Posted: 2nd January 2017
Have you considered unlocking the potential of your website to make money? Liz Walsh from Topdogdays uses her own experience of affiliate marketing to provide a few handy hints for those interested in exploring new avenues for their current business.
You’ve probably been providing interesting & engaging content on your site for some time. Heck, it takes passion to set up & sustain a business! With persistence, you’ve acquired skills & expertise in your field and affiliate marketing can provide you with the opportunity to apply this knowledge and convert it into actual sales.
Affiliate Window reports that website publishers are already providing £15 billion in sales for the advertisers they promote. Whilst the larger name companies take the lion’s share, it is the content specialist sites with a passion for what they do, that makes up the rest.
So for those with an interest in developing their business into pastures new, we’ve put together a few handy hints to help you explore if affiliate marketing could work for you too.
Handy Hints For Those Considering Affiliate Marketing
About TopDogDays
Like MoneySavingExpert we have been using affiliate marketing to generate income for a number of years. Whilst we don’t claim to be on the same standing as the mighty Martin Lewis, we’ve found it to be an effective way to monetising our website. Let’s face it, there can’t be many jobs where you get paid to enjoy days out around the UK!
Affiliate marketing rewards you for selling or promoting someone else’s product and the crazy thing about it is that practically anyone with a website can get a piece of the action. Our story began back in 2009 with a half baked idea and pinch of magic so it’s worth considering if you too can tap into this potential money spinner.
Having previously run a daycare business in Staffordshire, we became renowned for our unusual days out, but trying to find new places to visit on a budget was becoming ever more challenging. Topdogdays stepped into the gap to provide information on days out on a budget and now receives in excess of 1.2 million visitors a year.
However back at the beginning, in 2009, it all seemed a little different. With limited IT skills that hadn’t developed further than a game of pac-man, we used a basic word press template to create the first version of the site. Seeing those first visitors trickling in was simply astonishing – who needs reality TV when you’ve got google analytics!
However the beauty of affiliate marketing is that it doesn’t require a huge set of IT skills just an ability to provide original, good quality & engaging content and haven’t we all heard that before! In this Google-led age, most of us are already providing such-minded articles on interests that inspire us.
Fast forward a couple of years and our visitor numbers at Topdogdays had continued to climb as we began to rank highly for particular key terms. Whilst the business had previously relied upon building relationships with individual visitor attractions, we decided it was time to dip our toe into the affiliate world.
Once we took the plunge we saw sales coming in practically overnight, (remember we had been up & running for some time already). Affiliate marketing allowed us to reach a wider number of businesses in a quicker space of time. With a loyal following and a range of web pages primed for key terms, it was an easy move to include affiliate marketing within the business mix.