Affiliate marketing is the process of selling other people's products or services in exchange for a commission. Although it's not a new concept of marketing; as businesses have moved online it has become increasingly easy to enter your own area of affiliate marketing.
Although the relative ease of entering affiliate marketing isn't difficult; the main concern is how to drive traffic through your affiliate links and create a sale for your commission. One of the best methods to build your affiliate marketing is through the use of articles.
In this article, you will learn some of the ways affiliate marketers use articles to promote products and make money online.
Method 1: Writing tutorial articles
One of the quickest and easiest ways to use articles in affiliate marketing is to write a tutorial on how to use a product. Tutorials help give the reader an understanding on how the product or service actually works and how they will benefit from purchasing the item.
However, tutorial articles will often be read by people that already have the product which can create a hit or miss scenario with your articles.
Method 2: Write teaser articles
Perhaps one of the smartest ways to use articles in your affiliate marketing is to craft each article much like a teaser using marketing tactics.
Taking a look through the actual landing page you're pointing visitors to, take out some of the key points and craft an article with a few of these. Teasing readers with interesting content will increase your chance of gaining a click through because the reader will want to know more and could lead to your sale.
Method 3: Practice writing great headlines
Much like the cover of a book the only way your articles are going to be read is if it has an attractive headline.
For example (what would you click):
'How to create an article'
'How to create articles to improve sales, build your brand and dominate your competition'
Generally put, the later. Why? The second pulls in the curiosity of the reader and entices them to click through to read the information contained within. The information could be the exact same between the two but the one that gets click is the one that will help convert to sales.
Method 4: Review a product or service
Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful ways to create buzz around a product. Unlike marketing messages that come from a company; word-of-mouth marketing that comes directly from a friend will help convert into sales because of the trust factor.
When you write an honest review of a product you're essentially turning affiliate marketing into referral marketing. In your article, you could break down each of the main benefits, tell people how you use the item, include some of the finer details and later point them to the product or service through your affiliate link - if they click and buy, you made a sale!
Method 5: End with a strong byline
The most important part of your article is the author byline. The byline in the article is your personal profile information but it doesn't have to stop at just that. Many smart affiliate marketers will use their byline as a lead-out which creates a call-to-action and entices readers to click through to learn more.
Instead of just using "this article is written by..." try going with a strong ending such as "to learn the secrets of X, visit X to learn more". This message can be crafted over time and should be tested - once you find a great byline, use it in each of your articles but always continue to optimize it.