Affiliate programs: An affiliate program is a marketing arrangement where an individual or website (the “affiliate”) earns a commission by promoting another company’s products or services. The affiliate earns a percentage of each sale made through their unique affiliate link, effectively outsourcing sales efforts

Years ago, when I first started blogging regularly, I jumped at the idea of signing up for affiliate programs.

The general concept is this: You enroll or set up an an affiliate account with an online retailer, provide links to products on your blog (or whatever platform you use for sharing content), and when someone clicks through from your link and makes a purchase, you make a certain percentage of the price as a commission.

Ah yes, the illusive idea of actually earning a bit of money through blogging. Ha.

I enrolled in Amazon’s affiliate program, as well as Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and (the dearly departed) Book Depository. Amazon dropped me because I failed to meet their quota, which was something like three purchases via affiliate links in the first three months. (I had zero). In all, I made a whopping $0.80 through my various affiliate accounts!

Woo hoo! Eighty cents! I’m rich!

After keeping the other non-Amazon programs going for a bit, I dropped the idea entirely and stopped including purchase links in my posts. But lately, I’ve been toying with the idea again. If people are stopping by my blog to check out my reviews or other book-related posts, and want to go from there to a purchasing site to buy one of the books I mentioned, why not try to get a teeny bit of a benefit out of it?

So, a couple of weeks ago, I signed up once again for the Amazon affiliate program, reactivated my Bookshop.org account as well, and have started including purchase links at the end of my book review posts.

I’m on the fence about it all. I don’t actually think I get enough traffic to make the links worthwhile, especially since most of the people I engage with are also book bloggers — so why would they use my links when they probably (maybe) have links through their own blogs?

And let’s be clear, I by no means consider myself (or would ever want to be) an influencer! I’m just a reader, who loves books, and likes to chat with other people who love books too.

My point in all of this is to put some questions out there to my fellow book bloggers:

• Do you participate in any affiliate programs?
• If so, which ones? Are there any you find especially worthwhile?
• Have you actually earned anything through affiliate programs?
• If you’re not in an affiliate program, have you considered it?

I’m interested in hearing about other people’s experiences, as I debate whether to bother with it all. I’m guessing that without a lot more effort than I’m willing or interested in investing, my connection to affiliate programs will go nowhere. I’m curious to hear whether anyone else has actually seen their links pay off in any sort of way.

The topic of monetizing blogging comes up quite a bit in the blogosphere, and in general, it’s never been of interest to me. As I’ve said in so many different contexts, I blog because it’s fun and I enjoy it. It’s not a job, it’s not an obligation, and I don’t expect to make a dime from it. This is why I’m so on the fence about affiliate programs: Sure, it’d be nice to get a few dollars back from time to time (which would go right back into buying more books), but I’ve never expected a financial payoff from blogging, so why start now?

So… affiliate programs: Yea or Nay? Please chime in and share your thoughts!