by Sean Rasmussen on March 10, 2010
Will writing product reviews help you sell products online? It could. Many affiliate marketers are making money via reviewing products that pay them an affiliate commission when a product is purchased through their affiliate code. Here are some examples and some success tips:
Know The Product
One of the worst mistakes an affiliate marketer can make is to start promoting a product they know very little about. The potential problems that could happen include: being ineffective at selling it and / or getting numerous return requests if you do happen to sell any because they product didn’t live up to its promises.
By learning about the product you’re selling, you can sell something you know will be useful to your customers and write effective reviews about the product.
Writing Product Reviews – Use The Right Keywords
Keyword research is important. Not only will it help you rank well in the search engines but it can help you figure out what is the best approach to take. Some affiliate products are ultra competitive but perhaps there are some long tail keyword phrases you could capitalise upon.
When writing product reviews, one approach is to begin targeting people who are already ready interested in the product but want further information on it. The right keywords can help you get found by this target market.
Another approach is that you’re sharing your experience with a product to people with a problem that the product solves. The right keywords will help you get found by your potential demographic and your product review can speak to their motivators.
Answer Questions
A person considering a product purchase typically has questions they want answered in order for them to feel that it’s worth the risk to buy the item. By anticipating what those questions are and then addressing them, you’ll overcome objections to buying.
Use Social Media And Web 2.0 Pages
Social sites can help you promote your product reviews. In fact, some of them are suitable for writing your product review as well. Beyond setting up a blog, a landing page that re-directs people to a sales letter, or website to review a product, you can use free publishing sites such as Squidoo, HubPages, Info Barrel, eHow, Tumblr, MySpace, Blogger, some article directories, WordPress.com, and others to help you share your opinion about a product.
Note the editorial guidelines for the site you’re writing for. The product review can reside on that page or you could begin a page that redirects someone to your actual review. This can be a great way to get traffic from multiple places.
After creating your reviews, don’t forget to bookmark them on social tools and blog and microblog about them as well. If they’re very helpful they can also go viral and even be used on your email marketing list to share with your subscribers who may, in turn, buy from your affiliate link and tell their friends about the product, too.
Product reviews can definitely sway a person’s opinion in a specific direction and a lot of people use the web to help them make buying decisions. Writing reviews could definitely help you increase your affiliate marketing income. Study some product reviews in the niche you’re interested in to help you as well.
Most of all, before you even consider writing product reviews, find products you like and believe in. This will solidify your trusted advisor status if you’re marketing to your subscriber list and can get you not only a client today but a repeat client that doesn’t hesitate to take your advice again in the future.
Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010
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by Sean Rasmussen on March 3, 2010
There are a number of affiliate marketing forums available online. Some are free and some offer private memberships. The common denominator here is that these forums are filled with people that are just like you – they are keen to start making money from affiliate marketing.
You can definitely benefit from visiting these forums. You can network, you can learn, and you can share information that can help you and others succeed. Whether you are a beginning internet marketer or are someone who has fired their boss and taken to the jet-setting webpreneur lifestyle, it never hurts to rub virtual elbows with others in your industry.
Here are some of the potential benefits of joining affiliate marketing forums:
1. SEO Knowledge
Get the lowdown on SEO. Search engine optimisation is a vital aspect of internet marketing and because there is no official set-in-stone rule book, getting a variety of opinions from others is going to be helpful. All affiliate marketing websites dedicate sections to learning about search engine optimisation and the more info you have on this topic, the better poised you’ll be for ensuring you get as much organic traffic to your sites as possible.
2. Avoid Scams
Sadly, the internet marketing world does have its share of scammers. Internet marketing communities share this type of information to help others avoid rip-off artists and bad deals. Affiliate networks that don’t pay, individual affiliate marketing programs with a high return rate, payment processors that are less than easy to deal with, and other important issues are discussed and you can avoid some mistakes others have made by staying up to date.
3. Get Advice
Get the Lowdown. Want to know if something is worthwhile? Ask. These forums have a community mentality and you can ask for advice and help on anything related to the internet marketing industry. Chances are that something you’re curious about has been covered by someone else who’s willing to save you time and frustration by sharing their knowledge.
Want to hear about new tools that others are using? Chances are that they’re talking about it on affiliate marketing forums and you could find something new that helps you extend your reach and touch new customers.
4. Learn IM Techniques
Some forums offer really detailed information on how to do things with step-by-step directions. You might get flowcharts, instructional videos, live webinars, ebooks and reports that can help you learn affiliate marketing in the easiest and fastest ways possible.
5. Affiliate Marketing Forums – Camaraderie
Who else understands the online entrepreneur’s lifestyle and challenges better than someone who does this for a living? Your spouse may listen with interest and empathy and your friends might try to understand what you do for a living but no one “gets it” like another affiliate marketer does.
Working for yourself can feel isolating and having a “tribe” to go on a virtual online water cooler for ideas, for empathy, even for a laugh, can help you get through the day and get through the rough patches that are inevitable when you are working hard toward your goals on your own.
6. Networking
Many joint ventures are born through membership groups. Want someone to bookmark a great article to get it to go viral? Want someone to proofread your sales letter for you and make suggestions? Want to exchange links on someone’s marketing list? Need to know how other people deal with a particular customer satisfaction issue? Affiliate marketing forums can be a great place to do that… saving you time and effort and giving you insight and wisdom.
Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010
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by Sean Rasmussen on February 24, 2010
Can writing articles help you make money through affiliate marketing? You betcha, it can. There are several ways that article marketing can help you to promote affiliate products and make commissions. The great thing is, that once these articles are out there, they can pay off repeatedly.
Here are some tips to help you learn why this works and help you come up with a plan to get article marketing working for you:
Remember Keyword Optimisation
If you have affiliate products that you want to promote and sell, find out what keyword phrases people who may be interested in buying that product are using in their searches. By optimising your article for those phrases, you can get attention from search engines.
People looking for information on the topic you are writing about could read your article and then click through to your site where they may buy thus earning you an affiliate commission. The right keyword optimisation will help the site you’re linking to rank for desired keyword phrases – therefore bringing targeted traffic directly to your site as well as to the article you’ve written for someone else’s site.
Pique Interest
Articles submitted to directories, blogs, and social sites should pique the interest of the person reading the article. Try to provide enough information to pique that interest but leave a little bit to the imagination so that the reader will click the link in your resource box / byline to learn more. Then, the place they link to should work on compelling them to buy something.
Call To Action
A resource box or byline is generally allowed on an article that’s submitted to article directories like EzineArticles, Goarticles, ArticlesBase, and others. A combination of anchor text links and a call to action can help you get traffic to the site you link to, to the article you’ve written, and help you get search engine rankings for those words. Learn to craft a resource box on an article designed for article marketing and it could be profitable.
Follow Editorial Guidelines
Some article directories will accept anything you write. But most high traffic sites that are worth submitting to have editorial guidelines you need to follow. These guidelines help the site get traffic and gain favour with search engines so they want people to adhere to their standards. Learn about the standards of each site you submit to in order to maximise your chances of being approved and maybe even gaining front page exposure.
Article Marketing + Social Marketing
Article marketing combined with social marketing can make for a powerful and profitable combination. Use social media tools to get traffic to the articles you write and they could become quite profitable.
Allow Syndication
A great benefit of article marketing is that you typically make articles available to others if they are willing to keep the article and attribution (with links) intact. The more people that publish your article, the more SEO benefits and potential traffic you could get to your site. That traffic could translate to affiliate marketing profits.
Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010
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