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.
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