To the Moon: 7 Ways to Earn with Make’s Affiliate Program
At Make, word-of-mouth is our top marketing channel. Without our brand advocates, we wouldn’t even be close to where we are right now. You are our catalyst for growth.
To return the favor, we decided to launch the Make Affiliate Program a few years back. And now, we want to provide you with a set of strategies that are specifically tailored to promoting our affiliate program.
Read on to learn about the most effective ways to spread the word about Make and maximize your commission earnings.
7 Profitable Strategies for Promoting Make’s Affiliate Program
1. Write stories about your experience with automation on your blog
If you have a blog, writing about automation to promote your affiliate page might seem like a no-brainer. Automation is a rising industry that’s up for grabs. And that may tempt you to stake your claim on the space through listicles, round-up posts, and how-to posts. But before you put pen to paper, we recommend digging a little deeper.
The human brain is wired to respond to stories, especially ones that are rooted in reality. That’s why we believe telling stories about how automation has benefited your business will help you gain more traction than following the standard content creation playbook.
Everyday content doesn’t touch on unique, personal experiences and could be produced by almost every other content creator around. Plus, sharing your experiences with automation will help you build the credibility to become an authority in the space.
Image source: RadReads
If you want to stretch your reach even further, you can also write guest posts about automation for brands that mostly cover automation or process. Again, we recommend crafting stories about your experiences with automation rather than listicles, round-up posts, or how-to posts. Anybody can create the latter types of content. Only you can write the former.
Pro Tip: When inserting your affiliate link into your blog posts or guest posts, consider only mentioning Make when you’re talking about the tools you used to build an automation. Then, hyperlink the text, “Make”.
2. Launch a newsletter about automation
In the automation space, there are only a few authoritative newsletters around, making it very possible to add yours to the list if you decide to launch one.
Before you do, though, it’s important to know that people expect emails to be a lot shorter than blog posts. As a result, you’ll attract more subscribers, opens, and clicks if you teach your readers one tactical lesson or first principle about automation rather than telling long-form stories about your experience with it.
Pro Tip: Tap into the greenest automation niches. There are hardly any newsletters about automation out there, and most of the relevant niches (including marketing automation, ecommerce automation, and email marketing automation) are up for grabs.
3. Strive to become a social media thought leader on automation
Just like email newsletters, social media is also a place where there are relatively few automation thought leaders. To establish authority on the topic, though, it’s not enough to post insightful advice, opinions, and facts and reply to the comments on your posts.
One of the most effective ways to build a following on social media is by chiming in on popular posts on LinkedIn or Twitter threads about automation. If the topic is controversial, even better. Your opinion will likely stir even more discussion and boost the exposure to your ideas.
Image Source: Twitter
And what about Reddit? Creating subreddits about automation and including your affiliate link in your posts or replying to Reddit posts with your affiliate link may seem like a great way to promote Make, but Reddit actually has a strict policy against sharing affiliate links on their website. Your account could potentially get banned.
Pro Tip: Make can automatically pinpoint these Twitter threads and notify you about them.
4. Create videos on YouTube about Make’s automation capabilities
On YouTube, a lot of business influencers create tutorials, how-to videos, and deep dives on singular products.
For instance, Gareth from GAP Consulting, an Airtable specialist, and one of our affiliate partners, creates helpful videos that teach his subscribers how to leverage automation to optimize their workflows and get the most of the tool. And in each video’s description, he inserts his affiliate link.
Gareth has built a following of over 14.6K subscribers, and racked in over 2.6 million views by consistently creating videos. And that’s exactly why he can attract more viewers to his videos and get more clicks on his affiliate link.
Image Source: YouTube
Pro Tip: Point your subscribers to your affiliate link by mentioning that you’ve linked to Make in the description below. Then, you can remind your audience to click it if they’re interested in checking out our product. Additionally, if you’re in the YouTube Partner Program, you can add link cards and end screens to your videos that will direct viewers to your affiliate link.
5. Host a webinar about the power of automation
Webinars are popular because they’re usually packed with pragmatic tactics. Consider creating one about the best practices that you have uncovered for implementing automation into business processes.
Pro Tip: If you need some creative inspiration, check out webinars in the automation space, like ours with Monday.com about how to best use the project management software in conjunction with Make.
6. Participate in product and Slack communities
In product communities like Airtable community and Monday community, members often discuss automations and integrations that they can use in the product. Slack communities like No Code Founders explore automation as a whole.
With passionate members and high engagement rates, these communities are perfect for promoting Make. However, these communities also highly discourage shameless plugs of products, especially if you’re one of their affiliate partners.
Pro Tip: Give your fellow members real-life examples of how automation has benefited your business and casually mention that you used Make. Not only is this a great way to contribute to the conversation while simultaneously promoting your affiliate link but it’s also a great way to build authority in each community. This can lead to direct messages from your fellow members, which is the perfect place to share your affiliate link, if Make comes up.
7. Run paid ads
Running paid ads on Google or social media is an easy and effective way to get a lot of eyeballs on your affiliate link. But there are a few things that you really need to be cognizant of to avoid getting your ad taken down:
If you’re an affiliate marketer who doesn’t provide any other services, you can insert your affiliate link into your ads but you can’t use any branded keywords (like “Make”) in the copy. Keep in mind, bidding on our keyword is forbidden.
If you are an Make partner, automation consultant, or freelancer who provides services, we recommend promoting any of your web pages or blog posts that include your affiliate link instead of your affiliate page. This will boost the odds that people will click on your ad because you’re adding more value to their lives.
Don’t Just Plug the Product. Join the Conversation.
Maximizing your commission earnings requires tact. Gone are the days where you could just plug our product in as many places as possible and expect an influx of cash.
Instead, you need to bring value to the table, know where the most valuable conversations about automation are taking place, and contribute to them without an agenda.
And with these seven promotion strategies in your arsenal, we’re confident your commission earnings will stack up in no time.