10 affiliate marketing content ideas to try

Whether you've been googling "affiliate marketing for beginners" or wondering how to start affiliate marketing without feeling sales-y, then this post is for you! I'm sharing a simple approach to creating content that serves your audience as you ease into passive income affiliate marketing.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. VIDEO: Affiliate Marketing Content Ideas 2022
3. The BEST Affiliate Marketing Course
4. What's content-focused affiliate marketing?
5. Where should I create content?
6. What should I promote?
7. Content idea #1: Gift Guide
8. Content idea #2: Resource/Favorites page
9. Content idea #3: Roundup
10. The KEY to good affiliate marketing
11. Content idea #4: FAQs
12. Content idea # 5: Demo/tutorial
13. Content idea # 6: Review/case study
14. Content idea # 7: Comparison
    
15. Recommended resources
    
16. Let's take action
17. Share this post

Intro:

When you hear affiliate marketing, what comes to mind? If you picture pushy sales-y, influencer-dropping links all over the place on social media, you're not alone. I used to feel that way too, but it turns out there is a way to do affiliate marketing well. Content-focused affiliate marketing has in fact become one of my favorite ways to share content with my audience. It's enabled me to promote other people's products and services while still being of service to you.

And that just feels great. So here I want to share some simple ideas for how you can start using it in your business too.

Please note: You can support my blog by using the affiliate links below! If you go on to make a purchase, I'll receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

VIDEO: Affiliate marketing CONTENT ideas 2022

The BEST affiliate marketing course

Now, for the purposes of this blog, I'm not going to get into all the legal and ethical considerations of affiliate marketing. For all of that and so much more, I'm going to recommend this awesome resource, Pat Flynn's 1, 2, 3 Affiliate Marketing Course. I am a happy student. I've been through the course and I credit it really with opening my eyes to all the different avenues available to us for affiliate marketing.

A major focus of this course is content-focused affiliate marketing really being of service to your audience, as you are sharing links to other people's products and services. I learned so much in this course. I can't recommend it highly enough. I have included the link if you'd like to check it out for yourself and learn more about it. And yes, of course, it's an affiliate link.

What's content-focused affiliate marketing?

Now, if you've ever been on the receiving end of some hastily or just poorly executed affiliate marketing, you know, it can feel kind of abrupt, like it came out of left field. You're watching someone's Instagram story and all of a sudden, boom, they are dropping a link to some product that seems to have come out of thin air. This type of affiliate content that is so focused on the link and the sale with just the lightest of storytelling around it, makes up a large proportion of the influencer marketing that we see online. For us as business owners creating content that's designed to serve our audience in a very real way, can feel disconnecting, totally abrupt, and by extension icky. It doesn't feel good to market that way.

Content-focused affiliate marketing in contrast is really a natural extension of the way that you're probably already showing up for your people. It allows you to offer up a piece of content for free that is inherently valuable. This content has standalone value to the people that you're communicating with and embedded within that is one option for them to take the next step. If they're interested in one or more affiliate links, you can think of it as a little call to action. If they're interested in continuing toward whatever it is that you're talking about in your content, that's one avenue they can take.

Where should I create content?

You could be creating this content on your blog, your YouTube channel, podcast, via email, social media, really, wherever you're already showing up. Creating content is fair game for content-focused affiliate marketing. You can link to these pieces of content in the footer of your emails, you can embed them within your courses and online programs. You think as broadly and creatively as you like, but because you are creating a piece of content around that affiliate link, around the promotion of that product or service, it really can fall into any of the communication channels you would use with your regular content.

What should I promote?

Affiliate marketing can totally extend to time-limited promotions like an upcoming workshop or summit. In this blog, I'm really focusing on products and services that are available ongoing because when you're creating a piece of content around it, I really want you to be getting the biggest return on your time and effort as you can. Think about what kind of content will have evergreen value. Whether someone finds it right when you hit publish or a week later or a year later, is this something that can still serve them well?

If you're just considering all this for the first time, you might be wondering, okay, so what do I promote? It can be tempting to look around and see what other people are promoting or start researching specific companies and looking into their commission structure but instead, I suggest you start with you and your audience and your business and ask yourself a couple of questions.

First of all, what am I already asked about? What are people asking for recommendations of? For instance, back when I first started this business, I'd share productivity tips for how I'd stay on top of documentation and paperwork in my therapy practice. I'd often get questions about which electronic health record program I would use or specific pieces of software or tools. Over time, I started a list of those questions because a lot of themes would come up. That helped eventually guide some of the resources that I might recommend.

Secondly, if you've been creating content for a while, you can ask yourself, what am I already talking about? What have I been promoting just without the affiliate link, without even realizing it? A clear example of this in my business is social squares. Social Squares is a styled stock photography membership. As a word person who is not a visual person, I love having this resource to dip into again and again for high-quality professional images. The evidence is littered all over every surface of my business. You will always see Social Squares images. I have been talking about them forever, being a member pretty much since day one. When they eventually came out with an affiliate program, it was just a really natural fit. I was already talking about them. My audience is already familiar with me talking about Social Squares. The only difference now is that I've switched out just the direct link to their website with my affiliate link so that when anyone goes on to become a paid member, I will earn a commission back, it was just a very natural fit, not abrupt. It didn't disrupt the flow of communication with you because you're already familiar with me talking about this brand.

I think this is the ideal situation when you're first getting started especially, to find those companies to partner with that you already love, use, and can speak about genuinely and with authority. Now you don't have to have used something for years and years in order to promote it as an affiliate, but you always want to make sure that you're coming from a place of genuine experience. You want this to have been something that you've gotten in there tried out and that you genuinely recommend, for example, sometimes I'll learn about a new tool or resource. There are so many, and I'm learning about new ones all the time, but I won't actually create a piece of content around it and promote it as an affiliate unless I've gotten in there, tested it out for myself, and can truly say yes, I recommend this, I'm here to answer questions about it and I think you might like to try it too.

Content idea #1: Gift Guide

I'm going to run you through some quick ideas for content you could create as an affiliate. You could put together a gift guide or a buyer's guide. We see these come up seasonally or around certain holidays, but you could also anchor it to a particular segment of your audience. Now, the links themselves are valuable, of course, but the real value in this comes from the fact that you are curating it. You are shortening the amount of time they would be spending doing all of this research to pull together their own list of items. Then because you are building upon an established relationship of trust with your audience, it's going to be that much more valuable to them.

Content idea #2: Resource/Favorites page

A similar idea is to create a resource or favorites page. You could approach this in a couple of different ways. First, focus on particular segments of your audience, and put together resources that they need in order to move ahead toward a particular goal, or you could anchor it to people at different stages of progress toward whatever you help them with. What does a beginner need? What are some resources that more intermediate or advanced members of your audience would find valuable? Or you could also frame it in terms of your favorites, "These are the top five best investments I made in my business this year".

Content idea #3: Roundup

You could create a roundup of different resources organized around a particular theme. I did this recently with my video, Sharing My Top Pinterest Resources. This can be especially valuable when you know that there is a topic that your audience is really interested in, and it plays really nicely with other pieces of content you have already created. You may have one piece of content that's walking them through the top five fast facts they need to know about that topic, then you follow it up with a roundup-style piece of content, sharing some different resources.

The KEY to good affiliate marketing 

Remember, what's going to make this kind of content so valuable to your audience is to embed nuggets of information in addition to the links themselves that your audience can take and learn from. For example, in that Pinterest resources video I mentioned, I didn't just include a link to an outside scheduler that I recommend I also included some tips on how to determine whether or not you even need a third-party scheduler. That speaks to perhaps my biggest piece of advice when it comes to this type of marketing, good content-focused affiliate marketing should aim to serve your audience, whether or not they ever click any of your affiliate links, it should have inherent value that they can take and learn from, or be encouraged by whatever the goal is. They should get something out of it.

Content idea #4: FAQs

You could create a piece of content answering FAQs. These could be questions about a specific product or service that you're promoting as an affiliate, or you could create the content around general FAQs that you get in your work with clients or that you're hearing from your audience when you're creating content online. Then as it makes sense, folding in relevant affiliate links.

Content idea # 5: Demo/tutorial

Demos and tutorials make excellent pieces of content for affiliate marketing, you can focus it around a particular tool or resource, and just really do a deep dive. Walk your audience exactly through how you use it. Or you can pair it with a Roundup-style piece of content where you are highlighting several different tools at once and then giving them a mini demo or tutorial for each one. I've done both of these and I'll link examples for you below.

Content idea # 6: Review/case study

You can do an in-depth review or case study on a particular product or even a program that you've been part of. You'll see this a lot where someone who's been a student in a particular course and then goes on to become an affiliate for that course will get on and share their authentic experience going through that program. Audiences love this, especially when there is that foundation of trust already built with the person creating the content. They want to know what your genuine experience has been. It's really powerful when you can create a whole piece of content sharing that.

Content idea # 7: Comparison 

Are there two equivalent brands or versions of the same type of product? Create a piece of content, and compare them. This is very popular across all kinds of different niches because it answers so many questions all at once. It gives you a chance to share the pros and cons and then leave it ultimately up to your audience to make their own informed decision. Spend some time thinking about what is the array of options available to my audience as it relates to a particular piece of gear or equipment or a tool or a resource or whatever. Then test them both out and speak from experience.

Hopefully, this goes without saying, but that also applies to any resource that you'll see linked here. In all my blogs, everything included, there is something that I've tested out for myself and that I feel good about recommending to you. I suggest you take that same approach in your affiliate marketing. Obviously, not everything that you like is going to be your A's cup of tea. If you are approaching it in good faith, authentically recommending things that you genuinely approve of, that's what is going to help build trust with your audience. Plus, it's just going to feel better to you.

Remember when it's done right, affiliate marketing should feel good to you and to your audience. It should be so inherently valuable that it has worth in and of itself, whether or not they go on to click a link. For the people who are interested in clicking that link, it'll feel like just a natural extension of what you've already shared. It's that winning combo that makes content-focused affiliate marketing a strategy I wish more people were talking about. If you want to see this in action, I've got lots of content on the way, sharing some of my very favorite resources. So stay tuned! 

Recommended resources

Want to explore more ways to create content marketing? Check out these blog posts:

• Creating Content Amid Crisis
• Easy ways to engage with your audience (+ 3 tools to help you)
• Instagram Reels growth tips: Lessons from my first 100 Reels
• Marketing your therapy practice across state lines
• Batching social media content with Social Squares

Let's take action!

Ready to implement what you learned in this post? I like your style!

1. Choose 1 of the ideas in this post and test it out in your business.
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