Since writing this post I have started using Skimlinks to affiliate links. I have seen higher revenues and betterĀ results overall.Ā
If you’re anything like me your initial reaction to the term affiliate marketing isn’t one of great affection. It’s likely one of annoyance or frustration. Or perhaps you’re worried that if you become an affiliate marketer you’ll lose the value of your words. You’ll somehow abandon all integrity. Or maybe all your readers will abandon you. You’ll become a slave to CPA, CPC, and all those other acronyms that internet marketers spout off.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to be a sleaze to be an affiliate marketer. And your blog is work, so why shouldn’t you be compensated for your influence?
I want to take a few minutes to talk to you about affiliate marketing and introduce to you a company called Viglink. I want to share this with you because I think it will be helpful to you, your readers, and you deserve to be compensated for your work and words. This is the easiest and least intrusive way I have ever had the pleasure to monetize my blog with.
Do you Blog from the Heart?
Do you give your honest opinions about products or services on your blog? Do you talk about items you personally own and encourage others to get them do? Do you link manufacture websites, iTunes, Amazon, or any other sites?
Do you have affiliate tags on all those links? You’re advertising for those people for free you know. And if you’ve been blogging for any amount of time and want to see any real income out of it (because it can does, and will happen if you want it to) then you are likely already participating in affiliate marketing be it through Amazon or another resource.
You Work For Free?
Oh you aren’t? You work for free? Oh… no you think affiliate marketing is intrusive and a hassle? You also think your readers don’t want a sales pitch right?
Affiliate Marketing Sleaze
Affiliate marketing is typically scammy and sleazy. There’s always some elaborate page about all the checks you are going to get and at least 1 or 2 videos, HUGE unattractive fonts, and images of the giant home, new cars, and all the cash you are going to earn when you purchase their $99 program. But wait if you act now you can have the program that never works, and will just be a series of email or videos that tells you everything you already know or that can easily be googled for free.
Entire Blogs Just a Sales Pitch?
OH but won’t you buy my Ebook.- oh geez. If I see one more offer for a free e-book or an exclusive mailing list, well I guess I’ll do nothing, because I’ll probably see one in the next 15 minutes. But I personally like to read blogs that are blogs and not just an effort to make a sales pitch. I like to read the words of others that I can identify with, and I want to hear their opinions about products because they like or dislike them and not because they are hoping to gain a commission off me.
Blogging is Work, Compensation isn’t out-of-line
But I do think that those bloggers should be compensated for their time, energy, and effort they put into the often elaborate and detailed reviews. I think that if someone purchases an item because of their influence, they should be compensated. I also think it would be easy for them, and non-intrusive to me. Other than a disclosure on their page, my experience should not change just because they used affiliate links.
Manual Affiliate Programs Are a Pain
I have tried google affiliates, linkshare, clickbank, and a few others. They work. But you have to specifically seek out individual products and to me, once you’ve done that the entire flow of your writing changes. Once you know you are writing content specifically so you can put an affiliate link on your blog, it just looses some of the value. Your words have less power, they don’t come off as authentic. Plus, honestly, it’s a HUGE hassle. You have to apply to each individual vendor and wait to be approved. So your little blog posts sit pending in your draft box waiting for a vendor to approve you… but what if they don’t. Well, you wrote the post, might as well publish it anyways. It sure would have been nice to save all that time and effort and just post good content, right?
Viglink To the Rescue
What if with one simple WordPress plugin (or comparable option for Blogger, phpBB, Tumblr, TypePad, or vBulletin ) every link on your blog would potential become an affiliate link? No coding. No manually changing or adding. And the user experience wouldn’t change at all for your readers. Actually, the links don’t even change. All that happens it adds a tracking code to your links that tell a website that you sent them there. If they buy a product, you get a percentage.
The nice thing is that if you already have affiliate links on your blog, they don’t touch those. And now you will never again have to wait for approval from an affiliate.
What’s in it For them?
They take a small percentage of your profits. How much? It varies. But I can tell you that for a $2.99 iTunes app I made $0.18. Heck for a free iTunes App I made $0.11. For a ZAGGfolio I made $15.00 . Considering I had to do no extra work to get this, I think it’s well worth whatever little they are keeping for themselves to aggregate all these affiliates into a passive program.
Are your interests peaked?
Who Are Their Merchants?
A few I know of: Zagg, Amazon, Ebay, iTunes, Bestbuy, Kodak, Newegg, Macys, Gamestop, Walmart and the list goes on.
There is a also a tool to specifically check for merchant coverage if you want to know if a company is included.
What’s in it for Me, and well, you too!
If you sign up through viglink via my site/affiliate link I get 10% of your sales for the first year. They don’t take it away from you. They take away from their percentage to give it to your referer, like most other referral programs. And honestly, you can stand to make a lot of money off this alone. When you sign up, and post the disclosure logo on the page, or talk about viglink, you’ll get the same referral rate on anyone you send their way as well.
What’s in it for Them?
Straight from the horse’s… er… Viglink’s mouth:
There is no up-front fee for using VigLink so you can try it without risk. For all links we affiliate, VigLink takes a 25% cut of the commissions a publisher earns. Commissions for inserted links vary and depend on the brand, merchant and product, as well as how often the click results in a sale. In some cases an account is referred to us by someone else, either individually or through a distribution deal. (And of course VigLink is a merchant in it’s own software so any links to VigLink on a site running VigLink are automatically affiliated.) Referral commissions are usually 10% and they always come out of VigLink’s portion, so a publisher is never worse off for having been referred than if they’d approached us directly. Some merchants wait a week or more to report revenue, so these totals may not be final.
What are you Waiting for?
So Sign up and Blog with Integrity, Honesty, and Passion without having to stop and find the appropriate affiliate links for the brands and products you love.
You’ll Love VigLink!
You’ll thank me later. I promise! Viglink has be the best, easiest, and my lucrative monetization I have ever participated with in my blog and I want you all to join and feel free to blog and get a bonus dollar or two every now and then!
If you use Viglink or sign up, I would love to hear from you in the comments below. Also if you have any questions feel free to ask, I’ll do my very best to help you out!
….got here from the Warriors Forum (WSO). Thanks for the tip, you saved me a couple of bucks that I can use on something else!
Nice blog! I’ll be back to look around some more soon.
Glad I could help. š
I think I am going to give it a try! I don’t have a lot of out bound links now but I have a lot of spots I could put them.
I just found your blog today I love it. You have given me a lot of good tips to use on my blog, thank you.
Kasey,
One of the cool things about viglink is that it will turn plain text into links for relevant items.
This sounds like a great program and I’m going to check it out. Thanks for sharing!! (even if you do make a little pocket money…you deserve it!!)
Thank you!
Hope you earn lots of cash from it!
Signed up using your link. Thanks for the post.
Thank you Ericka,
I hope you make a ton of money off of it!
I think you’ll like it. Most people who use it see it as such a relief.
Let me know how it works for you.
Wow, thanks for this! I’m so over searching for and adding all the manual affiliate links, yada yada yada…. This will be great and I’m thrilled to support a fellow nurse blogger and go through your affiliate link! Rock on, sista! Great content!
Thank you!
I really think that viglink is one of the easiest and least spammy ways you can generate revenue organically from your content.
Must you have WordPress.org platform to use them? Been thinking of these programs for a while, checking them out and wasn’t sure which to go with. This one sounds very good. Thanks for sharing.
Viglink can be used on several platforms and its so simple to install and use! It’s takes a lot of grunt work out of it for you.
No, it works on multiple platforms.
I’m sure the WordPress.org is referencing that Lisa currently uses WordPress.com which is really restrictive on what ads/affiliates/customizations you can do. I’m quite sure you couldn’t use this program with WordPress.com (unless you’re a VIP which is expensive!).
Of course, it’s really easy to move your blog from a WordPress.com hosted blog to a self hosted WordPress.org blog. It’s particularly easy if you have domain mapping with WordPress.com
Ok, I guess I shouldn’t have started. I hope this helps.
As a side note, Google Adsense can work really well. You just have to target it properly, put it in the right location and have great content with the right keywords that people want to advertise on.
Gonna check this one out – new to me.
You should check Prosperent as well.
Thanks for pointing me towards prosperent.
I totally don’t think google adsense works well.
Will have to dive on it.
I do think that you will really live Viglink. I’ve been very impressed, especially when the dollar sign keeps growing and im literally doing nothing extra. The biggest thing with them is just make sure you have relevant outbound links. Youd be surprised at what pays a commission (even like nursing journals and free itunes apps). I never look to see if its there or not before I write about something, I just gamble. I write for the myself and my audience, not for a check š (but it sure is nice to get a little unexpected kickback)