Tips & Guides — 20 May 2020
Top Tips for Affiliates to Promote Products
For the last few years, affiliate marketing has been a popular way of making money online. But joining an affiliate program does not yet mean succeeding in it.
Every year the industry sees a growing number of new affiliates who enthusiastically enter the market, claiming to earn millions. And also, every year the industry witnesses a considerable number of unscrupulous publishers who enter multiple programs and just insert affiliate links wherever they can.
Obviously, with an approach like that, publishers don’t earn expected millions. The majority make almost nothing. A part of them get discouraged and quit, leaving comments on forums that affiliate marketing is dead and you can’t really earn there. The other part starts to analyze their actions and try to correct the mistakes made.
A bunch of questions then arise. How to prevent these mistakes and market products effectively? What set aside a diligent publisher from the one who is here for quick money? And what are the tips for newbies to succeed and be taken seriously by advertisers?
Let’s figure out step by step.
Indeed some people claim that it is possible to earn up to million dollars per year with affiliate marketing. But let’s be frank. And also realistic. You can’t make a fortune in affiliate marketing overnight. It will take a lot of time and effort before it becomes a significant passive income.
Success in affiliate marketing is about persistence and continuing nature. Once you finally get 300$ per day, nobody can guarantee that it will be your minimum daily earning. It is more of an accumulation effect character. You may get nothing for several months; then, after a while, you start to receive your first commissions. And after earning somewhat a modest income, people make it to a bigger profit. It is all about choosing the right niche and the right strategy. And there are plenty of opposite cases when affiliate marketers went from high incomes to sod.
It is possible to achieve the desired income in affiliate marketing. But how can affiliates escape mistakes and succeed?
In the next paragraphs, we will share several recommendations that will help you gain more online visibility for your brand and promoted products.
Instead of a “register and leave a link” attitude, develop the feeling that every product you promote is a fraction of your brand. The way you promote a product reflects you and your success in digital marketing accordingly.
You will probably work with dozens or hundreds of different projects. “Why would I care if there are plenty of them?” some may wonder. The result in performance marketing is not merely about referring to a product but about presenting it in a way other customers would like to purchase it. In the end, your earning depends on the product’s success. If you produce quality content, it has more chances to attract and convert. Think as a marketer, consider what is essential for consumers and give them what they want. You need to create a good reputation and happy emotions around the product – so that people will go for it.
The correlation of time spent in affiliate marketing and income received from it is not like a snowball effect. Nobody can guarantee that every new affiliate program will bring you the same high profit. Some may bring a lot; others may bring less. What is true is that quality and diligence put into promotion pays back. It is not enough just to post a product. You need to work on content and advertisement carefully. Some affiliates can neglect quality to quantity and, as a result, fail to perform well. In this way, it is a question every affiliate should ask himself/herself – do they have enough resources for one more product? Sometimes having fewer programs but well-promoted can bring more income than multiple products that you barely put effort and creativity into.
It is not a secret that some platforms serve better than others for different affiliate niches. To drive more results and get accepted to new programs, publishers need to showcase diverse experience with promotional platforms. Additionally, it would be a big plus for you if you could demonstrate advertisers different examples of your work.
Below you will find the most popular platforms for product promotion in affiliate marketing
Social media platforms are a great place to share information on your product in a less promotional way. One of their advantages is a huge and diverse audience. Let’s dive into the three most popular social media platforms among affiliate marketers; they are Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.
It has been a long time ago since Instagram as a platform crossed the line from “just sharing favorite pictures” to “the whole cycle of product promotion.” At first, Instagram was more about influencers. It was not easy to track the results; thus Instagram was mainly used for brand awareness campaigns. However, with the progress in new features, it became possible to open up for CPA campaigns.
How can affiliates work with CPA campaigns on Instagram?
Right now, there are options to shop directly from Instagram or get forwarded to install an app or register for an event, etc.
Nowadays, affiliates have more options to promote products:
You can think of Pinterest as a media search engine. People usually go there for inspiration. But once they dive into a variety of Pinterest offers, they realize that all these products are a minute away. It is not something made up, limited, or out of stock. It is a product that you can easily purchase.
While going through nice pictures, users don’t at first realize which merchant stands behind a product. They do not set brand names or price limits once they load a website. It is an excellent chance for some brands to become more recognizable worldwide. Thus if you come up with effective attracting dashboards, your chances to attract customers are very high.
How do you do that?
At your page, you create pins that connect site visitors with different products and lead to product pages, should visitors be interested.
Here are a few options for how it can work:
Which products are the best for Pinterest?
Pinterest is a great place for content on fashion, travel destinations, DIY, cooking, books, design, blogging about blogging, painting, goods for kids, etc.
Facebook also retains its position among the most popular social platforms for affiliate marketing. There are several ways to leverage this platform for product promotion.
You can run Facebook ads; this is probably the most effective way to reach Facebook’s audience of billions of people. And in comparison to annoying popups, Facebook ads are very user-friendly. In this way, you can see many Amazon products advertised on Facebook. They appear in the Users Newsfeed, among all the other updates that users receive from their friends and family. Some ads might be even hard to distinguish apart from users’ posts if one scrolls fast.
The other way is to share information through Facebook posts either on personal or business pages. You can also research industry-related communities and try to outreach the owners of the groups with your promotional material. In the latter case, you will probably have to pay for the listing, unless your content has educational value along with the promotional one. To make it free of charge, you can suggest doing cross-promo and publishing guest posts on your page; for a particular post or for posts in perspective. When you work with product promotion, you need to build media partner relations either way.
Blogging is not dead in 2020. People are still looking for information online and read what provides value. Thus starting a blog, creating a long-term content strategy and SEO optimizing your content is a good way for affiliates to both develop their brand and promote products.
The most common article types that work in affiliate marketing are product reviews, product comparison, step-by-step guides, selection of best tools, recommendations, experience sharing, infographics, expert opinions with intuitive examples of product, etc.
If you don’t have enough time to write articles regularly, you can always invite guests, authors. There are plenty of people outreaching with articles’ ideas. Just make sure that they go in line with your content strategy, and you can also use this content.
Everything that you can do when blogging, you can transform into video blogging. Unless you are timid, and your mind goes blank in front of the camera. Sometimes people can get bored with reading, and creative, helpful videos will be a good alternative. If you teach people how to do something or you demonstrate how products work, video format can even be better – they show the whole process and make it more accessible and realistic for users. The level of trust grows as they see all tools that you use in the process and that it is all real.
The most widespread channel is Youtube. Nowadays, many people perceive Youtube not as an entertainment video platform, but as a video search engine. If you look something up in Google, you will often see matching video suggestions pretty high in the search results. And Youtube has a massive audience, that’s a massive argument in favor of doing affiliate marketing there.
And the type of content that sells on Youtube is not much different from blog posts. It is also about product reviews, step-by-step guides, lists of best tools, recommendation articles, experience sharing, expert opinions, etc.
Email marketing is another excellent way to promote products. Having a considerable email list opens up plenty of opportunities for affiliates. Nowadays, many people prefer to rely on recommendations from friends, people they know, brands they trust, etc. By subscribing to an email form, people give you their trust; they know that you produce valuable content, and they would like to receive updates from you.
Email campaigns could be of a different kind. They can be promotional and offer products directly, for example, sales announcements or exclusive offers. They can also be more educational, like monthly newsletters, collection of the best tools/ recommendations, case studies, news, updates, etc.
We see a lot of free webinars or online courses available on the web. The share of valuable educational content inside which varies depending on a course. And webinars can range from ones with almost no value to beneficial ones.
Whether they provide much value or not, online webinars aim to sell something else. A webinar can aim at a host’s (lecturer’s) product or be purposefully developed to sell other merchants’ products.
While providing a gist of a webinar topic, a host can start recommending a set of tools needed. For example, the course is about a healthy lifestyle. Inevitably you will get recommendations on certain fitness trackers, healthy sleep apps, fat burners or calorie trackers, etc.
Besides locating affiliate links to articles and comments under posts, you can also add affiliate links at ad banners on your website and run PPC campaigns. Popunder banners can be relatively friendly and effective. They are different from popups that appear in the middle of the screen, blocking the entire content. Popunder banners appear only on the side from the content, not blocking the main content. A good choice will also be to place ad banners in sites header or footer, or in between articles paragraphs.
The thing about ad banners is that you shouldn’t overdo it. Ad banners alone don’t bring that much profit, add banners in the right place where they can be of use.
Don’t annoy users with quantity. Organize your content strategy and hence ad banners in a way that would make sense and be useful.
Even though podcasting has been losing its popularity for the last few years, the great thing about it is its loyal audience. Podcasting is a terrific way to build a story around a product and sell it in a very intuitive way. Podcasts listeners trust the podcast owners a lot. Otherwise, they wouldn’t spend up to 2 hours listening to them. Thus, they will undoubtedly consider their recommendations if the topic is relevant to them.
The reason why podcasting is not a headliner in marketing is its lengthу process to build your audience. Podcasts last from 20 minutes to 2 hours. I bet you will think twice before allocating one hour for a particular podcast. You will spend this time on something you trust and know it has value inside. It brings us to the conclusion that one needs to have a very loyal audience who will listen to the podcast all this time. Also, one needs to love what they do. I would suggest that people who like podcasting and they see their podcasts growing should monetize their podcast with affiliate products later on. But prepare to work a lot on the content and gaining audience loyalty first.
The concluding note
You may have seen some bloggers leaving small paragraphs on top or bottom of their texts about the possible presence of affiliate links. Nowadays, it is considered as a good tone to disclose one’s participation in affiliate programs. And in some instances, it is very appropriate. When leaving these notes, some bloggers can also add that those are only products they trust themselves. We will never know whether it is true or not, but being frank with your audience is a good tone.
Additionally, you may even prevent the risk of removing affiliate tags in the URL. It can be an issue sometimes. Not all people understand what an affiliate link is and how, in general, affiliate marketing works. Some are misguided and fear that affiliates get a commission over a price and that they, customers, will pay a higher price. When in reality, they pay the same price, and affiliates get a percentage from the initial product price.
Your company is searching for a full technology stack to drive affiliate business?
Content Manager
Yulia is a Content Marketer with a love to a great story and an eye to small details. Carrying a voice and delivering an accurate message - that’s what Yulia believes content marketing is for. Looking for thorough research and long-reads? You came to the right person. Her goal is to produce content that educates and entertains, and most importantly, has an impact. Challenges and something that is yet to be explored are her main motivators.
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