In many ways, affiliate marketing follows an easy formula that can more or less be summarized to:
Identify a market in need of a solution;
Identify a product that will satisfy that demand;
Become an affiliate for that product; and
Market away!
This is supposed to be easy, because, as the hype often points out, you don’t need your own product, website, or even autoresponder — and there are any number of social media and web 2.0 platforms which you can leverage to essentially advertise for free.
However, while it’s often that simple, it is seldom that easy. Especially for newbie affiliate marketers, the difference between knowing what you are supposed to do and doing it correctly is often a difficult chasm to cross.
One aspect of affiliate marketing that is especially critical to master, though often hard to get right, is writing articles to drive traffic to your sites. The mistake that most beginning affiliate marketers make is that they just starting writing away without a plan or a strategy in place.
While it’s fair to say that the posts you put on your blog and the articles you submit to article directories do not need to be award-winning material (and who hasn’t experienced that sense of cringing at a poorly written article on the web?), it’s also necessary to realize that these articles need to meet a certain minimum criteria if they are to meet the whole purpose of writing them — that is, turn visitors into buyers.
So, I would like to share with you the four types of articles that, in my opinion, every affiliate marketing site should have.
Product Review Articles
People are always looking for information on products. Maybe they heard about a product from a friend, or maybe they’ve been exposed to a sales pitch somewhere else and are searching the Internet for an objective opinion before making a buying decision. So, to attract traffic and build trust, give your prospects what they want: an honest and sincere information on your affiliate product in the form of a product review.
Be honest with your reviews. Along with all the good reasons people you should buy your affiliate product, make sure to mention any downsides the product might have. While this may seem like you are unnecessarily driving people away, presenting a well-balanced view will give readers the confidence that they have the information they need to make up their own minds.
If you do this correctly, it is possible to promote your own affiliate product as well. While few people will respond favorably to an out-and-out sales pitch on a page where they expected to find a even-handed product review, those who do favor your product (based on the totality of features, or price, or ease of use, etc) will appreciate a link for buying the product.
And, whether you have made a sale, or managed to add a subscriber to your list, hopefully you’ve built at least a little bit of trust that will motivate your readers to keep coming back.
Product Comparison Articles
If you are confident of your product’s ability to sell in the market, write an article comparing the product your are promoting against one or more similar products. Chances are, the product you are promoting is not the only one on the market; and chances are, your prospect already knows a little bit about theses other products, or at least has formed an initial impression, so it is smart to address these initial impression directly.
One thing you should always remember, especially so if a competing product has a comparable or even better set of features, is to focus on the *benefits* that the user will derive from choosing your product over the other. For example, will your product save more time? save more money? Require less work? etc. If you can demonstrate that the product you are promoting has more benefits to your visitor than a competing product, you have gone a long way toward making the sale.
Of course, you should make this comparison in a reasonably fair manner. Do not just highlight all the cons of the competition while just highlighting your own product’s benefits. However, if you wish, you *can* be somewhat selective about the benefits you are comparing. Highlight the benefits of the other product, then compare in such a way that your product comes out on top. Be smart in selecting which benefits of the competitor’s product you are going to highlight. If the competitor’s product has qualities that yours can’t beat, then opt to ‘overlook’ that quality, and focus instead on the other product’s benefits which your product can beat.
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