Affiliate marketing is scary. I get that. I had trouble figuring it out and continue to learn how to do a better job today. With that, I thought it’d make sense to bring in an expert in the field to chat about this whole business of making money through links. It’s jam packed with info so hope you enjoy!
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Summary
For the next hour, I sit down with Jeannine of Affiliate Window to chat about affiliate marketing. What makes this interview so interesting is that instead of hearing from someone who’s any other guru that doesn’t know anything about travel, Jeannine’s actually been on both sides of the fence. She a travel journalist turned blogger turned affiliate marketing manager. In this episode, I drill deep into what affiliate marketing is all about and strategies that relate to travel bloggers.
In this particular episode, you will learn
- About Jeannine Crooks
- Start and rise as a travel journalist
- Inspiring stories as a writer
- Shift to digital
- Going client side – marketing
- Transition to Blogging
- Writing style is different
- One trip can result in multiple blog posts
- More control in final product
- Affiliate Marketing
- What is affiliate marketing?
- More than just banner ads and more about linking to the right destinations
- Share links in writing to say an Orlando hotel
- Commission based
- Can continue earn money on links forever…evergreen monetization opportunities
- Make money from your good writing
- Change in mindset – Serving your readers (not selling out) – Put link into your article so people don’t have to guess about what places you’re talking about
- Beauty of affiliate marketing is that you get commission on total sale and is valid for a number of days even after the click
- Tip: Add a “Before you go” section
- What is affiliate marketing?
- Affiliate Window
- Largest affiliate in the world
- Making affiliates easier with convert-a-link tool (and WordPress plugin)
- Has an opportunity marketplace built in
- Chrome extension available
- Partnership with FMTC
- Affiliate Marketing Strategies for Travel Bloggers
- Nothing wrong with using affiliate links for articles you write for say tourism boards
- Banner ads don’t work but can work if they are paired with a text link in the article
- Include lots of contextual text links that are deep link (direct link to hotel as opposed to home page)
- Work with bigger partners because they will most likely stick around. Small partners may go away.
- Super huge programs like Amazon pay the lowest commission so you lose out on quite a bit of money so think about working directly with merchants (i.e. Lonely Planet)
- There’s an affiliate program for just about everything
- Think outside of just booking travel (i.e. Etsy, travel gear)
- Linking
- People respond well to brand names
- 2-4 words as anchor text
- Open in a new tab – Easy for user to return back to the original article
- Leverage Pinterest
- Don’t be afraid to re-post old content on social media for posts that have affiliate links
- Affiliate Network vs In-House Affiliate Program
- Adv: Does not have resources for technological innovations, single place of login (consolidated dashboard), more technical support, handles a ton of currencies
- Disadv: Get to know them better
- Same commission percentages (a requirement for Affiliate Window)
Links mentioned in this episode
- Affiliate Window
- Affiliate Summit West experience
- Tim Ash – on link optimization
- FMTC – discount feeds
- Affiliate Marketing 101 for Travel Bloggers
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Hi Will, thanks so much for this podcast, it’s super-useful and I’ll definitely be signing up for Affiliate Window!
I was wondering about one thing, though – how is it with do-follow and no-follow links when it comes to affiliate sales? Do you know?
Hey Veronika! I’ve actually just messaged Jeannie to find out. I would assume that no-follows are totally fine as I’ve done that before. When I use Pretty Link to create my links, I always set those to no-follow if that helps at all.
Thanks, Will, that does help 🙂 Still curious about hearing what Jeannie says too 😉 Have a great Tuesday!
hey will – great podcast! i hadn’t heard of affiliate window before (i mainly use CJ and linkshare). do you have an invitation code for affiliate window that you could send me? do you know why they charge you $5 upfront? seems kind of strange/sketchy that they do that..
Hey Sher! I know this is a little behind but yes if you click on any of the Affiliate Window links in the blog, you’ll be supporting Travel Blog Breakthrough.
The $5 upfront was a bit strange to me as well and unique to Affiliate Window but it’s one way to know that you’re a genuine person. It’s a way to weed out the people that aren’t serious and is a small incentive to actually try to make money through their platform.
As someone that uses their network, I can say that I’ve gotten several cheques from them already. They are legit!