If a brand isn’t visible, it’s invisible—plain and simple. That’s why SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a non-negotiable in digital marketing. It’s the engine that keeps your content discoverable. Without SEO, even the best products get buried. But with it, your blog posts, product pages, and affiliate links can show up right where they matter most: in front of people actively searching for solutions.
The Role of a Blog in Brand Advocacy
For affiliate marketers and brands alike, a blog isn’t just a content hub—it’s a trust-building tool. A well-maintained blog becomes a voice for the brand, a place where ideas, advice, and product recommendations live. Each post is a chance to:
Highlight product benefits
Answer audience questions
Tell stories that connect
For example, if you’re promoting premium pens, your blog might cover topics like “Top 5 Pens for Bullet Journaling” or “How Writing by Hand Can Improve Focus.” These aren’t just filler articles—they’re doorways into your brand, optimized to rank in search and drive qualified traffic.
Backlinking: Fuel for Growth
Backlinking—getting other reputable sites to link to your content—is one of the most effective ways to increase your blog’s authority. When other websites cite or recommend your content, search engines take it as a signal of trust. More backlinks = better rankings = more visibility = more conversions.
Backlinking is especially valuable for affiliates. As you create content that others reference or share (like reviews, tutorials, or industry lists), you’re not just helping your content rank—you’re amplifying the brand you represent. It’s a ripple effect that lifts both your blog and the company you’re working with.
Affiliate Marketing and the Visibility Game
Affiliate marketing is all about putting valuable content in front of the right audience—people who are actively interested in the product or niche. It’s not just about having a link. It’s about building a system that attracts, informs, and motivates people to click and buy.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Content Creation – The core of every strategy. You create meaningful content that blends product value with audience interest.
SEO Optimization – You research keywords your audience is searching for, then structure your content to match.
Strategic Sharing – You post across channels (blog, social, newsletter) and actively pursue backlinks from relevant sites.
Conversion Tactics – You include CTAs, product reviews, and discount codes that nudge readers toward taking action.
What Kind of Content Works?
Content can be shaped by topic (pens, ink, stationery, handwriting, journaling) or by format:
Lists: “Top 10 Stationery Items Every Writer Needs”
Memoir: “How Journaling Saved My Mental Health (And the Pen I Used)”
How-to/Inspirational: “Start Your Day Right With a 5-Minute Morning Writing Ritual”
Productivity: “Using Paper to Stay Organized in a Digital World”
Building a Content Marketing Plan
When you commit to a content plan, you’re building a system with clear deliverables:
Blog Posts – Consistent, valuable, and keyword-optimized
Backlinks – Earned through quality and strategic outreach
Views – Tracked through analytics and social insights
Audience Engagement – Measured through comments, shares, and conversions
Every one of these elements is either directly or indirectly connected to a strong content creation strategy. When done right, content marketing becomes the long game that keeps your affiliate links relevant, your audience engaged, and your visibility high—exactly where it needs to be.
Instagram isn’t just for selfies and vacation pics anymore—it’s one of the most powerful platforms affiliate marketers have to connect with audiences, build trust, and drive conversions. Especially in the world of consumer goods like pens, stationery, or journaling tools, Instagram shines as a visual-first platform where affiliate marketing can thrive.
How Instagram Works (Brief Overview)
Instagram is a social media app focused on visual content: images, short videos (Reels), Stories, and direct messaging. Users follow creators or brands they like, and their feed shows a curated mix of content from those accounts. Engagement comes through likes, comments, shares, saves, and DMs.
For affiliate marketers, the key asset is attention. The goal is to build a community, then point them—authentically—to affiliate products that match their interests.
Why Pictures Matter for Branding
Images instantly communicate identity. For a pen or stationery affiliate, a single photo of a beautifully styled desk setup, a handwritten quote, or a bullet journal spread can convey:
Quality
Aesthetic appeal
Brand personality
Utility
High-quality visuals increase trust and signal professionalism. People are more likely to buy a pen they can see in action—writing smoothly, showing off its color and ink flow—than one described in plain text.
Pictures also tap into aspiration. A well-composed image of a productivity setup with your affiliate link tells a story: “You can be this organized and creative too—with the right tools.”
Why Instagram Works for Affiliate Marketing
Instagram works for affiliate marketing because it’s built for visual storytelling. You can show products in action—like how a pen glides across a journal page—rather than just talk about them. The platform also gives you built-in tools to boost engagement: polls, Q&As, comments, and DMs make it easy to start conversations with followers and learn what they actually care about. With a simple link-in-bio setup, you can send people straight to your affiliate product pages. Add in hashtags like #bujo, #stationeryaddict, or #studygram, and suddenly you’re tapping into active, targeted communities. Over time, you build a loyal following that trusts your voice—because you’re not just selling, you’re showing up with value.
Tactical + Strategic Approach to Instagram
Tactics – Day-to-day content that gets eyes on your affiliate products
Post 3–5 times/week with a mix of Reels, carousel posts, and single images
Use 10–15 relevant hashtags per post (e.g. #stationerylover, #penaddict, #productivitytools)
Engage in the first 15 minutes after posting to boost visibility
Include affiliate links via Linktree or another “link in bio” tool
Reply to every comment and DM to build community
Strategy – The long game: building a brand people trust and buy from
Define your visual style: clean, cozy, academic, minimalist, colorful?
Know your audience: Are they writers, students, artists, planners?
Be consistent in voice and tone: friendly, helpful, expert?
Share your real use of products—show, don’t just tell
Track what content drives the most clicks or affiliate conversions and double down on it
Hypothetical
When I first joined InkCraft Pens as an affiliate, I knew Instagram was going to be my main platform. I already had a small but engaged following—mostly people into journaling, productivity, and desk setups. My plan was to use visuals to tell a story and let the pens sell themselves.
Over time, I started organizing my best posts into Highlights. One was called “Top Pens,” another “Desk Setup,” and another just “Journal Tips.” That way, new followers could quickly see my most helpful content and find the links they needed.
As I posted, I paid attention to what actually drove results. Reels with handwriting demos outperformed aesthetic photos. Personal journaling insights outperformed generic product shots. I tracked clicks through my affiliate dashboard and adjusted based on what moved the needle.
And it worked. Within a couple of months, I had turned my Instagram into a consistent sales funnel. Not just likes and follows, but real conversions—real commission. It wasn’t just about promoting a pen; it was about showing people how this one product fit into a lifestyle they wanted. Instagram gave me the space to do that visually, authentically, and effectively.
Final Thoughts
Instagram isn’t just a place to “show off”—it’s a sales engine if used strategically. For affiliate marketers, it’s one of the few platforms where you can create a direct emotional connection with your audience through visuals, while also guiding them to take action.
In short: great content, real engagement, and a clear affiliate offer = a winning formula. With the right approach, a single Instagram post can do more for your affiliate sales than a week of email blasts.
If you’re new to affiliate marketing, one of the first terms you’ll run into is commission. But what exactly does it mean, and how does it work in real-world affiliate programs?
What Is a Commission?
A commission is a payment made to an affiliate marketer for generating a sale, lead, or specific action on behalf of a business. It’s performance-based—meaning affiliates only get paid when results are delivered. For example, if an affiliate refers a customer who buys a product from a website, they earn a commission for that sale.
How Much Commission Do Affiliates Make?
Commission rates vary depending on the industry, product type, and the agreement between the affiliate and the website owner. Here’s a general breakdown based on 2024 affiliate marketing trends:
Retail products: 5–10% per sale
Digital products/software: 20–50% per sale
Subscription services: $10–$100 per signup or 10–30% recurring monthly
High-ticket items: Flat fees ranging from $100 to $1,000+
On average, affiliate marketers earn 10–20% commission per conversion in direct-to-consumer product categories, such as beauty, stationery, or tech accessories. For example, if an affiliate refers a $40 sale and their commission rate is 15%, they would earn $6 per conversion.
Example Payment Arrangement
A simple commission structure might look like this:
15% commission on each sale
Monthly payouts
$50 minimum payout threshold
The website owner tracks all sales generated through a unique affiliate link or code. Each conversion is logged in real-time using affiliate software like Refersion, ShareASale, or Tapfiliate.
At the end of the month, the owner reviews the affiliate’s dashboard, confirms total earnings, and sends payment through PayPal, Wise, or direct deposit.
Tools That Make Payments Easy
Affiliate tracking software – for monitoring clicks, sales, and commissions
Automated payout platforms – like Tipalti, Payoneer, or PayPal Mass Pay
Analytics dashboards – to give both parties visibility into performance and ROI
These tools help reduce manual work, ensure accurate payments, and build trust between the brand and the affiliate.
Why Commission-Based Pay Works
Commission is an incentive model. It motivates affiliate marketers to:
Target the right audience
Create better content (like reviews, tutorials, or social posts)
Focus on driving real results
Because earnings are tied to performance, affiliates are more likely to stay engaged, test different strategies, and continuously improve. The better they promote, the more they earn—creating a win-win for both sides.
The Joys and Follies of Growing Up in an Eloquence of Lawyers
By Amanda Kern
Image Credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm, Upsplash What do you call a family full of lawyers?
Shysters. Ambulance Chasers. Quacks. Scammers. Hey, that’s my family you’re talking about!
Growing up in a family of lawyers is great because it teaches you insults that none of your friends know. I could spit the word pettifogger at annoying classmates before I could even read.
In all seriousness, a group (or family) of lawyers is called an eloquence. Like many blood lines tainted with a fortitude for jurisprudence, the tradition of legal prowess started with my grandfather. As the son of German immigrants, he naturally lacked any typical inclination for human empathy, a trait that quickly proved useful once he settled into law school. As an estate planning lawyer by trade, he spent most of his days contemplating the impending deaths of his clients. Needless to say, this line of work took its toll over time, carving out a grim and narrow outlook on life that left him a rather severe and somber shell of a man. We like to joke that my grandfather only decided to have children as part of his own estate planning – he needed an heir to run his practice after he died.
Imagine being my three year old father, lulled to sleep each night as my grandfather read him bedtime stories from Black’s Law Dictionary. While in law school, my father met my mother, a law clerk for her uncle’s family law practice. Naturally, my father’s parents were delighted when he brought my mother home. Raised by yet another line of legal brethren, she had the neat and polished air of a woman who could raise a whole litter of legal envoys. My parents were happily wed just months after meeting. They certainly gave my brother and I a childhood worth envying in many ways, but like any family, we experienced our share of challenges.
Image Credit: Mikhail Pavstyuk, Upsplash
Vacations proved themselves to be more stressful than relaxing for our father as he performed the mad dash between remotely managing his practice and pretending to enjoy his time away from work. He once drove the family station wagon forty minutes away from our rented cabin to the nearest McDonalds just to get cell service so he could talk to a client on the verge of a breakdown. He came back with a stomach ache that makes me suspect he stress-ate his way through a few Big Macs on the way back. Though our mother never said anything in front of us kids about his incessant need to work, our father could be seen covertly sneaking glimpses at his Blackberry on the beach or in the hotel room in such a way that made me think maybe she had said something about it in private.
Image Credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm, Upsplash
I sometimes pitied our father for the kinds of clients with whom he frequently dealt. Family law can be quite emotional, and when emotions run high, people can turn ugly. For my eleventh birthday dinner, we made reservations at a fancy little cafe. Everything was going swell until we found ourselves accosted by a man going through a brutal divorce that included a custody battle, the most volatile of situations in family law. As he headed out of the restaurant, the man spotted my father, who represented his ex wife, and took a detour to our table. He hurled a slew of ready insults that ended with, “…pig, how can you live with yourself?” To our surprise, it was my mother who came back with the snappy retort. “The same way most people do – with a stiff drink, telling us about all the stupid idiots he had to deal with at work all day.” The man was eventually escorted out, but the shock of my mother’s quick wit has lingered for years. We laugh about the incident to this day at most holiday dinners.
Another classic dinnertime recollection is the time our mother thought our father was cheating on her with his office secretary. Lawyers are notorious philanderers, and the irony of a family law attorney with a mistress seemed fitting for that time of our lives. For nearly a month straight, our father came home an hour or two later than he normally did. He’d slip out on weekends claiming to have “business engagements,” though the beads of sweat lining his forehead as our mother’s eye bore into his gave him away. One night, our mother, thinking herself wise to my father’s deceit, followed him in our neighbor’s car. When she arrived at a video production studio, she was confused, and upon confronting her husband, learned that he was making a VHS mashup of all the family footage he’d acquired since they married to give to her for Christmas. They watch the video every year during the holidays and force us to gather around the television with them while laughing about the infidelity that never was.
Holidays continue to present their own special kinds of challenges. My brother grew up to become a family law attorney like our father, so while most people look forward to reconnecting with their loved ones over holidays, things look a bit different when you gather three generations of bull headed attorneys at one table. Lawyers have a tendency to hit the sauce hard, so once the wine begins to flow and all niceties are lost, polite conversation turns to spirited debate and frequently descends from there into madness. Have you ever heard a staunch republican, a stubborn democrat, and a die-hard libertarian discuss local politics? Probably not, since you’re still alive to read this article.
Image Credit: Piotr Makowski, Upsplash
Sure, having a brood of familial legal hound dogs in your corner has its advantages. That underage drinking thing that happened back in 2009? Nope, wrong, never happened. Don’t even know what you’re talking about. Not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but there may have been an irresponsible bonfire party in the middle of an abandoned corn field that attracted the attention of some local troopers. Tipsy teens scattered in all directions, but some were faster than others and several kids were apprehended and placed into custody. Apparently kicking your way out of the back of a cop car, attempting to flee police custody, and getting caught by the cops for the second time in one night is totally fine as long as your parents belong to the same country club as the judge assigned to the case. Dumb luck or legal jiu jitsu? We’ll never know because according to the expunged record of the person that shall not be named, it didn’t occur.
Don’t worry, my brother and I turned out just fine despite a rocky series of high school mishaps. Like our father, my brother always knew he was destined for law school. Academics just come to some people naturally, and despite his many, many teenage misadventures, my brother graduated with a 4.0 GPA. While I spent my junior year studying for the ACT, he spent his junior year studying for the LSAT. For a brief time of my life, I envied the attention showered upon him, the praise and adoration he received for punishing himself with a life dedicated to long hours of reading and studying. How is it that we both spent our college years chasing beer kegs, yet he somehow managed to stay the course towards law school? How is it that someone who caused more headaches for our parents than I ever did found a career of such wealth and prestige while I fell into a series of pretentious English Literature classes that have only led me to a wealth of debt? It took some time, but I’ve accepted my place among my familial eloquence of lawyers, and even find frequent moments to share laughter with (or laugh at) the hilarity of their highly stressful legal lives.
So here we are now, my brother’s wife newly pregnant, our parents over the moon to become grandparents, and me, writer and black sheep of the family, ready to become aunt to the next generation of constitutional progeny. Sometimes I wonder if my grandfather envisioned the family turning out this way when he cursed us to multi-generational penal code stewardship. It seems as though I’ve managed to dodge the curse altogether, just so long as I don’t fall in love with a lawyer.
Image Credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm, Upsplash
Three Jokes Your Lawyer Friends Won’t Laugh At:
How many lawyer jokes are there, anyway? Three. The rest are true stories.
What’s the difference between a vacuum cleaner and a lawyer riding a motorcycle? The vacuum cleaner has the dirt bag on the inside.
What’s the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer? A bad lawyer might let a case drag on for several years. A good lawyer knows how to make it last even longer.
Jokes courtesy of ParalegalEdu.org
Bio:
Amanda is an art journalist, editor, and lackluster knitter from Detroit, Michigan. She lives in Columbus, Ohio with two very loyal cats and enjoys going for mind-clearing jogs, traveling to anywhere that isn’t the midwest, and attending local drag shows. For more information, check out her art blog
