Live chat drives conversions in a personalized and seamless way. However, having human agents for live chat support can be costly. Fortunately, with the rise of chatbots, it becomes more affordable to provide live chat services! There is no surprise that more eCommerce platforms are implementing chatbots to offer personalized product recommendations. And there are more creative ways you can use a chatbot to earn extra income. One of which is to earn affiliate income through participating in affiliate programs.

What is an Affiliate Program?

Many brands and businesses offer an affiliate program for bloggers, influencers, and publishers to earn a commission when making a referral. There are tons of high-paying affiliate programs out there (Landbot has one too, which offers a generous 20% recurring commission!) I recently wrote about the best high-paying affiliate programs, and it covers all the basics, so I don’t have to repeat it here. And in this article, we’ll focus on how to use a chatbot to drive affiliate income. Here are the tips and steps!

Install and Implement a Chatbot on your Website

Many would imagine it to involve lots of coding and intricate technical knowledge when talking about chatbot development. With the rise of the no-code movement, building a chatbot has never been easier. You can create one with Landbot in just a few minutes and implement it on multiple channels - including your website, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or any messaging platform with API.

You can quickly get started by registering a free account.

Then, you can create a chatbot either from scratch or use one of the templates.

I’ve picked the “Basic Lead Generation” template since it already includes a lively welcome message, and I will build upon it.

Make a list of Affiliate Products

After creating a chatbot and optimizing general messages like the welcome message, you can start planning the list of affiliate products you want to promote.

The best types of affiliate products are those you genuinely love and offer high-paying, recurring commissions. This is a win-win situation for you, your reader, and the affiliate brand.

Now, write down a list of products you think can benefit your readers. Pick a winning product in each category that’s beneficial to your readers.

In my case, since Venturer helps people work remotely and achieve location independence, it would be natural to recommend the best SaaS tools and remote platforms to support the digital nomad entrepreneurs. So I would include Fiverr as my top pick of freelancer marketplace, Zapier as my favorite tool for web applications integration, Bluehost as my most-loved web host, and more.

If your website niche is in travel, pick your favorite hotel booking platform, airline, tour company, etc. If you have a fashion blog, write down your favorite shopping platforms, brands, and fashion items for different occasions.

Having a list in place would make product recommendations easier in the upcoming steps. Next, let’s create conversations to engage your readers!

Create Q&As and Insert Affiliate Links in Messages

To initiate a conversation with your visitor, ask what they are interested in learning about, and provide multiple options for them to choose.

Since Venturer currently has five major topic themes, I include each of them to see what the visitor is most interested in.

(Proposed alt: initiate conversation with landbot)

Let’s say the visitor is interested in affiliate marketing. The chatbot will then share a quick overview of what affiliate marketing is and recommend affiliate networks and the web host we use to help visitors get started quickly. And here, we inserted our affiliate links!

The chatbot then guides the visitor to our detailed affiliate marketing article to help them learn even more.

Isn’t that quick and easy?

With the chatbot, visitors get immediate answers and action items. They use your links, and you receive affiliate income!

You can do the same in almost every niche. Just add your major topic themes, then provide a quick overview and your top recommended products to help your visitor.

Link to Helpful Content

Did you notice that we link to our blog article at the end of the above example messages? Link to helpful content that provides more value to your visitor. And in the article, you might insert affiliate links as well, so there’s an increased chance that your visitor uses your links to make a purchase.

Build your Email List

Additionally, collect email addresses with the chatbot!

Building an email list is essential because email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with your readers. In fact, 30% of marketers cite that email marketing offers the highest ROI.

‍You can engage with your email list subscribers by sending them exclusive content and articles that will likely interest them. It’s also a great way to share your personal story to connect with your readers.

It’s essential to build a bonding and personal connection with your readers so they will come back for your content. Returning visitors are more likely to trust your recommendations. With increased traffic and more returning visitors, you’re likely to see a boost in affiliate income!

To collect the email address, simply add the “Question: Email” there. Edit the question text to attract your readers to subscribe. For example, you can provide exclusive email content, free resources, ebooks, and more!

Bonus SEO Benefits

There are added search engine optimization (SEO) benefits to having a chatbot on your website. SEO helps you rank higher in search engine results and bring organic traffic to your website. It is arguably the “healthiest” way to grow your website traffic.

It’s also more likely that your visitor will actually purchase the product you recommend since they search for the topic and are looking for a solution. In short, your content resolves a visitor’s query, and your recommendation is likely to satisfy their demand.

Wonder what bonus SEO benefits having a chatbot can bring you? Here are they.

Lower Bounce Rate

The average person’s attention span is only 8 seconds. When visitors land on your page, they might quickly lose interest if nothing catches their attention, and they leave your site.

Having a chatbot that pops up at the bottom right corner and initiating an interaction can quickly catch the visitor’s attention and interest. The chatbot also encourages your readers to navigate to other web pages, therefore lowering the bounce rate.

Higher On-Page Time

Through interacting with your chatbot, visitors are engaged, stay on the page longer, and have their queries answered. This increases the on-page time, which is an essential metric in SEO.

Implement your Chatbot on Multiple Channels

Last but not least, why limit yourself to earning affiliate income only through the website? Landbot is a multi-channel chatbot. After building it once, you can implement it on messaging platforms like Facebook messenger.

Social media platforms like Facebook provide you a tremendous opportunity to expose to a new audience. There are 1.3 billion users globally on Facebook Messenger alone, and 20 billion+ messages are exchanged between businesses and users every month.

When a user discovers your Facebook page, your chatbot encourages the user to visit your website. And remember the product recommendations in your chatbot messages? This again provides you more opportunities to make a referral!

Final Thoughts

Affiliate marketing has been around for more than a decade, and it’s continually evolving. In the past, most implemented it on websites. A few years ago, brands and affiliate networks started tapping into social media platforms and invited influencers to join. With the boom in chatbot adoption, using chatbots to boost affiliate income would be a rising trend that offers numerous benefits.

Start acting now and implement it on your website and messaging platforms!