5 Ways To Write a Legitimate Affiliate Review
Affiliate marketing is not a new business model, but it is getting a lot of flak from people who are just getting familiar with it. For some reason, people have difficulty believing that affiliates can actually be honest with their reviews and claims. That could be partially due to the fact that some affiliates have overstepped the lines and done shady things in the past. Having some affiliates and marketers getting busted for misrepresenting products does not hurt either. But not all affiliates are out there to trick people into buying stuff. Being honest and promoting products worth promoting is a good start.
It goes without saying that your affiliate business can go out of business in a flash if you are busted for doing fake reviews. If your affiliate business is large, the PR disaster would be even worse. Yes. We all want to sell more products but affiliates can make money by doing things the right way. Here are 5 ways you can write legitimate reviews to make money as an affiliate:
- Actually review products: too many affiliates cut corners when reviewing products. It’s so easy to grab product description from Amazon and present that as your real review. But that’s what gets affiliate in trouble. If you are trying to sell a product to your audience, you may as well test it to see if it works as advertised.
- Be honest: if a product is terrible, don’t promote it. Nobody is forcing you to promote something that is not up to your standards (or your audience’s). Lying about a product may get you some sales in the short-term but people are not stupid. They will return those products and may come after you too. (more…)
Promoting The Small Fish To Catch The Big One
Affiliate marketing is a game of percentages. Getting paid 8.5% percent per sale instead of 7% can make a big difference if you have enough volume going for you. Affiliate programs such as that of Amazon’s for long have practiced this concept. The more you deliver to them, the more they are willing to increase your commission. That ought to be a good deal for those of you who are not planning to break the bank on trying to make HDTV buyers out of people who just can’t afford them.
Let’s take Amazon Associates Program. It’s one of the best affiliate programs around and can generate a ton of cash for you if you play your cards right. A lot of newbie affiliates go after those big items to make as much money as possible. Selling a HDTV is not going to be as easy as selling a pair of headphones. Besides, since most affiliate program do have some restrictions on the amount of money you can earn per transaction, you may need a more well-rounded plan to get the most out of your affiliate efforts.
5 Ways Affiliate Can Get over Internet Tax
There are plenty of experts who are being too optimistic about the possibility of an Internet tax being legislated by the current administration and the upcoming Congress. We all want to believe that the legislators won’t make the mistake of taxing small businesses further in these economic times. But with the country’s deficit hitting astronomical highs, it’s almost inevitable that there will be such a tax to pay for some of the things the country is spending money on. It’s not an ideal situation, but that move could lead to some of affiliates going completely out of business.
Affiliates really have three choice about it. They can either complain and moan about how unfair life is, pray to God or whomever they worship to stop the Internet tax, or prepare for tough times ahead. While we are in an election year, the chances of such a bill passing are slim to none. But don’t hold your breath the next year or the year after that. There will be time when the government needs to find new sources of revenue (taxing marijuana use would be one way to do it). As an affiliate, you don’t want to sit around and wait for it all to come crashing down. Better be prepared than sorry. With that said, here are 5 ways affiliates can get prepared for the “soon-to-come” Internet tax:
Why Blogging Is Not a Long-Term Answer for Affiliates
Many new affiliates start selling products using their blog. Plenty of so-called “gurus” recommend blogging to newbies and talk about those hidden gold-mines. Blogging can be a lucrative business if you manage to drive enough traffic to your website. If you are passionate about a topic and don’t mind going out of your way to break stories and create top notch articles, there is money for you to be made. The trouble is, a blog is never going to be something you can rely on to make a living. Blogs can be cloned too easily. It’s a highly competitive business and can be volatile as well. Who knows when Google decides to slap your blog.
Most smart affiliates work on developing multiple streams of income to make sure they are not affected by every little change in their market. Let’s face it. Nobody likes to fail in any channel. But that’s the reality of doing business online.Even top bloggers are working on their membership sites, books, e-courses, and paid communities. Those are in addition to sponsorships and ads they display on their blogs.
Can Affiliates Survive Internet Tax?
Let’s face it. The Internet Tax is coming. When you see tech websites argue for such tax, you know the writing is on the wall. Unfortunately, the country is spending more than it gathers in revenue, which means someone has to pay the bills. Internet tax bills have been brought forth in the past and defeated in some cases (a couple of states did pass them). The Mainstreet Faireness Act that was introduced by democrats just recently will allow states to impose sales taxes on online sellers/retailers. That means only one thing. A lot of affiliates are going to get the shaft if such a bill passes. I happen to agree with eBay’s take on this:
Year after year, supporters of increased Internet sales taxes recommend legislation that would impose significant new costs on hundreds of thousands of online small businesses and e-commerce entrepreneurs, which is sure to harm the economy and kill small business jobs.
Unlike eBay, I am not confident of anything when it comes to this bill. This is the perfect opportunity for pro-internet-tax crowd to pass this legislation and bring a whole new reality to light for thousands of affiliates.
Why You Should Promote Free Products
Newbie affiliates are desperate to see real results as soon as possible. Let’s face it. When you are just starting in this business, you want to figure out if going full-time with your affiliate business is feasible. So it’s normal for beginners to only promote products that pay well and give them a good chance at a big fat commission check. The trouble is, promoting free products could end up paying more over the long run. But you would not know that unless you test them out.
So why should you promote free products? It depends. You don’t want to promote products that offer no up-sell opportunity. If your affiliate partner has a large selection of free and paid products (and offers hop-links), you can get people to your partner’s site more easily by pushing those free products. Take Amazon for instance. Pushing to $1 items may not look smart on the paper. However, Amazon does pay affiliate commissions on every other item your leads purchase. We all know how tempting Amazon’s online store can be.
Affiliate Marketing and Need for Innovation
Affiliate marketing gets a bad rap from a lot of people who have no idea what this business is about. Many think of us as spammers (not that there are not spammers among us). A lot of others think of affiliate marketing as their way to make millions of dollars from their bed, without having to actually do some work. In reality, affiliate marketing is easy to pick up and hard to master. Making your first $100 or $1000 is not going to be that difficult if you go with the basics. Making a living from selling other people’s products is another story.
In order to build a long term business promoting products online, affiliates need to innovate and continue to do so to stay competitive in this market. Let’s face it. There are plenty of unethical affiliate marketers out there. I am talking about those who will clone everything you have done without hesitation. There is nothing wrong with learning from other people’s strategies and implementing what has worked for them. It’s another thing to create copycat websites to take business away from other affiliates. A lot of people do it. While it’s not illegal per se, it does make it necessary for all affiliates to continue to innovate to set themselves apart from copycat artists.
Paid Reviews and Affiliate Marketing
Many affiliates wonder how bloggers and portal owners easily get their hands on freebies. It’s easy to assume that all these folks are getting paid for their work. Some actually are. Thanks to the FTC’s latest guidelines for bloggers and online marketers, you can find out about those relationships on disclosure pages. But in many cases, those top portals are just happy to review the latest gizmos and products without getting compensated. After all, they get to keep their visitors and add more.
Paid reviews are not looked up favorably by too many people. It’s not easy to assume that one can stay unbiased when they have been paid to write a review about a product. You can argue the same for affiliate products. Would you consider criticizing a product that you are planning to refer your visitors to? We have all seen those glorious, “best in the history,” reviews for products that are absolutely terrible. Those affiliates either know they have stupid visitors or they assume their visitors are gullible. (more…)
Are You Thinking Big with your Affiliate Business?
Not every affiliate niche is created the same. There are some niches that don’t see too much changes and can bring you profits for quite a long time. But one thing is certain in the affiliate marketing world. If you stay where you are and don’t innovate, you are going to be left behind. There are plenty of affiliates who find a good niche and think they are set for life. But things change quickly. Your market could go away completely or a disruptive technology can wipe out all your profits.
Take the GPS market for instance. There were a lot of portals who put all their efforts towards making profit from standalone GPS units. Fast forward a few years, and the standalone GPS market is almost dead in the water. Smart affiliate can always make good out of something bad. In the case of the GPS market, a smart affiliate would focus on different types of GPS devices and sub-niches that will survive the wave of smart-phones that are making it to the market.
Does Your Affiliate Program Pay?
There are many top affiliates who make a killing from top networks such as CJ and LinkShare. Those affiliate networks have tons of programs and give marketers the chance to develop highly sophisticated affiliate websites and campaigns. The same applies to Clickbank and other similar networks. But there are affiliates who make a living off of working with smaller networks. The good thing about using smaller networks is that you don’t have as much competition as you do with the top ones. The products that are being promoted through those networks are often niche products, and you’ll have less competition over those than you would over an iPad or a computer.
The problem with working with such networks is figuring out whether they will get you paid after you have delivered your end of the bargain. There are many affiliate programs that talk about how great their products are, but they fail to pay their partners on time. If you notice, most third party networks don’t take any responsibility for affiliate partners’ payments. After all, your specific merchant partner is responsible for paying your commission. That’s a scary thought if you think about it. You work and deliver thousands of leads to a merchant only to realize they never had any intention of paying you. (more…)
