Affiliate Sales

Discover Why Content Will Make Or Break Your Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing and content marketing are joined at the hip. If you want to be a good affiliate marketer, you need to put out good content. There’s no other way around that.

Even if you’re using paid advertising, you’ll be trying to get people on your email list. The emails that you send are content. There may be links to your blogs, reviews, etc.

The crux of the matter is that most people online come looking for either information or entertainment. Only a small percentage are ready to buy. This applies to anything from booking hotel rooms in a foreign country to buying a gun safe.

Before the purchase, these potential buyers will do their research online. They’ll want to know if the hotel they’re staying in has all the amenities they need. They’ll want to see reviews, etc.

If you have a website that shows up when they search for the hotel reviews and you mention how the proximity of the hotel to the local watering holes is a plus point, or you show all the different activities they can engage in that’s just a stone’s throw away from the hotel – the visitor will read the content on your site eagerly because it pertains to them.

In most cases, they’ll click on your affiliate links and book the rooms. Now you’d have made an affiliate commission by providing content that the visitor was looking for. That’s how it works.

There are 5 pointers to note when creating content. Failure to adhere to the tips below will mean that your content marketing falls flat, and you’ll not see much affiliate sales.

Must Be Relevant

Your content must be relevant to the products you’re promoting. If you’re promoting an outdoor grill, you may wish to have content on what to look out for when purchasing grills.

Or how to clean grills… or even easy grilling techniques to prevent a mess. Whatever the content may be, it must be relevant.

When writing content and thinking about SEO, try to think like a buyer and the sort of things that they will be typing into Google.

What do they need help with? Write an article helping them and then link to the appropriate affiliate product you are promoting.

By targeting longtail keywords, you know that whoever comes to your content is a red-hot lead. Yes, the amount of traffic you will get will be less but it is highly targeted and much more likely to buy something you recommend if your content is informative and helpful.

Must Be Interesting

Your content must be interesting enough to hook the readers by the eyeballs and keep them reading to the last word. If your content is vapid and dull, the reader will yawn and click off the page. There goes your sale.

Nothing is so bad that it can’t get worse. When visitors leave your site quickly, Google will notice this, and you’ll rank poorly in the search engines because your site has a high bounce rate and is deemed not ‘user-friendly’… So, have interesting content.

And, don’t be too formal and stuffy unless your niche expects that. Most niches don’t and readers will appreciate you trying to make the content interesting as well as useful.

Must Be Engaging

Facebook posts on your fan page are content too. So are the videos on your YouTube channel. But here’s what makes them so powerful – the engagement in the comments section.

Look at the comments and engage with your audience. The more you get to know them and respond to them, the more they’ll like and trust you. Engagement counts too.

Ask questions that encourage people to comment. Believe me, people are much more likely to comment if you simply ask them to.

Inject humour and your own personality into your social media content and don’t be afraid to be a little controversial now and again.

You ultimately want to attract the people that “get” you and repel those that don’t.

This way you will be much more likely to see visitors to your blog content click through your links as they like what you have to say and trust you and your recommendations; just don’t let them down!

Must Be New

Your content needs to be new. You’ll have to keep publishing content to stay up-to-date.

There’s no point in having a hotel review on your website that’s 8 years old when the hotel has already been torn down to make way for a shopping mall.

Always have a content publishing strategy and stay relevant with the times.

Yes, there are types of content which are classed as evergreen but even though they are evergreen, some of the details may change so you need to keep up to date with your market.

You can either update existing content which means you won’t lose any of the SEO juice for that particular post, or you can write a completely new post; both options have pros and cons so choose which way you want to go and do it.

Must Be Reliable

Whatever content you publish must be reliable too. The term ‘fake news’ is being tossed about everywhere these days. You want content that is trustworthy.

Readers can sense hype and drivel. So, make your content useful and it will help to sell your affiliate products too.

If you are teaching strategies and/or tactics, make sure that you know what you are talking about. It is a good idea to always practice what you preach because at least you know what you are talking about works.

If you are teaching erroneous tactics you will get found out and this can completely ruin your reputation in that niche, so always ensure that whatever content you create is accurate and as reliable as possible.

Stick to the 5 content creation and marketing tips above and you should see your content work better for you and increase clicks and ultimately, sales.

Many marketers are so focused on sales, traffic, and conversions that they neglect the content… which can make or break them. Don’t make this mistake.

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” – Andrew Davis, Author

If you want to know more about affiliate marketing then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download it read it and take action 🙂

How To Make Affiliate Sales With No Website Or Money!

Every single day, droves of people get on the internet hoping to make money online. Very often, they have a plethora of reasons for wanting to do so – ranging from wanting to quit their day job to having more money for the finer things in life.

One common thread that binds most of them is that they’re often on a tight budget… and is also probably the reason why they want to get into online marketing to boost their income.

And if they are looking to get up and running fast, they will probably want to try affiliate marketing first as you don’t even need your own product to get started.

However, they’re often told that they’ll need to purchase their own domain, pay for hosting, fork out more cash for autoresponder fees and so on. It’s almost as if they need money to make money.

While motivational gurus may spout motherhood statements such as, “It’s not about your resources, but your resourcefulness…”, the truth of the matter is that you can’t multiply by zero.

You’ll need money to pay for different fixed and recurring costs in your business. That’s a given.

If that means getting a second job to earn extra to pay for your business, you may have to do it – and that is resourcefulness, but ultimately you still need cold, hard cash.

However, if you’re financially strapped and can’t possibly get a second job because your first one is almost working you into an early grave, there are a couple of ways you can make affiliate marketing work, for free.

You Need A Free Website

There are several platforms that will allow you to have a free website. The catch here is that you’ll have no control over the advertising that appears on your site.

Another risk is that you’ll need to conform to the rules of the platform however inane they may seem.

If they feel like you’ve flouted their rules, they could boot you out unceremoniously without giving you any notice.

Countless beginner marketers have lost their businesses overnight by ‘building their houses on rented land’.

So, your goal is to build a free website and once you’re generating sales, you should immediately buy your own domain and hosting so that you’re in control of your business.

Here are 2 free platforms you can use:

WordPress.com – https://wordpress.com/

*Medium – https://medium.com/

*While Medium doesn’t allow you to build your own site, it allows you to post articles on their platform. That’s really all you need for now.

The site gets a lot of traffic and has potential when it comes to ranking for low hanging keywords that you may wish to target. From there, it’s just a matter of publishing more targeted articles and getting affiliate sales.

Getting Your Affiliate Links

It should be free to join most affiliate programs on places like ClickBank, Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate, ShareASale, Rakuten Marketing and so on. Go ahead and sign up and get your links.

Forget programs that require you to ‘pay to play’ – where you need to have a monthly paid subscription to the software/service/etc. before they bestow upon you the dubious honor of being able to promote their products.

There are tons of excellent affiliate products that you can promote for free without having to jump through hoops.

Free Traffic

Since money is tight, paid ads are definitely not an option here. The next best way to generate traffic to your pages will be to siphon it from high traffic social media sites and platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google.

It’s important to know that free traffic takes time. You’ll not generate massive traffic overnight. You’ll need to create content consistently and almost daily to get reach and traction.

If your content is valuable and top-notch, you’ll build a following and have people clicking on your affiliate links or article links. So, go ahead and create accounts in the different social media platforms and…

Start making videos with your mobile phone and post them on YouTube
Set up a Facebook group and a fan page and start posting content
Write articles on your niche and post them on Medium
Start tweeting your articles/videos/etc.
Use Canva.com to come up with attractive creatives you can use. (It’s free!)

Once again, it’s important to remember that social media sites are not your web properties, so you’re never totally safe with them. The goal is to always generate sales until you have enough money to build your own website and list. These are YOUR assets.

Putting It All Together

One way to start will be to write and start posting useful articles on Medium (you’ll embed your affiliate links in the posts). Just remember to disclose affiliate links and DO NOT overdo it. Moderation is key here.

As long as your content is good, you’ll have curious readers clicking on your links and reaching the sales page of the product you’re promoting… which is your main objective.

Point your YouTube videos, Facebook posts, tweets, etc. to your Medium article so that you can pre-sell the reader by providing more information and value. Once you build trust with your audience, your chances of getting the sale will be much higher.

Your Medium account with all your content will act as a hub-site for your affiliate marketing business. The free traffic methods you employ will siphon traffic from different platforms and point them all to your hub site’s content… just like how all roads lead to Rome.

Then it’s just a matter of time for the traffic to convert into sales (if your content is valuable and persuasive).

What Next?

Keep on keeping on until you start seeing sales trickle in. Give yourself 6 to 12 months to see your efforts yield fruit. This is a slow process, but a rewarding one.

Once you see the commissions coming in, do invest in your business by getting your own domain, hosting and an autoresponder.

Being able to build your own mailing list will help to elevate your marketing to the next level and skyrocket your commissions.

This is the best way to bootstrap your way from scratch to affiliate marketing success.

“Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once you have started to make progress you should consider taking the next step and investing in your business to take your affiliate marketing to the next level. If you want to know more about this then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download it and take action 🙂