One Way to Make Money from Your Blog: How I Used Being an Affiliate Marketer for Professional Development

Shareasale landing page
Screencap of Shareasale.com landing page - a website where merchants and affiliates find each other.

*This post contains affiliate links. What does this mean? If you click a link on this page, then you create a profile or buy a product/service, I get a commission for that. You don’t pay more for the service, but you help me make a little money to support my blogging addiction.
When I first started on my blogging journey I was doing it for fun, but as time went on I realized that there’s a lot more to this blogging thing than I had anticipated. Long hours of sitting at a computer researching the next place/thing to review, going out and having an experience to share (paying for those experiences myself), typing, editing, and re-typing quality content for my readers. It's a lot of fun, but, also, expensive and a lot of work!


So, I started looking into options for making money from my blog, and I learned that bloggers can become affiliate marketers for products, services, and brands.

What does becoming an affiliate mean?

A blogger who is an affiliate for a product, brand, merchant, or service gets paid to write about them in exchange for a small commission if their readers click on their links and buy things. Sometimes merchants will give bloggers free samples of their products/services to try out, so they know exactly what they are advertising.

My Promise to You: I will only post affiliate links to things that I have tried myself and that I personally believe will benefit you.

How did I become an affiliate?


I sought out different ways to become an affiliate.

I signed up with Groupon and Amazon, and it was fairly easy. They had short and simple applications.

But I don’t want my blog to be all about trying to sell my readers products or experiences. I want to help fellow bloggers navigate these murky blogging waters, or share some fun experiences to make you chuckle.

I had to find other products to try out and advertise, so I scoured Facebook groups about blogging to find out how to connect with other companies looking for affiliates, and that’s how I found out about Shareasale.

How does Shareasale work?
You have to have a website/blog setup to sign up for an account with Shareasale - it’s like a Monster.com for bloggers/reviewers/affiliates and merchants. You create a profile and once your profile is approved, you can start looking at the merchants that are in search of bloggers/affiliates to help advertise their stuff.

NOTE: There are other websites similar to Shareasale out there, but I chose to talk about Shareasale specifically because it is the only one that I am signed up with and have found my interactions with the site to be fairly easy and pleasant.

If a specific merchant has a product or service you are interested in marketing on your blog, you can send them an application to become an affiliate.

How did I use Shareasale to find a merchant looking for affiliates?

You can read the rest of this post at ellanewriter.com.

Comments

  1. JessicaAugust 22, 2017 at 7:21 PM

    Great post! You helped me better understand how Sharesale works! I haven't had a chance to explore the site yet. Now I'm excited to get started.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. E. L. LaneAugust 23, 2017 at 8:02 AM

      When I first signed up, I was really intimidated by it. But after playing around on the site for a while, I found that it's easier to manage than it looks. lol

      Delete

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