How Does Affiliate Marketing Work

There are multiple websites telling you how does affiliate marketing work. We have found that these are marketing sites selling you an affiliate marketing program, which is odd.

Its like the multiple ebook selling author of "how do you make money selling ebooks" by telling you how to sell ebooks. The Internet is full of them (also multiple well known websites do this as well).

What we have found is a website that shows you how to sell affiliate products (within the travel niche), as an example they are also trying to sell you an affiliate product :)

But how they are selling the product is the same story in this article. In some ways the website owner is down to earth and enjoying what they are doing. But as always, they could make more on selling the affiliate product.

Lets check them out.

How does affiliate marketing work- ABrokenBackPack.com case study.

So abrokenbackpack.com is a travel website (homepage above). The article that we have picked is one outlying how travellers can increase their income through affiliate marketing.

The site is clean, full of information and seems to be a lone solo project of enjoyment. Cool.

There are product pages (best phone for travelling, rain coats for travellers) and pre-product pages like how to keep food cool camping- which gives us a product review/ demo. It is all normal and natural which you need.

There are also ads on pages- which we will come back to later.

So what happens, someone will click on a product link and then abrokenbackpack will get a commission for that sale- if one goes through. If you bought it straight from the store bypassing the link, the price will still be the same. The seller pays abrokenbackpack for the sale.

As you can see the opportunities are endless and the profits too as it doesnt matter how many click on that link and buys you still get that commission of the sale. Some commissions are bigger, some are smaller depending upon the product type and niche that you are in. Check out our article on is affiliate marketing worth it, with stats here to get a low down on prices.

If you want to see how products are set out within an article then abrojkenbackpack is a good place to start.

So what does abrokenbackpack state for travellers on how does affiliate marketing work for them?

Get a blog. This is to house your content and interact with your audience
You can recommend airlines, hotels, tours, travel packages, travel insurance, car rentals, etc.
Use TravelPayOuts- seems to be an aggregate dashboard of multiple travel affiliate programs

It is this affiliate program that we want to focus on because I think the promotion of this also affects the promotion of the other articles. Which, could help abrokenbackpack sell more.

How can Abrokenbackpack sell more?

Remember this is not about putting down, it is about lifting up.

This one screen shot will, hopefully, explain:

Ads. There are 4 pictures in that screen grab. They are ads. 2 lines of text, ad, 4 lines of text, ad. Some are very big and maybe too big/ ad not set up well:

The ad issue is on most of the article pages, admittedly with slightly more text between ads. But sometimes it can get confusing. See below, ads in red and green and then I am assuming the "see on Amazon" is a link to the product being talked about in the article?:

Ads 2. If you have affiliate links on a page then running ads on the same page is going to be conflicting. Check which ones bring in the most revenue? Ads or affiliate links per same amount of traffic over the same period of time. It is tempting to run both but it also splits the customer and revenue
Picture. Sometimes, OK, most of the time the product isn't shown in the description. Check out how Engadget does it. In many of the articles you state "this is what I use" then it would be cool to see a picture of that. It adds authenticity and grounds your site. It gets some Google love if you place relevant pictures within your article. It also backs up what the customer can expect as seen below. The blue link is the name of the manufacturer rather than the name of the product. The big blue box is an ad, the nothing space is the size of the ad space. No product pictures:

More info. It looks like you use TravelPayOuts but it would be nice to see a video, a few screen shots or a walk through on how to use it on a separate page. Grouping it with your how does affiliate marketing work with tarvel websites doesnt do the product justice. I think you need to lead into it. So, something on the lines of. "Check out my in-depth walk-through on how affiliate marketing is working when I use TravelPayOuts. A specific program just for travellers. Last month I managed $680 within the first month of using it". Sound a little bit better right? Why I say this is because you are saying to people to use TravelPayOuts and some affiliate marketing tips, but do the full tips on the page then show them how the tips worked for you.
Links. I would be nice to see some more links. So this is text from the bottom of that screen: "In fact, it’s one of my favorite ways to monetize my content. Affiliate marketing is my #1 source of revenue, so I highly recommend you get started.Travelpayouts is a great network for travel bloggers, offering low entry thresholds, high commissions, and plenty of promotional opportunities. That said, it’s a great platform to get started with affiliate marketing as a travel blogger". It would be nice to offer a link to your stats on affiliate marketing- which would increase trust within this page. Also it would be nice to offer a link to the actual TravelPayOut website here as well. Also, if you really want to promote this product then add on a bonus for people who actually use the product through your affiliate link.
Amazon. Got to go back to that link about "See on Amazon". Make the link more specific to each product (if you can rather than a generic text-unless Amazon provided).

As always, we hope abrokenpackpack all the best.

If you want to check out other selling online articles visit the Jasonera blog.