10 Best Ways to Generate Traffic for your Affiliate Products

It is after the application process that the real work begins. Now that you have a product or service to promote, you can now start gathering traffic and funneling them towards your affiliate links. There are multiple methods on how you can do this. You will learn the effective methods to generate traffic for your products in affiliate marketing and make money in this guide, even without spending any money.

Free & Paid Methods to Drive Traffic to your Affiliate Products

The Paid Traffic Methods

First, you can use paid methods as a source of traffic. You can use advertising platforms that allow affiliate links and pay for the clicks or the views that you ad gets. With this method, you are spending money to make money. You will need a bankroll of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to make this strategy work. You will also need to make sure that you follow the guidelines set by the affiliate advertisers.

Most of them will restrict you from using certain keywords in the advertising targeting. If you are selling Adidas wears for example, the affiliate program contract may restrict you from using the keywords like Adidas. They do this to prevent affiliate marketers from competing with the mother company in the advertising bidding.

Some other paid traffic methods include:

Paid social media traffic from ads run social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
Paid traffic from top search engines like Google and Bing.
Paid traffic from native ad networks like Taboola, Outbrain, Rev content, Ad blade, Adsterra, etc.
Traffic from solos ads (buying clicks from someone who has already-grown email list in your product niche).

Free Traffic Methods – Spreading the Affiliate Links around the Web

The second method of sending traffic is to spread the link around the web. Harness the power of social platforms like relevant Facebook groups, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Quora, etc. to create large followings and get free traffic to your offers.

In the past, people used to do sleazy techniques to get clicks on their affiliate links. Some of them for instance, put their affiliate links in the signature part of their forum accounts. This way, when people see their forum comments, they also see the affiliate links. Many forums learned about this technique and now ban the use of links the signatures.

Some affiliate programs also allow the use of redirects and pop-ups to gather traffic. An affiliate marketer using redirect for example, may set up a page that will automatically redirect to the affiliate website. When the visitor visits that page, they are automatically transferred to the affiliate program’s landing page. The problem with this strategy is that most people who go through the automatic redirect are sent to the affiliate program’s website unwillingly. The majority of them will bounce. This excess traffic of non-buyers will eventually take its toll in the advertiser’s website. This is the reason why many affiliate programs ban the use of redirects.

Some people also use link pop-ups to send people through the affiliate link. They may set the pop-up to appear after a certain link in the website is clicked. Upon clicking the said link, another window or tab will open. This works both for desktop and for mobile browsers. When the pop-up opens, the affiliate link is triggered and the affiliate landing page starts to load. This process of sending traffic to affiliate programs is also problematic. Aside from being prohibited by most affiliate programs, browsers also tend to have pop-up blocking technology. This prevents most of the pop-ups from opening even when the right link is clicked.

See:

Content Marketing – The Best Method

The recommended way of gathering traffic for your affiliate programs is through the use of content marketing. Content marketing is simply the process of gathering internet user’s attention by using different types of content media. One has the option of using text, audio, images, videos or a combination of all these to invite people to go to your website.

News websites are a classic example of websites that use content marketing. They create news articles and accompany them with videos and relevant images. After creating them, they post their content in their social media properties. They spread their news articles through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media marketing platforms. When a person interested in the news sees the article, the headline and the accompanying image should compel them to click on the link of the article. This will lead them to the news website.

After reading the article, they may press the up-vote button for the content. Some may even share a link of the content to their friends. By doing this, they are spreading the news and increasing the reach of the news article. Other people interested in the news may also click on the article. Afterwards they may also share the content with their own social media followers, continuing to spread the news. Some people who may be looking to read that specific news article may also go to Google and do a search. Because of proper search engine optimization practices, the article landed in the top spot of the search result page with its relevant keywords or key phrases. Because of this, more people from Google will read the content. Some of the readers who are interested in the content of the article may also choose to share it with their friends.

While this may seem like a simplistic illustration of how content marketing works, this is how it happens for most content on the web. Content creators simple make the content and share them in the relevant online hotspots. They develop their skill in getting people’s attention over thousands of hours of practice.

You could also do the same with your affiliate marketing business. You could lure internet users to go to your website by creating and sharing content that are relevant to their interests and needs. In the process of viewing your content, they should also see the affiliate ads that you share in between your web pages. A percentage of them will click on these marketing materials and make a purchase. You will receive a percentage of the sale amount that your referred customers spend.

Email Marketing

This involves collecting interested users’ active email with the main aim to notify them about new offers. The best way to capture interested users’ email is through the use of landing pages.

A landing or squeeze page can be created as an informative article, or as a way to collect your site visitors’ information, such as their active email address or phone number. You can create beautiful landing pages with software like clickfunnels, leadpages, instapages, etc. Landing pages will also enable you to install tracking pixels. These pixels can be very useful in order to re-target the visitors that did not purchase or opt in to your offer for a fraction of the price.

In my opinion, collecting emails should be a must for any affiliate marketer. What many marketers will tell you to do is to send traffic directly to the offer or to an advertorial, and although it is possible to make some money doing it that way, failing to create an email list could result in losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run because you will not be creating a real business. I can’t stress enough about the importance of growing an email list. Many people don’t do this because growing an email list can take more time, but trust me, you will be glad that you did it.

A customer’s email list, when used correctly, is used to interact, help, and generate trust with people. It is not another way to spam them with unrelated offers every day or sell them on crappy products. Once you grow your list to a few thousand members, it will become a great asset to your business because you will no longer have to rely on paid traffic to reach potential customers.

How Does an Email List Work?

Let’s say that you promote a product on the weight loss niche. In order to get people into your list, you must first target them with a free offer (also known as “lead magnet”). This could be a free report on anything that people will be interested in. Your free offer should provide good information and add value to their lives. Also, the image used should portray something worth giving away an email address for.

Once you have your free offer ready, you will then send traffic to a landing page created with the sole purpose to encourage visitors to exchange their active email addresses for the free report. Your goal is to get as many people to subscribe to your list as possible, because once they do, you can continue to reach out to them without having to purchase traffic from expensive traffic sources.

Note that creating an email list should not be solely to make money without adding value to your subscribers’ lives. You should be dedicated to truly help these people with their problems. If you do this right, your subscribers will always patronize the products and services you recommend. In return, you will make not only really good commission, but some of your subscribers will also invite their friends to join your email list, thereby helping to grow your list for free.

Check:

12 Tips to Help You Build an Efficient Email Marketing Contact List

Conclusion

You have learnt some free and paid ways to drive traffic to your affiliate products, promote them, and make money. With some of the tips revealed in this article, you can start affiliate marketing without spending any money. Feel free to try out some of these strategies and discover the ones that yields the best result for you.

Do you have any question regarding to this topic? Feel free to drop it in the comment section. Enjoy!