4 Tips for Building a Profitable Affiliate Website
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Do you want to make residual income with affiliate marketing? If so, you’re not alone. Statista estimates that by the year 2020, affiliate spending in the United States will reach an all-time high of 6.8 billion dollars. The same research suggests that consumers will continue to spend more money on affiliate-sponsored products, which means that there has never been a better opportunity to enter the world of affiliate marketing.
All affiliate marketing programs follow a similar routine. Here’s how it works:
There’s a lot of hard work that goes into creating a website as an affiliate marketer. You have to pick the right products, create valuable content, and convince consumers that your opinion is worth their time. We are going to take a look at four tips you should keep in mind if you plan on operating a profitable affiliate website. Let’s dive in!
Before you can start showing off products to consumers, you have to decide on what kind of brands you want to promote. As a general rule, we suggest only promoting products that you’ve tried personally and love.
We have all landed on an affiliate page promoting a product, and it’s clear that this is nothing but the marketing material rebranded from the company. You never want to give users the impression that you don’t understand or appreciate the items you’re promoting. Consumers are smart; they know when someone is presenting an honest review or just looking to peddle a product with no valuable knowledge.
That being said, you should try to keep your website niche narrow. When someone lands on your website, they should know precisely what kind of products you review or discuss. If one blog post is about eyeliner, and the next piece talks about the greatest dog collars, consumers won’t know what to expect from your website. As a result, they will find one of your competitors that has a specific niche and fanbase.
High-quality content is one of the essential qualities of a profitable affiliate website. When you think of high-quality content, what comes to mind? The likely answer is long-form posts that give a detailed look at the topic of the post. Not only will consumers stick around to read your post if it’s valuable, but they are more likely to buy the products you’re offering.
Few people will jump on your offer if you post a 200-word article about a cool new computer part you purchased. However, people will want to hear your opinion if you write a massive 3,000-word buying guide on the most popular graphics cards of the year.
Not only will consumers stay on-site longer, but you can boost your search presence on Google by optimizing your high-quality content with relevant keywords. When you consider that 95 percent of all traffic stops on the first page of Google, it only makes sense that you would want to boost your search position with valuable, long-form content.
Don’t forget to share your content on your social media channels for even more engagement. Adding a picture from your article to your social media post on Twitter can improve your “likes” on that post by 89 percent, as well as boost your click-through rate by 18 percent. Creating content and promoting it on social media is one of the best ways to convince new consumers to buy the products you’re promoting.
Globally, there are 3.8 billion email users. There’s a good chance that your target audience uses email daily. If you want to get the most from your affiliate website, it’s vital that you invest in email marketing as a way to stay in touch with consumers.
On your website, you can feature a popup or subscribe page that encourages users to sign up for your email list for exclusive content and discounts only available to subscribers. As your subscriber list grows, you can begin crafting emails that help build rapport and trust with consumers. If they subscribed to your list, but haven’t jumped on one of your referral links, the additional confidence could convince them that your opinion has more value than they anticipated.
This is a marketing tactic that’s used by eCommerce storefronts and SaaS businesses to grow their brand, but you can use this trick to boost consumer trust on your affiliate website.
Finally, you should regularly track and analyze your outbound links, traffic, and engagement. These three metrics will help you make more money with your website.
Outbound links show you how many consumers are clicking through and going to business pages you’re promoting. This information is crucial for figuring out your areas of opportunity and fine-tuning your product selection.
Your traffic and engagement show how interested consumers are in what you’re offering. If you notice abnormally low rates, there’s a good chance you’re not reaching your target audience. You can use this information to revisit your content and social media marketing strategy.
Before long, you’ll have an affiliate website that makes residual money. Starting an affiliate website is no easy task, but the reward for patience and time invested is unmatched.
