Blogging for affiliate marketing is becoming more popular and attractive than ever. Of course, you don’t just want to blog for fun, you perhaps want to earn something out of blogging! Here, affiliate marketing plays its role. Tailored affiliate programs for bloggers are one of the best ways to earn some cash from your blog. Well, finding the best blogging platforms to make money is the best place to get started!
These platforms’ different capabilities and functionalities can set you on the path to success in creating that profitable affiliate marketing blog. You are perhaps wondering what is the best blogging platform to make money or how to start a blog for affiliate marketing. Well, this quick guide will delve in deeper and tell you everything you need to know about blog platforms for affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing where you market the goods/services belonging to another entity (merchant). In return, you earn a commission for every sale or sign-up the merchant makes through you. It is becoming a nice way for bloggers to leverage their blogging platforms to make money.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
It is common to meet questions like, does blogging make money, or is blogging profitable? The answer is yes you can make money blogging using avenues like the right affiliate marketing opportunities! Affiliate marketing has been around for a while, yet many bloggers still don’t understand how it works.
Put simply, a blogger creates promotional content about the product/service of another company.
The blogger can add an affiliate link that will direct potential buyers to the brand’s/company’s website. If the customer buys the product, the agreed percentage of commissions goes to the blogger.
As a blogger, your role is to find a market for the company’s/brand’s goods/services through your blog. You will have to research the best blog topics for affiliate marketing. This will help you attract affiliate marketing partnership deals.
You will also need to fine-tune the content to attract customers and convince them to buy easily. It is a model designed to be a win-win arrangement for merchants and bloggers!
Blogs & Affiliate Marketing
Blogging and affiliate marketing work in tandem. Brands need authoritative blogs to help convert customers. Bloggers need affiliate marketing to convert traffic to cash.
Authoritative bloggers create content for blogs which varies depending on the target niche. The content and aesthetics are designed to attract the audience and keep them reading through the content. There have been many blogs that have grown into successful stories. Talk about Huffpost, Moz, Techcrunch, Engadget and the likes. Bloggers can write about different niches to attract more traffic to their blogs.
Of course, building a Huffpost is easier said than done but they also started somewhere. The good news is that these days you don’t have to be a seasoned expert. With the right information, you are good to go and build a successful blog for affiliate marketing.
The first step in the right direction is to find a suitable niche. Niches are primary determinants of the traffic volume on your blog/site, and you cannot afford to neglect them. Focus on the niches that are attractive to audiences. With the right niche, you will find it easy to find products for affiliate marketing. There are probably many other bloggers out there posting the same topic. You should work to stand out above your competition.
Another critical aspect you ought to get right is to use a good blogging platform. A good blog platform has proper underlying infrastructure allowing you to generate and edit content to meet your needs and post it to the audience. It will also have tools you can use for your affiliate marketing partnerships.
Remember, different blogging platforms offer different capabilities.
You will need to understand your needs and choose a blogging platform that fits you. You can choose to use free blogging platforms, but you ought to know which platform is best for affiliate marketing.
How to Pick the Right Blogging Platform
As aforementioned, you can’t afford to pick the wrong blogging platform for affiliate marketing. You want platforms for blogging that ticks their boxes and makes blogging successful.
As a blogger, you should consider the best factors in picking the right blogging platform. Some of the plausible factors include:
- Ease of use- choose a blogging site that is easy to use yet powerful. You don’t want to struggle during setup and installation. If you don’t have the needed technical skills, try those blogging platforms that are intuitive and user-friendly.
- Data Security- Data security is crucial, and you cannot afford to neglect this aspect especially if you want to attract customers and merchants. You want your information to be encrypted so that customer information remains secure and private. This is the standard for top affiliate marketing blogs; you should never climb down.
Since a blog is like a website, securing your online transactions from criminals who want to access and modify respective information is important. The trick is to find a blog platform that can assure your security. You will also need to buy an SSL certificate to secure the blog. Even the low price SSL like cheapest wildcard SSL certificate can help you fortify the security of your online connections. This way, customers will transact with you without the fear of leakage or theft of private information.
- Cost- a hosting platform can either be free or a paid self-hosting platform. Depending on your financial capability, you can choose between the two. If you want to spend less as you fine-tune your blog, then use the free blogging platforms. However, many refer to self-hosted platforms with established hosting providers. Although you will incur some costs, it is easier to build and grow your blog this way.
- Platform Capabilities- Different hosting platforms have different capabilities and functionalities for affiliate marketing blogs. The varied widgets, integrations, and plugins give different levels of customization. If you want a basic standard blog, you can easily find such features on many blogging platforms. However, better customization and personalization require more robust blogging platforms.
What are the Best Blogging platforms for Affiliate Marketing?
There are now many top-rated blogging platforms to make money from affiliate marketing. However, they offer different capabilities that suit different needs. Some of the best blogging platforms for affiliate marketing include:
Wordpress.org (WP) is undoubtedly the world’s number one affiliate marketing blogging platform. It is actually the best free blogging platforms to make money. WP boasts a huge market share in the blogging space given it powers over 43% of all websites on the web! The beauty of this platform is that it is open source, and users can build their websites within minutes. WordPress also offers additional features like an online store, selling online courses, forums, and memberships. With over 59000 plugins, you can scale up your traffic and grow your earnings through affiliate marketing.
Medium was founded in 2012, initially as a social networking website. Many people, including writers, journalists, experts, and bloggers now use it to create content. The good thing about Medium is its ease of use. However, design features are limited and hence not great for personalizing brands.
Ghost was launched in 2013 and has since grown to become one of the best blog platforms for writing. The beauty is that the platform is clean, organized, and intuitive. The hosted version doesn’t require a setup. However, there are limited options and fewer themes to personalize the site’s appearance.
This is one of the best free hosted blogging platforms suitable for building quick websites and blogs for affiliate marketing. It is one famous drag-and-drop feature that simplifies how you create websites and add blogs for small businesses. Founded in 2006, Wix has grown to over 110 million users worldwide. Although the setup is quick and easy, the free account is limited, and you cannot edit a template once you have selected it.
This popular website builder provides many nice tools to build business websites, blogs, and ecommerce stores. There is no setup requirement, and users can access free blog templates to add to their websites. This free blogging platform is however limited in features and bandwidth. Compared to other top-grade affiliate blogging platforms, Weebly also has expensive paid subscriptions but it is good if you want a quick setup.
Gator is one of the finest website builders and blogging platforms created by the popular hosting company HostGator. Like Wix, Gator provides the drag-and-drop feature to create any type of website, such as blogs, online stores, and business sites. This platform offers a quick setup, and users don’t need to worry about backups and performances because HostGator handles that. This platform has no free account, and the ecommerce features are only available on higher plans.
Blogger is another best free blogging platform to earn money or at least it is the best to get you up and running. This is one of the oldest blogging platforms that lets you effortlessly create unique and eye-catching blogs. Several easy-to-use templates help you create blogs that meet your desired styles.
The templates have flexible layouts and many background images that take your design to another level. The good thing with a blogger is that you can monetize on a free site. However, it does not work well with very long blogs.
Squarespace is another popular blogging platform suitable for artists. It provides drag-and-drop tools and beautiful templates that make creating eye-catching websites easily. Starting in 2003, this platform has gone to power several millions of websites online. The downside is that integrations are limited to a few services and tools.
Wrapping up
To sum this up, you need to create a good blog if you are to tap into affiliate marketing to make money blogging. Start by picking the right blog platform for affiliate marketing and content management. A competent SEO company can help with all this, but make sure when they ask for payments that they have a comprehensive SEO invoice template with all details to track billing and avoid errors. Pick the right niche and be consistent in creating blogs. You can start then start finding the right affiliate marketing partnership and start earning !
