Why You Should Use Affiliates For Your Products

Affiliate links | Back in October of 2018, I released my very first eBook. In April 2019, came the second. I realise I’m talking about them as if they’re children but to me, they are my babies. I put a LOT of time and effort into them, not only in the creation and writing process but also every day thereafter in terms of promotion. The promotional aspects of having your own online products can take a LOT of energy. But as business owners, you want to make money, right? So today I’m talking about why you should use affiliates for your products!

Photo by Eleonora Topa on Unsplash

Up until this year, my eBooks were available to buy on the ecommerce site, Payhip. I enjoyed using Payhip, it was easy and straightforward but the only downside for me was their affiliate scheme. You can sign people up as affiliate but then YOU have to organise their % of payment yourself. As someone who’s notoriously bad at math… you can see why this wasn’t an option for me.

You can find both of my eBooks here!

So this year, I moved over to Gumroad to sell my eBooks, as Gumroad offers a straightforward affiliate programme in which you can sign affiliates up, assign them products to sell and a % of the income and voila. Gumroad does the rest for you! I’m not trying to pit one site against another but for me, Gumroad was the way forward.

So, why should you use affiliates for your products?

It wasn’t until this year that I actively started using affiliates for my eBooks. Partially due to the platform I was on, partially because I hadn’t really thought about it. Hindsight is a wonderful thing because of course I’m kicking myself now for not using affiliates for my products sooner. I now have 7 affiliates on my books, who receive 30% commission for every sale. One of my affiliate has earned me $95!

There are a ton of benefits to having affiliates. So let’s look at some reasons why you should use affiliates for your products!

Your products are promoted to a new audience

Of course a lot of bloggers have similar followers, specially if their in similar niches but there’s always going to be SOMEONE that isn’t following you. By using affiliates for your products, you’re potentially opening up your products to a whole new audience. Which is absolutely what you want. You can’t keep pushing the same products to the same people.

Because either 1) they’ve already bought it or 2) they don’t need it and aren’t going to buy it. Therefore, you’re not making any extra money. This is way it’s always important to continue to grow your blog following and your work on your blog views.

Related: 6 Methods For Generating Catchy Blog Post Titles To Explode Your Blog Traffic

You’re supporting another blogger by allowing them to make money

Most bloggers want to make money in some way. When we find out that making money from our blogs is an OPTION and that so many people out there are doing it, it’s almost impossible to not want a piece of the pie. And that’s okay. Nothing wrong with making a bit of extra wedge, is there?

And by offering an affiliate programme to other bloggers, that’s a great way to support them by them supporting you. Not only are you 1) introducing your product to a new audience you’re also 2) potentially earning more money and 3) allowing another blogger to make extra cash too.

Related: 8 Ways To Save Money & Manage Your Finances

Another blogger is supporting you by promoting your products

And of course the support goes both ways. By having affiliates, it definitely shows support of you and your blog AND your products. For me personally, I won’t become an affiliate for something I haven’t already read or taken part in. I don’t want to promote something I don’t know is valuable.

Which is why I’m very selective about the affiliate programmes I join and the products I promote but the ones I DO promote, I wholeheartedly believe in and want to share and share and share because I know how much value they provide. I think the two-way support element is such a great reason why you should use affiliates for your products.

Some products I’m affiliates for and would recommend to you are:

• Blog To Business: Your Pitching Toolkit (use code JENNY for 10% off!)
• Keyword Research for Bloggers – an include guide on how to effectively search for ranking keywords
• Pinterest With Ell – a course on everything you need to know about Pinterest

You have the chance at making more sales and more money

More affiliates = more potential audiences = more potential sales = more money. And I assume you’re selling products because 1) you’ve got something to say and something to teach and 2) you want to make money from them. Agree with me because there’s no shame it in either.

Ultimately, we want our products to be successful. And for digital products like eBooks or courses or printables, success = sales. And sales = money. That chance gets much higher when you have a number of affiliates working in your favor to help you get those sales and that money! Which brings me on nicely to…

You won’t have to spend so long on promotion

This is a BIG one for me because I find promo incredibly boring. I hate scheduling tweets but of course self promotion is VITAL for selling your products. So by getting affiliates on board, they’re going to be doing a lot of promotion for you. In that case, you can either keep up the amount of self promo you was doing before or cut back a bit.

Which is what I’ve done, since having affiliates promoting my eBooks. Of course they can promote as much or as little as they like. The more they promote, the more likely they are to make money but they’re under no obligation to post X amount of times a day. But because I do have so many affiliates onboard, I’m cutting down on the amount of promo I’m doing myself so I can spend time doing other important things!

If you have your own digital products, do you use affiliates for them? Are you considering using affiliates for your products in the future? Do you have any affiliate marketing success stories?