Simple Strategies For Generating More Affiliate Sales

In the past, affiliate marketers would refer traffic directly to the vendors, without ever trying to capture the prospective customer information. They would also adopt a scattershot approach, promoting products that were higher priced in some cases, or trendy in others.

Over time, however, smart affiliate marketers realized they were missing out. They were working so hard to get traffic, only to give it away with no benefit to themselves other than an affiliate commission. And they were doing their best to promote products, but if the vendor’s sales letter wasn’t very good, there would be few sales.

Fast forward to the present, and affiliate have learned how to market a great deal more effectively, making the most of all their marketing efforts. In this guide, we will be looking at the most effective ways to grow your affiliate marketing commissions.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the chance to earn money selling products for reputable companies and websites in exchange for a commission. Top sites like Amazon and eBay offer huge variety in terms of high-demand products. Top companies like Apple also have affiliate programs, though there are sometimes thresholds for participating, such as how much traffic you get to your website.

To start as an affiliate marketer, you will register at the site of your choice, or at an affiliate marketplace such as CJ Affiliate, LinkShare and ShareASale for physical products, or ClickBank and JVZoo for digital products. Once you have been accepted, (sometimes this is automatic, and at other times you will be evaluated for certain companies), you will be able to form specially coded links.

Why Become an Affiliate?

Firstly, you are going to receive a high commission when you make a sale. The average commission for information products is between 50% to 100%. For example, if the product price is $97 dollars, you can earn between around $48 and $97.

Secondly, one of the biggest benefits of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to create your own product. There’s no need to do the research, develop the product, write the sales letter, set up the sales funnel for customers to purchase the item, and so forth. It’s all been done for you. Join an affiliate marketplace, and you can have hundreds of products to sell in a matter of minutes.

Thirdly, selling for a vendor is hassle-free for you because the vendor will be doing all the customer services work and support. All you have to do is drive traffic. And there are many ways to drive traffic, free and paid.

Lastly, creating content is optional (though it is highly recommended these days). It does help to have your own site or blog as a gateway for referring sales to the vendors, but some people just use social networks to drive traffic and affiliate sales.

Each time someone buys a product through your link, you earn commission. The best thing about affiliate marketing is that your links are earning for you around the clock — even when you are asleep, away from your computer, or on vacation.

Getting Sales from Your Affiliate Marketing

But how can you make sales? The answer is, by increasing the visibility of your links. There are a number of ways to accomplish this.

Targeting Traffic

One of the most important aspects of modern affiliate marketing is to have your own site or blog where you produce content related to the products you wish to sell. Choosing a topic, or niche, helps you focus your efforts and enables you to connect with people who are genuinely interested in the affiliate products you are trying to sell.

If you already have a website and/or an existing business, you can add an all-new stream of income through affiliate products. You can also become an expert in your niche — one worth paying attention to because you know what products are hot and which are not.

If you are selling digital or physical products, chances are you don’t have a product line so extensive that you can cater to every customer who visits your site. Affiliate marketing can help you fill in the gaps, with products you already know are in high demand because they come from reputable companies.

Choosing Your Niche

Your first step is to choose your niche if you do not already have an existing business. Think of topics you enjoy and would like to learn more about. Also think about the kinds of products you and your family and friends buy regularly. Everyone buying through your affiliate link will make you money. If your partner buys from your link, that is an instant discount on that product.

High-Paying Niches

Golf and pets are two high-paying niches that are also broadly popular. Each are worth around $70 billion per year and growing. Could you make some decent money tapping into one of these niches? Of course, you could. It’s just a case of getting organized and studying that niche.

Electronics, computers, and gaming are all popular niches as well. However, if you are going to choose them, you need to know what you are talking about.

Content as Context

In order to make an affiliate income these days, the best method is to have your own site where you create content related to your chosen niche. You can write general articles and provide links to suggested products at the end of the content.

You can also create your own content about each product. Reviews are very popular, as are product comparisons. The most important things to remember are that everything you write should have a ring of truth. This helps position you as an expert worth paying attention to.

Creating Pre-Sell Pages

Smart affiliate marketers will also often create what is called a pre-sell page. This has become common practice for a number of reasons. The first is that not all affiliate product pages convert very well. Those working hard to drive traffic to these vendors’ pages were getting frustrated at the lack of sales and commissions. So they decided to take matters into their own hands and created pre-sell pages that got their site visitors more excited about what was on offer.

Good sales letters list features, but the main focus should be on benefits. For example, car ads always mention leather seats as a feature. But what are the main benefits? Depending on the audience, you might mention that they are:

· Sexy

· Stylish

· Luxurious

Or you might mention that they are:

· Durable

· Easy to clean

· Holding up against kids and dogs

Chances are you would use the first set of words for a single young person in the market for a sports car, and the other for a busy soccer mom or an outdoorsy-type parent.

Your pre-sell page is therefore a chance to fill in any blanks that might be missing from the vendor page.

It is also a chance to capture more information about your site visitor before they click over to the vendor site and you never see them again.

Savvy affiliate marketers soon realized they were spending time and even money with pay-per-click ads in order to drive traffic to the affiliate sites so they could get commission. However, they were not getting any customer information in return. Now a pre-sell page is often used as a lead generation page, in which you capture the prospective customer’s name and email address before they click over to the vendor site.

Building an Email Marketing List

It can be difficult to build an email marketing list these days because people have such crammed inboxes and free newsletters are no longer the great lure that they once were. Having said that, knowing your niche and your target audience are two of the best ways to come up with an incentive they will be so eager to get that they would be willing to give you their contact information.

Two good incentives would be an eBook or eCourse on a hot topic related to your niche. Think of the kinds of problems people have in your niche and create an information product which offers real solutions. An eBook is a good option because you can create a PDF and they can download it easily. However, they can also grab the download and unsubscribe, so you never see them again.

An eCourse is a better solution because you can line up a number of emails (for example, seven) in your email marketing platform’s follow-up area (autoresponder). Each of these emails can help you build a relationship with your prospective customers, positioning you as an authority. Each of the emails can also provide a context for a link to an affiliate product you wish to sell, giving you multiple chances to earn commission without seeming like a pushy spammer.

Being Discerning about What You Sell

You should not promote anything you would not use yourself or are not impressed by. You don’t want to get the reputation of being an affiliate who will literally sell any old rubbish just to get a commission. Rather, you want to show you are in the know, with great deals on products that really work.

If at all possible, make sure you do actually try the products you are promoting. You can usually ask for a free item. If they turn you down, purchase the item if you think it will be something you will use regularly. Keep the receipt to write off the expense on your taxes in relation to your affiliate income. Once you start using the product, write an honest review. Consider creating a video review to show the item in action. This will give your opinion a lot of credibility, because seeing is believing.

Content as a Gateway

As we mentioned, capture each visitor’s contact information before you send them over. Your content should serve as a teaser for all you have to offer, and for the affiliate products you will be selling.

Keywording Your Content

Keywords related to your niche will help drive free traffic via the search engines. This is a marketing technique known as search engine optimization (SEO). Google and the other main search engines each have their own algorithm, or formula, for ranking sites and pages on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

All of the keywords should be related to your topic or niche and should be words that an ordinary person interested in your niche would search for. Keyword all media files such as images and videos as well. They can also be discovered by Google, which would give you the chance to get more than one of the top slots on the SERPs.

Avoiding SEO Penalties

Some marketers try to use shady tactics in order to try to get to the top of the SERPs, but this can backfire badly. Some try “keyword stuffing,” repeating the same keywords over and over to try to boost their relevance score. Others opt for “negative marketing,” creating pages that say, “Is X product a scam?” This can drive the page up the search engine and generate a lot of clicks, but it can also backfire. This ploy casts doubt on whether the product is worth it or not, no matter what the page actually says.

The best way to get to the top of the search engines is to write high-quality content as naturally as possible. It is helpful to keyword the titles of your articles and blog posts. You can also put them in the titles of any images you might use on the page. In addition, it is a good idea to link to the affiliate product page using keywords. Instead of saying, “Click here,” you could say, “Learn more about the ultimate puppy obedience training guide.”

This will give your page SEO credit and also boost the vendor’s SEO for that page.

When you are creating your pages, think conversions, as in subscribers or sales. Include all the elements on the page that will encourage your visitor to complete your call to action, such as subscribing or clicking through to learn more and hopefully buy the affiliate product you are linking to.