Increasing Your Affiliate Marketing Sales

Want to know my secret to increasing affiliate marketing sales?

Put less emphasis on affiliate products that pay the highest commissions and more emphasis on finding quality affiliate products that your readers will benefit from.

Are there high quality affiliate programs that pay high commissions? Sure there are, but finding them and truly knowing if they’re quality products comes with using them yourself.

I hear affiliate marketers say all the time that they make affiliate sales without using the product or service themselves, I don’t doubt that, but my ability to compel a reader to buy comes a lot easier if I can experience a product or service first hand.

But also, what if a product or service is poor?  Your commissions will be retracted due to returns or refunds and your readers will no longer trust you.  That’s not how you’ll increase your affiliate marketing sales.

Here are the strategies I use for increasing my own sales that, effectively used, will  increase your affiliate marketing sales as well.

Get To Know The Affiliate Product Manager

Your affiliate marketing manager is a great resource for helping you promote successfully and increase sales.

First of all, an affiliate manger knows the product, secondly they know how their most successful affiliates became successful and they are willing to share that information with you.

Start by sending an email to the affiliate manager and introducing yourself.  Ask questions about the product, how many affiliates and customers they have and ask them what suggestions they might have for helping your promotion efforts.

Sitebuildit for example, which is one of my favorite affiliate programs, created a special promotional banner just for me when I began promoting.  It was a personal touch that I wouldn’t otherwise have had if I didn’t get friendly with my affiliate manager and ask for ideas on how to promote the service. .

They also looked at my site and gave me pointers on what would work best for my promotions.  That tells you how much they value their affiliates, it also tells you a lot about the quality of their products.

Developing a working relationship with your affiliate manager opens a lot of doors.  Just by contacting them they will see that you are motivated and driven to succeed, that motivates them.

Use the Affiliate Product or Service Yourself

Before you can promote anything you should have confidence in the quality of the  product.  You can’t truly know that without using it.

I like to use the example of my Keurig one cup coffeemaker.  I’d heard great things about how it makes just one cup of coffee in under 60 seconds and the coffee pods made cleanup a breeze.  What I didn’t know about the coffeemaker is that the temperature of the water is not too hot, it’s brewed at the perfect temperature to start drinking immediately.

However, another thing I noticed is that the coffeemaker is LOUD!  Not exactly a bad thing, but it gives my readers a little more information before making the buying decision and people appreciate that additional insight.

Then ask yourself, “Would I recommend this to my mother or someone I really care about”?

Use Your Own Voice

Many affiliate programs  provide their affiliates with canned product reviews and articles that are pre-written.  These are nice features of the program but honestly,  I  would suggest that you write product reviews and articles yourself.

I’ve never been a fan of canned content; it doesn’t sound natural and it doesn’t help build trust if your readers see the same review on your site that they see everywhere else, that’s not going to do much for increasing your affiliate marketing sales because your reader won’t trust your review.

A review that you personally write will set you apart from the ‘lazy’ affiliates who put less effort and interest in their promotions.

If you do write your own review, try sending it to the affiliate manager asking them to provide comments and suggestions. This is an excellent way to help you make sure you touch on the most important points of the product.

In Summary

Use the products and services you promote, look for the small details that aren’t found in the sales material and ask the affiliate manager what makes the product or service better or unique from their competitors. Write a personal review from  your experiences and then ask yourself:

“Would I recommend this to my mother or someone I really care about”?

Promoting affiliate products using this method will give you a much better chance of increasing your affiliate marketing sales because your building trust with your readers,  meaning they’ll look to you for their next purchase recommendation.

Tagged as: Affiliate Marketing