5 Things Successful Affiliate Marketers Do Right

Successful affiliate marketers are masters of getting you to buy without you knowing you’re being sold on something, learn how here.

Image by John Conde from Pixabay

There is often an air of desperation when dealing with affiliate marketers.

Be they people on YouTube videos crying out for people to click their links or very biased review websites that are 70% advertisements and 30% weakly written content. The thing to remember is that successful affiliate marketers are so good that users often don’t realize they are affiliate marketing.

This is one of the reasons why affiliate companies are now so demanding when it comes to letting people know when a product is sponsored, or when the webmaster is due to be paid money if consumers click links or make purchases. The truly successful affiliate marketer is so good that his or her users don’t even know the selling process is occurring.

1 – Start a Comparison Website

One of the best ways to get a conversion on your home page is to offer a tool or a function that hooks the user. No website has ever embodied this philosophy harder than a comparison website. People are literally entering your website to use your tool, and your tool points them towards the companies that are going to pay you affiliate money if your users buy.

Part of the reason for their success is that people do not go to comparison websites to buy. In almost every case, people use comparison websites as a “Research tool” and are then convinced by the great rates and perk-filled deals to buy through the comparison website and earn that affiliate marketer a fortune. It is like those people who say they just want to walk past the ice cream store to see what they have on offer, and almost always end up walking out with three tubs and a cone.

Though one is quick to suggest you open your own comparison website, perhaps try taking the principles that make them so successful and applying them to your own idea. Just remember that people consider the website to be a research tool and not a buying platform, and perhaps this level of willing (almost obliging) participation is what makes comparison website users such great targets for easy affiliate sales.

2 – Try Something Different

If you are looking at affiliate marketers historically rather than in the present, then the most common theme is that the affiliate marketer tried something a little different. Perhaps it is difficult to tell since we have no idea how many people were being innovative and how many people “Lucked out.” We also cannot consider how mean people try something different and fail without ever making an impact.

Yet, if we look at the marketplace with the simplest of analysis, it seems that the people who tried something different are the ones who did the best. These are people like Price Spy who offered people a way to check on different prices for the same products, and then offered affiliate links to those who chose to buy.

Another example comes from people using digital display software and QR codes to show offers to passersby and visitors. Rather than relying on online ads, digital signs were able to catch people when they were out and about, and both QR codes and discount codes were offered as a way of helping the digital sign owner get paid. You can treat your digital signs as if they were online ads that existed offline. In fact, if you were not feeling very creative, you could use the same ads on your digital signs as you do on your websites. The only difference is that you need a way for people to interact since they cannot click on a digital sign advertisement. Offering up QR codes, discount codes, and showing specialized (easy to copy down) links is often how this is done.

3 – Start a Review Website

Perhaps one of the most commonly thought of methods for affiliate marketing is to start a review website. The premise is simple. You start a review website where you tell people what is good and what is not, and then you hope they buy those same products or services through your website and through your links. You can start review websites on anything, such as:

• Downloadable DRM games
• Different types of faucets
• Car insurance companies
• Vegan ready meals

You can be as creative as you wish, and the great thing is that being very niche and very specific can pay off. Those trying to review entire ranges of work tools are making far less than those who specialize in one thing like faucets or robotic vacuums.

Later in this article, the idea of “Quantity over Quality” is pushed as one of the ways successful affiliate marketers make their money. When it comes to review websites, you should still have high quality content, but you should be focused on making smaller affiliate profits through honest reviews. You will have to let people know when poor quality products or services appear on your website because if every review says that the products are great, then people will not believe your reviews. So, when it comes to review websites, you need both quantity (lots of smaller affiliate sales) and quality (well written pages with honest reviews).

4 – Add Affiliate Deals into Your Podcasts

One of the most oddly workable affiliate marketing methods is through podcasts. The likes of Bill Burr didn’t adopt this methodology but seems to have made is popular and solidified it as a strong affiliate marketing method.

Podcasts are the sort of disposable content that blogs used to be before blogs were turned into corporate SEO (Search Engine Optimization) machines. People used to wait for blog posts to come out in the same way they now wait for podcasts to come out. The disposable nature of podcasts is why affiliate marketing works so well.

In some cases, you can tell people to follow a link, but in most cases, you offer the listener a discount code. When the code is used to make a sale, the affiliate marketer (the podcaster) receives a fee. Podcasters are becoming very successful affiliate marketers because they can use their personality to sell. Even the likes of comedian Bill Burr will tell listeners to use the code because that is the only way he will be paid, and people will buy almost as a way to tip Bill for his efforts. Podcasters can be brazen in their affiliate marketing attempts, and in many cases, their personalization and personality is enough to sell it.

Yet, for some reason, this methodology has never been as popular on YouTube, possibly because people wait for podcasts like the series of a soap, whereas people peruse YouTube and may find old videos where affiliate links have died off years ago.

5 – Focus on Conversion Quantity Over Quality

In most instances in life, we are told to concentrate on quality and not quantity, but the opposite is true for affiliate marketers. You are much better off getting ten affiliate sales at a commission of $1 each than trying for $10 payments for a single affiliate sale.

The worst part is that this advice is probably the most commonly ignored. It is very obvious when an affiliate website is trying to push the product with the highest affiliate payments. In many cases, you see things like how their comparison tools and reviews always show the same products or services at the top. Plus, they offer brazenly good points for one company or product, while almost brushing off all the others.

As you can imagine, this quality of quantity approach will short-change the viewer, who often learns to mistrust the affiliate marketer because he or she clearly has an agenda. What’s more, the higher affiliate payments are often for higher-priced goods and services, and that is a very tall target to shoot for. It means that not only must you attract people with that sort of money, but you must also get them to click and buy. You could spend months waiting for that $50 affiliate fee, when at the same time you could have made hundreds of 50c affiliate sales.

Summary

If you want to be a successful affiliate marketer, put these 5 practices to work and watch your sales grow. Got better tips? Share’em in the comments :)