30 Simple Ways To Increase Affiliate Sales For Your Business
Learning everything about the ways to increase affiliate sales is not the most straightforward task marketers must tackle.
Pursuing a considerable number of commissions is even more challenging when you’re just getting into affiliate marketing for beginners.
Most marketers struggle with boosting their monthly affiliate sales, but they don’t give up on the goal:
After all, affiliate marketing provides an excellent way to build a passive income stream.
They are making money while sleeping – that’s one of the fundamental reasons why people launch online businesses in the first place.
Today, I’ll share with you proven affiliate marketing concepts that will help you increase your affiliate income.
This post contains affiliate links – read my affiliate disclosure.
How To Get Sales In Affiliate Marketing: Strategies To Increase Your Affiliate Sales
1) Learn What Key Performance Indicators You Should Pay Attention To
As a newbie affiliate marketer, you’ll first need to understand the meaning of a couple of affiliate marketing terms.
While getting visitors to click on your affiliate links is important, converting these clicks into sales matters way more.
Now, what is a key performance indicator in affiliate marketing?
To sum up, a key performance indicator is the metric promoters use to determine the effectiveness of their marketing strategy.
Here are a few such indicators you should become familiar with from the start of your affiliate marketing career:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR is a metric that shows the clicks vs. views.
- Conversion Rate: Think of conversion rate as conversion vs. clicks metric. Overall, the process is successful every time a reader takes the action you want them to take.
- Revenue By Traffic Source: In short, a revenue by traffic source is the income you’ll receive from each source of the traffic to your offers
- Average Session Duration: The ASD will show you how long a visitor stays on your page – you can use this metric to discover which pages your readers find most valuable
It goes without saying that you’ll need to check these indicators regularly to determine how your affiliate offers perform and make changes if necessary.
2) Understand Why You Need To Create Sales Funnels To Convert Readers Into Buyers
Do you know what a sales funnel is?
Don’t sweat it if the term is unfamiliar to you – most beginner marketers fail to recognize the importance of knowing how essential sales funnels are.
At some point, though, you’ll need to learn how to create sales funnels for the offers you promote:
Using a sales funnel for a marketing campaign is probably the most effective of all the ways to increase your affiliate sales.
Every sales funnel has to achieve the following goals:
- Draw Attention To The Offer: Naturally, the first thing a sales funnel has to accomplish is to create awareness among the audience of the product you’re promoting.
- Establish A Connection Between Marketer And Visitor: As a rule of thumb, people don’t buy from individuals they don’t trust. So, the second goal your funnel must hit is building trust between you and your readers.
- Recommend Without Forcing: A well-crafted sales funnel will never show you desperate for a sale.
- Score Affiliate Sales: If your sales funnel accomplish the previous three goals, making affiliate sales is inevitable.
3) Each Affiliate Campaign Must Provide A Clear Answer To The “What’s In It For Me” Question
Quite frankly, earning affiliate commissions is not as simple as some people would like you to believe.
However, it’s not that complicated either once you realize the fundamental principle behind selling in general:
Above all, people will invest in whatever you’re selling if they consider it valuable enough to justify a purchase.
In other words, what’s in it for me always plays a crucial role in the mind of each of your potential clients:
Present a product/service that will solve their problem, and you’ll see your affiliate offers constantly converting into sales.
4) Create High-Quality Content That Will Easily Convert Readers Into Buyers
OK, I know that most of you are well aware that writing valuable content is one of the best ways to increase affiliate sales.
With that said, not all content types perform equally – some will suit your affiliate marketing needs better than others.
For example, product reviews, tutorials, and how-to guides tend to prove more valuable from a client’s perspective.
After all, such articles make it so easy to readers to see the benefits of the product you promote.
Never underestimate the marketing power of a product comparison in a post – pitting valuable products against each other will do wonders for your affiliate income.
How To Write Product Review That Will Sell
Take a look at the best practices when writing a product review:
- Try The Product First: Think what you will, but the audience can smell a phony from miles away. If your product review doesn’t prove that you have a first-hand experience with the product, that review won’t convert. The only way a reader will trust your take on a product is to try it yourself first.
- Include Both Advantages And Disadvantages: Everyone knows that there is no such thing as the perfect product. So, don’t hold back on the cons of the product – state them along with the pros, so the readers will know what they’re getting.
- Offer Alternatives: There is not a single product that can satisfy the needs of every single reader of yours. Likewise, adding an alternative affiliate offer to a product review is another way to serve each member of your audience.
Pro Tip:
Ultimately, a product review will serve a greater affiliate marketing purpose if it’s not just valuable but engaging as well.
Close your product review by prompting your readers to engage with its content – they can ask questions, share their experience with the product, etc.
Another Pro Tip:
Link to your Tools And Resources Page from relevant content.
I’m sure most of the tools you use in your business offer affiliate payouts, so use that to double your affiliate sales.
More Tools That Will Help You Increase Your Affiliate Commissions:
- Affiliate Titan
- The Affiliate Bots
- Niche Marketing Kit
- ConversioBot
5) Optimize Your Product Landing Pages
First and foremost, the product landing pages have to be the backbone of your affiliate site.
Such a page must contain all necessary info about the product, but not only:
Consider it the final stage in the purchasing process for your clients.
How can you make sure your product landing page is optimized for ultimate conversion?
Your product landing page needs to contain all the following elements:
- Clean Design: Remove the clutter and get rid of anything that might distract your readers from the offer.
- Stunning Visuals: Incorporating a video that demonstrates the product in action is always an effective marketing strategy.
- Social Proof: Including testimonials from happy customers will double your chances of making an affiliate sale.
- Strong Call To Action: Placing a call to action on your product landing page will most likely be the difference between a sale and a read.
- Clever Placement Of Your Affiliate Links: The affiliate links on the page have to naturally fit the content flow – make sure you add more than one.
6) Do A/B Testing To Identify Your Best-Performing Content
Quite frankly, all the rest of the ways to increase affiliate sales fail in comparison to the importance of performing A/B testing as a marketer.
I mean, how will you know how well your affiliate content is doing unless you put it through a test?
Conducting an A/B test to see which elements of an affiliate campaign perform better is the most effective strategy to improve your conversion rate.
Basically, you can perform A/B testing on everything from articles, pages, and emails, to banner ads.
If the thought of doing A/B testing is freaking you out, you can relax – there are WordPress plugins and tools that will assist you through the process.
How To Run A/B Test
- Pick elements to evaluate (layout, visuals, headline copy, call to action)
- Decide which metrics will measure the success of the test
- Choose the number of tests you want to perform until you determine the winner (sample size)
- Create two versions of the test while changing only the element you want to test
- Run the test
- Go through the results, evaluate them, and pencil in the external factors affecting them
7) Provide Exclusive Offers And Brand Discounts For Your Readers
Once you gain some experience as an affiliate marketer, you’ll soon realize what a massive role exclusivity plays in the success of any affiliate campaign.
Never underestimate the selling power of an exclusive offer:
As a rule of thumb, if people see a product as an out-of-reach gem, that product becomes of a higher value to them – and they are more likely to buy it.
So, take advantage of the concept of exclusivity and incorporate it into your most lucrative affiliate marketing campaigns.
For example, you can offer your visitors all of the following exclusive deals:
- Discount codes
- Early access to new products
- Access to premium products/product bundles
- Memberships
8) Publish Listicles And Comparison Pages
Earlier in this article about the best ways to increase affiliate sales, I mentioned the type of content that converts really well.
Within that previous paragraph, the central piece was the product review.
However, comparison/listicle articles are invaluable to professional affiliate marketers.
Such articles often provide tons of value to the readers and take less time to create.
Just make sure that your listicle is easy to navigate – your readers will appreciate the effort.
9) Repurpose Existing Content
Since we’re still on the subject of leveraging different content types as a way to boost sales, let’s add repurposing content to that mix.
Quite frankly, regularly creating a new piece of content is a tough job and takes a lot of time.
Repurposing existing content is a clever strategy most experienced marketers often implement.
Transforming one type of content into another will not only save you time – it will also allow you to reach a new audience and extend your brand’s presence on different platforms.
Have a look at a few examples that will show you how to repurpose content:
- Build an infographic that showcases the highlights of a blog post
- Post the most powerful quotes of an article as an image on Instagram
- Create a YouTube video around an article’s content
- Combine the content of several articles into a PDF or eBook
10) Make The Best Of Merchant’s Resources
Chances are, you’re already working with some of the highest-paying affiliate programs in your niche.
But are you taking full advantage of everything they have to offer?
I’m talking about the tons of resources and promotional materials a merchant provides for its affiliates.
More often than not, affiliates choose not to use sales copies, banners, and templates they have access to – and that’s a marketing mistake.
Why shouldn’t you use promotional material that you don’t even have to work to build on your own?
11) Build Relationships With Affiliate Managers To Secure Higher Affiliate Payouts
Hands down, one of the most underused ways to increase affiliate sales is negotiating higher commissions by building relationships with affiliate managers.
Generally, you can see how much an affiliate program is willing to offer to marketers to promote it on a product’s public page.
While most newbie marketers have no choice but to accept the official payouts, the situation is different for experienced affiliates with established platforms.
Let’s imagine you have a YouTube channel with thousands of subscribers and videos that attract tons of views.
Owning such a platform will put you in the perfect position to reach the marketing manager of an affiliate program you like and ask for a higher commission once you begin promoting the product.
You’ll be surprised how often such an affiliate strategy will deliver a positive outcome!
12) Use Tables For Products You Promote
Whether creating a product review or a listicle type of article, adding a product table is always an excellent idea.
In my opinion, placing a product table within your post works best for listicles:
A product table allows visitors to see, compare, and rate multiple products.
Furthermore, using a table will let you collect multiple affiliate links in one place to boost your commissions.
Adding a table in WordPress is as easy as it can get – I’m sure you’ll have no issue managing it.
13) Add New Affiliate Products To Existing Content
Those of you familiar with SEO know that your older content is your strongest content:
If that content is of high quality, it must already bring you organic traffic and sales.
Why not update such articles by adding fresh info and more relevant products?
There is always something you can do to improve blog posts – just like there is always a way to increase their conversion rate by providing more buying opportunities for readers.
Placing more affiliate products on well-performing older articles will not only boost your affiliate income but will increase your blog traffic as well.
14) Improve Your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Speaking of SEO, let’s talk about how improving it is one of the smartest ways to increase your affiliate sales.
Actually, there isn’t much to explain here – it’s pretty simple:
Bettering your SEO will result in more traffic. And more traffic means extra opportunities to score affiliate sales.
Working to improve the organic reach of your business is time-consuming but worth the effort.
15) Find The Right Affiliate Programs To Promote
Now, picking the best products to promote should be a crucial part of your affiliate marketing strategy.
Moreover, there is a lot that needs to go into that decision on your part:
Joining every affiliate program is an amateur move that will crush and burn you as a marketer.
With that said, how should you choose an affiliate program to promote?
By all means, there are a couple of factors to consider when selecting affiliate programs to join:
- Recurring Commissions: Does the affiliate program you have in mid offer recurring payouts? Promoting recurring affiliate programs will allow you to keep making money after the first initial sale.
- Search Volume: Is the product you want to promote in high demand? If the answer to that question is yes, don’t hesitate to join the product’s affiliate program.
- Conversion Rate: Believe it or not, the conversion rate and product/brand image heavily share a close connection.
A piece of advice:
When you’re starting to work as an affiliate marketer, go after less competitive products – that will give you a fighting chance to earn decent affiliate sales early on.
Related Read:
16) Keep Building Trust With Your Visitors
As I’ve mentioned earlier, people don’t buy from individuals or companies they don’t trust.
So, the hardest task you’ll have to tackle as an affiliate marketer is building a trustworthy relationship with your readers.
What can you do to gain, improve, and keep the trust of the people visiting your affiliate campaigns?
- Disclose Your Affiliate Links: Let your readers know that if they purchase something through your affiliate links, you’ll receive a commission at no extra cost to them.
- Promote Only Products You Use Or Would Use Yourself: Never try to sell a product you wouldn’t invest in and pay for with your own hard-earned money.
- Post Testimonials: Social proof is one of the most powerful tools all experienced marketers use to advance their promotional effort.
17) Start Building A Targeted Email List
Basically, building an email list has to be a priority regardless of the type of business you want to develop:
Even if you don’t plan to earn money via affiliate commissions, having an email list matters a lot.
That email list will contain all the contact information of the people who are your most loyal followers:
If they’re willing to grant you access to their data, they already appreciate everything you have to offer to them.
Subsequently, your email subscribers are the people who will most likely buy the products you promote.
Some of the best ways to build a targeted email list are providing an opt-in and offering freebies.
ConvertKit is an excellent email service provider – it’s easy to use and will cover all your email marketing needs.
18) Try Different Affiliate Networks
Nothing stays the same – isn’t that a fact we all know?
Sometimes, affiliate programs shut down. Another time, they may decrease affiliate payouts and no longer serve you well as a marketer.
In case any of that happens, you don’t have to keep promoting products or services you no longer have any use of.
No, all you’ll need to do is find, join, and promote a different affiliate program that will fit better within your affiliate marketing strategy.
There is no shortage of affiliate programs you can work with, so don’t settle.
19) Base Your Future Marketing Strategy On The Current Results
First and foremost, there is no universal formula that works every single time for all affiliate marketers worldwide:
After all, promoters work in different niches and implement different strategies that depend on a variety of factors.
The point is, what works perfectly well for one affiliate marketer might not work that well for you – even if you develop businesses in the same industry.
So, the best thing you can do to keep boosting your affiliate sales is to carefully examine the results you’re getting and develop a further strategy based on them.
20) Never Hard Sell
Alright, the final point I want to make about the best ways to increase affiliate sales has everything to do with hard selling.
Long story short – don’t do it!
Being too pushy and trying to sell a product way too hard will deliver the opposite results to the ones you expect:
After all, people enjoy buying, but they hate the feeling of being sold to, so do your best to avoid creating such an emotion in the buyer’s heart.
Stay away from selling tactics that are way too aggressive, and you’re gold!
I Earn Such Affiliate Commissions Monthly – See How To Do The Same!
10 Extra Ways To Increase Affiliate Sales
- Leverage The Marketing Power Of Facebook Groups: Joining relevant Facebook Groups will allow you to keep building relationships in your field.
- Spend Time On Quora: Platforms like Quora are excellent playgrounds to build yourself as an authority in the marketing industry.
- Repost Old Content To Medium: Medium will introduce your content to millions of readers – many of them are potential clients.
- Drive Organic Traffic To Localized Sites: According to statistics, people tend to buy products more easily if the content that promotes them is in their native language.
- Start A Podcast: Do I even have to explain how popular podcasts are these days?
- Analyze The Product Reviews On The Top Performing Affiliate Sites: Take notes on the way they structure their product reviews and use these notes to improve your own.
- Boost Your Sales Via Paid Advertising: If you have extensive knowledge of working with Paid Ads, put it to good use.
- Learn As Much As You Can About Content Marketing: We all know that content is king!
- Publish Income Reports: Everyone loves seeing how a business owner makes their money, so post income reports and reveal your revenue sources.
- Cloak Your Affiliate Links: Cloaking your affiliate links is a must – plugins like Thirsty Affiliates will take care of the cloaking.
My Closing
Well, this is it for now – all my ways to increase affiliate sales are now yours!
Of course, there is always something I can add to this article:
I’ll update it with more valuable information later on.
Until then, I give the word to you:
What are your favorite proven affiliate marketing concepts?
Share them with me, and we can discuss them together!
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