When we talk about affiliation, we often put ourselves on the advertiser’s side. This is to forget that, in order to function, you need an affiliate who will be responsible for promoting the relevant offer to its audience.
In fact, for once, we’re going to take the affiliate’s side in our article by offering you the top tips for affiliate success.
Step one: build a solid audience
First and foremost, you need to have a regular following. If you are a site owner, your site must register a substantial traffic. As an influencer or affiliate present on social networks, you need to take the time to build your reputation and brand image.
In both cases, to attract affiliators, you need to a strong, solid audience adapted to the desired target.
It’s impossible to launch an affiliation business without an audience.
Please note: we advise you to opt for a niche market. This will enable you to become an expert and, in so doing, more easily promote new offers related to this specific field. If, on top of that, this market has little competition, all the better! But that’s still rare today…
Choose the right offer
It’s good to offer your users a product or service that’s highly profitable for you. Offer your users a quality product or serviceis better. Obviously, if you’ve found the perfect offer that combines quality and profitability, you’ve hit the jackpot.
In any case, don’t rush into the first product or service you find (or are offered). Take the time to find out about the offer you’re going to communicate about.
In other words, you need to test and use it before recommending it. As a bonus, this will help you put together a real sales pitch with the product/service’s strong points and, if you want to be totally honest, the disadvantages.
Doing so is essential to gain your audience’s complete trust. All it takes is one breach of this rule (offering a product you haven’t tested and which turns out to be disastrous, for example) and you’ll lose your legitimacy. This has repercussions on your brand image and reputation, jeopardizing your business.
Good to know: here again, we insist on choosing offers linked to niche markets wherever possible, to avoid too much competition.
Be honest with your users
As an affiliate, honesty comes into play on several levels.
Above all, you must be honest with your users. This means, as we explained in the previous paragraph, that you must promote products you’ve actually tried. Communicating about a product or service you’re not familiar with means you’re taking a definite risk: that of promoting a low-quality offering that won’t meet your users’ needs. In this case, the disappointment will be immense and will more or less severely damage your relationship with your audience. This has been the experience of many influencers of late, when they made the cryptocurrency promotion. Even though they knew nothing about them, they decided to promote them to their audience anyway. As a result, many people lost money. In fact, a bill is currently under discussion to regulate this type of practice.
Good to know: every time you affiliate, it’s mandatory to it’s compulsory to make this clear to your audience. The law states that all online advertising must be clearly identified. The same applies to affiliation (
to find out more
).
So, to let your audience know, you can mention it at the start of your article, or say so verbally if you’re a fan of videos or podcasts. Not doing so is not only a problem of integrity vis-à-vis your audience. You simply become an outlaw. This can backfire.
Honesty in affiliation also means establishing a relationship of trust with your business partners (in this case, the affiliates). This means, in other words, that you must not prejudice them by using false arguments, and that you must not commit fraud to inflate your results in order to artificially increase your income.
Today’s technologies are increasingly precise and sophisticated. This makes it increasingly difficult to commit fraud without getting caught.
Test different programs and compare commission rates
Once you’ve got a solid audience and think you can monetize your traffic, it’s time to get serious. If you’re lucky enough to have a good reputation in your sector, affiliators will automatically come to you. If this isn’t the case, you’ll have to do your research on your own, preparing the right arguments to make retailers want to call on you as part of their communication strategy.
In this respect, don’t hesitate to test several programs at the same time, and put the brands you work with in competition with each other. (unless you prefer exclusivity, which obviously has to be paid for).
Take the opportunity to take an interest in the remuneration and possible challenges. All these elements will help you prioritize one program over another.
Think about affiliation platforms
Finally, if you need help getting started in affiliate marketing, you can sign up on platforms platforms dedicated to this activity. Playing the role of intermediary between advertiser and affiliate, you get all the tools you need to managing your affiliate business.
Note: there are both general and specific platforms. At Casaneo, for example, we have chosen to focus solely on the fashion and home markets.
Don’t hesitate to try out everything, and to fall back on the partners you prefer as you go along.
In any case, by following these few tips, you have all the keys to affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing: A growth lever for content publishers
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