Affiliate marketing blogging is a way to monetize your blog. We will now talk about getting traffic on your new blog.

So you have created your blog, you’ve built up some content on it, you added affiliate links and banner widgets. Despite all this, there is no one reading your blog. If no one reads it, there is no traffic. So if there is no traffic on your blog, how could you send traffic forward to the advertisers you are promoting for commissions? 

One of the important steps in blogging is to promote your blog and your blog posts. It is also very important to make sure users who visited your site already have a way to always be updated on new content. 

We will talk about the ways you can promote your blog with no financial investment. But first, before getting there, you should offer your visitors a way to stay connected to your blog by giving them several options to follow you.

1. Sign up options

The sign up options are closely related to the widgets we talked about when we explained how to display a banner or more in all your blog’s pages. 

A. RSS Feed

RSS Feed is one of the classic ways to follow a blog. Although it is no longer used by most internet users, it’s still a good idea to give them the option to take the RSS feed, even if you add this widget in the lower and less visible part of the blog. 

The RSS feed adds in a feed reader the newest blog posts or comments from your blog and notifies that reader’s owner about this.

On WordPress, themes come with a preset RSS feed widget, called META. 

B. Email sign up

WordPress also offers a widget that enables a blog reader to sign up via email. However, you need to know that you will not have direct access to the email base generated by your blog or control over the sent newsletters. The widget is called Follow Blog.

C. Connecting with your blog’s Facebook page 

WordPress enables you to associate the blog with a Facebook page through a Widget. In order to do so, you will have to have a personal Facebook account that will allow you to create a Facebook fan page dedicated to your blog. To create a Facebook page, you should go to the settings menu in your Facebook account. Click “Create a page” and another window will pop up where you could choose your new page’s category.

You will then have to go through a small set of questions regarding your page and then you will be the owner of a brand new Facebook page that you can connect with your blog through a Widget named Facebook Like Box.

D. Connecting to other social networks

Besides the Facebook page, it is advisable you create Twitter or Instagram accounts too. They have different set up specifications but you will surely find the widgets to set them up on your blog.

2. Promoting your blog

Promoting your new blog should take up most of your time, next to creating and editing your blog posts. Your blog should be like a business card that you can show anytime, it should be representative for your and you should grant it maximum exposure. 

As mentioned before, the RSS feed and email notifications are automated on WordPress, but your will have a little work to do for promoting your blog on Facebook and other social networks. Besides that, the comments you posts on other websites should always include, someway or another, a link to your blog.

A. Comments on the Internet 

Everytime you leave a comment online, on an product you purchased in an online store or comments on news, articles or other blogs, add your blog as your website.

Don’t forget to add your blog’s URL as a website on every comment you post on another website.

An important slice of traffic could come from the comments you publish on online stores, news websites or other blogs. The more your comment is relevant or useful, the more interested people will click on your link to check your blog too. This is how you can get targeted audience on your blog, provided you choose your products and store wisely.

B. Promoting through the Facebook page 

Each blog post you publish should be promoted on your Facebook fan page. You can do this by copying the link in a new Facebook page post. You can also ass a new image in the Facebook page post and insert a short URL (based on your post’s link)  in its description.

Most of the times, the moment when you publish a new blog post is not also the moment it should be promoted on the Facebook page.

You should test what is the best time in a day or day in a week when you can promote your new blog posts on the Facebook page in order to get maximum reach without having to add a budget to it.

There are some statistics talking about the ideal timing for getting the highest organic reach on Facebook, but don’t limit yourself to that, as they can be misleading. You should start testing with your own audience and try different times of the day or days of the week. 

Don’t share the blog post on your own personal Facebook wall. Only share your Facebook dedicated fan page’s post on your wall. This way, you also promote the page.

It may seem a bit weird, but this newly created Facebook fan page is not your profile, it is your blog’s profile. Thus, unlike the comments you leave on other websites, your should separate as much as possible your own personal profile from the blog’s profile. You should make sure your blog is represented online through its dedicated page.

C. Promoting on other social networks 

If you decide to create other blog dedicated pages on other social media networks, you should be aware that they will never have the same impact on your overall traffic as Facebook does. However, they can help consolidate your blog’s online presence.

Don’t spend too much time on other social networks, but if you decide to associate them with your blog, don’t ignore them. Try to update them together with Facebook.

These are the first steps in affiliate marketing blogging and you don’t need any financial investment, only time investment. In order to be successful, you need to be consistent in your blogging actions, publishing new posts regularly and promoting them online.

Good luck!