Here are a few numbers that will make your jaw drop:
- Bloggers who are experts at affiliate marketing can earn up to (and sometimes over) $10,000 per day.
- Even beginner affiliate marketers can earn an average of $300 each day.
- 84% of publishers and 81% of marketers in the US almost exclusively work with affiliate marketers to promote their brands.
- The affiliate marketing industry is expected to grow to $6.8 billion by year-end 2020 and you can be one of the few who benefits from this tremendous growth.
Affiliate marketing is an extremely lucrative business. Today, especially with the Coronavirus pandemic having caused a record high nation-wide unemployment in the United States, you may need a way out of your financial woes.
Affiliate marketing provides one of the easiest, quickest and most passive ways to earn a pretty penny. You only need to invest a bit of your time, tap into your creativity and implement a touch of technology, to get started on your affiliate entrepreneurial journey.
Top 5 Ways to Create the Best Affiliate Content that Pays
Affiliate marketing isn’t difficult or confusing. Creating affiliate content can be really easy. Here are 5 easy strategies you can use to create impactful affiliate content:
1. Don’t forget your existing content, repurpose it to target new audiences
Any piece of content created has more to offer in multiple formats than in a single format. The more formats you publish the content in, more the channels you’ll be able to tap in to drive new audiences and leads.
Content repurposing is the process of taking a piece of content, like say a blog post and publishing it in different formats like videos, social content, infographics, presentation, shorter snackable pieces or something else. Just be creative and you can open tons of new channels with the same content, repurposed in different formats.
Repurposing content adds years to your life as an affiliate marketer. Plus, it enables you to engage audiences who may have not responded favorably to the old content format.
While repurposing sounds like a great idea, it still means additional content creation. It is also possible that you may not know how to work with some new types of content formats. But there’s a workaround. There are specialized content creation platforms and freelancer hiring marketplaces, which you can use to hire experienced professionals to repurpose your content.
Take Narrato for example. A written content ordering platform, Narrato connects you to qualified and experienced writers, who have expertise in your domain. The writers can repurpose your existing content in several text formats or can even write fresh pieces for you. Its $1 trial and extremely pocket-friendly services, make Narrato a great option for new affiliate marketers. It also has a copyright free image search tool, which comes quite in handy.
If you’re looking to repurpose textual content into image-based content, consider PeoplePerHour.com. Here, you can find freelance designers who can help you repurpose your posts into a variety of graphics-based content like videos, infographics and slides. Just log into the site, filter for professionals who match your requirements and contact the person you wish to hire.
2. The most strategic link placement makes the best case for your product
Affiliate content marketing includes two parts – one is the development of the text/image-based content, the other is the link placement.
As an affiliate marketer, it’s your job to strategically place your affiliate links, in order to encourage your audience to “stumble onto” the product, visit the site and buy it. The key here is to make the link placement seem as organic as possible. Some of the most successful Amazon affiliate websites have mastered this practice. Significant affiliate commissions can be earned if you have a site that gets significant traffic.
AmaLinksPro is an excellent tool that helps you with digital merchandising. It is a WordPress plugin, which helps you include attractive and impactful product images and affiliate links in your content. From text & image-based links to custom-designed CTA buttons to product showcase boxes, you can create them all.
Need to insert a tidy product comparison table to help your audience make the right decision? AmaLinksPro empowers you to do that too. The tool has been designed specifically for one of the world’s most lucrative affiliate marketing programs – Amazon Associates.
Now, here are a few tips to make your affiliate link placement seem less salesy:
- Write a detailed case study of you using the product and include the link when you’re explaining the positive results/benefits obtained.
- Write How-to product tutorials and include a section on ”How to buy the product”.
- Place your affiliate banner with the link at the start of the article/video.
- Include the affiliate links in any gated content you have on your Amazon affiliate site.
3. Use SEO the right way to create snippets that even Google can’t ignore
Featured Snippets are extremely integral to the success of your affiliate marketing campaign. They’re what get your target customers in through the door, so to speak.
Featured Snippets are extracts of posts. You can see them highlighted and in bold, underneath the site link, when Google turns up a list of search results. These snippets give the reader a taste of what they can expect if they visit the site and read through the content.
Having entertaining, informative and SEO-enriched featured snippets can determine whether you attract readers to your blog or if you lose them to a competing affiliate marketer.
Now, the thing about snippets is that your content will be featured only when it matches Google’s algorithm requirements. This is where SEO-optimization of content helps. Here are some things you can do to SEO-optimize your content for featured snippets:
- Include long-form, question-type keywords that mimic actual search queries. (Ex: how to make chocolate chip cookies)
- Study the searches prompts that Google offers when you’re typing a query. Use those as keyword inspirations.
- Use the “inverted pyramid” style of writing – give the most important or crux of the information in the first paragraph, followed by related product details and finally generic information.
- Use words that commonly appear in featured snippets.
If you’re looking for a tool to help you create the most compelling featured snippets, there’s the Featured Snippet Optimization Tool by Ninja Tools. You can run your blog post URL in the tool and the tool generates the featured snippet that will be displayed on Google. You can use this information to modify your content and make it more searchable.
4. Commenting on your own posts helps
This might seem counter-intuitive and salesy, but the fact is, comments by the affiliate marketer actually stimulate higher engagement.
After publishing the content, you can be the first commenter. Ask the audience a question pertaining to your post. Request them to suggest any ideas or product hacks that you might have missed mentioning. Seek their opinions about a point you’ve made in the post.
By actively soliciting engagement through comments, you can get more people to interact with you. Plus, as people communicate with you through comments, you can provide more personalized sales pitches to individual commenters. This will help you display your affiliate product in a 360-degree perspective.
Metype is an AI-driven comment management tool that enables you to actively track, moderate and engage with your commenters. You can have conversations in real-time, react to the comments with appropriate emoji and prevent spammers from ruining the quality of your comments section.
5. Geo-target your affiliate content
Your customers and audiences don’t always come from your own country. Most times, affiliate marketers get customers from overseas because the brands they work with optimize the products for all regions.
Take Amazon for example. Amazon is present in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa…basically everywhere. A book listed on Amazon.com will also be listed on Amazon.in. If you’re promoting this book, you need to make sure that your content is visible and accessible to buyers from all regions. Afterall, a conversion is a conversion, no matter where it comes from.
This is where Geo IP based links help. These links allow affiliate marketers to use the same link to target audiences from different locations. The link when pasted in the content, is your original link i.e. relevant to the region you reside in. But, when a person from another country clicks on your link, he is redirected to the most relevant page of the site, pertaining to his location. Most e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay and Shopify use such Geo IP based links.
But if you’re working with a brand that doesn’t use Geo IP based links, you can use a tool like Geo Targetly to get the same results. This all-in-one tool allows you to catch geographic data from a visitor the moment they enter your site, create custom Geo IP redirection links for your posts, send geo-targeted content (i.e. country-specific ads, offers and discounts) and block users who don’t meet the geographic criteria you’ve set.
Bringing It All Together
When you apply the above strategies to your affiliate marketing campaign, you’ll find that:
- Your content becomes more search engine friendly.
- Your affiliate posts and links are more visible and enticing to target audiences.
- You are better equipped to engage and convert a global customer base.
So, go ahead and give these strategies a try. We’re sure you’ll soon be raking in thousands.
Nisha Prakash
