Affiliate marketing has long been a good way for people with a good online presence to earn money working from home. The way it works is quite simple – you promote things on your blog, social media accounts or via email (or really any way you can think of that fits with the company’s model), and when customers buy from the site you are promoting after getting there via one of your links, you get paid a commission on the sale.
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Product Reviews
As you might expect, one of the easiest ways people have been able to promote products while retaining the credibility of their blogs – that is, without writing what reads like blatant advertising copy – is by doing product reviews. Because so many people now like to research things before they buy them and see what other real consumers think, a well placed review by a trustworthy blogger can be a good way to lead people in to buying a product. Equally, if a blog has a good following, then when the blogger reviews a new product, their readers may be interested in reading about it and ultimately buying it when they may otherwise never have heard about it.
This has been an approach that has worked well for a lot of affiliate marketers, but what if writing reviews or making video reviews doesn’t appeal to you? Can you do well as an affiliate without producing that kind of content?
Sign Up Based Affiliate Schemes
One type of affiliate scheme that lends itself to different types of content, other than reviews, is the kind of affiliate scheme that rewards you for getting people to create an account with a site or company, rather than for getting them to buy an item. There are lots of affiliate programs like this, for example for online games, dating sites, and sites like Survey Junkie that give people opportunities to make money at home. Some apps also have this kind of model, where marketing them is not about getting users to buy a product, but to join a community that makes money in other ways.
Because you are not selling a fixed product, you can be more creative in the kind of content you use to drive your readers or followers towards the goal, and don’t have to only use reviews to make the content interesting to your readers as well as promotional.
Other Ideas
If you prefer one of the affiliate programs that sells products, for example Amazon’s well known affiliate scheme, then you can still find interesting ways to write about the things you are marketing. Gift idea lists relevant to upcoming holidays can be one easy option, or you can do a comparison between two or more products (because you can include links to all of them, you can gain commission on all of the products compared regardless which you pick as the best). Alternatively, you can write things like fashion ideas, fitness programs, recipes or craft tutorials, all linking to the products that could be used to follow them.
If you are stuck in a rut of writing reviews, or want to get into affiliate marketing but the thought of reviewing a load of things leaves you cold, these are just some of the ways you can be a bit more creative with it!