As a quick review, affiliate marketing is when you sell someone else’s product on your blog or website, and the respective product owner gives you a commission for making that sale.
Take Eastlinkcloud for example.If you promote our web hosting services on your blog, and someone else purchases a web hosting plan through your unique affiliate link, Eastlinkcloud will pay you a commission for that sale.
1. Build a gorgeous, high-traffic blog
Many successful affiliate marketers start out as bloggers. A blog is the vehicle that helps you get followers and attract traffic.
As you build an awesome blog, you position yourself as an expert and people want to listen to you. In turn, you create the perfect online space to advertise and sell your favorite products.
2. Only promote products within your niche
The first step in being a good affiliate marketer is establishing credibility.
Consumers are smart and it takes less than a second for a buyer to spot a blogger that is simply trying to make cash vs. someone who has tried out popular and relevant products and is making a good recommendation.
If you’re looking to build consumer confidence in your recommendations, then only promote products that are relevant to your specialty.
3. Try the products you sell
It will be difficult to speak to how cool a product is and why a consumer should purchase it if you haven’t tried it yourself.
If you’re interested in a particular affiliate product, reach out to the brand to get all of the relevant information about the product.Often times affiliate merchants will hook you up with free products or services so you know everything there is to know about their brand.
Even if the affiliate merchant doesn’t hook you up with a freebie, make sure you take the product for a test drive.When you know how the product looks/feels/tastes/works, you can speak about it with accurate insight, and boost your sales.
4. Create a review system of products you sell
Reviews play a huge role in consumer purchasing decisions. Stats show that around 95% of customers read reviews before making a purchase and 72% of consumers won’t take any buying actions until they’ve read reviews.
If you want to boost affiliate sales on your blog, then it’s smart to test and review all of the products you sell. This is especially true, considering reviews make customers 71% more comfortable buying a product.
5. Sign up for an affiliate merchant program
As a consumer, I love it when my favorite bloggers recommend individual products. It shows they go above and beyond to find, test, and review products related to their niche.
I also recognize that it’s extremely time consuming for bloggers to reach out to brands on an individual basis. And I have zero qualms about affiliate marketers that use affiliate merchant programs to promote products.
As a quick review, affiliate merchant programs are online hubs for affiliate merchants and marketers to join, so they can find each other more easily.
6. Publish tutorials
When you write up a tutorial for your blog, you introduce the product, include your affiliate link where relevant, and then take the blogger through the step-by-step process of how to use the respective product.
Let’s use HostGator’s affiliate marketing product as an example. If you’re a member of HostGator’s affiliate marketing program, you get a commission every time someone signs up for a new hosting account using your affiliate link.
7. Shorten your links with a plugin
What do affiliate links and spam have in common? A lot of characters, weird symbols, and long links.
The last thing you want is for someone to hover over your affiliate link and see a long, spammy-looking link with your ref id attached to the link.The consumer may take one look at your link, worry they are about to download a virus on their computer, and abandon ship.
A better way to present an affiliate link is to use a tool to shorten it. There are several link-shortening tools on the market.
8. Optimize your blog posts for search
If consumers can’t find your blog, they can’t click on your affiliate links and make purchases. A sure-fire way to grow your blog traffic is to optimize all of your posts for search (SEO).
Yoast is an incredibly useful plugin as it guides you through the SEO process every time you publish a blog post. Yoast will ask you for your target keyword, scan your content, and make suggestions to help improve your SEO ranking.
Yoast also includes SEO tutorials so new bloggers can learn more about this type of digital marketing.
9. Don’t over-do it
Once you learn that brands will pay you to sell their products, it’s hard not to promote everything under the sun.
Here are some hard-and-fast rules to help you keep it under control:
– Don’t include too many links
– Don’t promote every product under the sun.
– Don’t confuse your audience.
10. Love on your blog
Your blog is the tool you use to make more sales. As such, it’s critical to make sure your blog gets the care and attention it needs.
Loving on your blog means:
– Staying current on blogging and digital marketing trends
– Implementing a nice design
– Writing content consistently
– Updating your WordPress theme often
– Customizing your blog to make it unique and easy to navigate
– Making sure your blog is optimized for mobile search
– Signing up with a web hosting service that promises at least 99% uptime
– Writing clear, concise, and compelling copy
And more!
If you take care of your blog, you’ll be a more successful affiliate marketer
Get web hosting from Eastlinkcloud today!
If you’re ready to start your blog or boost your affiliate marketing commissions, the time is now to sign up for a Eastlinkcloud web hosting account.
Eastlinkcloud offers several web hosting plans to meet your needs, unlimited bandwidth, and everything else you would need to run a successful website. Don’t delay. Check out our eastlink web hosting plans today at info@eastlink.net.np
