Affiliate marketing has grown to become one of the key methods of online revenue creation today. It has grown into an incredibly effective approach that millions have become involved with around the world, and one of the most common ways to promote affiliate offers is through written content. Indeed, affiliate links are one of the biggest sources of income for blog creators all over the world.
The thing is, in today’s crowded marketing, you need good content that engages your reader to really be successful, simply writing stale content is not good enough anymore. It’s not hard to write great content, but it does take some effort and a little understanding. Here are some tips to help you create the content that your audience will love, and it may even make writing fun along the way!
Think about the people reading
Whatever kind of content you are writing, the goal is to give the reader a reason to click on your affiliate link. So, the best way to do that is writing your content is to focus on what your reader may want. If you are writing a review, think about the things the reader may want to know about a product. If you are using a tutorial as content, think about a new user for the product, what would they want to know.
Your content should always address why the reader would want the product, what it does for them, the problem it solves, and why they would choose to buy that particular product from your affiliate link.
Explain things, it is easy to forget that the audience doesn’t know what some aspects of the product are, but its just a product on the internet, there are millions of them. If you explain everything, that understanding builds desire for the product, it separates it from everything else they have seen an image of that day. That is the key to affiliate earnings.
Trust is everything
When using content marketing, you must build trust with your audience. It is trust in your opinion, views, and ideas that empower readers to click your affiliate link and make a purchase. Gaining that trust is all about being honest, offering good advice and appearing unbiased at all times.
Some people fall into the trap of over-praising a product they are promoting. It might even seem like a good idea. After all, if you want people to buy a product, just tell them it is super-amazing and better than everything else, right? You want to praise it of course, but today, people can spot this kind of thing, and it puts them off. Instead, take the time, to be honest, if there are a couple of minor problems, say so. It won’t harm you, and in fact, being able to say that something is not perfect actually builds trust.
Whatever the product, no one expects absolute perfection, you can spend time discussing the best points, and still give a good overall impression on any product while letting potential buyers know about small issues. This is not just for reviews, if you are writing a comparison article, don’t just say your product wins at every point, because it is unlikely to be true. If the other product has something that is clearly better, say so. The aim is to create the overall impression of a quality, useful product while still being trustworthy and unbiased.
Really test the products
Audiences today can spot when people are being dishonest. If you are writing a review of a product, use it. If you are writing about a problem and how a product can solve it, use the product and know what it does.
Creating stories that praise a product you have never seen or used yourself will eventually backfire. As we have discussed, trust is everything, you have to be credible. This also applies to products that you have tried but don’t like. If you pretend to like something because it’s an affiliate offer, it will come through in your writing at some point and your audience will pick up on it.
Apart from anything else, it is much, much easier to write about something you have used and enjoyed. It’s hard to create something positive about a product you don’t really like, so why make things more difficult? Write about things you know and like, it’s more fun and you will find it easier to create.
Be natural
One of the biggest mistakes people make in creating content is to find a product, think of a marketing slogan or idea, and then write a story around that to fit in the product and affiliate link. You are probably wondering why that is a mistake?
The answer is because it results in content that is obviously marketing. While that is OK on an e-commerce page, affiliate marketing needs to feel natural. You are the voice your audience trusts, they click the links because of your recommendation. The relationship is more a friend telling you about a good product that someone selling.
To maintain that feel of just a friend talking about something, the focus should be on giving the reader information, not selling. That means anecdotes about using the product, rather than a list of selling points. If you say it was fun to use because…, rather than it has this feature, then the story fees more natural. The other way simply reads like the bullet points of the product box.
The other aspect of being natural is to vary what you do. If everything you post is the same format, a 600-word review template or something, then that itself gives the impression of a sales formula. Your audience will become bored of that quite quickly. By changing things up, with different content, you keep your audience engaged. Just as importantly, it also keeps writing fresh too and avoids falling into a routine. That helps you to keep motivated, and it keeps your writing at the quality level you need.
Conclusion
Writing content is not as daunting as it may first seem. By ensuring you write with your reader in mind, being honest about the products you promote you can build trust. In offering a range of different content that keeps your audience engaged and interested, and over time that will result in increased revenue from your affiliate offers.
