Linkedin Affiliate Marketing in 2023

Today, I’m going to show you exactly step by step how to use LinkedIn for affiliate marketing.

I think there’s a perception out there that LinkedIn is only for finding a job when in reality, LinkedIn is one of the most underrated free traffic sources for affiliate marketers.

LinkedIn is a great opportunity to work with people from around the world that have the same interests as you.

Just think about if you’ve ever been on LinkedIn, you can actually find out what people are interested in by looking at their page, you can do a search by different topics and different ideas, you can do a search by hashtags, there are just so many different ways that you can find people, make connections and promote high ticket affiliate products.

Let’s get started.

Why Linkedin For Affiliate Marketing?

LinkedIn is a social media platform, very similar to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, but the purpose is different. Most people think that the purpose of LinkedIn is to get a job when, in reality, it can be successfully used to grow your brand and generate leads for your affiliate marketing business.

LinkedIn is a good opportunity to find employees or find people to work with and network with.

If you are starting an affiliate marketing business, LinkedIn is a great opportunity for you because again, you are going to network and find people that have a common interest.

Maybe they want a job, maybe they want to learn about your skills, maybe they just want to learn from somebody who knows a little bit more about affiliate marketing, and you could be that person.

Also, LinkedIn is a perfect platform for B2B companies looking to employ an affiliate program.

So, LinkedIn is a great opportunity if you are looking to grow a business, a brand, or if you just want to make connections with like-minded people.

Benefits of Linkedin For Affiliate Marketing

Now, let’s talk about why Linkedin is a great traffic source for affiliate marketing.

✅ Linkedin is the World’s Largest Professional Network

LinkedIn has 722 million members.

And the vast majority of people on Linkedin are business owners and professionals so it’s an incredible opportunity to start generating leads and sales with a platform that tons of people are on.

✅ Multiple Ways to Promote Affiliate Products

Another reason why LinkedIn is great traffic for affiliate marketing is that you can upload posts, you can upload videos, you can upload images, just like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and those other social media sites out there.

And in this guide, we’ll cover all of these different methods in a minute.

✅ Low Competition

Most marketers don’t use LinkedIn to promote affiliate products so the competition is very low.

A lot of people think that LinkedIn is not for them, but it is an untapped market that you can take advantage of if you do it the right way.

✅ Highly Targeted Traffic

Another reason why LinkedIn is a great opportunity is you can actually see what people are interested in, you can see the companies that people are following, and you can use that to tailor your marketing efforts to people or to certain groups.

Let’s talk about how you can make money with LinkedIn.

✅ Linkedin is a Search Engine

Just like YouTube, Google and Yahoo, LinkedIn is a search engine. And because you can search, you can basically find out what people want to know, what people are into, trending or historical, and what people need in order to grow their business.

So anywhere there’s a search engine, you can find out what people are searching for and you can create content and do a little bit of affiliate marketing.

How To Use Linkedin For Affiliate Marketing?

Now, once you know why Linkedin is such a great opportunity for affiliate marketers, let’s talk about how to use this powerful social media platform for your affiliate marketing business.

There are 3 ways to use Linkedin for affiliate marketing:

You can use any of these three methods to start getting leads and sales based on LinkedIn.

So, let’s take a look at each one.

The first way to promote affiliate links on Linkedin is by simply writing blog articles.

People are doing this and you can add in your affiliate links to Amazon, Clickbank, ShareASale, wherever you’re an affiliate, and you can do this for different products.

If we type in “Best WordPress hosting” you can see people are creating content about different hosting services.

And they are including their affiliate link to different hosting services but it’s actually not the best idea which leads us to the next point…

Use Landing Page

On Linkedin, you don’t want to link directly to your affiliate products. Always use a landing page whether on your affiliate marketing website or a sales funnel.

if you directly add affiliate URLs to this article, the LinkedIn algorithm will identify it and your post will get banned or maybe your account will get branded too.

So don’t try to do it always create a sales funnel and add your landing page URL to your Linkedin article.

Use Hashtags

So now you’ve got your pieces of content up, make sure that you are adding relevant hashtags.

And this is true for any social media platform.

The hashtags are how you’re going to get discovered.

People are searching based on hashtags, people are searching based on keywords, and so that’s what you want to do to get found on LinkedIn.

The cool thing with LinkedIn is it’s going to recommend a few different hashtags for you to use, but make sure that you are doing a little bit of research to figure out which ones are going to resonate with your target audience.

So maybe we’re going to talk about, let’s say online business, and as you can see, there are a number of hashtags that pop up.

Linkedin operates much like some of the other social media platforms out there where hashtags are really going to drive who gets to see this.

So, what we’d want to do is maybe add 5 or 6 relevant hashtags, and then add in a link to a landing page, or maybe even a blog article that you want to direct your potential customers to.

Tag People

And another thing you can do is you can actually tag people. Let’s say you wanted to get in front of someone like Elon Musk, or if you wanted to promote Tesla, you could tag Elon Musk and people that follow Elon Musk would have an opportunity to see this.

So don’t go crazy with this feature, but this is another good opportunity.

When you do that, this will get sent out to people that are within your followings, people that follow you, and then once people start liking it and commenting, it’ll get pushed out to a wider and wider group of people.

How Often Post Artciles on Linkedin?

Here’s a handy rule of thumb when you’re creating content over on LinkedIn, the average shelf life for a post over on LinkedIn is about 24 hours whereas, with Instagram, it’s going to be much shorter.

YouTube, it looks like is at least 20 days so you want to make sure that you are creating content at least every 24 hours.

I would recommend probably once every 8 to 16 hours so that you are staying in front of your relevant parties.

So, the first thing you can do is upload an article.

The next thing you could do to promote affiliate links is you can upload videos.

The best type of videos that work are videos that are vertical in format.

So, the TikTok, the YouTube shorts, the Instagram reels.

If you have those lying around, you can also upload those right into Linkedin and get traffic.

Now, when it comes to LinkedIn, there is a limit to the length of the LinkedIn video and the limit is 10 minutes.

It’s going to give me the same options to add in relevant hashtags and then add in a website, a URL, or a blog.

Videos get the most engagement.

Video is going to show up a little bit higher on the Linkedin search results on your algorithm, on your feed.

All social media platforms are like this.

The more videos you upload, the higher you’re going to show up when someone logs in to look at their feed.

If you enter in images, that rank second, and then texts rank third.

It has been proven that video has a higher engagement than those other types.

So, you just want to upload videos in a schedule where you can promote affiliate products.

The only drawback to video on LinkedIn is that they actually only limit it to 10 minutes.

Promote Your Videos

One thing that you could do is if you have a little bit longer video, you could start the video and then just say to learn more, go over to YouTube or go over to my website, wherever you have the video hosted, and people can click on a link to learn a little bit more.

Anyway, you want to upload videos if you have them, then images that are obviously telling a story or communicating something subtly, and then finally texts.

Also, what I recommend is doing maybe snippets instead of whole pieces of content.

So maybe halfway through and say, “this is just a portion of a tutorial, click the link below to learn a little bit more, to get the whole story”

The next way to make money with affiliate marketing on LinkedIn is to join relevant groups.

And just like Facebook and any other groups out there, you want to join the group with the thought of adding value, you want to become the subject matter expert for whatever it is that you are planning on promoting.

For example, if we talk about affiliate marketing, if there’s a LinkedIn affiliate marketing group, you want to go in and answer every single question because people are going to LinkedIn to learn more, they want to increase their knowledge base and you can be that person.

So, you go in and you answer questions, you get seen eventually as a subject matter expert, and then people will start asking you questions directly, they’ll want to connect with you, and then they’ll start sending you private messages.

Once that happens, you’ll be able to direct people to either your website, your YouTube channel or even any affiliate offers that you have.

Linkedin Affiliate Marketing Best Practices

Now that you have content up, there are a few different things that I would do.

Build an Email List

So as mentioned earlier, instead of sending people directly to your affiliate offers, send them to a landing page so you can collect their email addresses.

It takes multiple touch points before someone will buy a product that you’re recommending.

Once you add value and it doesn’t take as long as it may seem, you start adding value, people are going to want to connect with you because you are seen as a subject matter expert.

Once that happens, you have them on the hook, you can get their email address, and then you can start doing the different affiliate marketing offers that you have.

Including email marketing actually converts at twice the rate as the other marketing types out there.

And you can re-target your customers or the people on your email list multiple times for different products and services.

Don’t Promote Too Often

The other thing that I would do is I would not add that landing page to every piece of content. What I would do is I would do what’s called interlinking.

Let’s say you have 10 pieces of content, I would only put the landing page on maybe 2 or 3 pieces of content and send all of the traffic from the other 7 pieces of content back to those 2 or 3, where people can click on the landing page or click the link, and then they’ll get taken to your landing page.

Now, the reason why you want to do it this way, instead of adding your affiliate links is that algorithms can see when you’re trying to take them off of their website.

One of the most important things that you need to realize is that social media networks make their money by keeping people on their social media.

As such, if you’ve got links on your page, that’s going to rank a little bit lower.

So, it’s kind of a funny game when you start thinking about algorithms, it’s going to rank you higher if you’ve got video, but it’s going take you down a notch or two if you’re trying to take people off.

And the same goes for video and texts.

Linkedin Affiliate Marketing Summary

Although LinkedIn is a platform for job hunting and professional networking, we could also use LinkedIn to
promote affiliate links.

To summarize, you’re going to find an affiliate product you can use just about any product:

• Recurring affiliate programs
• Clickbank affiliate products
• Digistore24 products

Create content around products/services, rather than directly promoting, for better engagement and reception.

Do one at least every 24 hours, and also include an affiliate link to either the product that you’re promoting or a landing page link in each one of your posts.

I recommend that you upload vertical videos like TikTok or YouTube reels, followed by Instagram-type images, and then blog posts.

You can also do review-type blog posts which will last about 24 hours.

Connect with professionals in your industry, and see if they would be interested in writing a review or becoming an affiliate of your product.

Share affiliate content as a response to conversation topics or applicable questions in LinkedIn groups and rinse and repeat.