Email This Post
The Real Secrets To Making Affiliate Sales, Pt. 1
Posted by Jason - February 21, 2011 at 4:00 am 2 comments - What do you think?
We hear many stories about bloggers who make $30K-40K per month just from blogging! Inspired by these stories, many of people rush off and try to duplicate the results of these bloggers in short periods of time. Unfortunately, many find it down right impossible to achieve even a fraction of the results top bloggers have made. Getting mega affiliate sales are achieved and understood by very few. If you are having trouble making affiliate sales then keep reading and I will show you what has worked for me.
Before we get into what to do, let’s first take a look at what not to do. This way, if you are doing things to block your affiliate sales, you can work on them first. Does that make sense?
If You Want To Make Affliate Sales, Then Don’t Sell!
First of all, don’t sell! That’s right, don’t try to sell anything. Many blogging newbies think making affiliate sales is all about selling. I assure you it’s not. I know that copy writers and the such make very detailed sales pages but you don’t want that. Do you like it when people try to sell stuff to you? Do you have a hard time sleeping at night because you can’t wait to talk to telemarketers the next day? Do you clear your schedule to make sure you can watch infomercials? In general, people don’t like sales people or like to be sold something.
If visitors to your blog see you as someone who is trying to sell them something, little red flags of fear will start popping up all over the place in their minds. They will get the feeling that you basically just want to separate them from the money in their wallet or purse. Once they feel this way, you have about as much of a chance selling them something as making a few ice cubes in hell. Not going to happen.
I am going to say this one more time before moving on because it is that important. Don’t sell on your blog or website ( there are exceptions to this). Just to be as clear as possible, let’s cover a few examples of what selling looks like on a blog or website. It’s okay to run some ads because they are so common that people are used to them and they already understand the purpose of those ads, which is to sell them something. However, keep in mind that many people ignore ads for many of the reasons I have previously discussed. That’s why you don’t want to just rely on making affiliate sales this way.
Take a look at the image on the left. There are several things wrong with this, can you spot some of them?
Okay times up. Notice how it is trying to sell some affiliate books using an affiliate widget from Amazon. This blogger is trying to sell the books because he is clearly displaying the prices for each book. So what’s wrong with this? Again, you don’t want to sell things and furthermore, people don’t want to be sold things. When the reader looks at this, he or she may raise a red flag or two in their mind and possibly wonder if this blogger’s main purpose is to separate them from their hard-earned cash. So, don’t do this. Also, this is not very subtle.
Another red flag is shown at the bottom, where you see Amazon.com and their link,” Get Widget.” In this case, it becomes more apparent that something is being sold if the reader had any previous doubts. You don’t need Amazon.com advertising in this way on your blog. So go back and check your blog or website and make sure that your affiliate products are not being marketed in this sort of way. Keep reading to see an alternative below that is more subtle and less likely to raise red flags to your blog’s visitors.
How Can I Make Affiliate Sales If I Don’t Sell?
That is a great question and is worth much consideration. Take a moment and think about how this could be done. If you are able to come up with some creative ways to make affiliate sales then you will be rewarded handsomely. I will share with you some ways as well, but is also important for you to think about better ways of making affiliate sales. In the process of doing so you will hopefully put yourself in the shoes of the visitors that come to your blog or website and learn to see things from their perspective. You will ask yourself questions like, “Would I really buy something from this blog?, Do I trust this blog, author, or website?, Will this product or service really help me?, Is this a scam or is this author trying to scam me?”
Unfortunately, your website visitors don’t know and some of them don’t care, that it takes money and time to provide the information they are reading on your blog or website. They don’t realize that us poor bloggers need to eat and feed our families too. They also don’t realize, that many bloggers are honest, hard-working people, and are not trying to take advantage of them. Most of your visitors are too preoccupied with solving their own problems to even be aware of yours. I am saying all of this to help you better understand where your visitors are mentally coming from. Believe it or not, the best way to help yourself is by helping them get what they want.
Can You Really Make Affiliate Sales without Selling?
Yes, you can and you will. The real secret to making affiliate sales is to build trust, inform, recommend, and/or solve a problem for your blog or website visitors. You also want to do this in an honest and subtle way. I can’t cover all of these in this post as it is already getting too long.
Let’s look at a quick example or two, of how you can recommend affiliate products without selling. If you look at the right column of this blog, you will see some books I recommend. These books are linked to Amazon and I will receive credit if you purchase one of the books after you click on the link.
Notice how there are no prices, only the picture, title, and author. Also take notice how I don’t make it look like I want you to buy anything. I am only making a recommendation, that’s all. I only include enough information that would be useful to the reader. I also could include something that says, “Click for more information.” Again, this would be a subtle way to draw the reader in more if they want to know more. Instead of a book, you can do this for just about any product.
Another example is to write up a product review on one of your affiliate products ( see one of my reviews here ). Be sure to have used the product and give your honest opinion on it. It’s helpful to the reader to list what you found of value and things you did not like. It is also helpful to include information about why you decided to buy that product and how it has helped you. Then include a link to the product that allows them to find out more details, that also happens to be an affiliate link. Be sure to disclose that you could be compensated if they decide to buy the product. However, you don’t want to necessarily say it in those words because they may think that you are pushing the product just so you can make money and not for the true merits of the product.
This does present us with a bit of a dilemma wouldn’t you say? There are ways of actually using this to your advantage, but let’s cover more of this in Part 2.
Another way, is to write a free ebook that has incredibly good tips and information in it that also happens to be filled with your affiliate links. You will be helping out many people while also making a few bucks to recover the expenses of writing the ebook, like your time.
Did you catch a couple of subtle affiliate recommendations I made in this article? If so, let me know.
Related Posts:
Can You Have More Sales, Too?
Helping over 75,000 businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber's opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.
Email This Post
Interesting post.. To be honest is an important part when we are an affiliate. I am sure if some one needs a certain products, they will search for enough information about the product and will purchase when they are ready. So the useful products review surely have a greater chance to get the link clicked..
Very well covered points but the major catch of selling affiliate products are they take user to their site and next time they will visit it directly, so you are just paid once for diverting traffic and making a sale.