
That is why your story featured image or the first image you use in your Medium story is so important. Because the featured image will display automatically on Twitter, Facebook, and Medium.
In order for your image to display properly over all three social platforms, I suggest you use the “presentation” template inside Canva (a free image and video design and editing tool), so the image is 1920 x 1080.
You also want to download and upload your presentation image as a PNG file. It makes for better clarity and quality, but it also helps with faster loading time. Just something I picked up “along the way”.
Affiliate marketing with Quora answers.
Quora Answers work really well with affiliate marketing, but you cannot share affiliate links directly. Instead, you will be sharing your Medium stories in your Quora answers.
But you must write lengthy answers (long-form content) and focus on providing an answer that solves the problem. Adding your Medium story to the answer must add value to the conversation and must be on topic.
Your Quora answer must not be primarily about getting readers to your Medium story. It must offer a solution and a proper answer to the question that solves the problem, regardless of whether the reader visits your Medium story or not.
It’s called building a reputation, getting recognized, and gaining your audience’s trust. It must never be about the sales, but rather the quality of the solution that your content offers.
As seen above, an example of the kind of questions you might want to focus on with Quora. The Question follows, and the number of answers. In this case, a rather popular question with a lot of answers.
The “trick” however is to take a look at some of those answers, and then come up with a better answer, and better solutions. No matter what you do online, the quality of your content is the only way to stand out.
You can then also share your Quora answer in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter posts. But you will have to write the post and then include your Quora answer link.
As far as I know, the automated option to share Quora content on Facebook and Twitter only applies to your Quora profile. With a tiny share arrow to the top right-hand-side of your Quora profile.
If you click on that, then the drop-down window will include the Facebook and Twitter sharing icons. Unfortunately, LinkedIn is not yet an automated sharing option here.
Next up, oh, you’re going to love this! Getting Google Ads USA targeted traffic to your affiliate offers for $0.012 cents per 30-second ad view! This a really simple strategy I stumbled on in my search for quality buyer traffic!
Google Ads and Affiliate Marketing.
Anyone who has tried Google ads for affiliate marketing might agree, that getting your ad approved can be a nightmare. Then there is the cost, Google ads can be expensive and often turn out to cost you a lot of money with not a single sale in sight. Plus, you pay for clicks, regardless of how long your ad gets viewed.
There are however 2 types of URLs that I have tested with this Google ads strategy, and all these URLs are accepted with the Google Ad strategy I am about to show you.
Canva Websites.
Google Sites.
Below you can see one such ad I have placed with Google Ads just to demonstrate the targeting and cost of the ad. Targeting a USA audience, targeting a specific interests audience, and targeting even gender where applicable.
Gender is usually targeted when the product targets a specific gender, like “women’s health”, or “men’s health” for instance. But in my case (digital marketing) I am targeting both genders.
I’m paying 22 to 53 (South African Rand ZAR) cents per view of 30 seconds or longer. That roughly calculates to 0.012 cents per 30-second ad view in dollars. Rather refreshing in comparison to the normal one-dollar something per click, right?
With this add strategy, you score in 2 different ways (as if 0.012 cents per USA visitor is not enough), well, 3 then. Because you get both YouTube video views AND interest-targeted USA visits to your affiliate link (bridge page). Because you also get to leverage a call-to-action button.
You can redirect the call-to-action button with this Google ads strategy to any of your bridge pages (Canva Websites Or Google Sites), as mentioned above. But you can not use affiliate links directly.
It is not a Google Ad as such though, but rather a back door through YouTube. That is why you might want to read this Medium story on how to get USA-targeted Google ads traffic to your affiliate offers for $0.012 cents per 30-second ad view!
Indexing affiliate links in search engines.
This one raises eyebrows every time! How the heck do you index affiliate links in search engines, for one, no ping tool will accept affiliate links! Well, you index the affiliate link in search engines without indexing it. Sounds even more insane.
Hear me out, I know this sounds pretty impossible to believe. But I can assure you I have indexed a few of my top affiliate products in major search engines like Google this way.
In order to be able to leverage this strategy, you will however need your own hosted domain. Because with a free blog or domain, you cannot use plugins. And you’re going to need to use a plugin for WordPress called Pretty Links Lite to cloak your affiliate links.
What happens when you cloak your affiliate link this way, is that the affiliate URL is turned into a slug with the primary domain. That is why you need to have a hosted domain. You also get to choose the keywords to use in your slug.
Now, instead of the long and ugly, unacceptable affiliate URL. You have a URL redirecting to your affiliate product that looks like a blog post or a blog page. Meaning, it is now an indexable URL in all major search engines!
As you can see in the screenshot below, I’m not kidding you. “Simple Traffic Solutions” is a Clickbank product among the list of products I chose to promote. It is indexed in search engines!
But you will also notice that the primary domain is that of my own blog. With the slug area /web-traffic-solutions. Targeting the product topic because this affiliate offer is about getting more web traffic.
See, when you cloak your affiliate URL with Pretty Links Lite, the following happens. And it’s all about your primary domain, it turns your affiliate link into this. (HTTPS : // your domain (dot) com (or whatever) / affiliate-product-keywords-slug)
And there you have 5 ways that you can make money with affiliate marketing. Along with the choice to choose between paid or free traffic. Either way and in my opinion, you are bound to generate some sales.
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AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: Some of the links in this post are links to affiliate offers. If you visit them to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is entirely up to you. All offers come with a full money-back guarantee!
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