The Top 18 Tips for Affiliate Marketing
On the surface, affiliate marketing can sound simple: Affiliate marketers encourage people to buy certain products or services in exchange for a commission. And when done correctly, affiliate marketing can be a lucrative endeavor. The average affiliate marketer’s salary in 2025 is $56,141. Plus, 81% of advertisers and 84% of publishers use affiliate marketing, which means plenty of opportunities exist for those just getting started.
But dig beneath the surface, and you’ll find that to be successful at affiliate marketing, you’ll need strategy, consistency, and a thorough understanding of how affiliate marketing works.
Learn how to make a steady income with these 18 tips for affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing 101
Here are some basic affiliate marketing terms you need to know before you get started.
- Affiliate: This is you. You create content and marketing around the products or services you’re promoting.
- Affiliate link: A unique URL that tracks the specific sales you generate for a business. Affiliate links can also come in the form of a special discount code.
- Affiliate network: A business that acts as a middleman between merchants and affiliates. Their role is to create good matches between both parties so everyone benefits. Affiliate networks can also be called a “network.”
- Commission: The way affiliates get paid. The pay rate can change depending on the agreement between parties. There are different types of commissions:
- Pay-per-click (PPC): You earn a commission every time someone clicks your link.
- Pay-per-sale (PPS): You earn a commission for every sale you bring in.
- Pay-per-lead (PPL): You earn a commission for every lead you bring in.
- Merchant: The business that made the product or service. They may also be known as the “creator” or “advertiser”. They are the ones paying you (either directly or indirectly) to sell their goods or promote their services. They should also provide you with information about their goods and services so you can sell them more easily.
18 Tips for Affiliate Marketing
Here are the most effective tips for affiliate marketing. They work whether you’re new to affiliate marketing or an experienced pro.
1. Choose Products/Services that Match Your Niche
As an affiliate marketer, you’ll want to find a niche that excites you and has strong earning potential.
Some of the most popular niches include:
- Finance
- Dating
- Technology
- Pets
- Beauty
- Software as a service (SaaS)
- Fitness
- Health and wellness
Consumers can usually tell when someone is marketing a product or service purely for profit. You’ll lose credibility if they sense that your heart isn’t in it. So pick a niche you’re passionate about. Even if your niche has a small audience, you can still generate a sizable income by creating targeted content that speaks to their unique needs.
2. Pick the Right Affiliate Network to Work With
Although you can manage affiliate marketing on your own, partnering with an affiliate network can make the process much easier because they’ll handle finding the brands for you.
You should look for an affiliate network that offers supportive programs to their affiliates. For example, Round Sky offers widgets to make marketing easier, along with real-time analytics tracking.
You should also consider how you’d like to be paid. Some companies, for example, may have only one type of commission payment system.
Ask fellow affiliates their thoughts about potential networks. They may have an insight that can prevent you from working with scammy companies.
3. Learn What Your Audience Likes
Many affiliate marketers make the mistake of promoting only the products they personally like rather than considering what their audience actually wants. Successful affiliate marketers strike a balance by promoting products they genuinely love and that resonate with their audience.
A/B testing can help you determine what your audience responds to.
You can also ask your audience directly through social media or surveys what they’d like to see from you.
4. Create Engaging Content
Engaging content is any content that grabs and keeps your audience’s attention.
You can create engaging content by:
- Answering questions
- Addressing pain points
- Sharing knowledge
- Giving your honest opinion
Engaging content can come in the form of:
- Written content: Easy-to-read content (think simple sentences, bullet points, and small text boxes) is a common form. Affiliate marketers make almost 40% of their income from articles and blogs. You can write comparison posts, listicles, or personal stories that feature a product or service.
- Short form video: You can create short videos showing how to use the product or service, share personal updates, or simply talk directly to your followers to build connection and trust.
- Long form video: With long form videos, you can produce in-depth reviews or detail how the product or service solves a problem.
- Images: Bold visuals can capture attention, break up walls of text, and increase click-through rates.
5. Create Content with Conversions in Mind
For affiliate marketing to be successful, your content needs to be more than just engaging—it must also drive conversions. Your content should be mapped out as a sales funnel, with all the information existing to drive the reader or viewer toward a singular action (i.e., click a link, make a purchase, fill out a form, request a demo, etc.).
Conversion strategies include guiding visitors to specific pages to learn more about products and services, placing CTAs (calls to action) in the right spots, and making it easy for visitors to find the affiliate link.
6. Optimize Your Content for Mobile
The days of primarily accessing the internet from a desktop computer sitting at a desk are long gone. Today, 96% of the world’s digital population gets online with a mobile device. Whether you’re using a blog, a newsletter, a personal website, or any other online platform for your affiliate links, your content needs to look and work on mobile.
Use easy-to-click buttons, short paragraphs, plenty of white space, and lists as you craft your content to make sure it’s accessible to mobile users.
7. Use SEO to Your Advantage
Search engines are often how people will find your content online. They’ll type in a keyword into a search bar, and if your page has been optimized for search, your site should ideally show up at the top of the results. This is called search engine optimization (SEO).
Keywords are just one aspect of SEO. There’s also internal linking, external linking, technical SEO, etc., all of which you use in the hopes of appearing at the top of the SERP (search engine results page).
SEO can take time to learn, but it’s worth the effort. Once you understand the basics, it can help you throughout your affiliate marketing career.
8. Monitor Your Analytics
You won’t know how well your content is performing without paying attention to your analytics. Important analytics to watch include:
- Click-through rate (CTR): CTR is how many clicks you get on content, ads, and product links compared to the number of views received.
- Conversion rate: This can be any positive action that a consumer takes. For example, you can monitor conversion rates for newsletter signups, or lead generation form fill outs, or purchases.
- Revenue: You should track which channels generate the most revenue. This insight can help you develop a smarter strategy. For example, if your blogs are outperforming your videos, focusing more on blogging could increase earnings.
- Social media following: Brands often look at your social media following and engagement rates before offering affiliate deals. A strong, engaged audience can lead to better partnerships and higher commission opportunities.
- Bounce rate: This is the rate of people who visit a page on a website and then immediately leave (bounce) without clicking on anything else or visiting another page. A high bounce rate is a signal that your content needs to be improved.
There are several tools you can use to track these analytics. Social media platforms offer their own suite of tools, and you can use Google Analytics for your website.
9. Disclose Affiliate Links
You want to disclose any and all affiliate links for two reasons. One, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) legally requires it. Customers must be informed of any links or relationships with businesses.
Second, it builds credibility with your audience. Your audience wants to know when they are being sold to. If you try to hide it, they may feel cheated and lose trust in your brand.
10. Experiment with Different Social Media Platforms
Building a sizable audience is just the beginning; you’ll want to keep working to expand it. Experiment with different marketing strategies to connect with new potential followers. This should include trying new social media platforms.
Research shows that, as of April 2025, there are 5.31 billion social media users, and they spend a little more than two hours on social media every day. Also, 27% use social media to find products to buy. If you’re popular on one platform, try building an audience on another to reach a wider audience.
Recommended: The Best Social Media Affiliate Marketing Platforms
11. Build an Email List
Email marketing stands out as a tried-and-tested method that boasts an ROI of up to $45 per dollar spent. It takes time to build an email list or establish a newsletter, but you’ll see the fruit of your efforts once you have a list of receptive prospects opening your emails on a regular basis.
Follow our other tips to offer newsletter content that resonates with your target audience, so they’ll open it when it reaches their inbox. Don’t abuse their email address once you have it—make sure not to email your list too often, or people will unsubscribe to avoid digital clutter.
12. Work with Various Affiliate Networks
Don’t be afraid to work with various affiliate networks. Unless stated in a contract, you have every right to work with different networks. This can help grow your business and provide a cushion if one partner changes their terms or loses a partner business.
13. Write Product Reviews
Don’t forget to write reviews of the products and services you promote. We all look at reviews before buying a product; your audience is no different. Seeing your name on a review will further prove to potential customers that you truly value the product you’re promoting. Just don’t forget to add that disclaimer that your link is sponsored and that you’ll potentially earn commission.
14. Repurpose Content
Not all content needs to be new to capture attention. Sometimes all it needs is a fresh spin. By repurposing your existing content, you can continue to drive new sales with minimal extra effort.
Think about your original content as a core idea, and the repurposing process as different ways to express that same idea across platforms.
For example, if you’ve created a series of TikTok videos about a product, combine them into a longer video for YouTube. Or turn a blog post into a short video or a set of eye-catching graphics for social media.
15. Update Old Content
In addition to repurposing content, you can breathe life into old content by updating it with new keywords, links, or a fresh perspective.
You can even add repurposed content to old content! For example, if you made a video showing off a product, add it to the blog post related to that topic.
16. Interact with Forums
Although most forums don’t allow direct affiliate links, they’re still useful places to build trust and community. Join forums in your niche, contribute to discussions, and offer helpful answers to get your name recognized.
As your credibility grows, you can guide people to the website pages or social media posts where your affiliate links are naturally featured.
17. Pursue Recurring Commissions
An easy way to earn passive income is to choose products or services with recurring commissions. This usually means that they are subscription-based. Every month, when someone who uses your affiliate link stays subscribed, you get a commission.
18. Craft Strong, Honest CTAs
Click here. Learn more. Buy now. These simple CTAs probably sound familiar—but are they exciting? Or specific?
Be direct. Tell the reader precisely what you want them to do, and link to that. Specificity is more compelling and memorable than a generic message they see all over the place. Try something like this:
Take control of your income by signing up to become a Round Sky affiliate today.
Become a Round Sky Affiliate Marketer Today!
If affiliate marketing seems like the right fit for you, consider partnering with Round Sky. Our affiliate program offers multiple ways to earn, easy-to-use website widgets, api, multiple websites to promote, banner ads, video ads, and other variety of tools to help you succeed. We aim to ensure our affiliates and brand partners thrive while earning money along the way.
