How To Write An Affiliate Blog Post (My Ultimate Guide)

I was checking my inbox today and a lot of people were asking me how to write an affiliate blog post that does well not only in terms of revenue but also traffic.

This is something I struggled with a lot and I believe a whole lot of beginner affiliate blogging executors as well.

Some people give up too soon while others keep grinding until they finally figure out how to process actually works and then receive the rewards.

To give you some confidence, the affiliate marketing, and content marketing industries are worth over $12 billion and $400 billion respectively (that’s huge).

This means there’s a lot of potential if you stick to it and produce content that makes you money/affiliate commissions.

With that being said, in this post, you will discover how to write an affiliate blog post the right way to bring in revenue, profit, and highly targeted visitors each and every single month.

So, without any further ado, let’s get right into our process of writing a blog post for affiliate marketing real quick.

How To Write A Profitable Affiliate Blog Post

1. Choose the Type of Content you Want to Publish
2. Perform Search Analysis/Keyword Research
3. Complete the Research Part Properly
4. Write the First Draft
5. Proofread & Edit the Written Content
6. Add Some Illustrations or Quality Images
7. Optimize the Blog Post for SEO (On-Page SEO)
8. Add Call To Actions (CTAs) or Affiliate Links
9. Publish the Blog Post and Share it on Social

These are the nine steps you need to take for producing great blog content that generates consistent affiliate commissions as well as leads. Now, let’s look at each of them in detail.

Step 1: Choosing the Content Type

The first thing you have to do before you even open a text editor or any other tool is to decide what type of content you are going to produce.

There are so many types of blog posts you can write. You will have to choose a content format to be able to do perform the next steps properly.

Some of the blog post types are as follows;

• Listicles or list-based articles
• Product reviews
• Product tutorials
• Comparison blog posts
• How-to articles
• Guides
• Response posts

So, first of all, you are going to want to pick whether you will write a listicle, product review, or any other type of blog post.

Step 2: Performing Search Analysis

The second step plays a very important role in the whole process of writing a good-quality affiliate blog post.

Before you can go about writing an article, you will have to the search analysis. People also refer to this as ‘Keyword Research’.

This process alone can make or break your blog’s/blog post’s success. If you blindly go ahead and start writing articles/posts without even considering whether or not enough people are searching for the term and what is the overall competition, all of the hard work you put in will go wasted.

Hence, search analysis is pivotal to predict how the blog post you are going to write will perform in the long run.

There are a lot of ways you can execute this process. Either you can use tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Keywords Everywhere, or you can simply utilize Google and your instincts.

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I personally use my common sense and don’t rely highly on the tools. So, let’s say you decided to write a list-based article and you are into the website-building and hosting niche.

If you just jump right in and choose to write about something like ‘best web hosting providers’, no matter how good your article is, chances are – it’s never going to rank because there’s way too much competition and you don’t have a strong presence/high authority in the industry yet.

As you can see, I just did a search for the term ‘best web hosting providers’ and in the United States alone, there are more than 85 million results/content pieces that are competing to rank for this very term.

That’s a lot of competition and it’s really going to be extremely difficult for you to rank for the term as a new blogger/affiliate marketer.

On the other hand, if I choose to write an article on ‘best affiliate link cloaking tools’, there’s pretty low competition.

Based on the number of search results, I know that people are searching this term every month. So, I will write on the second topic instead of the first one.

This is a pretty basic method of keyword research or Search Analysis but it works for me and it should work for you as well.

If you are writing a listicle and you don’t yet have any topic in mind, you can simply go to the homepage of Google, type in a keyword related to your industry, press spacebar, and Google itself will give you tens of recommendations/content ideas which you can further analyze to see if there’s a lot of competition or not.

Once you do this trial and error method and find a topic you feel confident about, it’s time to move to the next step.

Step 3: Researching The Blog Post Content

The next step you will want to take is to do the research on the topic you chose to write the blog post on. In this process, an individual should check out the top 10 articles that are already ranking on the topic he wants to write and analyze the content formats.

When you will check out the top 10 ranking articles on the topic, you will have a rough idea of what you will cover in yours. Other than this, some of the things you can do are watch videos, read relevant articles, and talk to experts (if needed).

Generally, beginner bloggers and affiliate marketers spend a lot of time doing the research which is honestly unnecessary. You don’t have to come across as an expert in the blog post. You just have to be friendly.

So, limit the time of research and try to accomplish the research part as quickly as possible to be able to begin the writing process.

Step 4: Writing The First Draft

Once you have enough material to write the blog post, go ahead and open your WordPress or any other CMS (content management system) and write the first draft.

Make sure that you try to make as few grammatical errors/typos as possible so that you won’t have to spend hours and hours editing it.

A study by Backlinko shows that the average number of words top-ranking articles have is 1890 words. This study proves that long-form of content ranks well on Google no matter what anybody else says.

However, this should not be confused with just filling the content with fluff. To be able to rank well, you are going to want to be more in-depth, appealing, informative, and helpful than the other articles.

So, the content you write should be in-depth and have at least 1,500 words (from my experience) to lock some decent rankings, attract visitors, and more importantly conversions.

Step 5: Proofreading & Editing The Draft

The next step is to proofread and edit the initial draft you completed. We all are humans and we make mistakes. Sometimes there are going to be noticeable grammatical mistakes with the content of the affiliate blog post and sometimes it’s just going to be small typos.

Having these small errors can make you lose the entire credibility and it can turn out to be extremely unprofessional to the readers.

To make the editing and proofreading process much easier, you can utilize some tools such as Grammarly, Turnitin, and many others.

Step 6: Adding Illustrations Or Images

In my four-year journey of affiliate marketing and blogging, one of the best things I learned is presentation skills. No matter how good your content is, if you can’t present it in a certain way that makes a reader interested and engaged, it’s of no use at all.

Adding illustrations or unique images not only boosts the overall credibility and trustworthiness of the content but also makes the visitor/reader more interested to click through and check out other of your resources.

For example, this post I wrote about list building has some great illustrations and images. And it is one of the few posts that generate a hell lot of affiliate commissions for me.

Also, adding images and illustrations will send some extra traffic to your articles via Google Image Search.

Step 7: Optimizing The Blog Post For SEO

Once you get the content ready, the next thing you will want to do is optimize the post for SEO. If you don’t know what SEO means, it’s a practice of generating traffic/visitors to your website/funnels through search engines.

The biggest search engine at the moment is Google. So, in other words, you will have to optimize the post for Google SEO to ensure you get maximum traffic by securing consistent higher rankings.

If you have read my guide about digital marketing, you can learn everything about SEO in just one post.

As long as your write greatly informative and helpful content, SEO is no rocket science for you. Still, here are some best practices to ensure that you get the most out of your affiliate blog post in terms of traffic;

• Write headlines relevant to the topic
• Include your primary keyword in the URL
• Include the primary keyword in the Meta Description
• Add alternative text to images
• Add quality external links
• Add relevant internal links
• Write catchy Meta Title
• Use short URLs

If you follow these basic guidelines, your On-Page SEO is going to be quite strong to reap the benefits of higher rankings on the Google SERPs (search engine results pages).

Step 8: Adding Affiliate Links/CTAs

The eighth step you need to take in our process of writing a profitable affiliate blog article is adding affiliate links or Call To Actions (CTAs).

Although you don’t have to master a special skill to add affiliate links or CTAs but here some great tips for you to do it more effectively and differently;

• Don’t overuse the affiliate links
• Don’t try to sell to people
• Give people a reason to click
• Add creative buttons with actionable CTAs
• Don’t use discount codes (when not needed)

People are becoming smarter and smarter with time. They recognize if you are trying to sell them or provide valuable information.

So, try to keep it as normal and common as possible. You will be surprised to see that non-pushy content performs way better than the ‘cool tactics’ you learn from the YouTube gurus.

Step 9: Publish & Sharing The Post

The last and probably the most exciting step is publishing the post and then making it accessible to your social media audience or send email blasts (if you have an email list).

Sharing your affiliate blog post will not only send you some extra visitors and clicks but also, help you rank faster on Google as positive social signals are a part of Google’s ranking algorithms.

Mistakes To Avoid While Writing An Affiliate Blog Post

I have seen a lot of bloggers and marketers over the course of a few years and the wide majority of people are doing is nothing but copying what everyone else’s is doing in the industry.

So, even if you think you are writing the best content in the world, you might be making some mistakes that affect your overall trust and authority in the industry.

Let’s have a look at those mistakes real quick;

• Not paying attention to website speed
• Always promoting and searching for ‘high-ticket’ affiliate offers
• Promoting products they have never used
• Adding a lot of popups to the blog
• Not adding an affiliate disclosure

These are the common mistakes bloggers generally make while writing an article for affiliate marketing. Make sure your post loads fast enough, don’t try to push only high-commission products, never promote the products you don’t believe in, add affiliate disclosure, and last but not least – don’t add a lot of spammy popups because it’s just so annoying.

Taking care of these small things will surely make a big difference in your results.

Tips To Improve Conversion Rates Of Affiliate Articles

At the end of the day, all that matters is what’s the conversion rate, right? You can produce the most helpful content ever but if it doesn’t get you any good results in terms of money, it’s quite demotivating.

Hence, here are some sweet simple tips you can implement to increase the conversion rates of your blog posts;

1. Make a connection with the reader by using words like ‘You’ and ‘I’
2. Use a simple blog-post design
3. Limit fancy popups and notifications
4. Optimize the advertisement placements (if any)
5. Use personal images to show expertise and trustworthiness
6. Write readable paragraphs
7. Make readers engaged via storytelling
8. Use videos if possible

These are some simple strategies you as a beginner can implement to increase the conversion rates of your blog posts drastically.

In Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a pretty competitive industry and if you are not planning on producing high-quality content or in other words, write helpful blog posts that actually provide value, the success rate is going to be very low.

Following the steps and strategies I’ve mentioned in this guide, you can set yourself way ahead of the competition that’s just writing and producing mediocre content that has no strong base at all.

I hope you found this post helpful. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to jump into the comments section down below and let me know what you think.

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