Using Content To Boost A Blog’s Affiliate Earnings
By Jeff Alderson
Many blog publishers who come across fun, interesting and valuable new affiliate programs often feel like they’ve hit the jackpot. They quickly sign up, put their affiliate links on their sites, add them to forums and even mail them out. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as many take it before expecting big financial rewards to come their way.
While the above picture can reflect reality, the simple truth is it often takes a little more work to get affiliate programs to pay off well. Finding a great new affiliate program is just the first step in helping a blog owner realize a little profit for the efforts involved. Dropping links in forums, adding the referral link to the blog’s home page and even e-mailing friends and family can help. There are, however, many other steps blog owners can take to increase revenue through affiliate programs. Using the written word can be one of the best ways to boost interest.
Proven methods are available for bloggers and publishers to take advantage of to increase their potential earnings from affiliate programs. If the affiliate program happens to be new, the potential can be even higher. The amount of elbow grease that needs to go into a promotion will depend on the site publisher’s choice of action and willingness to work somewhat.
With new affiliate programs, it is very possible for publishers to get ahead of the competition by crafting posts early. If content about the program, its product or service is informative, accurate and balanced, your site can rank early on the topic and become a noted “authority” on it. The key here is to be honest, informative and interesting with posts or articles. Try to work the right keywords in, especially in titles and lead paragraphs. When you have the opportunity to strike early, don’t waste it.
Writing about a new program or one that’s new to you can be a little tricky. There are some important rules of the road to consider. Sites that offer posts, articles or full pages about a topic need to make sure their content is balanced, relevant and useful. The aim is to make a site and authority. Doing this requires fairness, honesty and balance. Should other articles already exist about the topic, don’t worry. Just write your pieces in a different manner, be more in depth or informative. Do avoid outright sales of the product, and don’t worry about mentioning any negatives that might exist. Including the cons can actually make a piece more credible.
Using keywords can be important to boost the search ranking of posts on affiliate programs. It is important, however, to make sure they don’t make the piece too cumbersome. Just try to work the words into the title and in a few other places, if possible. Posts that are winners are those that have clarity, usefulness and honesty included. These get read. Keyword stuffed articles often do not.
Linking to other sites that have written about the topic can actually be rather valuable in the process, too. When you link to another site, a trackback comes up. This can lead that site’s readers to your site. It’s not at all a bad thing to link to other articles, especially if they come from sites that are popular and well trafficked.
A few other options for boosting blog affiliate program revenues do exist in relation to the written word. One fantastic idea involves creating special presell pages. These pages can include reviews or just informational reports on the program. Give these pages their own URLs and do make sure to put the affiliate links on them. Blog publishers who own their own domain names often do this and only include their affiliate links on these pages. The benefit here is that these pages can quickly gain ranking and traffic attention. Instead of posting a blog piece on the topic, the pages themselves hold the relevant information and the links.
Traffic borrowing or leeching is also another prospect for gaining hits on your own referral links. To do this, many publishers set their Google Alerts so they know when other sites write about the topic at hand. When articles pop up, they visit the sites in question, write a few comments and drop links to their own reviews and articles on the subject. This can prove to be a good wait to gain traffic and even affiliate referrals, but not all view it as fair.
Increasing a blog’s affiliate program earning potential doesn’t necessarily require a lot of advertising. The right content can often make all the difference in the world.
About the Author
Jeff Alderson is an entrepreneur and Internet marketer. He is an expert on search engine strategies. To boost profits, Jeff suggests using a keyword research tool for any keyword research
This article is available as a unique content article with free reprint rights.
Did you enjoy this article? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to our feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment