Many of our readers have asked about adding an additional revenue streams to their food truck business model. We have offered a lot of options over the year. Recently though, we have come up with a way vendors and associations can do it passively. So how can a food truck or food truck association make money without providing a service? Easy, affiliate marketing! Today we’ll discuss the basics of this income generator and how you can add affiliate marketing to your food truck empire.

Passive Revenue Through Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online. It allows you to add a steady income stream to your food truck’s monetization strategy.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is when you suggest a product or service for people to buy via website, email list, or social media. Once they click the link, they get a cookie set on their computer that claims them as yours for a fixed period of time (could be 24 hours or could be a year). If they buy the product that you recommended, you get a commission on that product.

Some affiliate programs pay out daily, some weekly and some monthly, if you are lucky, you’ll find one that pays lifetime commissions. The key is to find a product or service that you believe will be helpful to your customers or followers. After that you have to strategically add it in your food truck blog posts and other areas of your website, so users can purchase the product using your referral link.

Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing

First, you need to make sure that you are using the right blogging platform. Find out if you are allowed to run affiliate marketing campaigns on your website. For example, if you are using WordPress.com, then there are some restrictions regarding the products and services you can link to. If you own your own website, then you can add any affiliate link you want and efficiently manage your affiliate campaigns.

If you haven’t created a website for your food truck already, then you can get started right away. Simply follow the instructions in our step by step guide on how to start a blog, and you’ll be all set.

RELATED: Developing A Blog For Your Food Truck Website

Finding Affiliate Products and Services to Promote

As an affiliate marketer, you don’t have control over the future of products that you are recommending. That’s why you need to make sure that you are recommending the best products from reputable companies.

There are many ways to find products and companies that you can partner up with as an affiliate. Consider companies or vendors you already have a relationship with. This could be your food truck builder, food suppliers or even Mobile Cuisine.

Affiliate Marketing Tips to Increase Earnings

Now that we have covered the basics, let’s dive into some more tips on how to actually earn money from affiliate marketing.

• Offer highly useful and valuable content. You can add affiliate links and banners anywhere on your website. However, simply adding links will not result in convincing your users to actually buy those products. You need to convince your users by offering useful and valuable information about the product or service. Do this by writing product reviews, video reviews, or product comparisons with pros and cons.
• Keep your readers in mind. Keep your website’s audience and their interests in mind when choosing what to market. Since you run a food truck blog, then you would want to promote food products that your audience would want to buy. You also need to make sure that you are not just recommending products because they are offering higher commissions. If a user buys a product based on your recommendation, and it doesn’t turn out useful, then they will never trust your recommendations again.
• Use your email list. Many of the affiliate programs will have email templates that you can send out to your list. Some of them are great but most of them are actually just long sales letters that everyone else is cutting and pasting too. If you have a list of people you mail to regularly make sure your voice comes through in the messages that you are sending your members. Don’t just copy and paste that affiliate email, really make sure it sounds like you would have written it yourself.
• Don’t post affiliate links in your social media feeds. Be warned, most social media sites don’t like affiliate links. Don’t risk your food truck account reputation by spamming Facebook or Twitter with link after link to affiliate products. Instead take some time to write a blog post that explains why you like that product so much and then link to that.

Bonus Tip

• Create a disclosure page. Let your users know how you make money from your website by adding a disclosure page. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants you to disclose that you are promoting a product, rather than just being something you recommend. The creation of a disclosure page will allow you to easily comply with the law

Mobile Cuisine Affiliate Program

The easiest way for food truck vendors to become affiliates is to join our affiliate program. Vendors and associations can get commissions from paid membership registrations, and purchases made by non-paid members.

Find out more: Become A Mobile Cuisine Affiliate

The Bottom Line

Hopefully this has helped you to understand more about adding affiliate marketing to your food truck’s revenue stream ethically. Don’t get discouraged if there is a slow start with your affiliate efforts. Just like your food truck, your affiliate marketing revenue will build over time.

Are you currently using affiliate marketing to earn passive income to your food truck business? Share your thoughts on this topic in the comment section or social media. Facebook | Twitter