One Simple Affiliate Marketing Strategy That Doubled My Sales

Are you wondering how to increase your affiliate sales and looking for an affiliate marketing strategy that actually works?

Turning your blog into a money making machine takes a bit of time and effort. But you can definitely speed this up by using smart strategies and proven affiliate marketing tactics.

In this post I’ll show you how I (more than) doubled my affiliate sales with a super simple affiliate marketing strategy that you can literally copy and implement in a few minutes.

Plus I’ll share another useful affiliate tactic that is sure to increase your affiliate sales as well.

Let’s get started!

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I may earn a small commission for affiliate links in this post at no extra cost to you. Please read my disclaimer  for more information.

What is Affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a method of selling products that are not your own. So you promote products or services for other companies, businesses or bloggers with your unique affiliate link.

When someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase, you’ll receive a commission. Your commission is usually a percentage of the product price.

Affiliate marketing is a great way for bloggers to make money, it’s easy to get started with and it doesn’t cost anything to set up.

For more tips on getting started with affiliate marketing, read:

How To Start With Affiliate Marketing

Is it easy to make money with affiliate marketing?

Yes it is! Once you know the basics of affiliate marketing you should be able to make a few sales very quickly, especially if you promote your affiliate posts regularly on Pinterest or use SEO strategies to get your post on the first page of Google.

If you’re not promoting your blog on Pinterest yet, it’s a good idea to get started. Pinterest brings thousands of people to my blog every week, making it my best traffic source.

If you’re new to Pinterest marketing, make sure to grab my free Pinterest Setup For Sucess guide here.

How much money can you make with affiliate marketing?

The amount of money you can make with affiliate marketing depends on a lot of things, like:

• How old your blog is
• If your blog posts rank in Google
• The quality of your content
• If you promote the right products
• Wether your audience trusts you or not

There are plenty of big time bloggers that make 20k, 50k and even 100k per month by using all kinds of affiliate marketing techniques on their blog.

These numbers are of course not the norm… there are also plenty of bloggers that make  $1000, $300 or $0 per month.

What makes an affiliate marketer successful?

To become successful at affiliate marketing you’ll need to focus on the following things:

• Create quality content for a specific target audience
• Promote affiliate products that help your audience in some way
• Build your “like & trust” factor
• Grow your blog traffic for more clicks (& sales)
• Build your email list
• Use smart affiliate strategies to increase sales

These are the building blocks for all round success as an affiliate marketer. However this doesn’t mean you have to have all of these things in place to be able to make affiliate sales…

The method I’ll show you next does not require all these things…

Affiliate Marketing Case Study

Ok, let’s have a look at the affiliate marketing strategy I used to 2.7x my sales for one affiliate product.

It’s super simple and anyone can implement this in less then 20 minutes, with results that are lasting and ongoing.

The affiliate program I used in this example is Canva. Canva is an online graphic design tool that anyone can use for free. The fact that it has a free plan makes it very easy to promote.

The only time an affiliate earns a commission is when someone upgrades to Canva Pro.

Canva Pro is the paid version (with more functionality) and they offer a free 30 day trial for first time Canva users.

So this is what I did:

I used a small pop up box to encourage people to try Canva’s 30 day free trial of Canva Pro.

That’s it.

A simple pop up box with a free offer.

Here is why this is so effective

Adding affiliate links to your content is good but a lot of people skim read your post and might miss your affiliate link. Creating a pop up box that really highlights your affiliate offer, is guaranteed to get noticed.

I used ConvertBox to make a small customised pop up box that looks like this when it appears on my website:

This pop up box activates after the reader has spent a certain amount of time on the page (or when they leave the page) and gives them one more nudge to try a free offer.

Let’s look at the results

As you can see in the image of my Impact Radius affiliate dashboard below, from around September (I added the ConvertBox to my blog post in late August) the sales (actions) are increasing.

In May, June, July and August I had a total earnings of $292.39. And from September to December I made $796.04.  This means I more than doubled (2.7 x) my earnings.

This means that with less then 20 minutes work, I more than doubled (2.7 x) my earnings for just one affiliate product!

Let me show you how I set this up in ConvertBox…

What is ConvertBox?

ConvertBox is a marketing tool that allows you to create small branded pop up boxes that you can use to:

• Welcome your reader
• Offer opt in freebies and grow your email list
• Segment your subscribers
• Promote your offers or affiliate products
• Offer affiliate bonuses
• More

ConvertBox offers a lot of customised settings so you can determine who will see your pop up and who won’t. This is great because you can create very targeted pop ups so you won’t annoy the rest of your audience with an offer that they might not be interested in.

How to use ConvertBox to promote affiliate products

Let’s have a look at how to create a ConvertBox to promote your affiliate product!

All you have to do is create an account and after that ConvertBox will guide you through the setup process.

Step 1. Create a ConvertBox account

Go to ConvertBox and claim their limited time lifetime deal!

Step 2. Connect ConvertBox to your website

Once you signed up, you simply follow the instructions to connect ConvertBox to your website. If you use WordPress, you can install a plugin, paste in a string of numbers and you’re good to go!

Step 3. Connect your email provider

ConvertBox is compatible with most email service providers. To connect your email provider, you select it from the list and add your API key. You can find your API key in your email provider’s dashboard settings under integrations.

Step 4. Create your first ConvertBox

Select Dashboard in the top menu and click on the green box: + New ConvertBox.

Step 5. Name your ConvertBox and create a group for it

Step 6. Select the type of ConvertBox you want to create

You can create a ConvertBox that pops up as an overlay, or you can have a ConvertBox that’s embedded in your content.

With the overlay ConvertBox you can choose from 4 different options:

1. Sticky Bar
2. Callout Modal
3. Center Modal
4. Full Page

Select what you prefer, for this tutorial I’m going to create a Callout Modal pop-up.

Step 7. Select a template

ConvertBox has several ready made templates available to make it easier for you to get started.

There are templates for:

• Video message
• Lead generation
• List segmentation
• Limited time offer
• and more

Select a template you prefer or click the button to skip and build from scratch.

Step 8. Customise your template

Next you’ll end up in the ConvertBox editor. The editor is very easy to use, you simply click on the element you want to edit and options will appear in the menu on the left. It is a drag-and-drop editor so if you want to add something to your ConvertBox, you can grab (click and drag) elements over from the left menu and drop them into your ConvertBox.

You can also create A/B tests (to try out different wording or designs) with the button in the top right.

Step 9. Add your affiliate link

To add your affiliate link to your button, you simply select your button and in the left menu near the top you click on a button that says Button Settings.

In the pop up box that appears you make sure Actions is selected at the top and then from the left dropdown you select Redirect to URL. Paste your affiliate link in the box next to it and make sure to tick the box Open redirect URL in a new tab.

Once your ConvertBox is live, make sure to test the button.

Step 10. Set your display triggers

Once you’re happy with your ConvertBox design and content, you need to configure your display settings > top menu > Display.

Here you can choose after how many seconds your ConvertBox pops up, how often each visitor will see your ConvertBox, and which pages or blog posts it appears on.

Step 11. Target specific visitors

In the targeting section you can choose to target all your site visitors or specific visitors.

If you target specific visitors you’ll have to add conditional rules, you can select from the following rules (see image below).

12. Launch your ConvertBox

Now your ConvertBox is ready for launch!

Give it a name, switch the Status button to ACTIVE or schedule a start and end date if it’s a limited time offer.

Step 13. Test if the ConvertBox shows up on your site

If you selected to only show this ConvertBox on certain pages, make sure to check the right page and wait for the delay you’ve selected under Triggers. Also make sure to click the button to see if it goes to your affiliate product ok.

Step 14. Sit back and relax

Now you can sit back, relax and watch your sales increase…

Or you can rinse and repeat this process for several other affiliate products and make the most of this super easy and passive way to increase affiliate conversions!

This is my new affiliate marketing strategy!

I hope you like this affiliate technique and are ready to give it a try yourself.

This affiliate method works great if you’re promoting a free trial or a free course that leads to a paid product.

But besides increasing your affiliate sales you can also use ConvertBox to promote your optin freebies to grow your email list or promote your own products, services and special offers.

All in all this is a great tool to increase your overall blog income!

Click here to try ConvertBox today!

If you have any questions make sure to leave a comment below or if you want to find out more details about ConvertBox you can read my full ConvertBox review here.

BONUS STRATEGY

Another ConvertBox technique that has greatly increased my affiliate sales is….

Offering a bonus!

Use your ConvertBox to offer a bonus product and link the ConvertBox button to a separate page where you explain the bonus details.

If the bonus product is related to the affiliate product and super helpful for this particular audience, you will be sure to increase affiliate signups through your link.

Bonus product ideas could be:

• A free strategy call
• Social media templates
• Swipe files
• A free course

Or any digital product you already sell from your blog that is relevant to the audience that is interested in this particular affiliate product.

Are you ready to increase your sales with attention demanding pop ups and bonuses?