Cha-ching! That’s the sound of your content making money for you.
In today’s fast-moving, competitive world of digital media, advertising alone doesn’t deliver as much revenue as it once did. Affiliate publishers have numerous ways to monetize content but still struggle to craft the right combination of channels and methods to maximize revenue.
The decline in publishers’ revenue introduced new technologies and monetization ideas. Publishers like you constantly test new strategies and integrate dozens of tools to measure performance, but staying up-to-date on the latest ways to cultivate new revenue streams is still challenging.
See what options you have for content monetization and learn how to build a solid, revenue-generating strategy.
What’s content monetization and why is it important?
The term “content monetization” implies many possible strategies and channels. You may have heard of methods like:
- Native advertising (i.e., Taboola and Outbrain)
- Sponsored content/branded content
- Programmatic/display advertising (i.e., Adsense)
- Influencer marketing
- Automated affiliate link services (i.e., Skimlinks)
You’ve likely heard the phrase “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” This phrase also applies to content monetization. If you want to craft a strong strategy, you’ll need to use multiple channels to get maximum results for your program. The best model depends on your audience, vertical, and program maturity.
Why you should use affiliate links for content monetization
If you’ve read even one murder mystery novel, you know that the answer to any question is usually the simplest. In this case, affiliate links are one of the best proven ways for publishers to generate revenue.
Affiliate links have been at the heart of affiliate marketing for several decades. Though it may seem like an outdated solution compared to all the innovative tools in the industry, don’t overlook it just yet. Of all the channels in the marketing mix, affiliate partnerships still bring brands up to 30 percent of their total revenue.
Automated affiliate marketing has many other benefits that complement its easy-to-use, foolproof nature. Let’s see four reasons why using affiliate links to monetize your online content can be a lucrative strategy.
Earn more revenue with commerce content
Discover how commerce content earns money for publishers while pleasing their audiences.
Get my free guide1. You can preserve (and even improve) your readers’ experience
“A satisfied customer is the best strategy of all,” business writer Michael LeBoeuf once said. For you, this translates to: Satisfy your readers and you’ll see success.
Affiliate marketing provides a reliable revenue stream that doesn’t compromise on reader satisfaction and editorial integrity. Readers consume online information to learn about a topic, find relevant products, and compare different offers. Your content—and the affiliate links you include—can help guide them along the buyer’s journey.
Affiliate links don’t look like advertising. They’re embedded into content that looks like a helpful recommendation and generates value for your audience. This approach creates a sense of authenticity and strengthens the reader’s trust—both in you and the brands you promote.
When readers make a purchase from one of your product recommendations, they remember this valuable experience and turn to you for even more suggestions. Using affiliate links in your content allows you to cultivate a valuable revenue stream that stems out of the trusting relationship you develop with your readers.
2. You can measure the impact of your affiliate links
Affiliate marketing doesn’t work without data. That’s one of its top advantages. As a publisher, you can measure, track, analyze, and improve any content with affiliate links based on your return on investment (ROI). You and your partner brand can see tangible results from your efforts and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Modern solutions like impact.com for Publishers give you actionable data from every piece of content you have. You can collect deep insights about your content’s performance, allowing you to optimize it for your audience and make even more money.
3. The more you optimize, the more you can monetize
Speaking of optimization, all the affiliate data you collect from your content opens massive opportunities for improvement and growth.
Most importantly, you can learn what kind of content your readers prefer and what posts bring in the most profit. Find ways to replicate the content’s success and even craft your strategy around it. Minor tweaks make significant differences that reflect on the generated revenue.
Get creative with how you leverage your data. Integrate your affiliate sales data with your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to maximize traffic generation efforts. Import your affiliate network sales data into Google Ads and run complementing campaigns. When you have the right data at your disposal, the opportunities to leverage your data to improve your content and boost your earnings are endless.
Ready to start generating affiliate commissions?
See the essential best practices for creating and incorporating affiliate links into your content
Get my free guide4. Automated affiliate marketing makes content monetization easier
Your memories of affiliate marketing may involve labor-intensive URL tagging, manually searching for broken links, and endless hours constructing reports. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Affiliate marketing solutions make it possible to automate most of these processes so you can focus on strategy, development, and other important tasks.
impact.com for Publishers allows you to automate and simplify numerous aspects of your affiliate marketing program, including:
- Easily discover top brands that match your audience’s preferences
- View sales and performance data from all your affiliate networks in one dashboard with a data consolidation tool
- Check your affiliate links for errors (including out-of-stock pages, 404s, etc.) automatically
- Streamline your URL parameter tagging
- Quickly highlight the unique value you bring to your brand partners with live reports
Monetize your content the simple way
To truly harness the advantages of affiliate marketing, choose a full-stack solution that gives you deeper insights into your content and automates manual tasks so you can focus on growing your channel.
Learn more about how impact.com for Publishers can help you.
