Affiliate Marketing Tips from Super Affiliates
July 16, 2020 5 minute read 35201 Views
When you watch professional sports, there are a lot of athletes who are good enough to be pros, but only a small handful who can be considered elite. This is the same with affiliate marketing. Many people are affiliates, but only the elite are considered “super affiliates.”
These are affiliate marketing professionals who drive traffic full-time, and generate six figures of revenue and commissions on a regular basis.
In order to help affiliates of all skill levels, we thought we’d chat with a few super affiliates to get their tips on what helps them perform well.
Mindset: Invest Into Your Affiliate Marketing Business
One of the mistakes that people make in affiliate marketing is that they treat it like a hobby.
What’s the barrier to entry to affiliate marketing? There’s none at all – it’s free to sign up as an affiliate.
Since it’s easy to get into affiliate marketing, many people treat it pretty casually.
What do super affiliates do differently? They act like CEOs of their own business:
They invest in themselves. Whether it’s conferences, courses, or tools to improve their skills – super affiliates invest time and money into their own businesses.
Dimitri M. says: “I put at least 10% of my income into improving my own business. Right now I’m focused on improving my copywriting skills. I’ve hired a coach to help me boost my PPC ad click-through-rates, as well as improve my landing page conversion. If I’m able to increase my conversion rate by only 5%, it will make a dramatic increase to my net profit.”
SEO: Don’t Get Caught in the Trap of Chasing Search Volume Over Intent
Pasha “Grindstone” Stewart says: “Who cares how much traffic a term can generate if there’s no buying intent?” (Unless you’re into made-for-Adsense sites.)
He said that he learned this lesson the hard way, spending months ranking #1 for a term that gets 250,000 searches per month on Google.
He finally got there, saw traffic was exploding, the server was overheating and sales were… almost nonexistent!
Meanwhile a much smaller volume term he ranked #7 for continually racked up the conversions, day in, day out.
As he dug into the niche deeper (as he admits he should have from the start, and as you should from the start) and he realized the big term was people brand new to the niche, looking for information.
The term that got 1/10th the traffic was almost all buying traffic and turned into a gold mine after he ranked it #1… A lot quicker and with a lot less effort.
So when you’re starting a new campaign, break down all the keywords or potential traffic sources into one of three buckets:
- Ecommerce – Buyers, the quickest easiest money. Start here. Sometimes end here.
- Info/Reviews – The biggest chunk of traffic usually but the one that will require the most advanced funnel.
- News – Won’t be applicable for 99% of sites but can drive traffic. Email captures are your friend here.
Once you’ve compartmentalized intent, now you can go about building traffic acquisition plans and conversion funnels for each bucket.
Most affiliates won’t get further than the first two but for anybody taking the time to create Google News-worthy sites, the long term payout can be immense.
PPC: Don’t Be a Lazy Affiliate Marketer
One of the first questions affiliate managers receive from lazy marketers is, “what offers allow me to bid on their brand name?”
The fact is, very few brands will allow you to hijack their brand traffic. There’s little-to-no value in allowing affiliates to bid on a brand, which is why the vast majority of brands don’t allow it.
It’s a lazy way to generate traffic.
Instead, apply some of the knowledge shared in the SEO section of this article and focus on buyer intent. Think, “what does a consumer search when looking for my product?”
For example, let’s say you want to promote TestRX – SellHealth’s top testosterone boosting supplement. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What problem does someone need to solve?
- Why would someone want to shop for a testosterone supplement?
The reason a man wants to increase testosterone is because he likely wants to increase muscle mass, improve his sex drive, lose fat, and increase energy.
Instead of focusing on all of the problems a man might be struggling with, focus on one of these issues and make all of your copy reflect and agitate the issue.
Michael W. says: “Target keywords that focus on buyer intent for the problem they want to solve. Need help coming up with suggestions? Use Google’s Auto Suggest or read Amazon reviews, web forums, and read social media to see what questions that people ask experts. Find YouTube videos on the subject and see what comments people make about the subject.”
The more you can know about the struggle of the consumer, the better marketer it’ll make you.
Ask Questions
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Your affiliate managers are a wealth of knowledge with regard to how to promote offers and how to optimize your campaigns for higher conversions.
Affiliate marketing can be tough. Whether it’s a Google algorithm update, losing your Adwords account, or some other stumbling block – veteran marketers know that sometimes it can be a challenge.
It’s hard work, but the payoff can be huge.
If you want more advice on affiliate marketing, be sure to come back to this blog for more information. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to The Affiliate Report Podcast where we discuss how to keep improving your affiliate marketing business!
To get started with SellHealth, fill out our application and one of our affiliate managers will reach out to you within 48 hours.
