Taking Affiliate Marketing on Quora a step further


In the previous article about making money using Quora I have covered some ways you can go about it. I explained how does this type of affiliate marketing work and showed a few examples of the strategy.

The strategy I’ve reviewed in that post was easy. Didn’t take much time nor work (at least compared to what I’m about to show you). That strategy of affiliate marketing was beginner friendly. The thing is, it wasn’t a business model. 

Why is this better, then?

Think about it this way. You spend time replying to people’s posts writing a mini article. You have to possess the knowledge in order to write such a thorough reply. Why don’t make better use of it?

The amount of time you would have to spend on writing numerous articles would be huge. Of course it’s fine if you just want to make a couple of sales. Then you simply answer 5 or 6 questions and that’s maybe a weekend worth of work. But what if you tried to produce a consistent income? Well, then you’d have to spend lots and lots of time consistently replying to people’s questions. 

Why? Because those answers aren’t eternal. Although they will remain there forever, the need for them will vanish. Quora won’t show one question all the time in the feed just because it got a good amount of traffic and quality replies a month ago. But guess what, Google will.

What should you do to take Affiliate Marketing with Quora to a next level?

First things first, it should become rather ‘Affiliate Marketing with the help of Quora’.

Instead of writing endless replies to questions on Quora elaborating about the topic, create a blog. I know I might have just lost your attention. ‘Dude, I don’t wanna write a blog…’.

I get it, not many people want to commit to such a project. It’s like I told you to write a book. The amount of work you see just overwhelms you. You probably think of a book like of 250 pages of text and a lack of ideas after first 50. But that’s not the way to approach it.

Don’t think of a blog like 100 article milestone you’d have to achieve to start making money. That’s not the case at all! There have been blogs that made their owners decent money just after 15 articles. But let’s say you’d still need a hundred. Don’t think of those like a whole. 

You wrote one, you raise your eyes from the computer and suddenly see a whiteboard saying only 99 more to go! You’d obviously get daunted. It took you a whole afternoon to write those 2500 words and you have to do that 99 more times? No way…

That’s why you need to think of a blog like it’s your personal diary. There are no milestones, there are no “99 yet to go”. You write an article on a topic, and after you’ve finished – don’t think about it. Go watch a movie, talk to your friend. Just get involved somewhere else, let your head chill for a bit.

The next day, you can’t walk around thinking ‘OMG I just wrote 1 out of a 100’. Think like this: ‘OMG I just wrote my first article, look how nice it is! Who’s a good boy?’ Your blog is a place where you let your thoughts out. Nobody’s there to judge you, there is no teacher to grade your work or a boss who’s whining that it’s too dull to read (however, make sure it isn’t).

Don’t think of a blog like of something scary and intimidating. It’s not 99 articles to go, It’s 1 article less to your success. 

Enough of that pep talk, let’s get down to business.

Blog is a great source of income when it comes to affiliate marketing. And here’s why:

  • It’s there forever (for a very long time). You see, if you get an article ranked in google it just sits there, driving traffic and making you money. Only chance for a blog post to go down in ranking is somebody outranking you with their new post, or google’s terms of service changing making your page rank lower. 
  • It can be whatever you want. You can write articles on many topics in a niche, which allows for a greater chance of monetization. If you see a post on Quora on affiliate marketing you can only talk about affiliate marketing. But if you run a blog about making money online you can talk about affiliate marketing, dropshipping, freelancing etc. The point is, you have much room to create content surrounding our niche.
  • It’s easy to get a blog monetized through affiliate marketing or ads. With a blog you can make a review posts linking to affiliate products. Just be sure to be transparent with it.
  • It’s passive income. You put the work in, wait some time, and it starts bringing in those dollars. 
  • It can be a great way to lay out the thoughts in your mind. You’ve probably had this state of mind where you’ve got so many ideas you can’t really focus on any of them. It’s good to write them all in a document. It helps you cleanse your head, and the editing can be done later on.
  • It’s scalable. With every single article your blog grows in strength. The more content there is, the more people read, and the more money you make.

‘Cool, but how does this apply to affiliate marketing and Quora?’

Affiliate marketing is mainly focused on driving traffic to a product. If you ‘own’ the traffic by running a blog, there’s nothing easier!

What’s the problem in creating a blog post related to some products you can be affiliated with? Top 10 best lipsticks under $5 – 10 affiliate products that all of your traffic will see. I think you understand how powerful this is.

‘Why is this related to Quora then? You’ve been talking about a blog all this time.’

According to my research, it takes approximately 3-6 months for a page to rank organically in google, and about 8 months (35 weeks) to reach its top position (i.e. it won’t go any higher unless you change it).

Of course you can wait for that time to pass, while still producing content. Just stay motivated and don’t quit. It does pay off in the long run. Or you can leverage Quora to speed this whole process up.

Just as you would normally reply to people’s questions like I thought you in the previous article, you need to go out there and do the same, but slightly different. The replies can be shorter than previously. You just need to answer the question with a decent amount of detail, but don’t oversaturate it. Instead of linking to an affiliate product, link to your blog. Tell people you’ve got this great article on the topic and they can check it out if they want to know more.

That’s all. You got their attention by ranking your reply to the top (mind the previous article), answered the question and likely triggered curiosity. Everyone hooked on by your answer will click into your link to get more information. Thus you get visitors to your website. And if the content is good they’ll stick around.

Clever, isn’t it?

‘Okay, but what if I still don’t want to create a blog?’

If you don’t want to create a Blog, start a YouTube channel

YouTube channel is basically like a Video Blog (I guess that’s why such videos are called vlogs). For some people, including myself, watching YouTube is a part of daily routine. People browse through YouTube looking for something to catch their eye, or go and research a topic there. They watch tutorials, case studies, TOP 10 lists, and all kinds of stuff that is educative or entertaining.

Videos on YouTube take much quicker to rank than a blog post on google. I’m sure you’ve seen a video that is 24 hours old while browsing or searching YouTube, and I bet you’ve never seen a fresh blog post unless the site’s been out for quite some time (i.e. the site has a good domain authority) or you’ve got notified via email or other means.

Although It’s hard to rank Incredibly fast for a new channel, it’s still faster than ranking a Blog post in google. And if your channel grows in authority, you can rank your videos within hours from release.

The thing is, if you produce quality content, it’s much quicker to rank on YouTube and start making money than it is to rank in google. Quality content always makes its way to the top, but it does it much quicker on YouTube.

‘What do I need to start a YouTube channel?’

Basically, nothing you wouldn’t already have. Most people have smartphones, I’m sure you also have one. Use your phone to record videos. Many phones nowadays are equipped with HD cameras, which is just perfect for the start.

Or maybe some friend of yours has a camera? That’s great, ask them if they would lend it to you for a couple of weeks. Maybe buy them a pizza for that. If not, that’s fine, your phone should work too. Even if it’s not full HD it should still get the job done.

Mind that many people watch YouTube on mobile, so if You record it with your phone it doesn’t need to strech to fit a 23ish inch computer screen.

Signing up for YouTube is free, so that’s no obstacle.

Simply smash that SIGN IN buton in the upper right corner and sign into your google account. Then, just follow the instructions.

Video editing is easier than it sounds. There are plenty of tutorials for video editing using free software like iMovie, Windows Movie Maker or HitFilm Express. Go ahead and watch some, it’s not hard, trust me.

How to make money on YouTube using affiliate marketing?

At first, build up your audience. Don’t start right away with product reviews. Nobody knows you there, and although with a good touch of YouTube SEO you can rank your videos, you can’t expect to make huge money right away. 

Like, ‘who is that guy and why should I listen to his reviews if he’s got 2 videos on his channel?’. You see, you can’t just go all about reviews. People are smart, and they’ll notice that you’re doing reviews only to get sales. 

I know that’s kind of the point, but think about it this way. If someone’s only got reviews on their channel, unless they are review-specific channels, which I’ll talk about in a second, It means they are desperately trying to make money through affiliate programs. And thus the reviews might be ingenuine. You won’t say the product is bad if you want to sell it, will you?

You need to have an authority. Build an audience, make people respect your opinion. If you provide quality content to people they will start to trust you, and you can start making sales in no time. 

Make sure not to get too focused on making sales. In fact it would be best if you forget why you’re starting a YouTube channel in the first place. People tend to focus so hard on affiliate marketing when building a blog or a channel that they simple become desperate and spammy. It turns people away pretty quickly.

Oh, and those review channels I mentioned. I’m sure you’ve seen a channel that is only dedicated to reviewing products in certain niche. Such channels built up their audience by not running affiliate marketing in the beginning. When building the channel they reviewed products, good or bad, and were true about it. If a product is shit, they say it’s shit. If it’s good, they say it’s good. 

People are capable of noticing that a link is an affiliate link (especially because you have to make a disclaimer, most of the time). That’s why when running such channel it is important not to be affiliated with any product you review. If someone sees you’re affiliated they think your review is not honest. Gather an audience by building authority and trust by honestly reviewing products, and after some time, a PART of those reviews may start to be affiliate.

Many YouTubers have made almost no money their first 3 or so months. They have just kept on producing content, and after awhile it stacked up and exploded. That’s what you’re after.

You can’t get discouraged after a month that you don’t make any revenue. Keep on producing great content and it will pay off after some time. It’s hard to say what time, since it’s not a matter of ranking, it’s a matter of people willing to watch.

At first, most of your (little) money will come from ads. To run affiliate marketing you have to be respected in your group of viewers.

After you build a little audience and created a sense of trust, you can start your affiliate journey. You see, people don’t like being sold something. They like to be given for free. That’s why you provide value up front, and when you’ve built audience, you start tossing those juicy affiliate links.

There are a few ways to go about it, some of them being:

  • Product reviews. You buy a product or ask for a review copy and simply record your thoughts about it. Of course you can’t say it’s trash and expect people to buy it, so make sure you choose a decent product.
  • Tutorials. Create a video guide helping to solve some problem. ‘How to get great looking lips makeup tutorial’. You’d probably mention the cosmetics you use for the tutorial, and it would be a good idea to include an amazon affiliate link in the description if somebody would want to buy those.
  • Top 10 lists. Same as with blogs.

How does this relate to Quora? 

Same principle. Use Quora for generating free traffic to help your channel grow. 

Answer the questions regarding some topic. At the end of the post include a link and say ‘for more info click on the link’, or that you’ve got this info there and link the video. You get the idea.

Which one, a Blog or YouTube channel, is better?

In my opinion, YouTube seems to be a slight winner. YouTube is faster to rank on. It’s faster to make a YouTube video than it is to write a blog post. But still, sometimes you need the outline and a script if you’re that type of person, so it depends. People also tend to trust a person they see more than just a person behind an article. While speaking to a camera you build a kind of bond with your audience. Although this bond also exists when writing a blog, it significantly stronger on video.

On the other hand, a blog is a more universal solution. Practically anyone can start a blog, provided that the have knowledge on their niche. To start a YouTube channel you have to be able to speak openly in front of a camera. It might be hard for an introvert to run a YouTube channel, and easier to write articles in the comfort of their own home, taking their time to lay their thoughts out.

I think you should consider all the factors and choose a solution that’s best for you.

Also, there is a way to squeeze even more out of those two.

How to get the most of these strategies?

Use them both. I know it takes a lot of time, but look. It’s twice as profitable.

Create a blog, a niche site, a website that’s focused on your field of interest. Along with the blog, create a YouTube channel. It sounds like 2x the amount of work, but actually it’s not.

When you write a blog post on a certain topic, you basically have a video outline. You have already written what you have to talk about on a video. When you finish writing, simply take a break, rearrange things in your head and then record a video. Speak about what you have just written.

This way, you basically extend your content on 2 platforms. If people prefer to read, they’ll find you in Google’s search results. If they’d rather watch, you’re present in their YouTube feed. 

Omnipresence, I guess.

There is one small piece of advice when running both a Blog and a YT channel.

Try to differentiate the content a little bit. Since you’ll be linking videos to posts and vice versa, there will be people who both read and watch your content. You don’t want them to experience the same thing twice. What you want to do, is to include some things in a Video that you didn’t include in an article, and the other way round. 

Of course you don’t want to cut one half of your audience from something important. Those things I’m talking about can be, for instance, bonus methods, bonus tips, some tricks, something extra, but interesting enough so that people would switch platforms just to get to know what it is. 

If you don’t feel like using either of these strategies

Then I think you should resort to a thing called Guest Blogging. It can make you more money than just answering Questions on Quora, however not as much as a Blog or a YT channel. It can also be a way to suplement your blog and drive more traffic to it. I’ve got a nice article about it for you HERE. (soon)

Conclusion

Quora is a great place to make money by doing affiliate marketing. If you want to scale things up I recommend starting a blog or a YouTube channel. If you’re feeling motivated, start both. Who says you can’t?

If you dedicate a lot of time and effort into working on your blog or channel, it will start to produce an income for you. The thing about passive income is, you have to be consistent in the first place. You have to put a lot of work up front, which seems like working for free. But that’s what makes people say passive income is impossible. Why would you write 30 articles for free if you can get paid a flat rate per every one of them in the process? Well, because those articles will start to work for you.

You need to be persistent in your goals. Set yourself a goal you want to reach. Be it the blog with 30 articles on it. Don’t expect to get paid, just write them. Be yourself, put your heart into it. Soon you’ll realise it became a habit, and writing 30 more won’t seem like a problem. 

You put the work upfront, then let it earn you money for a long time.

So… What are you waiting for, exactly?

Off you go!