Affiliate Marketing

How to Setup Amazon Native Ads and Make $$

October 20, 2016 by Katie Clark 4 Comments

I got an email today from Amazon stating that starting on November 1st, any commissions generated through Amazon Native Ads would earn a 12% commission, which is INSANE.

I think Amazon typically caps out at 8.5%, so to raise that commission during the hottest time of the year amazing.

Amazon Native Ads have been pretty successful for me. They have a higher conversion rate than text links (for me, at least), and I love how customizable they are. I have had a few people ask me how to get these set up, so here are a few tips.

First off, there are three different types of native ads available:

Search: Select a search phrase that you want to use to generate the items that show up. I think this is good when you are want a specific category of products, but not necessarily a specific product. You can see an example of that here.
Recommendations: Select categories of products that you want to show up (this is best for when you put them in the sidebar or bottom of posts automatically – doesn’t have to be as niche. My highest conversion rate is with these at 12%).
Custom: You select the items you want to show up in these ones. I select this option when I am talking about very specific products in a post. You must select four products in order for a code to be generated.

Next, where should you place them? The thing about Native Custom Ads is that they are very flexible to where you want to put them.

I recommend placing one at the bottom of your posts that shows up automatically – especially if you are a very niche blog. For Clarks Condensed, we write about multiple topics, so this doesn’t work as well (I don’t want to scare away my food fans with breastfeeding products!). You can still accomplish for multiple topics by using the custom sidebars plugin, but that’s a tutorial for another time.

I also recommend placing one in each post with products related to the topic of the post. For instance, if you are writing about a slow cooker recipe, put in an ad that has a slow cooker, slow cooker liners, etc. It’s up to you what kind of native ad you want to put here. I recommend starting with your most popular posts and going from there.

Now, how to get your Amazon Native Ads code!

First, login to your Amazon Affiliate account. At the top of your dashboard is a tab that says “Product Linking”. Hover over this, and then click on Native Shopping Ads.

When you get to this page, on the left hand side you will see something that says “Create Ad Unit” with an arrow. Here you can select what kind of ad you want. For this, I selected the Recommendation ads (I’ll show how to set up the other ones after the main tutorial):

Once you get to Recommendation ads, you can select the categories you want to show up. You can select more than one. You will move the categories you want from the “Available Categories” to “Selected Categories” using the arrows.

Then, there is a box underneath the categories that says fallbacks. If you select “search keywords” you have to put in a search keyword that will show up if no other products are available. When you do this, your code will finally appear. You can select no fallbacks and get the code…but I think it’s smart to have a fallback.

Before you copy the code, go down to “Advanced Settings”. You can select if the unit shows customized ads (based on the users search history) or not. Then, you select the ad size. I actually always choose “One Size” and “one row”. Otherwise, the responsive unit often shows up with two rows, which I think looks a little spammy.

Installing the Code

Now, select the entire code. This is what you will put on your site. If you are putting it in a post, paste it directly into the text or html mode of your post composer. Press save, and then go look at the post.

You must NOT navigate back to the visual mode, because this will mess up the code and make it not render correctly.

You can also install the code in your sidebar using a text widget (in WordPress) or an HTML unit (in Blogger). Just make sure you press save.

After you’ve installed your code, it should start showing up right away in the post!

Three Simple Tips to Maximize Affiliate Marketing

April 21, 2016 by Katie Clark 4 Comments

Affiliate marketing has been kind of my jam lately.

I shied away from it for so long, and I’m kicking myself for that. It’s quickly becoming my favorite monetization method.

If you aren’t a fan of ads or doing outright sponsored posts, affiliate marketing is an awesome option for you.

But even if you do like ads and sponsored posts (which I do!), then you should still be doing it. It’s an amazing passive way to make money.

My friend Kristina are going to be writing an affiliate marketing class soon, and I’m SO excited about it. Because of that, I don’t want to give away too many secrets. However, today I thought I’d share three simple tips that can help improve your affiliate marketing efforts!

and if you like them, be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you can find out as soon as we release the course!

1. Look at outgoing links

This is HUGE, and I’ve increased my affiliate revenue quite a bit by doing this. Every month, go and look at your outbound links. While many of these will probably be to other sites that aren’t selling something, you can occasionally find links to products or services.

When I first did this, I realized a lot of people were clicking to survey sites I had recommended in a post about my favorite survey sites. I wasn’t sure if any of these survey sites had a referral program, but a few quick Google searches revealed that they did! I quickly signed up for their affiliate programs, put the links into the post, and BAM. I was making more money instantly. Just today, I realized a bunch of people were clicking over to Happy Baby Wraps – I found out they had an affiliate program, so I signed up!

If you are on WordPress and use the plugin JetPack, it’s very easy to see outbound links. This is honestly one of the only reasons I still use that plugin. Otherwise, you can follow this tutorial to track outbound links in Google Analytics.

2. Optimize Top 10 Posts

I think a lot of people get intimidated by affiliate marketing when they have a lot of posts – where do you even start?!

I recommend going into Google Analytics, setting the time frame for the past six months, and then optimize your top 10 posts. First, go through them and see if there’s anything obvious that could be an affiliate link (so if you are writing about your favorite cooking products, it would be pretty obvious to link to those!) Then go through with a separate set of eyes and think “are there any products/services that would make sense to put in this post?”

For instance, in my post “Third Trimester Checklist“, I had no affiliate links for the longest time. So dumb, because it’s one of my more popular posts. So I went through, linked up all the obvious links, and then I tried to find ways to put in other links. For example, at first glance, you wouldn’t think that there wouldn’t really be an affiliate program for a prenatal class. However, my friend, Hilary, actually offers an online prenatal course, so I was able to sign up for her affiliate program and use it in that post. You just have to be creative!

I also recommend swapping posts with a friend – I’ve done this a few times with Hilary, and it always helps to get input from another!

3. Change Font Color

Finally, this one is really simple. Change the color of your links to really stand out! I’ve been on sites before where the link color is the same color as the plain text, and it’s very difficult (if impossible) to even realize it’s a link. You want your links to stand out – make people want to click them!

You can either change your link color in your CSS – look for something that says a { and there should be a place to change your font color. If you can’t figure that out, you can easily change your links colors manually within a post!

BONUS:
Not sure where to start? Here are a few of my favorite affiliate programs (they have tons of different companies they work with. And as you might expect, this are my affiliate links!)

Share-a-Sale – My main sales here are from Grammarly, Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleep Suit, VitaFive, and occasionally VidAngel
Escalate – I use this mainly for survey sites
Dating Divas – if you post about any parenting, marriage, or relationship type content, this is one of the BEST programs out there! They pay a nice 50% referral fee, and their cookie is crazy long!
FlexOffers – I use this to promote SwagBucks (which, if you aren’t a part of, you should definitely sign up now!), Swap.com, and U-Pack
AffiliateWindow – this is how you can become an affiliate with Etsy. You pay $5 to get started, but you’ll get that back 🙂 Being able to be an affiliate for Etsy is an awesome revenue opportunity.

I hope that this was helpful – please make sure to sign up below for our newsletter – especially if you want updates on our upcoming affiliate course!

How to Get Started With Amazon’s Affiliate Program

February 1, 2016 by Katie Clark Leave a Comment

modern laptop with cup and diary on table

Well, if you are a blogger in Colorado you have may heard the news – we can officially use the Amazon Associates Program for affiliate marketing.

This is HUGE news. While Amazon doesn’t offer the highest commission rate, the fact of the matter is this – people LOVE Amazon and do a lot of shopping on there. I was making a good amount of money from the program when we moved to Colorado and were banned from participating. I tried to swap out links to Walmart, Target, etc., but they just did not convert as well.

I mean, I may .30 cents from Walmart in December. It was bad.

Amazon can be a great program to participate in, so I thought I’d share a brief tutorial on how to best use it and get started!

First off, go to Amazon Associates and sign up!

After doing that, you’ll just have to login. On the homepage, you will see this:

This is pretty much where you’ll spend most of your time. If you have a specific product you want to link to, just type that in to the “Search for a product” section that is in orange above. If you aren’t sure exactly what you want, switch over to the “Browse for a Product” and use that.

Once you have the product you want, click on the arrow to the right of the product. At this point, you can choose to copy the full link there, or a shortened version.

Alternatively, you can click on “Get Link” and you will be given a bunch of different options. You can get an image/link widget, just an image of the product, or just a link. I know a lot of people like the image/link widget because it will sometimes convert more people to buying the product.

And that’s really all you need to go started. You can start an Azon store where you can basically make a store to put on your site with your favorite Amazon products. Here is a basic one I started for The Food Nanny. I’ve also heard great things about the Amazon Native Ads if you are looking to monetize a little more through display advertising.

If you want to skip even logging into the affiliate website and just grabbing links directly from Amazon, once you become an affiliate, there is an affiliate dashboard that will show up at the top of your page. You can grab links from there.

You also must disclose on your site when you are using Amazon links. Here is a great post on how to properly do so, so you don’t get shut down!

Tips for Using Amazon Affiliate’s Program

Here are just a few ways to jump right in. I do find that it takes a little while to get traction, and you have to experiment with what your audience responds best to. Some of these tips are good for affiliate marketing, regardless of if you are using Amazon for those efforts.

Find your top postsI think the best thing you can do right now is figure out what your best posts are, and then see if you can incorporate Amazon links into it. For instance, one of my most popular posts is this post about alternatives to crying it out. I will go in and put Amazon links to the book I reference, essential oils, the Wubbanub, and more. Don’t try and force the links in – try and be organic. My friend, Hilary, has a great post about what to pack in a hospital bag where she’s put in helpful Amazon links that I recommend checking out.
Look at outgoing clicksNot everyone will easily be able to tell what people are clicking on to leave their site. If you like Jetpack in WordPress, you can see this information, and you can also set Google Analytics up to help you figure this out as well. Once you can see where people are clicking, you can find places to put links in.
For instance, say you linked to a set of pots and pans that you enjoy using in a post and people are ALWAYS clicking on it! Well, go find that same set on Amazon, replace the link, and
I find this to be super effective, because you know that people are clicking on that link, and chances are, someone is going to buy from it. I do this every month or so, just because some links start performing well out of nowhere.
Make links open in new windowThis is just a good technique for any outgoing link – but make sure your links open in a new window so they aren’t taken away from your site!
Keep your eye open for salesThis is really helpful especially during the holidays. People are always up for a good deal, and Amazon is so easy to buy from. If you see something that looks like a killer deal, don’t be afraid to share with your readers. Just make sure you put #affiliate in that post!
Make a “Best of” or “Recommended Products” section on your siteMake it easy for your readers to know what products you recommend they use! You can put this at the end of posts (I’ve seen people put the image widgets at the end saying “these products were used in this post). Or you can do something like Tried and Tasty did at the bottom of her home page, where she has niche specific guides to different products.
Put links in Every postDo this organically, but if you aren’t putting affiliate links in every post, you are missing out. You never know when a post will go crazy, or when people will just really be interested in a product you have to mention.
And the thing is, even if they don’t buy that specific product, they may buy something else. So many of my former Amazon sales were from products people bought after they initially went to Amazon through my link.
Share interesting productsThere are a couple Facebook pages I follow that are always posting the most interesting (or hilarious) products from Amazon. Ask a question or people’s thoughts on them – even if they don’t buy that product, there will be a 24-hour cookie to your Affiliate account so you’ll get credit for anything they do end up buying!
Don’t Rely On ItI know first hand how frustrating it is when all of the sudden you can’t use Amazon. I had to really learn a lot about affiliate marketing and experiment with different companies and methods to even make the amount I’m making right now from other venues. There’s no guarantees that you’ll always be able to use Amazon links. Affiliate marketing can be incredibly powerful, but as with most things when it comes to monetization, diversify. I definitely recommend using Amazon’s program, but I also recommend finding other programs that work well with your readers. I’ll be sharing a post soon on how I’ve been successful with affiliate marketing with Amazon soon, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss that post!
Be AuthenticAs with most things in blogging, be authentic. Don’t just shove affiliate links in your readers faces. I’ve seen many posts people have written that are obviously written just to make a sale, and I don’t like it. You want your readers to trust you and your recommendations. I’ve found that when they do, they are far more likely to buy something from your links anyways!