Looking for a way to monetize your food blog? Consider adding affiliate links to your recipes.
Publishing in-depth blog posts and sharing recipes is a great way to encourage more users to visit your food blog or purchase your full-meal prep orders. However, there’s a lot more you can achieve by adding affiliate links to your recipes.
For instance, there are many affiliate platforms such as Amazon Associates, Instacart Tastemakers, HelloFresh Affiliate Program, and Mama Sezz Affiliate Program that you can use to specify ingredients in your recipes or give readers an easy way to purchase full-meal prep orders.
In this post, we’ll explain everything you need to know about affiliate links and the advantages of using them. We’ll also explain how you can add affiliate links to recipes on your food blog using Recipe Card Blocks.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is a way of promoting another brand’s product or service in exchange for a small commission or a small reward.
For instance, you can let users promote your restaurant or bring in new customers in exchange for discount coupons. They can then use those discount coupons on their next order.
Similarly, if your food blog uses ingredients or products that your audience likes, you can publish affiliate links on your food blog. This way, users who are interested in trying out the recipe can purchase the ingredients using your affiliate link. As a result, you enhance the user experience and earn a small commission while doing it.
Let’s go over some of the major reasons why affiliate marketing is useful for food blogs:
- Recommend the “right” ingredients. Food bloggers can choose the right ingredients and recommend them to their audience with affiliate links. This way, you can give readers an easy way to get a hold of the ingredients needed for the recipe while earning a small commission for yourself.
- Earn a commission while promoting your recipes. With affiliate links, your recipes not only look more professional but become more accessible to all types of users, even first-time site visitors who are looking to make a quick meal. It’s a great way for food bloggers to earn a passive income while promoting their recipes and meal preps.
- Enhance the user experience. With an easy way to purchase all ingredients, you make it easy for everyone to follow your recipes. As a result, it enhances the user experience and can help you retain more readers in the long run.
What Are the Advantages of Using Affiliate Links on Food Blogs?
Affiliate marketing is incredibly advantageous for food bloggers.
You can promote your favorite products and services while sharing recipes with your readers. Since food blogs don’t have their own products or services to sell, they can leverage affiliate marketing as a way to create a passive income stream for their business.
Let’s dive deeper into some other benefits of using affiliate links on food blogs:
- Promote your favorite products or tools. Using affiliate marketing, you can connect your audience with brands or tools you like using for your recipes. This way, you ensure that your readers have all the resources they need to follow your recipes.
- Earn commissions. Whenever someone uses your affiliate link to purchase ingredients or use it for getting cooking equipment or appliances, you will earn a small commission that’s predetermined by the brand you work with.
- Create a passive income stream. Affiliate marketing is an excellent way for food blogs to earn a passive income while continuing regular business operations. All you have to do is add the affiliate link to your food blog.
- Flexibility. With affiliate marketing, you have more flexibility and control over which products or tools you want to promote on your food blog. You can choose to add affiliate links to the products and services you want to promote.
How to Add Affiliate Links to Your Recipes
Here, we’ll show you how to add affiliate links to recipes on your WordPress food blog.
For this, you will need a WordPress site and a recipe card plugin such as the Recipe Card Blocks Pro plugin. This lets you specify where affiliate links are displayed on recipe pages.
Step #1: Install and Activate the Recipe Card Blocks Pro Plugin
Note: You can add affiliate links to Ingredients, Directions, and Notes with the free version of the plugin. Adding affiliate links to the Equipment section is available in the PRO version.
Get the Recipe Card Blocks Pro plugin if you haven’t done so already and install it on your WordPress site. After installation, make sure to activate your license.
Step #2: Add Affiliate Links
The great thing about Recipe Card Blocks Pro is that it lets you create a recipe and add affiliate links while doing so.
Here’s what you need to do:
Navigate to Recipe Cards → All Recipes and click on the Add New button.
Give your recipe a title and add basic details such as the recipe image, the description, and the nutritional value of your dish. Using the Ingredients section, you can start specifying all the things readers need to follow along with the recipe.
When adding ingredients, you can select the ingredient you want to add an affiliate link for and press “Ctrl + K / CMND + K” or click on the Link button to add a link to the text.
Paste your affiliate link in the text box and click on the Enter button. You can also select the Open in new tab checkbox to create a distraction-free browsing experience.
When adding the Directions to your recipe, you can also add affiliate links the same way. For instance, if you use a certain brand’s bowls or spoons, you can add their affiliate link to your recipes.
Similarly, you can also add affiliate links to the Equipment section of your recipes if you get the premium version of the plugin. This helps you promote the products you regularly use while earning a small commission every time someone uses your link to purchase the product.
Recipe Card Blocks Pro also lets you add affiliate links to the Notes section of your recipes. You can use this space to mention substitutes and add affiliate links to where readers can get them from. It’s perfect for adding affiliate links for products that don’t fit in the other categories.
Once you’re ready, make sure to click on the Publish button to continue.
Step #3: Preview
Now that you’ve created a recipe with affiliate links added to it, you can display it anywhere on your WordPress site using the recipe shortcode. Copy the recipe’s shortcode using the Recipe Card Post Details and paste it on any post or page of your food blog.
Add the Shortcode block and paste the recipe shortcode you copied before. Finally, click on the Update button.
Readers will now be able to click on affiliate links as they read your recipes and purchase the right ingredients and equipment.
Conclusion
Adding affiliate links to your recipes helps you generate a passive income stream, increase your brand’s bottom line, and deliver a more professional user experience on your food blog. Readers can follow your recipes more closely by purchasing the exact same ingredients you use and the equipment you recommend.
While you can edit your site’s code and add links to your recipes, it can be challenging – especially if you’re not very experienced with coding. This is why we recommend using a recipe card plugin such as Recipe Card Blocks Pro as it lets you systematically add affiliate links to your recipes while you’re creating them.
You can even import existing recipes to the plugin and add affiliate links easily. This makes it the ideal solution for food blog owners that want to quickly add affiliate links to their recipes, without having to touch a single line of code.
Ready to quickly add affiliate links to your recipes? Get Recipe Card Blocks Pro today!
