You may want to earn money through affiliate marketing. But how are you going to do it? Well, I have researched a few websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money.
Moreover, we are going to talk about how those websites marketed 3rd party products. At the same time delivering value and learning lessons from them.
But before that, in What Ways Will Affiliate Marketing Benefit You. Significantly, let me share a few benefits with you.
Interestingly, there is a famous quote by Bo Bennet “Affiliate Marketing has made Businesses Millions and Ordinary People Millionaires”
Benefits of Affiliating Marketing
- Affiliate marketing is performance-based
- Moreover, it helps broaden your audience
- Significantly, affiliates can boost your reputation
- Importantly, it is cost-effective
- Furthermore, affiliates can rapidly drive traffic to your site and pike up your conversion rates
- It is a low-cost business opportunity
- Specifically, you don’t need any expertise to start affiliate marketing
- It gives you the choice of independence, flexibility, and convenience
- Moreover, you have numerous marketing techniques and strategies
- Importantly, you can have more effective use of advertising budget
Now, let us carefully study the websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money. Just scribble the ideas that you get as you read the following.
Bonus: know what affiliate marketing is all about and how it works
Websites that Use Affiliate Marketing to Earn Money
1.Nerdwallet
A famous among websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money
Nerdwallet does enormously well in making money online. And their content is genuinely useful. Specifically, they are prominent among websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money.
What is this site all about? It is a review affiliate site for financial products. Furthermore, they cover everything from credit cards to mortgages to investing to insurance.
Importantly, they have stellar contents and an exceptional user interface.
Website’s Key Statistics:
Facebook: They have 152,451 followers
Twitter: 57.7 K followers
Visits to their site per month: 10.6 M
Domain Rating: 83
Backlinks: 34,316
Alexa Rank: 2,722
Niche: Consumer Finance
Goal: To help people pick the best credit cards, loans, etc..
Their Key Challenge: Extremely Competitive Market
Website’s Top Content
Nerdwallet’s top content is about two main keywords or titles. They are, “How Much House Can I Afford?” and “Best Credit Cards of 2019: Reviews, Rewards, and Offers“. Moreover, the second keyword is one of the most difficult affiliate keywords in the world. And astoundingly, Nerdwallet ranks No.1 for it in the SERPs.
Specifically, Nerdwallet has a hyper-useful tool that does well in the context of a content marketing campaign.
Products they Promote
How Do They Make Money?
Nerdwallet is a 100% affiliate site. They promote only other’s product or service. Moreover, they don’t have ads. Neither do they sell any of their own products.
Lessons to Learn for your Affiliate Marketing from Nerdwallet?
- Using tools, tend to attract lots of links. Moreover, SEO is a major part of Nerwallet’s site.
- Significantly, you have to regularly update your key pages.
2.Money Saving Expert
This is a successful affiliate marketing website that helps people make better financial decisions. Furthermore, the website ranks as the leading consumer affiliate websites in the UK. Moreover, it has 8 million visits every month.
Money Saving Expert (MSE) stands apart by providing content quality and devotion to helping consumers.
Website’s Key Statistics:
Facebook: 205,597 followers
Twitter: They have 295K followers
No.of Visits to their site per month: 8.8 M
Domain Rating: 83
Backlinks: 18,900
Alexa Rank: 3,530
Niche: Personal Finance
Goal: To help ordinary people make better financial decisions
Key Challenge: Their challenge is to provide ethical, accurate and updated financial information in a sector marked by self-serving interests.
Their Top Contents related to affiliate marketing works:
They provide three valuable contents, namely, “Credit Scores: Bust myths and improve your score“; “19 Cheapest Ways to Get Travel Money“. And “The budget planner“. Significantly, these contents augur well for their successful affiliate marketing works.
How do they Make Money?
Some tactics and tools they use in order to monetize are,
- Coupons
- “Best of” guides
- Cheap X guides
- Calculators: The site offers a number of calculators for its users. For example, a loan calculator or mortgage calculator. Moreover, it takes a commission for any recommended financial products.
Correspondingly, other tactics it uses to make extra affiliate marketing cash are,
Uniquely, products they promote are,
- uSwitch
- MoneySuperMarket.com
- Skimlinks
- Tradedoubler
- Affiliatewindow
Lessons to learn to propel your affiliate marketing initiatives
- Invest in design
- Invest in ethics
- Create “Hero Pages”: MSE has “hero” pages for major search terms. These are highly visual and gives readers a quick glance at the best options. Furthermore, as these pages are very much user-focused, they rank well.
- Be actionable: Whether it is blog posts or deal finders or calculators, MSE’s content and products are ultra-actionable. Users are able to find the right information they want.
3.The Wirecutter
Among the important websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money
The Wirecutter is a famous review affiliate websites for electronics, gadgets and consumer goods. It is important among websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money. Moreover, The Wirecutter is one among the top 6,000 sites that focusses on finding the best product in respective categories.
Website’s Key Statistics:
Facebook: 123, 932 followers
Twitter: They have followers 88.4K followers
No.of Visits to their site per month: 3.6 M
Domain Rating: 80
Backlinks: 18,300
Alexa Rank: 3,530
Niche: Consumer product reviews
Goal: To help people find the best product under many consumer categories
Key Challenge: To design innovative tests and select the best products without being distracted by commercial interests.
Top Contents found on their Website:
They mainly have three contents,
- Wirecutter Deals: In this content, they regularly update a list of the best deals on electronics across the web.
- The Best Portable Bluetooth Speaker: This contains a list of the best Bluetooth speakers for average customers.
- The Best Wi-Fi Router (for Most People)
How Do They Make Money?
Few tactics and tools they use to monetize are,
- Product recommendations: “Best of” product pages.
- Answer questions: They answer the reader’s questions such as, “which headphones should I buy?”
- Apart from Amazon and other retailers, the site also uses Skimlinks to make money online.
The Wirecutter’s heavily used Affiliate Promotions
Affiliate Marketing Lessons from The Wirecutter
- Focus on providing in-depth reviews
- Use the right web design
- Concentrate on more quality than quantity
4.PC Part Picker
This is another leading among websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money. Significantly, the site is a bit different from the traditional affiliate website model. It basically markets itself.
Importantly, the site is a tool for those who want to build their own computers, especially gaming computers. Furthermore, building a computer is not that easy. You have to find the latest parts that fit your budget and also compatible with each other.
At this juncture, PC Part Picker solves the problem. It allows you to shop for the latest pc parts based on performance and budget. Furthermore, it automatically cross-references them with each other to check for compatibility.
Additionally, the site also maintains a blog.
Website’s Key Statistics:
Facebook: They have 34,595 followers
Twitter: They have 47.2K followers
No.of Visits to their site per month: 3.3 M
Domain Rating: 73
Backlinks: 7,600
Alexa Rank: 1,721
Niche: Computer parts
Goal: Help people build computers
Key Challenge: Low commissions
Site’s Top Contents
Some of the site’s valuable contents are,
- New PC System Builder Tool: This is a primary tool on the site that helps people choose the best PC parts for their current PC build. And checks for compatibility issues. Markedly, you can note that every part of the list has an affiliate link.
- PC System Guides
- Intel Core i7 6400 4.0GHz CPU Review
Significantly, the site also has a price history section. This proves useful in an industry where prices change constantly.
How Do They Make Money?
PC Part Picker makes money only through affiliate links. Their ways of monetization are,
- User-created PC builds:- where users can custom-build their own computers and order parts by clicking on the affiliate links.
- Expert-created PC builds:- In the form of a blog post, experts on the site will put together builds for you.
- Reviews of individual components
Their Top Promotions
As their overall strategy, PCPartsPicker uses many affiliate programs. But their bulk of income comes from Amazon.
What Does PC Part Picker teach for your affiliate marketing?
- Build a tool
- Focus on user experience
- Help your users shop around
5.This is Why
I’m Broke is interesting among websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money
This is one among the first affiliate websites to do well in the gift and novelty section. Significantly, the site taps into the internet and pop culture to spot strange things that attract people’s senses.
Website’s Key Statistics:
Facebook: They have 299,389 followers
Pinterest: They have 33,739 followers
No.of Visits to their site per month: 728K
Domain Rating: 71
Backlinks: 4,800
Alexa Rank: 13,348
Niche: Novelty items and gifts
Goal: To find weird and wacky stuff and display them
Their Top Contents
Significantly, their top contents are, “Gifts for Men“; “Gifts for Geeks” and “Bear Sleeping Bag”.
How Do They Make Money?
- They make money through affiliate offers.
- Additionally, most of their money is made through the Amazon Associates program.
- Furthermore, they sell plenty of stuff through Etsy and appear to be an affiliate there.
Their Top Promotions
This Is Why I am Broke (TIWIB) follows an interesting model. Only posts that point to Amazon or Etsy products are monetized. The rest is just a regular, non-affiliate link.
Lessons for your Affiliate Marketing Initiative
- “Fun factors” can be great natural marketing.
- You mandatorily needn’t monetize everything: Certain posts, even if they display gifts need not be monetized. Like TIWIB, you can keep such posts just for fun. Furthermore, they will provide a great user experience. And boost the site’s reputation.
6.The Points Guy
This is prominent among websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money.
The Points Guy site has cracked the much needed targeted social traffic. They also have an equal number of organic traffic.
Significantly, the site is about credit cards in travel. Furthermore, they talk about leveraging the benefits of credit card companies and travel companies offer for taking different actions. This results in traveling cheaply and sometimes even for free.
This has made Points Guy really popular. Significantly, they help people do something very specific, instead of simply beating around the bush.
Therefore, two things are achieved through this site: Solving people’s problems + recommending products through which they earn affiliate commissions.
Website’s Key Statistics:
Facebook: They have 1,904,187 followers
Twitter: They have 323K followers
No.of Visits to their site per month: 3M
Domain Rating: 78
Backlinks: 10,500
Alexa Rank: 4,054
Niche: Credit cards and travel
Goal: Travel and credit card hacking
Key Challenge: Extremely competitive niche
Their Top Contents
Some of their top contents are, 5 Key Things to Know About Getting Global Entry. And Best Ways to Avoid Airline Change and Cancellation Fees. Significantly, the second title proves to be a highly useful evergreen title that can be updated and re-marketed continuously.
Ways In Which They Make Money
The site makes money through credit card and travel affiliate programs. Moreover, they focus mostly on credit cards that people can use to earn travel rewards.
Their Top Promotions
Their promotions or promoting products is based on which offers the best rewards. Few examples are,
- American Express
- Chase
- Citi
Lessons to Learn for Your Affiliate Marketing
- Always solve a problem
- Place your favorite products, front, and at the center.
7.Website Setup
Prominent among websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money
This site focusses on people who want to create a website. Significantly, there are many people typing this keyword into Google every day. Moreover, this site is unique among websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money.
The perfect storm of affiliate marketing in this site is,
- Identifying an eager market
- That same market has high-paying affiliate programs
- The site has an Exact Match Domain (EMD)
- Importantly, visitors never have a feeling that they are being sold into.
Website’s Key Statistics:
Facebook: They have 25,514 followers
Twitter: They have 2,500 followers
No.of Visits to their site per month: 494,000M
Domain Rating: 78
Backlinks: 4,100
Alexa Rank: 22,701
Niche: Web hosting
Goal: Help people build their first website
Key Challenge: Operating in a highly competitive market
Some of their Top Contents
How Do They Make Money?
- They generate money through monetizing content with affiliate offers they earn a commission from.
- Moreover, the site doesn’t use Google AdSense or any other form of contextual advertising.
- They heavily promote Bluehost.
Other methods used to promote various affiliate programs without making them feel like a promotion are,
- User-guides
- Round-up reviews like best web hosts for speed, the best site builders, etc.
- Technical guides
The Site’s Top Promotions
Lessons to learn for your affiliate marketing
- Try to convert early by providing users real value.
8.Skyscanner
More useful among websites that use affiliate marketing to earn money
This site get paid a commission for sending visitors to the websites of major airlines. Therefore, this makes them a commission-based business, they’re an affiliate site. Moreover, Skyscanner has become a trusted brand.
Website’s Key Statistics:
Facebook: They have 10,163,826 followers
Twitter: They have 171K followers
No.of Visits to their site per month: 9.1M
Domain Rating: 84
Backlinks: 17,100
Alexa Rank: 2,849
Niche: Air Travel
Goal: To help travelers find cheap flights
Key Challenge: The site faces a neck-to-neck competition with major international airlines
The site’s Top Contents
Their valuable content is, “Skyscanner’s guide to finding a late deal“, “Amazing places you won’t believe exist on earth“. And “17 surprising items not allowed in your hand baggage“.
How Do They Make Money?
They make money through,
- Referral income from airlines
- AdSense and
- Internal affiliate program
What are Their Top Promotions?
- British Airways
- Ryanair
- Google AdSense
Lessons for effective affiliate marketing
Airlines is a big field. But you need to think big like Skyscanner and aim for higher ventures. Moreover, you have to give importance to Content Marketing on your site.
Conclusion
All the above examples show the peculiar ways adopted by each site to convert targeted traffic. Not many use email lists or email marketing. They use fewer banner ads. Particularly, most of these sites earn money through passive income.
Importantly, they heavily invest in social media. But above all, there are two lessons you can learn from these sites,
- You have to balance monetized content and value content
- Go for more affiliate programs or networks.
Do you know of any other affiliate website that monetizes primarily by recommending products? Please share about them in the comments section.
The list is small. definitely, there are more no. of sites to mention and looking forward to those.
Thanks, buddy for the article Sound motivating for me to start earning let me work on this