8. Writing Your First Affiliate Blog Post

Before I take you through some different affiliate networks and how to sign up for affiliate accounts, I first want to walk you through writing your first affiliate blog post.

No matter what topic you decide to go with, I recommend writing the content first (after doing your keyword research) and then adding affiliate links later.

Why do it this way around and not write a post based on what affiliate programs you’ve joined? The main reason is to make sure you’re putting your readers/clients first, and prioritizing your content based on what they are searching for. NOT what you’ve got affiliate links for.

Create a kick-ass article first, and when it comes to applying for affiliate programs, if they can see you’re creating great, relevant content, they are much more likely to accept you.

Example – Vow Books

Let’s say you’re a wedding photographer. You’ve noticed that vow books are becoming more popular, and you decide to dedicate a blog post to your favorite ones. This post can be sent to your existing couples in the lead-up to their wedding day, but it can also be optimized for SEO to hopefully get some organic traffic too.

Step 1 – Keyword & Competitor Research

Before you get stuck into writing this post, you’ll do some quick research to see what’s already out there and what keywords you might want to include in your post. Below is some example keywords we might want to use in this post:

Step 2 – Create A Structure

Most blog posts follow a very similar structure. This usually looks something like this:

• Title
• Introduction paragraph
• Adding more context paragraph
• List of recommended items
• Other things you might want to consider
• FAQs
• Conclusion

That’s essentially it. Some posts may have more content or explanatory paragraphs, depending on what you’re writing about. In the video below, I’ll walk you through a template for this post on Vow Books.

And that’s the main meat of the blog post. Once you’ve mapped out your main sections, you’re going to start writing the paragraphs, adding in the images and the links to the products.

Step 3 – Selecting Images

As photographers, when it comes to using images that we’ve not taken, we start to freak out. But when it comes to affiliate posts, you may often find yourself writing about something where you need to use images that aren’t yours, and this can be a bit confusing on how to proceed.

My preferred way to do this is to do the following:

• Share a screenshot of the product from the shop page or
• Download the product image from the shop page
• Have a visible caption disclosing the image source and linking to that page

Following this method, I’ve never had any problems, as most stores I am recommending are pleased that they are getting more traffic to their shop (and hopefully more sales). I believe (but I am not 100% sure) that this also counts as an acceptable practice under “fair use” guidelines.

Step 4 – Generating Your Affiliate Links

When you first write this blog post, you won’t have signed up for any affiliate programs yet. So the links you’ll share in the post will just be standard links.

But once you’re signed up and you’re a member of an affiliate program, you can switch out the standard link for your specific affiliate link.

Depending on the affiliate network, you might have the option of a Google Chrome plugin to generate your unique affiliate link, or you might have to go to the affiliate network website, where there are usually tools to create an affiliate link to a specific product.

In the video below, I’ll outline how you can do that:

Reminder – you don’t have to have joined an affiliate network already to write a post like this one. You can (and should) also promote things you’re not an affiliate for – especially if you know your reader will love them.

Now that your first piece of content is written, let’s take a look at how you can actually start joining some affiliate programs.