“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die” – Warren Buffett.
Buffet is so right. Poor people work for money while rich people find ways to make money work for them.
Did you know the surest way to make money while you sleep working online?
It’s affiliate marketing.
Most people say it’s easier to make money from affiliate marketing but it’s not true. In fact, it takes years of consistent efforts and dedication to make money while you sleep from affiliate marketing.
Bloggers like Jeremy Schoemaker, Neil Patel, John Chow are making millions of dollars from affiliate marketing and they know how to make more sales without pitching much. So what can you do to become a successful affiliate marketer like them?
If you are struggling to boost your affiliate product sales, this post is a treat for you where you will discover five of the best affiliate marketing tips you can use to grow your sales.
Are you curious to find them out? Let’s jump into the details then.
#1. Develop a solid content marketing strategy
Yes, you need more affiliate sales to make money even while you sleep. But sales don’t come easily without having a solid strategy.
You need to have a plan. You need a solid content marketing strategy to boost your affiliate sales.
You may ask, “why do I need strategies for content marketing”.
So, let’s quickly talk about it and then we can talk about how you can lay out a great content marketing strategy to increase your affiliate sales.
Content marketing is all about “attracting more people with your content and then turning them into buyers”. Content marketing is the #1 key for bloggers like Neil Patel, Pat Flynn, Brian Clark to grow their online presence and that’s how they have built multi-million dollar online businesses.
That being said, here’s how to lay out a solid content marketing strategy that not only attracts more audience to your sites but also boost your affiliate sales. You can also refer to this affiliate marketing guide for a detailed breakdown of the process as well.
- Find your target audience first. Figure out their demographics, age, interests, wants and needs. Analyze where do they usually hang out online (forums, social media, groups etc). Gather as much information as possible. You should know more about your target audience than they know about themselves.
- Brian Dean’s method of using the skyscraper technique to find the most popular content in your niche is one of the best working strategies out there. Then, create content that beats anyone else’s content in your industry. That’s how you grab more attention, social shares, and links.
- Do email outreach with other bloggers in your niche. Frequently link to their content and let them know whenever you do so. Sooner or later they will also start doing the same which gives you a huge boost in your search rankings.
- Always do keyword research before creating content. Find long tail keywords that your target audience are searching for. Make sure you are using long tail keywords properly in your titles, meta description, image alt tags, URL and throughout your copy to rank well in search engines.
- Last but not least, create long form of content. Almost always detailed content (usually over 1500 words) ranks well and outranks short form of content on Google search results.
#2. Answer “what’s in it for them?”
There are a gazillion number of blogs out there. Millions of blogs are going live every single day. Almost every one of them try to sell something to make money.
Then how can you differentiate yourself from your competition?
How can you actually cut the noise and increase your affiliate sales?
Answer what’s in it for them first. Make a list of all the benefits that your target audience will get when they buy something from you.
If they are not getting any benefits, you have to find ways to add benefits to them. You can also give away your own products or services if someone buys your affiliate products. That way you can quickly boost your overall sales.
Make sure you are answering “what’s in it for them” before promoting any affiliate product on your blog to boost your overall sales.
Ask yourself the following questions if you want to increase your affiliate product sales.
- Am I giving away anything valuable to the people who is buying from me?
- Am I promoting the right affiliate products that suit my target audience?
- Am I actually adding value to my audience?
#3. Trust comes first, sales come later
The #1 reason people buy from the most successful affiliate marketer Pat Flynn is “trust”. Pat knows how to build trust online and he also knows how to turn his prospects into buyers.
If you want to boost your affiliate product sales, you need to build trust. Without that, you can’t make more sales. It’s as simple as that.
Unfortunately building trust online is NOT easy. The reason is, online people has less attention span and they don’t care about buying from strangers.
At the same, they are ready to take out their wallets if they like you and trust you. If you are wondering how to build trust online, here are few things to consider.
- Whenever you add affiliate links to your products, make sure to add the full disclosure. Just by mentioning “all the links using in this page contain affiliate links and when you buy something from the page, I get a commission” can go a long way and it instantly adds trust.
- Add social proof. If your site got featured on top sites in your industry (either through incoming links or guest posts), make sure to showcase them in your home page or about page.
- Position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Really, positioning is everything in online. Observe any top blogger or marketer in your field and you will notice they positioned themselves as experts in a specific niche. That’s what you exactly need to do if you want to quickly build solid trust online.
- Try to write as many case studies as you can. Case studies really increase your social proof and it helps you quickly connect with your audience. They also attract a lot of buzz online by giving you more social shares, comments, and backlinks.
- Walk the talk. Before you say anything, first do it by yourself. Walk the talk. Action always speaks louder than words.
#4. Research your competitors
You can drive incremental affiliate sales and make a lot of money from affiliate marketing if you research your competitors. Find out your top 10 competitors and research every bit about them.
Find out how they are making money by selling or recommending products. Find out what products they are promoting on their blogs.
Figure out which promotion strategies your competitors are using to increase their affiliate product sales. Analyze their content, read their comments section and do everything you need to do to spy on your competitors marketing strategies.
Last but not least, focus on using the right affiliate marketing platforms to choose the right products to increase your sales. That being said, here are 3 of the widely known affiliate marketing sites you can use to find and promote affiliate products.
- Amazon Associates: The Amazon program is one of the most widely used affiliate marketing platforms used by bloggers around the world. With millions of products, your monetization options are endless.
- Commission Junction: This is another incredible network that is used to find and sell a ton of products on many different topics.
- ShareASale: Another widely used affiliate network mostly useful for marketing related sites and you can make a lot of commission through their products.
You might be wondering, how can I actually spy on my competitors?
You can use tools like SEMrush to find your competitors best performing keywords, backlink sources, and high traffic blog posts so you can use few of their tactics to increase your own website traffic and sales too.
#5. Write unbiased product reviews
The fastest way to increase your affiliate sales even if you are a beginner is to write product reviews. Not just any random reviews but honest and most unbiased product reviews.
Writing useful reviews about the products you personally use or promote is the surefire way to educate your readers and increase your affiliate sales.
Instead of writing product reviews just for the sake of increasing sales, make them useful. List out all the features and if possible write case studies.
For instance, when I wrote a detailed review of SEMrush, I didn’t just cover how it’s useful for the readers, I actually went in-depth and covered how it has helped me increase my overall website search engine traffic. People actually loved it so much so that my sales went through the roofs.
That’s what I recommend you to do. Use your products first. Get results. Then, share your case studies as product reviews. People will love such kind of in-depth product reviews and they will buy from you (if they find your products useful for them).
Here are few tips for creating affiliate product reviews that sell.
- Consider creating video reviews about the products you promote. They work like a charm. You can describe in detail and you can also add a personal touch when you are using videos for product reviews.
- Do a comparison of the products you promote. Find out the similar and relevant products and create product reviews about them. Discuss all the pros and cons and recommend the RIGHT product that suits best to your audience. They can attract more sales.
- Always spend quality time on crafting the perfect headlines. Headlines are everything. Did you know that 8 out 10 people read your headlines first? They click on your posts only if your headlines are compelling to their needs.
- Research your competitors. Analyze how they are writing their product reviews. Find out how they are promoting their products and boosting their sales. It gives you a better idea on how to increase your own affiliate product sales.
- Write case studies about the products you promote. Do videos about them. Do whatever you want to do to educate your audience about your recommended products.
How to Find the Your Eventual Success with Affiliate Marketing
Making a lot of sales from affiliate marketing is not an easy task. If it was, everyone would be doing it. Successful affiliate marketing is an art. If you learn the art of selling, you can easily convince your audience to buy recommended products and services from you.
Another important factor you need to remember while going for affiliate marketing is to build trust. Without building trust, you simply can’t convince people to buy stuff from you.
Read books, marketing blogs and learn how to build trust to boost your affiliate sales. Don’t focus solely on increasing your sales or you will look like a salesman.
Affiliate marketing is here to stay, and those who continue to find the most success are the ones who put in the actionable time and effort using the methods above.