Affiliate Marketing on Twitter – Beginner’s Guide to Twitter Money

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Social media has been an indispensable online marketing tool, and Twitter is included. 

Most entrepreneurs or freelancers use social media for business growth, from individuals to small business owners to Fortune 500 companies. 

However, Twitter is not always among the most talked about platforms for affiliate marketing. But did you know you’re missing additional revenue opportunities for not promoting your affiliate marketing links or products on Twitter?

You can do affiliate marketing on Twitter and increase your revenue by following some of the tips and advice shared in this post. 

If you want to expand your reach, promote to more audiences, and diversify your traffic, Twitter is an excellent platform to consider for affiliate marketing. 

With approximately 353.9 million active monthly users, Twitter is a viable platform to build your affiliate marketing business. 

Before I dive deep into the specific Twitter affiliate marketing tips, let’s clarify what affiliate marketing on Twitter is, just in case we have beginners reading this post.

What is Affiliate Marketing on Twitter?

Affiliate marketing on Twitter is a marketing strategy where individuals or businesses promote affiliate products or services to their followers to earn commission from the sale or other actions generated through their affiliate links.   

Twitter affiliate marketing is no different from other platforms, like your website or other microblogging platforms. 

The main idea is to build a well-targeted large audience around a niche market, educate them on the subject, and subsequently market your affiliate products. 

Due to the nature of Twitter’s algorithm, platform rules, and tweet lifespan, the strategies for promoting affiliate products on a personal website will differ. 

Though the concept or ideas might be the same, the execution will differ. 

As we advance, this article will dive deep into how to use Twitter for affiliate marketing, as well as the strategies and tips for successfully promoting affiliate products and services on Twitter. 

Twitter Affiliate Marketing Guide

Individual creativity is essential in building a thriving affiliate marketing business with Twitter.

The better your marketing strategies and audience engagement, the more you can succeed.

Twitter is a unique social media platform with an audience not readily on the platform to buy. This is why patience and unique strategy are vital to Twitter marketing.

Here are some proven Twitter affiliate marketing tips to help you scale your business.

Discover Your Niche

You must define your target niche before building an affiliate marketing business on Twitter. This will serve as the base for everything that follows. 

Unlike a personal website where you can promote different affiliate products and be successful, doing so on Twitter might not work well. 

You need to be more focused, narrow your niche, and promote closely related products that serve relevant purposes. This is how to build a thriving affiliate marketing business on Twitter. 

Need help choosing your niche?

You can begin by doing simple keyword research. 

However, this process can be time-consuming and relies on industry expertise and keyword research knowledge to discover profitable affiliate marketing niches. 

You’ll need access to keyword tools like Semrush or Rank Tracker. 

I have published a detailed guide on keyword research for affiliate marketing. The information in that post should help you get started on the path to picking the right affiliate niche. 

If you need a quick look at a high-paying affiliate program niche, I have researched some suitable affiliate programs for bloggers and businesses. 

Another helpful strategy for picking the right niche for your Twitter affiliate marketing business is to study trending hashtags. 

If you notice relevant hashtags from a particular industry niche are trending often, that could indicate popular topics on Twitter. And a viable niche to dive into. 

Another option is to look at the top sellers of products or services on affiliate network places like ShareAsale, Amazon associates, Commission Junction, Impact, Avangate 2Checkout, etc. 

In the case of ShareaSale, use the Power Rank filter to find top-performing brands to promote. 

Now that we’ve explored several ways to pick the right affiliate marketing niche; let’s see how to build a Twitter audience that buys your affiliate recommendations. 

A word of advice: this will not be fun; it takes concrete efforts, persistence, consistency, and dedication to build a loyal following on any platform. 

Also, you must be committed long-term for this to work. If you can’t work on something for a reasonable amount of time, this might not be for you. 

With that said, let’s jump in.

Optimize Your Twitter Profile

Your profile is the first aspect of your Twitter affiliate marketing to focus on. 

It is the first thing people will see when they decide whether to follow your account. You won’t build active followers if your profile looks spamming, unreal, or confusing. 

When people come across your content for the first time on their Twitter timeline, curious users might want to check on your profile page. 

Ensure to include sufficient information that helps people know who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.

Use a real headshot picture; it helps build trust and prove a human is behind the profile. Avoid using a cartoon version of yourself or a picture of a celebrity and stuff that doesn’t represent your business. 

If you need inspiration writing a Twitter profile that helps build your business, check out some of the top brands and marketers using the platform.

Here is how Neil Patel builds trust, shows his expertise, and promotes his business within his Twitter profile. 

He introduced his agency business, Neil Patel Digital within the limited space. Also, he is a best-selling author and lists outstanding career awards from notable organizations or persons. 

If you’re starting, you don’t have to worry about not having credibility or achievement. The thing is, don’t lie, and don’t fake it. Be real.

As time flies and you keep consistent, network, and improve yourself and your business, you will gain credibility and social proof.

Build Your Followers

This is where the real work of building affiliate marketing on Twitter starts. 

You must be consistent, strategic, and focused on growing your audience. It is not something you do for some time and ignore for a long time if you want to experience significant results.

Before I discuss some proven tactics for getting more Twitter followers, here is an important tip:

• Don’t buy followers – you get nothing but fake profiles and bots. 

Marketers often buy Twitter followers to satisfy their egos and social proof. The trust is that purchase profiles are usually fake and bot, and you rarely get any engagements. 

Don’t even think of buying Twitter followers a dime; it wastes time and money. 

So, how do you build engaged Twitter followers?

Find other Twitter users in your niche and follow their profile. A good number of people follow back profiles. This is an excellent way to build your audience base and get noticed on the platform. 

Here is one tactic I use to find relevant Twitter accounts to follow. 

For example, I researched a freelance writer (Mos Clement) with an extensive following and engaging profile. Then, I click on the follower list to reveal his audience. 

From here, I review their profile, look for specific signals, and follow the relevant ones. 

Though this process can be time-consuming, some tools automate the process and help you find relevant accounts effortlessly. 

If you’re comfortable spending a little extra money on this, try Circlebloom or Followerwonk. These tools offer a free plan but limited access to features and functions. 

If you want to research Twitter profiles to follow, the free plan is sufficient. 

Tweet Often/Multiple Times Daily.

Twitter is a number game. The more often you update your social status, the more your profile appears on other people’s timelines.  

Also, many studies show that users who tweet often get more engagement and conversion than users who tweet less. However, focusing more on the tweet’s quality than quantity would be best. 

While there is no specific data for the ideal number of times one should post, it is believed that anything from 5 times daily is a good start. 

Realistically, finding time to post multiple times daily isn’t visible for busy people. But there is a workaround. Tools like Missinglettr and Buffer offer a free plan that lets you schedule posts and publish them at intervals.  

You can schedule months’ worth of posts for different social media platforms.

Twitter also offers built-in schedule tools, which you can use for simple auto-scheduling tools. 

Tools like Missinglettr, Hootsuite, and Buffer offer more features and functions than the native Twitter scheduling tool. 

Join Relevant Twitter Communities.

Twitter communities are an excellent way to bond and connect with others in your niche or particular topic of interest. 

It is a place to meet people of similar interests, discuss relevant issues, share ideas, and possibly promote your affiliate products. However, you must read the community rules before attempting to share your affiliate links; otherwise, you will get kicked out by the admins. 

There are benefits to joining Twitter communities. 

Unlike your Twitter profile timeline, where posts have a very short lifespan and are seen by random people, posts in communities can be seen more by relevant people. Depending on the community size, posts also have a longer timeline lifespan.

Twitter communities are good for finding potential customers for your affiliate products. As you help people in your community and discuss relevant solutions, you can pitch your affiliate products in a way that does not violate the group rules. 

There are communities for any topic you can think of. From SEO, digital marketing, affiliate marketing, religion, politics, language, sports, and technology to culture, you have many of them on Twitter. 

Find Twitter communities that align with your interests, be part of them, help others, and provide value. 

Suppose you provide value enough that people start noticing your expertise, even if you can’t directly promote your affiliate links in your response. In that case, you can use the community to build your follower base. 

Use HashTag

Hashtags are helpful features for discovering relevant and trending discussions on social media platforms, especially Twitter. 

As a Twitter affiliate marketer, use hashtags to help relevant people find your post and get more exposure. However, when publishing your tweet, you can add trending hashtags, too; this gives it more exposure and increases reach.

But the sad reality is that trending hashtags on Twitter might not be relevant to your topic. For instance, your tweet is about SEO, and you include the hashtag “#GazaWar” because it is trending then.

While this will give your post more reach and exposure, the audience might not be interested in your SEO content. So, you must balance relevancy and what is trending and explore your content copywriting skills. 

Alternatively, you can use tools like keywordtool.io to find trending Twitter hashtags for your content topic. 

Better, here is a comprehensive post on the Missinglettr blog for finding the right Twitter hashtag for content promotion.

Use Twitter Thread

Twitter Thread is ideal for writing longer articles on the platform. It helps break your article or text into chunks, making it more readable and easily digestible.

Aside from this, Twitter Thread is ideal for nonverified users. 

This is because you’re limited to the default 280-character space as a nonverified Twitter user. But with threads, you can write more to express yourself, teaching others something you’re passionate about or know more about.

You must have been seeing Twitter Threads but may not have noticed it. 

Here is one of my Twitter Threads.

As you can see in the image, the tweets followed each other. 

Here is how to create a Twitter Thread for a longer article.

This feature allows content creators space to write lengthy articles, add images, and uniquely express themselves on Twitter. 

For affiliate marketers, this is an excellent opportunity to show your expertise, build trust, publish longer articles, add affiliate links, and express yourself while giving more value to your followers. 

You can add product affiliate links within thread content to increase exposure on your affiliate ID. 

Run Paid Ads.

It would be best to consider paid ads at some points in your Twitter affiliate marketing journey. 

Sure, you can use Twitter as a platform driving free traffic to your affiliate products, but this can only take you far. If you want to experience significant marketing results, paid ads are something you should try. 

There are different Twitter ad campaigns you can try for other business objectives. 

For example, you can run ads to build your followers, create brand awareness, get engagements and app installs, or even drive traffic to a website outside of Twitter. 

However, since Elon Musk took over Twitter, a lot has changed. Now, at the time of writing, only verified Twitter users are eligible to run ads on the platform. 

This is something of concern, especially if you’re not willing to spend on something such as Twitter verification. 

Affiliate Marketing on Twitter – Things to Avoid

Starting affiliate marketing on Twitter looks easier than on a personal website. But here’s the trust: you can quickly get banned by an affiliate network, or often, Twitter marks your link as unsafe. 

So, to avoid sad stories that break the heart, read the affiliate program terms and conditions carefully before adding your links on social media, including Twitter. 

For example, some affiliate programs are okay with driving traffic from social media directly to the product landing page. However, you must disclose your affiliate partnership in proximity to the affiliate links. 

This ensures your promotion aligns with Federal Trade Commission law (FTC). 

Other affiliate programs don’t allow direct traffic from your promotions other than your website. This includes PPC ads (social media and search engines), email lists, and content. 

If you direct traffic from any platform besides your website, you risk outright affiliate account termination and forfeiture of any outstanding commission. 

In a nutshell, read the affiliate marketing program rules before you begin promoting. This is more important now than ever.  

Another factor to consider is affiliate link cloaking.  

Twitter isn’t the perfect place to paste long, ugly affiliate links. Long affiliate URLs with strings don’t look very safe for users and often get blocked by the platform. 

Therefore, you must cloak or shorten your affiliate URLs. Use URLs shortened like Bit.ly and other affiliate link management tools.

Shortened or cloaked URLs are more pretty, look safer, and provide more accurate analytics. 

FAQ

Conclusion

Twitter should be among the platforms you promote your affiliate offers rather than the leading platform. 

It’s hard to build a long-term business on social media that entirely operates independently. You will keep working if you want to remain relevant and get traction. 

Compared to a personal website, in which you have leverage, your one-time work can generate leads, revenue, traffic, and engagements for years. 

You don’t have this kind of freedom with social media. The moment you’re not posting and visible, the traction and engagement dwindles. 

Twitter, being a rapid information hub, you’re at a disadvantage the moment you slow down on publishing and engagement. 

I suggest using Twitter to support your website. 

Your strategy should be to funnel traffic from Twitter to your platform. This can be an email list, website, or YouTube channel.