In affiliate marketing, traffic is considered to be the pathway of your success. Without traffic sources, it is impossible for marketers to earn profits. Why so? Because if no one sees your page, then how will you make a sale and earn commissions? This is where traffic sources come into play. Traffic sources are the lifeblood of affiliate marketing as they decide the fate of your business and help you identify where your potential customers are coming from. We can classify traffic sources into two major types - paid and organic.
The traffic source that works best for you depends on various factors such as your niche, budget, skills and goals. Paid traffic as the name suggests, involves getting paid advertising to drive traffic to your website and achieve high conversion rates. Organic traffic is free and typically originates from search engine results, whether through social media platforms or Google itself. SEO plays a big part in getting your content ranked in search results to drive traffic.
What do you mean by traffic sources?
Traffic sources are basically the platforms that make potential customers arrive at your website, landing page or affiliate offer. You can think of traffic sources as the route that guides the targeted audience to your destination. In affiliate marketing, choosing the best traffic source can be a complete game changer in boosting your sales.
Knowing where most of your audience comes from helps you put more emphasis and focus on those channels and create a better layout for promotion. Thus, without identifying the right traffic sources, your affiliate marketing journey can fall short.
7 Best Traffic Sources for Affiliate Marketing
In this list, we will focus on both paid and organic traffic sources so that you get a clear picture of what works best for you:
SEO Traffic
SEO traffic falls under organic traffic as it is entirely free to drive customers to your website. SEO is one of the most significant traffic generators and is highly crucial for getting your content to appear in search results. You can use SEO to get your YouTube videos, blogs and websites appear in people’s search results.
When you optimize SEO in your content, whether by identifying search intent, keywords, link building, using alt text in images, etc, it increases the chances of people clicking on your affiliate page or links. For individuals who are beginning their affiliate marketing journey or are already on the path to success, SEO is the best free traffic source for attracting visitors to your website and boosting conversions.
Social Media Traffic
In the era of social media, where one single video/reel/post can make the internet go frenzy, most traffic sources for affiliate marketing originate from here. Yes, social media has a massive reach which enables people to visit your site from a single video or post. You can use your social media channels like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook to promote your products and watch people flood into your DMs or comment sections asking for links.
Millions of people are browsing YouTube and Instagram in their spare time which makes these platforms one of the best sources to boost your conversion rates. The more you increase your engagement, the more people will interact with your page. You can create engaging videos such as tutorials, how tos, fashion hauls etc, to attract people to your affiliate page.
Online Forums
Online forums are also another free traffic source that works wonders for your affiliate marketing conversions. These online forums are platforms where like minded people discuss relevant topics and share their experiences with each other.
These online forums are what coffee shops or cafes of earlier centuries were used to be, where people used to debate and discuss trending topics. Platforms like Quora and Reddit are similar to those coffee shops but in a digital way. Since a lot of people communicate and post their thoughts and opinions on these forums, they work as the best free traffic sources helping potential customers land up at your page.
Email Marketing
Email marketing, no matter how traditional or professional it appears to be, is an excellent traffic source. Email marketing is a direct and personalised way of reaching your target audience. Since you are focusing on your own subscribers, there is a chance of the conversion rate being higher as your content is already aligned with the right audience.
You can attract the audience with multiple offers and send newsletters to build a healthy relationship with customers. Using a catchy subject line, personalising the emails by using the subscriber’s name, putting a strong CTA, etc, surely helps in boosting conversion. Email marketing is one of the best way to engage with the same audience multiple times with offers tailored to their needs, and end up with a high ROI.
Paid Ads
Paid ads are a way to connect to your audience by displaying your content without waiting for them to find your page. This method is suitable for people who want faster results in a limited time. Marketers can use different paid ad networks like search ads, social media ads, display ads or native ads. Paid ads often make your content appear in search results when people type a related keyword.
With social media ads, people get redirected to your page when they see your display ad, either through posts or videos. The same is true for display ads which help you land on your website after seeing the visual banners on blogs or apps. Using Google ads, Bing ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads etc works miraculously faster and provides immediate traffic.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is an effective way to guide traffic from other prominent websites to your website. In this, you write and publish articles for different websites and strategically insert your affiliate links which allow readers to click on those links and visit your website, thereby increasing your traffic. Why does this work? Well, because you are connecting with an audience base that already cares about your niche. Using a reputable website to promote your affiliate link is a masterstroke and even helps strengthen relationships with other bloggers and site owners.
Mobile Advertising
It is no surprise that mobile advertising is the fastest growing traffic source for obvious reasons that most people spend their time online on mobile devices. This is a paid traffic network where ads are displayed to users through mobile web banners, push notifications, short form videos etc.
In this, when an ad appears in the user’s mobile and they click on it, they are redirected to your affiliate page. So based on the traffic generated through PPC or PPV, you can earn your commission. Mobile advertising is a lot more cheaper than most paid advertising networks, but the returns received are much higher.
How to choose the best traffic source?
Target Audience - The most important thing is to know where your target audience spends the most time. You will come to know this by identifying from which traffic source most of your conversion comes from.
Costs - While organic traffic is free and does not require any monetary investment to generate traffic, the paid ones can be a little expensive. Based on your budget, choose the traffic source which is cost effective and gives faster results.
Match Platform to Product - Analyse the product that you are promoting and decipher which traffic channel will be ideal for showcasing the product. Example - a technical product requires a video, whereas, a fashion item is best for Instagram or Pinterest.
Traffic Quality - In order to get faster results, do not choose sources which provide low quality or bot traffic which acts like a clickbait. Rather focus on sources that get you high quality and relevant traffic based on your niche.
How to increase traffic for affiliate marketing?
Focus on SEO - As we discussed above that SEO plays a crucial role in getting your website ranked and ultimately generating traffic. You can use SEO tools to identify users’ search intent, trending keywords, your site’s performance analysis, etc to understand how you can create better content.
Utilize Social Media - Since social media has become a part of our daily lives and people open it every morning like a newspaper, you should tap into this opportunity to place affiliate links in your content to make it visible. Social media helps lock in potential customers who end up on your post while scrolling.
Engage in Communities and Forums - People discuss things they like or dislike on online forums and so you should capitalize on this opportunity to share your affiliate links and communicate with them.
High Quality Content - When you focus on creating engaging content with search intent in mind and targeted keywords, your content automatically gets ranked on search engines and help increase your traffic.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed some of the best traffic sources for affiliate marketing that can truly be a game changer for your success. It is not necessary that only paid networks will guarantee you traffic, even the organic ones can do wonders for you. However, they sometimes give slower results compared to paid ones. With consistent efforts and strategic planning, you can see a significant boost in your sales. So check out these traffic sources that we have listed and thrive on your affiliate marketing journey.
