How To Create An Affiliate Program & Increase Product Sales [Ep. 103]
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By Jessie Festa. This episode on how to build an affiliate program contains affiliate links to trusted partners!
Interested in learning how to create an affiliate program?
Then you’re in the right place, as in this episode of The Profitable Travel Blogger Podcast, we’ll be going over a step-by-step strategy for setting up an affiliate program that helps you increase product sales.
By the end of this episode, you’ll understand:
- Tips for setting up your affiliate program
- How to create an affiliate program in WordPress + other platforms
- How to get people to join your affiliate program
- Ideas for getting your affiliates to promote your products
- And more!
In short, if you’re looking to learn how to run your own affiliate program successfully, you won’t want to miss this!
How To Create An Affiliate Program [Podcast Episode Audio]
Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts/iTunes
Click here to listen on Spotify
Travel Blogger Resource Library (+ Affiliate Invitation Outreach Template)
To help you jumpstart your blogging success, I’ve added 55+ blogging resources like printables, video tutorials, and workbooks into a FREE resource library for travel bloggers.
These resources are meant to help you grow your traffic, community, and income faster and with less overwhelm.
This includes an Affiliate Invitation Outreach Template you can use to invite new affiliates into your program!
➡️ Click here for the free Travel Blogger Resource Library.
Build An Affiliate Program With These Helpful Tools
Teachable. This is the platform I use to create my digital products and easily create an affiliate program to help promote them.
AffiliateWP. If you’re curious about how to set up an affiliate program on your website, this plugin makes it easy to do just that.
Legal Templates from Lisa Fraley. Part of setting up an affiliate program involves having contracts with your affiliates. Luckily, attorney Lisa Fraley offers a DIY Affiliate Terms & Conditions Template you can use for this.
How To Create Your Own Affiliate Program [Episode Transcript]
When discussing how to grow a blog, the topic of affiliate marketing comes up a lot; however, what we’re usually talking about is promoting other brands as an affiliate yourself.
The thing is, if you sell any products or services on your blog, having your own affiliate program can be a savvy way to make more sales—without having to do more work.
It’s also a great way to create mutually beneficial relationships, reward other creators with income for their efforts, and make sales regardless of your own audience size.
There are a few ways to go about creating an affiliate program, which we’ll cover below.
Additionally, we’ll go over the step-by-step workflow I recommend when it comes to how to start your own affiliate program. It’s the strategy I’ve used for my own business!
🎉 Also, don’t forget to grab access to my FREE Travel Blogger Resource Library! Get access to 55+ resources that can help turn your blog into a profitable business—including an Affiliate Invitation Outreach Template you can use to invite new affiliates into your program!
Step #1: Set up your affiliate program
There are a few options for doing this:
Join an affiliate marketplace. First, there is the most obvious way, which is to sign up for an affiliate network like CJ, ShareASale, or Impact Radius.
This can help you grow your program quickly, especially as these platforms can get you in front of new bloggers who aren’t already in your network; however, they can also be quite costly and may not be affordable for many bloggers.
Use a plugin. Another idea is to use a plugin, like AffiliateWP—a robust affiliate management tool that makes it easy to create your own affiliate program through your WordPress website.
While not free, it’s typically much cheaper than going through a large affiliate network.
Utilize built-in digital product platform features. Additionally, many digital product creation platforms like Shopify and Etsy allow you to create an affiliate program directly through them.
For instance, I run my affiliate program through Teachable, which takes care of creating affiliate links and automating payouts.
Sell your products on Amazon. Wondering how to set up an affiliate program with Amazon? Sell your digital product through them!
For instance, let’s say you’re selling an ebook or a traditionally published book through Amazon. You can have people promote your product through their Amazon affiliate link.
Use a coupon code to track affiliates. This entails creating a branded coupon code, so that when it’s used you know who the sale was from.
I do this for my NYC Photo Journeys tours. I have a spreadsheet with each affiliate’s name, PayPal email, and branded code, and then I manually pay them out the day after the tour takes place.
If you want to create an affiliate program for free, this is a great option—though it’s also a lot more manual on your part and affiliates won’t be able to track their clicks and stats in a dashboard.
Instead, they’ll need to trust you to be honest and pay them out, so it can be a less attractive setup to potential affiliates.
Step #2: Create a promotional toolkit
You want to think about how to make it super easy for your affiliates to promote your products.
One of the best ways to do this is to create a promotional toolkit that contains:
- A document on getting started, with instructions on how to set up payouts, create links, and properly disclose the affiliate relationship
- Swipe copy they can use to craft emails and social media posts
- Creative assets like promotional graphics, IG reels, and story content that can be shared across social media
Step #3: Create your affiliate onboarding process
Another important piece of how to create an affiliate program for your business is onboarding your affiliates.
To do this, you can set up an automated email sequence that welcomes new affiliates into the program and gives them ideas for how they can see success—which, in turn, also means you see success.
This might include a list of promotional ideas like:
- Creating blog, YouTube, podcast, or social media content promoting the product
- Adding affiliate links to content that is already driving traffic
- Creating a tutorial or review of the product
- Sending out an email promoting the product or offering tips related to the product and then linking to it
- Adding your affiliate link to an automated email sequence or free email course
- Adding your affiliate link to a resources page linked in your main menu
You also want to make it clear how involved you’re willing to get.
For instance, would you be up for being on their podcast or co-hosting a giveaway or webinar to help them increase affiliate sales?
Or can you offer affiliates a coupon code they can promote to their followers?
Make these things clear in the automated onboarding sequence.
Step #4: Find new affiliates
The first step with this is to create an application for prospective affiliates to fill out and link it in your homepage, either in your main menu and/or your footer—which is the most common place brands link their affiliate programs.
Additionally, I recommend doing outreach to invite bloggers and influencers you’d really want to promote your products.
But, how do you find these people?
Let’s say you have a travel photography course. You can search for listicles in Google sharing the “best travel photography courses” as well as for blogs that review travel photography courses and then invite them into your program.
You might even offer them increased commission and free course access to help with promotion.
And, a little bonus here, to make this easier for you, I’ve added an Affiliate Invitation Outreach Template to the free travel blogger resource library.
Personally, I do affiliate outreach once per month.
Step #5: Let affiliates know about promotional events
Along with sharing evergreen opportunities to promote your products, also keep affiliates in the loop about any pop-up opportunities like sales and launch events—and include swipe copy and creative assets for them to use that is tailored to the event.
With this, make sure to give your affiliates enough time to plan and schedule their promotional content.
For instance, if you’re doing a Black Friday sale, don’t wait until the week of Thanksgiving to let affiliates know.
You can always let them know about the promotion as soon as you know the dates, then email them again once you have swipe copy, and then send reminders as it gets closer—including the week the promotion starts.
Step #6: Do a quarterly program check-in
See which affiliates are bringing you the most referrals, and consider how you might take your partnership with them to the next level—such as by co-hosting a giveaway or co-hosting a free webinar.
Going back to the travel photography course example, you might offer to teach a free webinar on “3 Ways To Improve Your Travel Photography” that pitches your online course at the end using their affiliate link.
They would be in charge of promoting the webinar, and you can both be live during the webinar with you teaching and them acting as a host with a familiar face.
When you do these check-ins, also track what is working and what isn’t in terms of outreach and promotional strategies.
Also, do you have any goal numbers in terms of how much income you want affiliates to be referring you? If you’re not meeting those, how can you fix this?
In short, keep doing more of what is working and refining your strategy so that you continue increasing your income with the help of affiliates.
Final thoughts on setting up an affiliate program
Alright, now I hope you enjoyed this episode on how to build an affiliate program. I hope you feel inspired and empowered to create an affiliate program that helps you make more sales.
Don’t forget to grab access to the free travel blogging resource library. There are a ton of resources in there on growing your community and increasing your blogging profits.
And of course, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes sharing these bite-sized strategies for bloggers who want to turn their blogs into profitable full-time businesses.
Happy blogging!
FAQ About How To Make An Affiliate Program To Sell Products
Now that we’ve gone over how to create an affiliate program for your product, let’s answer some frequently asked questions.
Q) How much does it cost to set up an affiliate program?
The cost of setting up an affiliate program can vary widely, from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on whether you use an affiliate network, custom software, or a platform like Shopify, Teachable, or WooCommerce which may have built-in or add-on capabilities.
It can also be free if you simply use a coupon code to track affiliate referrals.
Q) How do I create an affiliate program?
To create an affiliate program, choose a management platform or software, define your commission rates and terms, and then recruit affiliates. It’s also recommended to create a promotional toolkit to make it easy for affiliates to promote your products.
Q) How do I create an affiliate link for my business?
Creating an affiliate link for your business involves using your chosen affiliate program platform or software to generate unique URLs that track the referrals and sales made by your affiliates, which they can then share with their audience.
Q) How do I create an affiliate program using Paypal?
When it comes to how to create an affiliate program with Paypal, you would typically need to integrate PayPal payments into your affiliate tracking software or platform, ensuring you can automatically or manually pay commissions to your affiliates through PayPal based on the tracked sales.
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