Affiliate marketing can often go two ways – it can crawl along earning you a frustrating few cents here and there, or it can be a healthy part of your overall earnings (just look at Pat Flynn!) when done right. If you are not familiar with the concept you can learn more from Podcast Episode 51: My Tips for Making Money As a Blogger Through Affiliate Marketing.
One of the things I wanted to talk to you about was how to do affiliate sales right. There really is an art to it, and often you’ll find that different techniques will reap different rewards. It can be useful to figure out what works for you and spend more time on those efforts than spreading yourself across all affiliate possibilities.
What Affiliate Links to Use in Your Emails
On today’s podcast, I focus on where to put links when sending an email promoting a product to your list. This could be a book or ecourse written by someone else that you are promoting, where the more you encourage your audience to buy, the more money you can earn.
This was inspired by a question from listener Scott, who asked:
“I want to try my hand at some affiliate promotions and have selected an eBook to promote. I have heard to say that your affiliate promotions work best when you email your list but I am wondering if I should email that affiliate link or send them to my own blog where I review the product.
“I’d love your guidance – how do you promote an affiliate product?”
It’s never going to work to just send an email that is generic, or that you haven’t put thought into to personalise for your reader.
There are a few things to consider, and they’re all about making your audience feel like this product is perfect for them, that it will be worth their time, and making it as easy for them as possible so they are more likely to hit that “buy now” button.
Things like linking directly to the sales page of the product you are promoting (rather than a page describing the product), sending the reader to your own blog (win-win there!) and how many times to email with affiliate links are what to keep an eye out for, and what I discuss in the podcast.
Affiliate sales can be a fantastic way to boost your income, but if you’ve not done it before, I hope you benefit from my advice.
Hi Darren,
Making your readers see the benefits of affiliate products makes ’em pop.
I’ve done little affiliate stuff but the best sellers always resonated with my audience.
I think; would my audience dig this if I created it? If they would dig it, then you betcha they likely would dig the affiliate product.
The problem; many bloggers, including old dingbat me, grabbed a product, promoted it and flopped because I put virtually zero thought into the planning phase.
Did it align with my audience? Would my readership dig it? Am I buying into it, stressing the benefits of using the product, putting my heart and soul into it as I would any of my eBooks or courses or services.
As for links I prefer to bring folks in to my review page. They trust me. They vibe with my voice. So I run with that.
But sometimes, as you said, it makes sense to take out the middleman. Because if you bring people into the offer, and if they trust you already, AND if the page is aligned, with clear, compelling copy, the affiliate sales will jump.
You are super clear on sales pages, you buy in, so no need for a lead in.
But sometimes, if you don’t feel as clear with the landing page, write a review on your blog and bump up the trust factor a little bit more.
Excellent stuff dude.
Signing off from sunny NJ.
Ryan
I promote quite a few affiliate products in various markets and a lot of it is a matter of getting to know your list.
If they don’t buy in certain areas – usually because as a list owner you’ve steered clear of those areas – then the conversion goes down.
I like to add value in most of the emails I send so that people on my list have a “take away” even if they don’t buy the product I’m suggesting.
I find that a much better approach than just blasting out anything and everything and hoping something sticks to the wall.
I also prefer to talk from experience so I’ll either buy the product or ask for a review copy, The latter weeds out quite a few sub-standard offers and helps keep the overall quality higher.
I’ll also tell my list if there’s a downsell price just by clicking the ‘X’ in the browser. Not a sale technique I like much but it happens and I’d rather people found out there was a cheaper price – sometimes without the bonuses you’d never use anyway – than get stitched up.