How can you maximize the profitability of your affiliation campaign?
Affiliation is a way of acquiring traffic, and therefore customers. It involves a partnership between an advertiser and an affiliate. Unlike other acquisition methods, affiliates are not paid to display ads. Rather, it's a partnership based on performance.
In fact, the affiliate is only paid if the visitor to the partner's site performs a specific action, such as making a purchase, registering or filling in a form. The advantages of affiliation include the freedom to promote the products of one's choice, and the absence of banners and ad wraps that can disfigure a site. It's a healthy monetization model for you and your visitors.
How can you maximize the profitability of your affiliation campaigns?
Affiliate marketing can provide you with a comfortable additional income to round out your monthly income, but if you want to make a living from it, you'll need to write more than just one article a week. Whether you have the time to devote to it (in which case you'll need to set up an editorial strategy first) or whether your schedule allows you to do affiliate marketing part-time, here are a few tips on how to take advantage of busy periods and current events.
Sales highlights
In the retail sector, there are periods of intense commercial activity, i.e. events organized by salespeople to boost their sales. These include traditional events such as back-to-school, Halloween, Christmas, Easter, White Month, Household Month and wine fairs. On the Internet, we can also mention major events such as Black Friday, Single Day, Amazon Prime Day and French Days.
These events have the advantage of being spread throughout the year, allowing you to define an editorial calendar. These periods of high activity offer you the opportunity to increase your sales considerably, provided you prepare for them.
Anticipating these events means letting search engines know that you are relevant to these themes. How do you do this? By producing content, of course, but not at the last minute!
The aim is to create an editorial funnel towards which the links, and therefore the audience, will converge. Before the event, create a page that will host offers as soon as the time comes. Then publish several articles on a regular basis to talk about the event, its origins and the date on which it will take place. In these preparatory articles, include a box with a link to the special page. In the tips you write, don't hesitate to include a link to the operation page. Finally, promote your articles on social networks. The internal links you set up will help give your site credibility on the day.
Competition is tough, but if you manage to position an article on Google during a peak period, you've hit the jackpot.
💡 Preparation work must be repeated every year.
Surfing the news
In addition to commercial highlights, daily promotions and current events are real gold mines to be exploited. Take the example of seasonality and the arrival of winter. Traditional media will cover temperatures and gas prices, while content-to-commerce offers a wide range of topics to liven up your site and generate sales:
- A site on beard care: the best oils to protect your beard during winter
- A high-tech site: the best pairs of tactile gloves
- A DIY site: knit yourself a hand-knitted scarf in less than an hour
- A gardening site: how to protect your plants for winter
- A do-it-yourself site: how to detect heat leaks in your home
- Automotive website: accessories to protect your car from the cold
There's no shortage of examples, and all it takes is a little imagination to come up with ideas whatever the season, and come up with content that will appeal to your audience.
Hot news can also be an effective way of boosting your sales. For example, in July 2015, the law prohibited motorists from driving with a Bluetooth headset. Tests of hands-free kits without earpieces have enabled high-tech and automotive sites to increase their sales.
To reach a wider audience, licenses are also a powerful lever for selling derivative products. If your site specializes in Harry Potter, for example, there are so many derivative products that you could publish a different article every day without ever having to talk about the same product twice.
And while the advent of video-on-demand platforms is hastening the gradual disappearance of home players, some films are not always available online, or deserve to be seen with optimum image and sound quality. In this case, links to 4K Blu-Ray versions may be a good idea.
Key points to remember
Your long-term efforts will ensure your audience mattress, but prepared actions will enable you to go far beyond your usual visits and sales. Remain alert to current events and reactive to take actions that will enable you to "QuickWin" and gradually increase your revenues.
