6 Tips for eCommerce Beginners: How to Increase Affiliate Product Sales?

Affiliate marketing is one of the best business models to start with. With it, you redirect your audience through an affiliate link and get a commission if they buy from you. That means you won’t have to have any inventory or a massive budget to start.

While it might be a great business model, it is not easy. In this article, I’m looking to give you six tips to make your affiliate business successful. If that sounds interesting, then keep on reading.

Tip #1 - Start With a Less Competitive Product

While you might find selling products such as website hosting more attractive due to a higher commission, I advise you not to do it. These affiliate products are probably highly competitive, so it will be difficult for you to rank on Google and get affiliate commissions.

Instead, you might want to start with a less competitive product. That way, you’ll have a much easier time getting traffic to your website. And the more traffic you get, the more chances you have for commissions.

A great place to start is the affiliate program! The commissions are low, but you’ll have access to all the products.

Tip #2 - Educate More Than You Sell

One of the easiest ways to earn affiliate commissions is to write reviews about the product and service. But when you do, you should remember to educate your audience more than you sell.

That’s because you don’t have any trust in your first-time readers. And when you start selling them, they won’t listen to you. So instead, it’s better to educate people about the product, its many benefits, and its faults before you sell them.

Tip #3 - Use the Power of Tables

Do you know how you can earn even more from your reviews? Well, it’s by adding some tables in your reviews.

With them, you can create product comparison tables showing how the reviewed product compares to its competitors. That helps your readers understand which product works best for them.

Once they have chosen one, they could just click the button on the table and buy it!

Tip #4 - Offer Incentives to Use Your Affiliate Link

One of the core issues with affiliate marketing is that you might not even be able to get a commission for every customer you refer to! That happens when you recommend a product to your reader, which they find through other means than by clicking your affiliate link.

How can you counteract that? Well, it’s by having incentives for using your link! For example, you could give them access to a private newsletter, course, or anything else. You might also be able to give them a discount if your affiliate partner can do that.

Tip #5 - Use the Power of a Newsletter

No matter how you get traffic to your website, you need to create a newsletter. That’s because email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies. Fortunately, many eCommerce builders, such as Shopify, Shoplazza, etc., allow you to easily create a subscription box for email gathering.

According to a 2018 study, about 81% of small and mid-sized businesses say email marketing helps them grow their company. So, why wouldn’t it help you?

Your email subscriber list is the only thing you own. Other traffic sources, such as social media following, are more akin to lent traffic because you can lose it at any time if the platform deems you unworthy.

Tip #6 - Do Market Research

A lot of new entrepreneurs are scared of competition. That’s because they think the competitors will take a portion of their sales. And while that is true to some extent, they can be an advantage to you.

That’s because, if you’re smart about it, you can learn a lot about your competitors and find ways to improve them. For example, you could find out what keywords they use, which products they promote, and more.

Then, you could either use them on your website or improve them to make them preferable to your target audience.

A great tool to use for this is Semrush! It helps you do a competitor analysis and get new keyword ideas.

Conclusion

Those were the six tips for increasing your affiliate product sales! As you can see, affiliate marketing requires a lot of hard work but is rewarding at the same time. Start taking action now, and you’ll reap the benefits!

(Contributed by Andreas Ojala & Hermes Fang)