Today, I want to share 8 of my best ways to increase affiliate sales. I have been doing affiliate marketing successfully for nearly 10-years now. Whether you are promoting credit cards, CBD or a high end service, there is a FORMULA for affiliate marketing success.
Even tweaking a few small things you do can result in HUGE improvements and conversions. What you will see below are some of my best tips to increase affiliate sales.
I’ve learned these tips during the past decade, mostly through trial and error. Keep in mind these tips are for affiliate marketers, not affiliate managers (people running the affiliate program).
8 Ways to Increase Affiliate Sales
The 8 tips you see below will help you level up your affiliate business.
# 1: Only Promote Something You Use Yourself
This tip should be common sense, but many people, especially new affiliate marketers, really mess this up.
Never promote a product you have not used yourself! Ever. Don’t risk your reputation to make a quick buck.
Buy the product. Use it. Make sure you like it. Make sure it does what it says it will do and provides more VALUE than you paid for.
Since most affiliate products come with a money back guarantee, you have nothing to lose. If the product or service sucks, you can return it and get your money back.
If you use the product first, you will know what makes it great and you will do a much better job PRE-SELLING it to your audience.
There is no shortage of products you’ll be able to promote. You’ll have the ability to pick and choose products that you personally believe in, so make sure that your campaigns center around truly valuable products that consumers will enjoy. You’ll achieve an impressive conversion rate while simultaneously establishing the reliability of your personal brand.
Source: BigCommerce
# 2: Include Free Bonuses
Everyone loves freebies. If you are promoting someone else’s affiliate products, make sure you include free bonuses if people buy it from you rather than a different affiliate.
You could include a free eBook, report, PLR product, video, boot camp or hundreds of other things. Make sure your free bonuses have a high perceived value and are relevant to the affiliate product you are promoting.
This is a quick way to differentiate yourself from all of the other affiliates promoting the same product. Be sure you let your audience know about the free gifts they will receive if they purchase the affiliate product through your link.
Bonuses result in excited and enthusiastic customers, but you do have to factor in potential lost sales. The important thing is that your business is actually making money from offering bonuses.
When you’re part of a huge affiliate program (where other affiliate marketers are also offering bonuses), you need to stand out in order to make any money. If you’re talking about thousand-dollar commissions, then it’s probably a must to offer the highest bonuses possible in order to stay competitive.
Source: EntrepreneurshipFacts
# 3: Provide a Detailed Review
Spend some extra time when you write your review. Include as much interesting information as you can, without giving away all the juicy details. Talk about what the product does, the details, the benefits, etc.
When you write your review, write as if you are TALKING to the person reading your post. Do not come across as the engineer, technician or over analytical type. Be interesting and sound normal.
Talk about WHAT’S IN IT FOR THEM. That’s what people are really interested in. People buy stuff to help them solve a problem. For example, people buy a drill because they want a hole, not because they want a drill. BENEFITS sell, whereas facts put people to sleep.
If you’re doing a video, spend some extra time and be thorough. Make sure your video is to the point, high quality, and entertaining/educational. This will make a big difference with your conversions.
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. Remember the main idea: always provide valuable content that adds value to the visitor experience. The sales will follow.
Source: the balance
# 4: Talk About What You Don’t Like About Your Product
Talk about the good and bad things about the product you are promoting. Everyone knows that no product or service is perfect. Discuss the pros and cons. Talk about what you like and don’t like.
This makes you come across as more “real.” If you only focus on the good, your audience might not take you as seriously as they would if you were transparent. People like when you are transparent and you discuss both sides of the coin.
Do not exaggerate things, features, or qualities of a product or service just to make a quick sale. It does not work that way! Once the people among your audience identify you as a person who just wants to make money off of affiliate links, you are done. You can say goodbye to your career.
Regardless of how hard it is, or how bad it is going for you, do not use tactics to lure your audience into buying something that really has no quality or will not serve them any use. Fooling your visitors once may happen, as there will be a lot of people coming across your page all the time. But, you cannot fool them all the time.
Keeping it simple and honest will provide more credibility to your words. Thus, once they recognize you are being truthful, anything is possible.
Source: Medium
# 5: Send People to a Capture Page First
Never, EVER, EVER send people directly to your affiliate sales page first. Instead, send them to a capture page first, so you can collect their name and email and add them to your email list. Once they “opt-in” to your email list, you can redirect them to your sales page.
You can then have a sales funnel (email auto-responder series) that sends 10-20 follow-up emails about the affiliate product, over the next 2-3 weeks. Realize that most people will not purchase a product the first time they learn about it. That’s why you need a good follow-up system that helps you build up the like, know and trust factor.
To send people emails, you need to get permission from them first. It’s called opting in, and it means that they agreed to receive communication from you. You must also provide a way for subscribers to opt-out of receiving emails at all times.
Your website is the best place to focus your email list building efforts. You can present opt-in forms in many ways. It’s essential to ask for emails politely. Aggressive pop-ups can annoy visitors of your website. Take advantage of email capture tools to grow your mailing list.
Source: CrazyCall Partners
# 6: Use Tracking Links
One of the worst things you can do is not track your links. Use a different tracking link for every traffic source that you use. That way you can determine your clicks, conversions and conversion rate from each traffic source. You can figure out what traffic sources convert the best and which ones are a waste of time.
If you don’t track it, you can’t measure it. Most good affiliate programs allow you to create different tracking links, so you can do this on auto-pilot.
First and foremost, affiliate commissions are entirely based on traffic and sales brought in by your affiliates – and they must be tracked in order for the affiliates to get paid properly. It’s also difficult to determine if your marketing, communication, creative, financial, and other efforts are a net positive without measuring performance. You don’t want to put tons of time and energy into a specific campaign only to break even!
Source: AffiliateWP
# 7: Promote Affiliate Products People WANT TO BUY
I should have listed this as tip # 1. At the end of the day, you need to find an affiliate product that people WANT to buy. There has to be a legitimate demand. You can find a cool product with a cool sales page, but if no one wants to buy the product you are wasting your time.
Do some research on the product to see how it is currently selling. Check out how many affiliates there are.
Look at the Alexa rank for the website. Check out similar types of products on Clickbank, Amazon and Share a Sale and see how they are selling.
Do a test. Send 1,000 targeted people to your affiliate link and determine your conversion rate. Do an A/B split test with another similar affiliate product and compare the results. You might have to test out a few different products before you find a winner.
And remember this. It doesn’t matter how much YOU like the product. It has to be a product LOTS of other people want to buy, if you want to succeed with your affiliate sales.
Listen to the people who are interested in your niche. What problems are they facing? Are there gaps in the solutions that are already available? Find products that can help and try them out. If the products are good, become an affiliate and recommend them. Your audience wants solutions. If they work, they’ll be willing to pay for them.
Source: Optinmonster
# 8: Tell People You Are an Affiliate
This tip might sound weird to some people, but let your audience know that you are an affiliate. Tell them you have bought the product, enjoyed it and you are also a happy customer. Tell them that if they buy the product through your link you do earn a commission, but they still pay the same price. I know this sounds weird, but it does work!
Always disclose your affiliate relationship. Most visitors will probably understand that graphic ad will lead to your getting paid, but if you write a review or use an in-text link as a recommendation, you want your readers to know that may lead to compensation as well. This ensures you retain transparency and trust with your readers.
Source: the balance
Final Thoughts
There you have it folks. These are 8 ways to increase affiliate sales. Whether you are an affiliate marketer, or have your own affiliate program, following these tips will definitely help you increase your affiliate sales.
What are your thoughts? What are your best ways to increase affiliate sales? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. I look forward to hearing from you.
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mrchuckholmes@gmail.com
It’s good that you mentioned that you’re suggesting these after trial and error. The readers must know how you’re eligible to offer these suggestions. One of the important points that anyone should remember regardless of their career is ‘don’t risk your reputation.’ Reputation is important, and it’s the key factor that creates and holds the reader/customers to one’s product or service.
I’m someone who likes detailed reviews. I also appreciate when the reviewer includes the con factors as well because it’s obvious we can’t find perfect products or services. So it’s cool that you mentioned it.
Yes, when it comes to sharing your opinion of different products online, it’s important to be transparent, talk about the good and bad, and disclose any financial relationship or gain you get by leaving a review.