How to come up with blog topics to promote affiliate links

Once you’ve decided on your niche and found some good affiliate programs, you need to decide what topics make the most sense to cover on your blog.


Luckily, there are a few tactics that make this really easy.

Study competitors to find what’s working for them

The first and often easiest tactic is to spy on your competitors’ content. You can see what affiliate programs they’re a part of and how they promote those affiliates just by browsing their websites.

This whittled down the list to 3,360 keywords. That’s still a lot, but it’s much more manageable. You can filter it down further if you like, but I personally like to just start looking to see what came back from this first filter.


Peruse the list of keywords and check the URLs that rank for keywords you like to see how they’re promoting their affiliates. Add any promising keywords to your content calendar.


For example, you can write about the best “coffee roasters” and promote them using affiliate links, just like Homegrounds does.

Helpful online tools for affiliate marketers

WordPress

If your website isn’t already built, I highly suggest starting a WordPress website for your blog. It’s free to use, open source, and has all the functionality an affiliate marketer needs.

While you’re at it, check out this list of the best WordPress plugins. 

Lasso

Lasso is an awesome tool that helps you manage your affiliate links and add affiliate product display boxes that are clean and conversion-optimized.
Another thing I love about Lasso is that it gives you suggestions of affiliate programs to join for websites that you’re already linking to on your blog.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of my most used tools as an affiliate marketer. I use it to do keyword research, competitive analysis, link building, SEO audits on my websites, and more.

One of my most used features on Ahrefs is the Content Gap tool. You can use it to see all the keywords your competitors rank for on Google that you don’t, which makes coming up with content ideas super easy.

Google Docs and Wordable

I write all of my content for my websites—and for Ahrefs—in Google Docs. It’s super easy to write, edit, and collaborate on content within Google Docs.

The one issue I have with Google Docs is uploading content from the document to WordPress. Unfortunately, it adds unnecessary hidden code to your writing that gets moved over to WordPress when you copy-paste the content. 

That’s where Wordable comes in.

Wordable moves documents from Google Docs to WordPress—including uploading images, title tags, alt text, and formatting—at the click of a button. It has saved me countless hours.

Snagit and Loom

Snagit is a screen-capturing tool that allows you to edit your screenshots quickly and easily, then add them to your Google Docs.
Loom is a screen recording tool that lets you record your screen, audio, and (if you want to) video from your webcam.

Loom is great for recording videos for employees and standard operating procedures or for enhancing your how-to content to show your readers how to do whatever it is you’re explaining in text within your articles.