Earn commission through your website: affiliate links, disclosure and backlinks done properly

Once your site has visitors, you can earn from more than your own product. Affiliate programs pay you a commission when someone you refer buys from another business. Done well, it's useful to your readers and a steady extra income. Done badly, it breaks consumer law and search engine rules. Here's how to do it properly.

How affiliate commission works

You join a company's affiliate (or partner) program and get a tracking link or code. When a visitor clicks your link and buys within the program's tracking window, the sale is credited to you and you earn a commission: a percentage, a flat fee, or a share of a subscription. Payouts usually happen monthly once you pass a minimum.

Each program sets its own rates, tracking window and rules, so read the terms before you join.

Find programs worth joining

Direct programs. Many software products, including tools you may already use to build your site, run their own partner programs. Look for "affiliates" or "partners" in their footer.
Affiliate networks. Networks bring many brands under one account and one payment. Commission Factory is Australian; Impact, CJ, Awin and PartnerStack are large international networks.
Retail programs, such as Amazon's Associates program, which has an Australian version for amazon.com.au.

Only promote things you'd genuinely recommend to your audience. Relevance converts; random banners don't, and they cost you trust.

Put links where they help

Affiliate links work best inside genuinely useful content: an honest comparison, a step-by-step tutorial that uses the tool, a "tools we use" resources page, or a free calculator or template. The content has to stand on its own. If it would be worthless without the links, it's an ad, and readers and search engines can tell.

Connect product data with APIs

Some programs and networks offer product feeds or APIs, so you can show current product names, images and prices instead of copying them by hand, or generate tracked links automatically. Treat them like any other API (see part 6): keys on the server, results cached, failures handled. Programs often have strict rules on how prices and product data may be displayed and refreshed, so follow each one's terms exactly.

Mark affiliate links correctly

Search engines ask you to label paid and affiliate links so they're not treated as editorial votes. Add rel="sponsored" to every affiliate link:

<a href="https://partner.example.com/?ref=devtrust"
   rel="sponsored noopener" target="_blank">Example Tool</a>

If you build your site with a content system, add this automatically to every affiliate link so nobody forgets.

Disclose clearly

In Australia, the Australian Consumer Law prohibits misleading conduct, and the ACCC expects businesses and content creators to clearly disclose commercial relationships, including commissions, when recommending products. In the United States, the FTC has similar rules. In practice:

Put a short, plain disclosure near the links, not only on a separate page. For example: "We earn a commission if you buy through links on this page, at no extra cost to you."
Don't present paid recommendations as independent reviews.
Only make claims about a product that you can back up.

This is general information, not legal advice. If affiliate income becomes a meaningful part of your business, get advice for your situation.

Track what earns

Use each program's sub-ID or tracking parameters to tag which page and which link produced a sale. Compare earnings per page against traffic per page. Usually a handful of genuinely helpful articles earn most of the commission, which tells you what to write next.

Backlinks done properly

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Search engines treat links they consider genuine as a signal that your content is worth finding. The key word is earned:

Make something worth linking to: a free tool, an original guide, a template or useful data. (Our free brand colour kit exists partly for this reason.)
Get listed where you belong: industry directories, supplier and partner pages, local business listings and your clients' "built by" credits.
Contribute: genuine guest articles, podcast interviews and quotes for journalists, where you add real value.
Build relationships with complementary businesses that would naturally reference you.

Don't buy links, join link exchanges or use networks that sell "do-follow" links. Google's spam policies treat these as link schemes, and they can cost you rankings. Ironically, that hurts the affiliate income you were trying to grow.

Launch your own affiliate program

The same model works in reverse. Once your product sells, let others earn a commission for referring customers to you. Several affiliate tools plug straight into Stripe to track referrals and calculate payouts, and your happiest customers often become your best partners.

Checklist

Only programs you'd recommend, with terms read and followed.
Links inside genuinely useful content.
rel="sponsored" on every affiliate link.
A clear disclosure near the links.
Tracking by page, reviewed monthly.
Backlinks earned, never bought.

That's the end of the Build it yourself series. Start again from part 1, or get in touch if you'd like DevTrust to build it with you.