Affiliate marketing can be the most profitable source of income for a blogger if it’s done the wright way. However, there is a lot more work involved compared to other types of income streams like contextual advertising, selling links, placing banners etc.
It there is somebody on this planet who still doesn’t know what affiliate marketing is, here is a short explanation: you get payed every time somebody buys a product or a service following your recommendation. You basically act like and online salesman; therefore, if you plan to become an affiliate marketeer, you should take a step back for a minute, forget all about websites, blogs, seo and other internet related stuff and do a little research on “classic” selling techniques. See what’s involved, what are the steps from approaching a potential customer to closing a deal, and after that, see how you can adapt all that knowledge to affiliate marketing.
The first sales model that I am going to blog about is A.I.D.A. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action (also known as “Hierarchy of Effects“), and it’s probably one of the oldest around (it appeared in the late ’50s) but it is even more relevant today than it was back than.
Let’s see how it can be applied to blogging:
Attention
Placement of affiliate links
This is the first thing that you need to have in mind. Don’t think for a minute that placing your affiliate links in your side bar is enough to get attention and expect conversions. Imagine a product left on a back shelf of a store, while all the others are well placed in front on of the window; how many people will actually see that product?
You have to bring it under the spotlight from time to time and blog about it. Make separate categories for all the posts on products that you promote, don’t let them uncategorized or placed in others that are more or less related. This way people will understand that those are as “important” as your regular posts and get their attention.
Landing page
When you blog about it, don’t do it only with your loyal readers in mind. That post will serve as a landing page for visitors that have searched for terms related to that specific product or service, and they may never had heard about your blog before. Your frequent visitors will probably read it, but you have less than 10 seconds to get the attention of the new ones. However, do it in a professional way, not the usual all caps, large red fonts, and highlighted testimonials; everybody has had enough of that. Try to come up with an intriguing title (like you normally would for a regular article), but don’t reveal the product name… in fact don’t even say nothing about the product itself. A good approach would be: “Are you tired of -problem that your product will solve-……?”. Ok, I know that it is not the best example, but you got the idea, so be creative!
Interest
Type of products you promote
Your effort of getting people’s attention are useless, if what you are trying to sell doesn’t interest them. Unlike the previous stage, you should do this step focusing mainly on your loyal visitors, and promote products that you think are useful to them. You must resist the temptation of promoting products that are totally unrelated (regardless of how profitable they may seem) due to 2 main reasons:
1) It will annoy your loyal audience
2)There is little to no chance of ranking high in search engines for terms that are not related in any way to your blog.
However, you could chose some products that are not directly related to your niche, but still could be useful for people that come to read your blog. For example, if your blog is focused on “digital painting techniques” you may have success by promoting graphic cards.
Language
When you write the “promoting” article, think about who’s reading it. Depending on the profile of your audience, you may go for academic/familiar, formal/informal, etc. approaches.
As a general idea, something is interesting if it’s relevant to the ones you are trying to reach and if it has the potential of bringing them some advantages.
Desire
It is easy to confuse “interest” with “desire” because the 2 concepts are similar. However, keep in mind that “desire” is generated by “interest” and not the other way around. Something may be interesting in the eyes of your readers, but this does not necessarily mean that they will feel the urge to actually own it. It is that “urge” that you should strive to trigger in their mind. Try to understand exactly what are their needs, and explain as detailed as possible how that product or service could help them solve their problems, improve some aspects of their activities etc.
Action
The ultimate goal - determining the reader to purchase whatever you are promoting. Everybody has some degree of natural caution, and your job is to help them overcome it.
First of all, you have to believe yourself in the quality of the product that you are trying to sell.
Second, you have to be prepared to answer every possible question, so you have to know the product inside out. When you answer to questions, do it directly on your blog, where everybody can see it, so you will gain credibility. Bloggers have a huge advantage over “regular” webmasters when doing affiliate marketing because of this, so make sure you capitalize this it also.
Final thoughts
If you look carefully at the order of stages presented above, you realize that this is the normal process that is taking place when you decide to buy anything.
First, it get’s your attention; second, if it’s relevant to what you are interested in, you want to know more about it. If it appears to answer to your particular needs, you begin to desire it. Finally, when you have no further doubts about it, you decide to buy.
So if this is the way you buy something, why not take the same approach when you are trying to sell?
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