How to Create Content for Affiliate Marketing – Simple Guide, Tips, FAQs & More
Table of Contents
Affiliate marketing is something that attracts many people who want to set up a reliable source of passive income.
While many people attempt affiliate marketing, very few actually get it set up to a point where they can actually receive sizable revenue from it.
One of the key reasons why many people fail is because they don’t push out the right type of content that could increase clicks and conversions.
Quick Summary
In this post, we will provide tips on how you can create content that genuinely engages consumers and pushes them to make a purchase.
We’ll also go over some of the common pitfalls that many inexperienced affiliate marketers fall into and how to avoid them.
So without further ado, let’s get started.
How to Create Effective Content as an Affiliate Marketer?
With so many affiliate marketer success stories floating around on the internet, it’s easy to think that anyone can be successful at it. However, the truth couldn’t be farther from that.
Since there’s a huge amount of affiliate marketing content available on the internet currently, you have to do your best to stand out from the crowd. That’s the only way you’ll be able to generate revenue that’s sizable enough to make it worth it.
Here are some ways through which you can ensure that your affiliate content will be effective:
Be Genuine When You Write Content
When it comes to affiliate marketing, one of the best ways to promote a product’s affiliate link is to review it. However, many affiliate marketers fall into the trap of always providing every product they test with a positive review.
It’s obviously tempting to do this because you want to entice readers to click on your affiliate link for the product and maybe even buy it. In fact, this can even work sometimes even if the product is not as good as you make it out to be.
When you provide a positive review of every product you test on your affiliate website, it will make people lose trust in your credibility.
It’s no secret that people are extremely fed up with the tone of disingenuous positive reviews that are clearly just written to make you click on a link.
Hence, when you feel that a product is actually not all that good, you need to honestly state that. Don’t be afraid to give products a negative review or list their disadvantages.
If you fabricate positive reviews, it might get you some clicks. However, any positive results you see will be quite short-lived. Eventually, people will lose trust in your website and your “affiliate brand” will lose all credibility.
Hence, as a long-term approach, you need to ensure that you build credibility with your affiliate website; not destroy it. That’s why you must ensure that you write high-quality content that provides genuine value and does not fabricate reviews just for the sake of clicks.
As a rough estimate, about 10% to 20% of the affiliate content on your website should be negative reviews. If you want to become an authoritative and trustworthy figure within your specific niche, you must learn how to properly critique products.
Don’t be afraid to call out products that are mediocre. However, also provide constructive criticism.
If you still feel that writing negative product reviews is not the right move for your affiliate marketing campaign, try to think like a consumer for a second.
If a consumer stumbles upon your affiliate marketing website and the first product they find has a negative review, there’s a high chance they won’t click the affiliate link for it.
However, do you think that they will leave your website after looking through that review? If they are looking for a specific suggestion of a product that is related to your niche, there’s a high chance they’ll interact and navigate throughout your site.
Why would they do that? Well, they’ll do that because the first thing they saw on your website was a negative review. This will lead them to believe that they can trust you because they’ve seen an example where you negatively reviewed a product because it was mediocre.
After they interact with your site, eventually, they’ll find a product review that they’re pleased with and they’ll click the affiliate link for that product.
That’s how you build credibility with consumers and readers. They’ll trust your word because they’ll know that you don’t just hand out positive reviews to every product you test.
Anecdotes are Your Friend
When it comes to affiliate sites, personal experiences and anecdotes go a long way when it comes to persuading people to click on affiliate links.
This is because anecdotes are a lot less generic than a simple pros and cons list or a 100-word summary about a product.
When creating content, you have to ensure that it’s as authentic as possible. If you want to review a product for your affiliate marketing campaign, you really have to buy that product and test it.
Don’t try to naively think that you can just write reviews for products just by plagiarizing from other affiliate marketing websites. Well, you can do it but it won’t be high-quality content and it certainly won’t succeed in persuading people to purchase.
So once you have tested out a product, try to take mental notes of what you liked about it and what you hated. If something notable happened during your testing, try to incorporate that personal experience into your affiliate marketing content.
For example, let’s say you are writing a review for a Bluetooth speaker and want to write about its battery life.
Well, you can test the Bluetooth speaker out yourself to check how long its battery lasts. You can also check its battery life at different volumes and modes.
Then, when you write content for it, you can incorporate your personal experience of how long it lasted at different volume levels for you.
Another common example is if a product starts to break down or show signs of wear-and-tear after a small period of testing. You can mention these things in your review and even include a picture of the product if you wish.
This type of content builds authenticity and credibility. It’s not easy to build trust with online reviews but this is certainly one way to take a step towards it.
Conduct Keyword Research
We’ve talked extensively about how you can persuade readers to click on your affiliate link through high-quality content. However, we haven’t yet talked about how people will find your content in the first place.
What is the point of putting so much work into your affiliate marketing campaigns if no one even knows it exists?
That’s why you have to ensure that your affiliate site is discoverable by search engines. This can be done through keyword research and search engine optimization (SEO).
Before you actually write any content for your website, it’s a good idea to conduct some research and develop an SEO strategy. Google will not rank your content just because it’s interesting for readers.
That’s now how their algorithm works.
Hence, you need to work to ensure your content is optimized to the best of your ability so that it can be discovered by Google and other search engines.
To start off, you should look for keywords within your niche that have high traffic but low competition. That’s the best way to ensure your website gets traffic and starts to rank higher on search engines.
How do you find these keywords? How do you know which one has high traffic and low competition?
Well, there are a ton of different keyword research tools available on the internet that you can utilize for this. You can find both free as well as paid tools that you can use to build content plans and strategies for your affiliate marketing campaigns.
Some examples of such tools include:
- Ahrefs
- SEMRush
- KWFinder
- Google Keyword Planner
- Moz Pro
And many more.
There are typically two types of keywords that you must focus on when you create content for an affiliate marketing website. These types are informational and buyer-centric.
Informational keywords are ones that provide genuine value to your readers and educate them regarding a certain topic within your niche.
Buyer-centric keywords are ones that push readers to click on your affiliate link and possibly make a purchase.
For example, if you run a gaming blog, informational keywords could be “how to get more FPS on fortnite” or “how to stop lag and high ping in CS:GO”.
On the other hand, buyer-centric keywords would be something along the lines of “buy destiny 2 dlc” or “destiny 2 dlc price”.
Take the Time to Polish Readability
Many affiliate marketing experts stress this over and over again: You must ensure that your content is readable. Not only should it be readable, but it should also be “skimmable”. This means people should be able to glance over it to get an idea of what it’s all about.
It’s a good idea to use:
- Bold headings
- Bullet lists
- Steps for processes
- Tables
And other neat inserts to ensure your content is readable.
It doesn’t matter if you wrote the most fascinating article on earth; If it isn’t readable, it will never rank on Google or any other search engine.
Not only will it not rank but it will also fail to be a hit with your readers. This is because someone who visits an affiliate marketing website typically wants to make a buying decision. They want quick reviews of products so that they can make a decision on which one to buy.
Here are some rules to follow to make your content readable:
- Keep your sentences as short as possible. Ideally, they should be between 15 to 20 words.
- Make use of headings as well as subheadings. This will make your content scannable.
- Keep an eye out and ensure that your paragraphs aren’t too long. If a paragraph you wrote seems too big, break it down into two shorter ones. Long paragraphs typically cause readers to close the page.
- Make use of bulleted lists.
- Always use active voice rather than passive voice.
- Try to use simpler synonyms rather than more obscure or difficult ones. Remember that you’re not trying to impress people with your vocabulary, you’re trying to provide an authentic review of a product.
Your affiliate links should also be short and sweet. To do that, and to also assess the metrics of your affiliate links, you can use Pixelfy.
To shorten your link through Pixelfy, you must first register yourself and log in.
Step 1: After you log in, you can use the fast shortener box to shorten your affiliate link.
Step 2: Copy your affiliate link and paste it into the fast shortener box. You will be redirected to the next page.
Step 3: On the next page, you’ll get the shortened link that you can use in your affiliate content. You can also track its metrics through the Pixelfy dashboard.
Choose the Appropriate Length for Your Blog Posts
It can be difficult to determine the appropriate length for a blog post but this is something you can ponder over during planning. This is why we stress the importance of planning and why you should develop a content plan before you start to write.
This can depend on a number of factors such as your specific niche and your target audience. Many affiliate marketing websites find great success when they publish 500 to 700-word articles each day.
Other affiliate marketing websites prefer to post 1500 to 3000-word articles every week or so.
Wrapping Things Up…
That’s how you create high-quality content for affiliate marketing campaigns as well as your affiliate website.
It’s a combination of search engine optimization, knowing your target audience, and providing genuine value to them. Make sure to have long-term goals and don’t fabricate reviews just for a few clicks. You’ll do just great.
For more questions, please comment below. Take a look at our blog to find out more about marketing strategies.
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