Promoting affiliate links within your blog posts is a great way to increase your passive income, especially if you’re also optimizing these posts for SEO and buyer-intent keywords. But, did you know there are other lesser-known ways to promote affiliate partners? In this post, I’ll be sharing some of my personal favorite ways to grow my affiliate income as a travel blogger.
I recommend implementing a variety of strategies to really help maximize your earnings! On that note, let’s dive into the strategies.
Reminders:
- It’s always important to check whether your affiliate allows a certain type of promotion before implementing it.
- Always disclose when you’ve used an affiliate link.
Strategy #1: Include a Summary Box Under Your Blog Post Introduction
While creating in-depth, valuable content is important, not everyone has time to read your entire 5,000-word blog post. To help give these readers who are short on time the information they’re looking for–while also increasing your affiliate income–consider adding a summary box underneath your blog posts.
There are several ways to do this. For instance, you might:
- Include a relevant “pro tip” that will help them take action on the content quicker, such as by recommending Omio as a user-friendly platform for booking public transport in a guide on how to get around Italy
- Include your top pick(s) if it’s a listicle, such as your top 3 hotel picks in a roundup
- Include a summary of a longer post, like a travel guide
Pro Tip
I recommend making this box a different color so that it stands out within the content. You can easily create this within WordPress by using the Gutenberg editor and changing the color behind your chosen text.
Strategy #2: Create a Resources Page With Affiliate Links
As you begin growing an audience, people will likely ask you for your recommendations. Why not make these easy for them to find by creating a resources page related to your niche–that also includes affiliate links!
So, if you’re in the budget travel niche, you might recommend products and services like WeGoTrip (offering budget-friendly audio tours), Hotellook (makes it easy to compare hotel prices), and Economybookings.com (helps you find budget-friendly car rentals).
Pro Tip
Make sure to link this resources page in your blog’s main menu so that people visiting your website can easily find it. You’ll also use this page again in our next strategy.
Strategy #3: Optimize a Free Email Course for Affiliate Links
I’m a huge proponent for growing an email list, though one question that often comes up is what opt-in freebie to offer. One of my favorite types of opt-in freebies is an email course, as it can act as both an opt-in freebie and an automated welcome sequence – and you can include affiliate links!
Going back to our budget travel example, this could mean creating a 5-day email course on “How To Maximize Your Travel Budget” and include affiliate links in the lessons. A lesson on saving money on flights could easily include affiliates like AirHelp.
Pro Tip
Remember that resources page you made in the last strategy? Share it in the welcome email of your course!
You can say something like: “ps. I created this list of recommended budget travel resources. Bookmark it for later, as I regularly update it!” and include a link.
Want to see an email course in action? Check out my 5-day How To Make Money Travel Blogging email course.
Strategy #4: Create a Quiz That Recommends Affiliates
Not only are free quizzes fun to make, but they can also be optimized for affiliate links in the results.
Let’s say your niche is Berlin travel. You might create a quiz that shows people their perfect Berlin itinerary based on their personality. These itineraries can include recommended hotels, tours, insurance, etc that utilize your affiliate links.
Pro Tip
A free quiz also makes for a great email opt-in. Personally, I don’t recommend making it mandatory for people to opt-in to get their results as this can be a poor user experience; however, you can offer more in-depth results if they do agree to opt-in or include a relevant opt-in freebie in the results.
Strategy #5: Co-host a Virtual Event
Reach out to affiliates you’re already doing well with to see if they’d be interested in taking your relationship to the next level through strategies like co-hosting webinars, giveaways, and challenges. I’ve personally done all of these in my own blogging business, and it’s a great way to boost affiliate sales quickly.
For instance, let’s say you decide to host a free challenge for your community. Before launching it, you’ll want to have two goals:
- A goal for helping your audience have a certain transformation, solve a problem, or learn a skill
- A profit goal—such as increasing sales to a certain affiliate
Let’s say you want to make more money with SuperTravel. You might create a free challenge aimed at helping people travel on a budget, and then encourage them to sign up for the SuperTravel app – and also ask the affiliate partner to supply a discount code to entice people to book through them.
Pro Tip
Make doing outreach a regular part of your strategy. Personally, I set aside at least one full day each month to do this. I call it my Outreach Days Strategy, and it is powerful!
Bonus Tip: Utilize Travelpayouts Tools to See Success
Along with having an array of affiliate tools that can help you promote your links – from deep links to widgets to forms and even white label capabilities – Travelpayouts also has a number of innovative tools like:
- Delegated Access. This makes it possible to give limited access to team members – like your virtual assistant – so you can delegate tasks. This allows you to spend more time creating content and running your blogging business, so that you can earn more income.
- LinkSwitcher. With this, you can quickly change non-affiliate links from brand partners – as well as affiliate links from direct brand programs and other marketplaces like CJ and AWIN – into Travelpayouts affiliate links.
There are many benefits to doing this, like:
- Receiving regular monthly payments without delays
- Accessing a variety of affiliate programs and promotional tools
- Accessing one dashboard showcasing a variety of travel affiliate programs in one place (vs needing to look up program stats individually)
- The ability to unlock reward rates as you make more sales
- Amazing customer support
On that note, I hope you found these strategies helpful. These are really just the tip of the affiliate marketing iceberg, so feel free to get as creative as you’d like. Just remember to always disclose when using affiliate links and to check program terms to ensure you’re always acting in accordance with them.
What are your favorite ways to grow your affiliate income?
