Affiliate Marketing In 2021 – How to Generate Traffic to Your Content

Affiliate marketing in 2021 is no different from the past decade. Of course, there are always new ways of doing things.

How the web was built 10 years ago is not how it is today.

Things have changed. Technology has advanced so many aspects of our lives. Business. Communication. Living. Politics. Entertainment. Sports. etc.

Although, while the fundamentals of generating website traffic remain the same, traffic channels have changed a lot.

Rewind it to 2000, Facebook wasn’t in existence. Google didn’t know either before I998. So things have changed a lot in the way marketing is done on the internet from decades ago.

In the same vein, driving traffic to your affiliate marketing content may not be the same as promoting your non-revenue focus content. Your primary reason for promoting your affiliate content is to generate sales, right?

If this is true, then attracting the right traffic is important now in 2021 than ever before. And you MUST be more aggressive also.

The simple reason is this.

Traffic sources are not the same, so the relevancy, engagement, conversion, and quality will vary.

Website traffic from social media sites is not the same as the traffic coming from search engines. Email list subscribers are different. Not to mention users coming to your sites from places like online forums, bloggers communities, etc.

The traffic sources I discuss in this post are basically personal experience. Mainly, all the traffic sources that have generates more hits leading to qualified sales. Meanwhile, starting and managing of an affiliate program is easier than ever: services like iDevDirect offer affiliate plugins for virtually any CMS: WooCommerce, Magento, Drupal and well as platforms like Wix, Weebly and many more.

If generating more sales will help your affiliate marketing in 2021, then this article is for you.

I have compiled a list of traffic sources I used in the past 6 months to drive more sales traffic. Generate more affiliate commissions, and grow my business forward.

This is a mix of free and paid website traffic channels. So I believe the information present on this page will be suitable for beginners and pro affiliate marketers alike.

Let’s dive in…

5 Affiliate Marketing Traffic Channels In 2021

1. SEO – Organic Search Engines Traffic.

Look here, in my experience, no other website traffic channel beat this when it comes to generating more sales traffic. Though, this is debatable, as email marketing as proven to generates the highest return on investment.

But when you compare the financial investment required for email marketing vs SEO, search engine traffic might top the list.

Besides, if you get the SEO aspect of an article right. And it ranks top for its target keywords and other variation of it, this could mean an endless passive stream of traffic.

Within 12 days, I generated over six (6) sales for the Wp Rocket affiliate product and earn more affiliate commissions. These sales were all possible because the page ranks top for its target keywords.

I have never run paid ads to this page. 90% of the traffic to the page is from the search engines. Mostly, Google.

The good thing about SEO traffic is that you don’t have to keep burning money to get people to your affiliate offer. What you need most is to write high-quality content that Google loves.

Do proper keyword research before you ever write a single word of your content. Writing an article without keyword research is a long-term potential traffic wasted.

There are lots of keyword tools you can leverage today to run effective keyword research. SEMrush keyword magic tool is one I use often. You can get it here for a 7-day free trial.

And not just the keyword tool you will have access to, but the entire SEMrush suite of marketing tools.

SEMrush Marketing Plans and Pricing

SEMrush has 3 (three) plans you can subscribe to:

You can check out each SEMrush SEO plan’s features on this page.

If you subscribe to any of the SEMrush plans using the link above, you will have access to all marketing tools on the SEMrush website for that particular plan.

2. PPC – Pay-Per-Click Advertising.

If you do affiliate marketing in 2021, then spending that extra cash driving more relevant PPC traffic is essential.

SEO traffic might be good, email marketing may drive better ROI. But if you need quick results, PPC marketing is worth trying.

It takes time before your SEO efforts start picking up. And building a responsive email list is not instant. PPC advertising is more of a quick fix for driving target traffic and generating revenue.

But there is a problem with running PPC ads for beginners.

You can’t get it right the first time. Running pay-per-click advertising takes a lot of testing, adjustments, and analyzing marketing data.

It required that you spend money to learn how PPC advertising works.

You need to run ads multiple times to see what works from what’s not. It takes a lot of patient and targeting options to run a successful PPC advertising.

In fact, you’ll keep learning how to better your next ad campaign. There is never an end to learning in digital marketing.

I have tried a couple of PPC ad agencies. Microsoft advertising (formerly Bing) has been more effective than others.

Although the traffic you could get from the Microsoft search network might not be that massive like the Google ads network. But it worth it and I advise you to try Bing ads today especially if you’re just getting started with PPC ads.

Microsoft ads is more cheaper and affordable than Google ads for beginners.

Microsoft Ads has been responsible for about 20% of my email subscribers list. This has also contributed to the traffic to my affiliate content.

Setting up your Microsoft ads account is not complicated. It’s simple and straightforward.

Here is a list of search engine marketing PPC advertising to consider:

3. Email List Subscribers.

No matter what year you’re doing affiliate marketing online. Either it is 2021, 2022, 2023, or whatever, email marketing is a MUST traffic channel to explore.

If done right, email list subscribers are your utmost guarantee traffic on-demand channels for affiliate product marketing.

But building an engaged email list is not as easy as saying. Though it is not difficult either. You just have to start with the right email marketing tools.

Since I started blogging way back in 2012, I have used as many as a dozen email marketing services providers.

Base on personal experience, not every email marketing tool will be very helpful to your business growth.

It is 2021, you need more than just the basics of email marketing services. You need a tool that lets you collect, organize, managed, and segments your email list without stress.

For beginners, it is a piece of safety advice to start with free email marketing services like MailChimp. But as I said above, you need more than just the basics.

What email marketing services like MailChimp offers are just the basics. I used MailChimp for more than 3 years before moving to GetResponse.

With free email marketing services like MailChimp, you won’t build your email list faster. This is because you will be limited to explore advanced marketing tools that let you build an effective lead magnet forms that attract signups.

There are lots of advanced marketing tools in GetResponse to build your email list faster.

From professional email form templates to audience engagement to selling your product. Hosting a webinar, Survey, beautiful landing pages, run ads right inside your GetResponse account, etc.

You can do a lot of things with GetResponse email marketing services. On this page, you will find a list of all the GetResponse marketing features.

No matter what type of signup form you want to build, you can do it with GetResponse.

4. Facebook Ads.

Facebook has been essential to the growth of CyberNaira. But that’s not to say it bring direct affiliate sales.

The use of social media may be different in every industry, website, or affiliate offer. I haven’t been so successful in using social media to drive more sales. But it has really helped in brand awareness and leads generation.

Social media has also help for building up engagement which might possibly lead to other business opportunities. Like getting business deals from merchants.

Regularly, I run Facebook ads for some of the revenue focus content to create awareness. Get more relevant eyeballs to the content and possibly generates more hits to the affiliate links.

Though, while this hasn’t generated direct sales. I could possibly say it has helped in driving more traffic, more social shares, awareness, and subscribers.

These metrics may not directly generate sales, but they’re good sales potential opportunities in the future.

If you haven’t tried Facebook ads before, maybe it’s time you dive in and see the growth it can bring to your business.

Besides, Facebook advertising cost is one of the cheapest among major ad agencies. Relatively cheaper than Microsoft and Google Ads.

But the conversion rate too can’t be compared to Google or Microsoft ads. In my experience, Facebook ads’ conversion rate is low when compared to paid search engine marketing.

But if you want to drive massive traffic to a page on your website fast, give Facebook ads a try.

Here is a list of social media advertising channels you can give a try:

5. Instagram.

Facebook owns Instagram, this makes it seamlessly possible to place ads on Instagram even without having an account there.

If you run Facebook ads, and your affiliate products appeal to an audience on Instagram, run your ads on Instagram too. It brings your affiliate product to the forefront of a massive audience.

But in my experience, not every affiliate offer would do well among the Instagram audience.

Products and services related to fashion, entertainment, Women, health, Skincare products, mobile device accessories, and things like these will probably do well on Instagram.

If you’re into any of these niches, give Instagram ads a try.

You only need to set up your ad on Facebook. It will automatically run on both Facebook and Instagram news feed.

Conclusion…

Promoting your affiliate marketing content will take more planning, aggressiveness, and carefully worked out strategies. Plus it will require more resources compared to when you’re promoting non-revenue focus content.

This is true because, with affiliate marketing, your primary objective is to earn a commission.

The 5 traffic channels discussed in this post are enough to get you started on the right path to driving massive traffic to your website.