During your time as an affiliate marketer, you will create hundreds, if not thousands of affiliate marketing links… This is the way that the merchant you are promoting knows who sent the customer to them, so they know who to pay. Your affiliate marketing links will be unique to you, and you will find your promotion stats on the merchants website to check which products you are promoting are converting through to sales.
For example……
Lets say you have a niche that promotes festival paraphernalia. This could be tents, raincoats, instant cameras, water bottles, backpacks, wellies, solar showers or even vintage festival t-shirts. You might be promoting all sorts of festival stuff, things that anyone doing the rounds through the summer would be glad to get all in one place, or maybe you specialise in one thing only, like the vintage festival t shirts or solar showers – great when the ones provided on the camp site give up from overuse!
The point is its a great example of a niche.. You don’t have the vintage festival t shirts yourself, you are interested in them as part of your niche, you simply need to know where they are available online and which company markets them…
Lets say that I liked this festival t shirt and it fits in well with a blog I was writing about performing acts at the latest music festival, I would add in links for the reader to go off and buy one of the shirts.
Steps To Creating A Link
- Find out who markets the shirt……eg Amazon.
- Go over to Amazon and join their affiliate programme…
- Find the product on Amazon and collect your unique link from the sitestripe bar, at the top of the page and link that onto your blog in wordpress. This means that whenever anyone comes along and reads your blog and thinks.. oh I like that t-shirt, I want one, they can click the link and go directly to amazon to purchase. You in due course will then receive a small commission from Amazon for promoting them. Its not a huge amount, a percentage of the purchase price so for a music t-shirt, its likely to be a few pounds or dollars, but they all add up..
To know where to find affiliate marketing links, read ‘Where Are All The Affiliate Programs‘ blog for more information on how to find your affiliate links.
Types of Affiliate Marketing Links
Amazon makes it very easy to find the link for their product. Once you are an affiliate member of Amazon, you will see the site stripe at the top of the page…. This is where your affiliate link is located.
You can take the text only/ Image only/text and image to embed the code given onto your website…. Be sure you know how to embed Amazon links properly, they have specific rules as to how this should be done. Never screen shot any of their products.
Some affiliate companies give you a single code to use for the whole of their website, so you can only link to their homepage and your customer then would navigate to the desired page. These tend to be much smaller companies which are really great for those ‘nifty’ gadgets or gear… I have one or two like this. I keep their details in Asana on a code section so they are handy to find.
Most companies are part of affiliate networks like Linkshare which, will allow you to apply to your chosen company’s affiliate marketing program, like Macy’s or John Lewis within their interface. Once you have been accepted onto their program you can get banners for advertising, links to promotions they might be running but also links to the specific product you are looking for. The interface will also allow you to make custom links so you can send your customer directly to the page of interest, making the purchase process easier, hoping this will encourage your customer to buy.
Each company will have their own percentage of commission, so check those out when you apply to their programs.
The custom links you receive from the affiliate network for your chosen company can then be embedded onto your site by using a link button or a highlighted word that once clicked will take your customer directly to the product.
Take a look at the photo of the previous section. I have highlighted ‘link button’ words, which is the first step in adding a link to your blog.
Then you click the link icon which brings up a little strip for you to type in the page that you are linking to. You can do this either by visiting that page and copying the link from the browser or by typing www.yourwebsite.com/the-name-of-the-article. That will create the link.
Amazon, once you are an affiliate, will allow you to collect your link from the site stripe once you have located the item you want. This yellow highlighted link is the link you put into the box above where it says ‘paste URL…. ‘ then you click the left hand arrow and the link is set.
This is how you set an affiliate link. Different companies pay out different percentages for their affiliate marketers so the more traffic you can attract to your website, the higher the chance that they will follow your links and purchase something from one of your affiliate companies.
If you would like to start your own website, and have not heard of Wealthy Affiliate, go take a look, there is so much more information there to help you on the way.
I have had to explain what an affiliate link is to many people over the past 4 years, as I often get asked what I am doing these days, and affiliate marketing is one way that I earn a full-time income online. Having this article that explains what they involve in detail is handy.
After I give them the elevator speech on what an affiliate link is and entails if they have further questions I will refer them to your page, as you do a very good job drilling down on the ins and outs of affiliate links. When I first started I had such questions too.
I do have a question for you regarding creating and using affiliate links. I have heard of others taking your link if it is not safeguarded and redirecting traffic to their own links. This means that you will not get paid a commission, they will. This is not ethical but I understand it happens.
Do you use any special safeguards for your affiliate links? I used to not worry about it, but as I get more of them out there, it can happen and I would like to avoid that. Perhaps there is a tool or cloaking mechanism that we can use?
Thanks Dave, so pleased my article has been useful… I have not heard of anyone stealing your affiliate links, the only way to do that would be to have access to the back end of your website and insert their own affiliate link.
Another great post here as links are really important when it comes to affiliate marketing. Thank you for explaining how to create a link in a such a straightforward manner. I do like the variety and look of Amazon links. They are also easy to implement, I agree. I’ll be checking out Asana a bit further for sure. Thanks for a thorough post on page links here and again a reference to a great product in Wealthy Affiliate, well done!
Thankyou ! Its very rewarding offering help that really works. Asana is a really useful tool, keeps me on track!
I am a new member in the affiliate marketing program of Wealthy Affiliate site. Thanks a bunch for showing the different steps of creating a link through this article. It’s helpful. I am still having the training, I already got some idea of how I can promote any product to the targeted customers. I will get more idea once I finish the training and afterward I will move to the next steps.
Well done Fahim… Every step is important on the pathway to success. Wealthy Affiliate is a huge community so ask for any help you need.
Thanks for explaining about affiliate marketing link. When I applied for an affiliate program, I was confused about what I should do with their affiliate links. Turns out that I need to add my affiliate ID manually for their product link. I want to ask about affiliate links. Is it generally alright if I use a link shortener (like bit.ly) to track my affiliate link clicks, or will it mess my affiliate tracking? Thanks
You need to be careful with some links, like Amazon links, you cannot change these in any way otherwise they may revoke your membership to their affiliate program. There is a plugin called Pretty Links that makes them look better, so you can use them on other links but not Amazon. I havent had any affiliate links that I have added my id to, my affiliate programs gives me the link in its entirety, then I use it to link to a sensible word in the text. Pretty Links doesnt affect the effectiveness of your tracking
HI there,
This article is very helpful, I am new to the Affiliate world, and I didn’t really know how to create a link in my website.
I have bookmarked your article so I can follow the instruction when I’ll need to. Just a question, please. Is there a limited number of letters or code we can put in the link box? Or it doesn’t matter? Thank you very much for this excellent post!
Thankyou Daniella for your comments. Usually you are given the code by the affiliate marketer and this should be used in its entirety.
This article has made it much clearer to me on what affiliate links are and how they can be used, but I am still a little confused when it comes to applying for affiliate programs through an affiliate network, in order to get my affiliate link for a product from an affiliate network, do I just need to sign up with that network and then have access to all the programs to choose anyone I want or do I have to sign hp with the network and then also sign up with programs individually within the network in order to get their affiliate link for my site?
Secondly, if you don’t mind, I would appreciate if you can throw a little light for me on what it means to shorten affiliate links and if it’s of any importance?
Thanks and hope to hear from you soon.
Thankyou Queen for your comments and questions. When you sign up for CJ or Twin – the affiliate merchants, you then need to sign up for the individual affiliate programmes. Some will automatically accept you, some will have to be manually approved. The shorter links don’t actually affect the way the link works, they are just smarter looking on your website.