Travel bloggers can partner with over 6,000 brands on Awin

Are you interested in making passive income through your travel content? Awin – one of our newest business members – has a solution that can help you work with over 6,000 brands – including household names like Etsy, Lonely Planet, Booking.com and Loews Hotels.

We asked Alexandra Forsch, Country Manager at Awin in the US, a few questions to learn more about affiliate marketing and how Awin can benefit Travel Massive members.

Tell us about Awin.com

Sure! Our network includes over 100,000 content publishers and 6,000 brands, commonly referred to as advertisers. By partnering through the network and using our technology, publishers help brands reach customers by driving quality traffic to their website and inspiring sales activity.

Awin is one of the largest global affiliate networks employing over 900 employees in 15 offices worldwide and supporting programs across 180 countries. 2017 has been an especially exciting year for us with acquisitions of two affiliate marketing platforms, ShareASale and affilinet, which are leading networks in their respective markets.

How much money did Awin publishers make last year?

Last year, publishers on Awin, which includes travel bloggers, made over $400 million in commissions. We are excited to help bloggers, influencers, and content publishers – who may already be talking about the products, services, and brands they use and love – learn more about monetizing their activity with the help of an affiliate network.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Basically, as a publisher, you promote brands, products or services that are relevant to your audience. You can promote on behalf of an advertiser in a number of ways – in a product review or blog post, on social media, in an email newsletter, by uploading a website banner, and so on – anything that will allow you to link to a merchant’s site.

If a reader clicks through and generates a transaction (such as purchasing a pair of hiking boots or booking a trip), you are rewarded with a commission by the advertiser, which is typically a percentage of the customer’s total purchase price.

The link or banner that you post includes a small piece of code that allows our system to track and pay out accordingly. Every publisher on Awin gets access to an easy-to-use interface where they can find links and banners to post on behalf of a variety of merchants.

Can you provide an example?

Here’s a practical example: a travel blogger (the “publisher”) places a link in an article pointing to Loews Hotels & Resorts (the “advertiser”). If a reader clicks on our tracking link and ultimately books a stay, the travel blogger will receive 7% on the confirmed booking.

There are affiliate programs for just about everything, from hotels to airlines to rental cars and so forth. Awin offers a variety of programs that are relevant to the TM community, like CLEAR, eBags and TrustedHousesitters.com, to name a few. Similarly, advertiser programs for clothing, hiking and biking gear, swimwear, workout gear, etc., all work quite well in the travel vertical.

One of our most successful programs for publishers operating a travel site is Etsy.com – everyone seems to find something to buy on that site!

How hard is it to get started?

It’s pretty easy. Website owners already know how to add content or insert links into their site – affiliate marketing just means getting that link from within our interface so that it includes the tracking information needed to credit the sale.

To make the process of inserting tracking links even easier, Awin developed a WordPress plugin called Convert-a-Link, which turns any existing, non-monetized links into trackable affiliate links in one fell swoop. For example, if you have already linked to one of our advertisers in a past post, such as Booking.com or StubHub, all you would need to do is place a piece of code on your site to activate the plugin. At that time, all relevant advertiser links will swap out automatically. This can save you hours of work

How much money can someone make using affiliate marketing?

You can earn indefinitely with just a single link which is why affiliate marketing can be a great way to generate passive income quite easily. Affiliate links generally don’t expire as long as you are still active in that Advertiser’s program. So, if a customer finds your blog post from a trip you took two years ago, and it inspires them to click through and make a purchase or book a trip, you will still earn a commission.

You can also incorporate affiliate links to supplement your existing monetization strategies. Bloggers will sometimes revisit old posts that originally featured a flat-fee sponsored promotion, likely arranged with a retailer outside of a network, and retroactively incorporate affiliate links. Once the retailer’s exclusivity period has elapsed, the blogger will often replace it with an evergreen affiliate link to continue earning incremental revenue from that post.

Learn more from Awin’s Ultimate Advertiser List for Travel Enthusiasts, and follow them on Travel Massive. You can also connect with Jeannine Crooks – Awin’s client services manager – who is a member of our Colorado chapter.