Do it! Especially if you can find an excellent service provider who can potentially help nearly everyone in your audience at one time or another and who can be a strong, steady income generator.
Option #3: Online Courses
Online courses are an important subset of digital products, especially for bloggers, and the market is huge. They’re so popular that they deserve their own category on this list.
Online courses exist on just about any topic you can think of. They range in price from free to thousands of dollars, with higher-priced programs promising big results for students.
Examples:
My Garden School
Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids – How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting
Aha! Parenting affiliate
Suze Orman’s Personal Finance Online Course
Advantages
Courses are one of the best ways to help your audience achieve a goal that’s important to them or move past a roadblock that’s been keeping them stuck. You can deliver incredible value with little effort on your part.
Courses are often offered at a higher price point than other digital products, so your earning potential from each affiliate sale is higher.
Courses are popular. It should be easy to find other influencers in your niche whose courses can help your readers.
Disadvantages
You’ll have to spend time working through and reviewing courses to make sure that they deliver on their promises (to protect your reputation).
Our Recommendation?
Do it! Help your readers in a big way, and earn big at the same time.
Option #4: Ecommerce Stores
If you decide to promote physical products on your blog, your best bet is to choose high-quality, distinctive products that that will appeal strongly to your specific audience.
Avoid commodity products that your readers can buy anywhere — the commissions are so small you won’t make worthwhile money unless you can drive tremendous traffic to your site.
Commissions on e-commerce products are usually fairly low because of the overhead of production costs, storage costs, shipping, etc. So unless you are planning to build a large review or shopping site, physical products will probably be a very small portion of your blogging affiliate income.
However, if you have a favorite tool of your trade, a must-have gadget that will make your readers’ lives easier, or a high-quality recommendation that you’re sure people will be thrilled with, go ahead and offer it.
You’ll build goodwill even if you don’t make a lot of money.
Examples:
Niche shopping — Product Review Mom (parenting), Compost Mania (gardening), Roemer’s Workshop (hobbies), Pinch of Yum (food)
Tech or gadgets — Engadget, Gizmodo, Craziest Gadgets
Engadget
BusinessCool stuff — This Is Why I’m Broke
Advantages
Once you have an established blog, companies may approach you and offer you free products in exchange for a review. (You should always disclose this, as it could be seen as a conflict of interest.)
If you can afford to purchase products on your own in order to test them, you’ll be seen as a truly objective reviewer.
Disadvantages
Commissions from e-commerce stores are usually a lot lower because of the overhead, so you’ll have to sell a whole lot more products to make a decent income.
Buying products so you can review them before promoting them can be expensive.
Our Recommendation?
Offer physical products only under certain circumstances:
They’re directly related to your blog topic and something your audience absolutely needs.
They’re not commodities. Specialized and distinctive products from e-commerce stores reflect better on you, boosting your reputation and credibility.
You should now have plenty of ideas for types of products you can represent.
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The Bottom Line on Affiliate Marketing
That dream you’ve had of making passive income isn’t just a silly fantasy.
It’s a completely achievable reality.
