Affiliate marketing can be a big source of revenue. The key to
maximizing your affiliate earnings is to provide additional value and to
engage your readers. Unlike traditional ads where you are paid for
impressions or clicks, affiliates are only paid if or when a specific
action is performed. The action might be something as simple as signing
up for a newsletter to submitting their zip code information up to
having a sale completed. Regardless, you are not paid until you've
compelled your readers to take some type of action.
With that in mind, here are the Top 10 Commandments for affiliate
marketing success to make sure your readers get value and take the
actions you want them to take so you can maximize your success with
affiliate marketing.
Know Your Audience
The most successful way to use affiliate programs is to only promote
products, services, and offers that match the needs and wants of your
audience. Consider why they are coming to your site, joining your email
marketing list, or following you on social media.
What are you providing that they are looking for? Make sure the
affiliate products you are promoting provide a solution to your
audience's problems.
If you are writing about sports, don't put up affiliate ads for printer
toner just because everyone has a printer and those programs have a high
payout. The people who are coming to read commentary or get stats for
their favorite teams aren't thinking about those things when they're on
your site.
The more relevant the ads are to your readers, the more likely they will
use them. An interesting way of looking at affiliate marketing is this:
educating your audience about relevant products and services they may
be interested in can be considered a value-added form of content.
Not only can knowing your audience give you better success with the
products you are promoting, but it can help guide you on the best places
to market, advertise, and promote your website to attract visitors in
the first place.
The more you know your audience the better you can use demographics,
psychographics, and other information the better target your audience
when advertising on platforms such as Facebook.
The bottom line here is to promote products that are directly relevant
to the audience you are serving. The more relevant the offers; the more
sales you'll generate.
Be Trustworthy
Readers are savvy. They know an affiliate link when they see one. If you
break their trust by promoting a product you don't believe in or take
advantage of their visit with too many ads, they will leave and never
come back.
It is your repeat visitors that will drive traffic. They are the ones
who will give you linkbacks, spread the word, and recommend your site as
the go-to place for valuable content. You need to build a relationship
based on genuine content.
If your visitors don't think you're being honest or think that you are
only recommended products and services due to a profit motive, they
won't read anything else you have to say.
If you promote products and services that aren't high value, they'll
lose trust in your recommendations and stop acting on them; costing you
sales and profits.
With this in mind, you'll want to make sure that your #1 priority is
adding value to your website visitors and email list. Only share
products that you know are relevant, useful, and can truly help them.
Also, you'll want to disclose any affiliate relationships you have with
the vendors you are promoting. Most people are perfectly fine with this
and the increased level of transparency you are providing can help you
build more trust with your audience (more on this below).
If you do that, you'll make much more money in the long run with repeat sales.
Be Helpful
Think of affiliate ads as additional resources that complement your
content. Give value to your content by making it helpful, useful, and
informative.
Don't put up a list of your favorite books, hoping people will click on
the affiliate link, purchase the books (just because you listed them),
so you can cash in on a sale.
Take some time to write a detailed review, and use affiliate ads to
point them in the right direction if they decide to act on your
information.
Even better, if you have a personal testimonial or case study to share;
write a detailed post about it then include your recommendation with
your affiliate link in your review.
That's what affiliate ads are for. If you write a great review recommending a book and readers buy the book because of it, you should get affiliate sales credit for that.
But just throwing out links to products with no rhyme or reason will
result in a quick exit by visitors who don't take any action at all.
Remember the main idea: always provide valuable content that adds value to the visitor experience. The sales will follow.
Be Transparent about Affiliate Relationships
Always disclose your affiliations. Your readers will appreciate your
honesty and will feel better about contributing to your earnings. If
they sense that you are being less than honest about your affiliations,
they are savvy enough to bypass your link and go directly to the vendor
just to avoid giving you referral credit (even though the price is the
same it's just something people do; strange but true!).
Honesty and full disclosure is a necessary part to building a loyal
reader base (and it's also the law!). They know they are supporting you
by using your referral links. Make them happy and eager to do so.
In some cases, not only do you want to be transparent about your
affiliate relationship, you may even want to offer a bonus or some type
of incentive if they take action and use your affiliate link.
This is an extremely powerful tactic that can significantly increase the
amount of affiliate sales you generate and a great way to stand out
from other competing affiliates.
When there are many other affiliates out there promoting the same
vendors, offering a bonus is a great way to make them want to purchase
direclty from you - giving you credit for the sale.
Select Affiliate Products Carefully
Take the time to go through all the different options for products or
services available through different affiliate marketing programs. Put
some thought into which products or services your readers may need or
like. Also, change the ads around often, try different ones, and use
different graphics and text to see which are the most effective.
It may take some time before you figure out the best formula, and you
may also find that you need to continually rotate ads to attract more
attention.
In many cases, the product creators will provide you with a handful of
ads to use on your site, on social media, and via email. Test different
ad creative to see which ones work best for you.
You may also want to create your own ads (if allowed by the vendor) so that you can stand out from the crowd.
One thing you should strongly consider is promoting digital information
products. These products are attractive for two reasons. First, they
have higher conversion rates because the customers can get instant
access and instant gratification when they purchase. Second, they
typically offer much higher commission rates than physical products --
which means more profits for you.
Also, consider promoting higher priced products as well as products that
renew monthly to get higher commissions and ongoing monthly
commissions. Getting a monthly recurring affiliate sales is a great way
to make the income in your affiliate business more predictable and
stable.
Try Different Programs
If one particular program doesn't seem to be working for you, try another one.
Affiliate programs aren't all the same. They offer different products,
services, and payment structures. Some vendors will have better
marketing and sales materials than others.
Some programs will have a lifetime payout on sales while others will
limit it to 30-90 days. Some programs allow much more flexibility in the
types of ad units available, as well as colors and design so it fits
better on your site's layout.
Also, check your favorite vendors to see if they run their own affiliate
program. Sometimes you can go directly to the source. You're not
limited to big affiliate networks.
Integrate systematic ad testing into your strategy to maximize your profits.
By continually testing different programs you'll see which ones convert
the best and which ones your audience responds to the most - increasing
your overall conversions and sales.
Also, constantly be on the lookout for new products and services that
you can test and add to your affiliate marketing portfolio.
Another tip is to negotiate higher payouts with affiliate programs where
you are doing well and driving a consistent amount of sales. Many
vendors are happy to reward good affiliate with higher commissions.
Write Timeless Content
Your old content can still be valuable even though it's no longer on
your front page. Take advantage of the long-term opportunities by making
sure you provide timeless content.
If visitors come across your older content first and find that it offers
dated information, they will leave right away. Of course, information
moves forward, so relevant content changes quickly. You can make your
content timeless simply by adding links to your updated articles on your
old ones.
Constantly updating your older articles is also a great way to maintain or even improve your search engine rankings.
Many platforms allow you to show "most recent" or "most popular" or
"related articles" on every page, so no matter how old the article is,
it will always show access to your new ones. Your old content can make
money for you indefinitely.
Although writing about new and up to date information can be beneficial,
another strategy is to focus on writing about "evergreen" content -
that is content that is timeless.
This will give you more mileage out of your content and drive traffic
for years to come, and you can always change up the products you are
promoting related to the content.
The name of the game here is to have content that is relevant, useful, and up-to-date.
You'll want to use both strategies in your content; for every two pieces
of new and updated content consider writing an evergreen content piece.
Another tip is to remove the dates from your blog posts. Even though the
content may have been written a while ago and the information is still
completely relevant, many people will dismiss it simply because it has
an older date. Removing the dates from your blog posts can easily solve
this.
Be Patient
Affiliate revenue grows and builds up with time. Remember that some
programs offer lifetime payouts. If you refer a visitor, you may
continue to make money from that one visitor even if he doesn't come
back to your site. Also, as long as you have referral links still active
in your old posts, they may still payout for you.
If you focus on promoting recurring billing / continuity type products
(as mentioned above) you can continually earn commissions every month on
the same products which can add up over time.
As an example, if you promoted a product or service that pays a $5
commission every month and referred 100 sales; you'd make $500 in that
month. At the same rate and assuming all the sales stick; after just one
year that would translate into a monthly recurring revenue of $6,000.
Also, as discussed above, sometimes you may have to test different
offers, products, and services until you find the best ones that are a
match for your audience.
Affiliate programs aren't a get rich quick plan, but it provides an opportunity to make passive income from your blog.
As you continue to add more content to your website, promote more
products, drive more traffic to your website, and build your email
marketing list, you'll continue to grow the affiliate marketing side of
your business and make more money.
Stay Relevant
Keep up to date on the latest offerings of your affiliate programs. New
ad units, advertisers, and tools are constantly being added to improve
usability and be more visually appealing. Small changes go a long way in
motivating action by readers. You may be left out in the dust by being
complacent with your strategy.
Don't get lazy about monitoring trends and exploring new opportunities.
For instance, if a certain diet or clothing trend is no longer popular
you may want to remove that content and recommendation from your site;
or update your post to acknowledge and reflect that.
Constantly be on the lookout for new products that are useful and
relevant to your audience -- the more products your promote and the
higher the relevance to your audience, the more money you'll make.
Content Comes First
Above all else, your content marketing strategy must be your highest priority.
Your content is your foundation, the life blood on which the site
exists. Without valuable and helpful content, readers won't come. Focus
on providing excellent content and the monetizing strategies will work
out.
Once you start compromising your content to cater to the affiliate
programs or any of the other ways to make money online, you will lose
your readers. Once that happens, you will lose the opportunity to
receive any earnings from any of your ads, be they CPM, CPC, or referral
based.
It can't be stressed enough that the quality of your content will be the
single biggest factor in the credibility of your website, blog, or
business.