Affiliate marketing is becoming one of the best means to increase your passive income, however, it is not without its challenges. To do it effectively, you need to have a clear strategy to be able to optimize your marketing efforts and hence increase your affiliate sales. 

Through our wide experience and constant research we have collected proven affiliate sales tips and tricks that you can use to expand your audience reach, maximize your efforts and increase your income. Let's get started!

1. Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Track Your Success

Many of you might be earning a huge number of clicks on your affiliate links, but are these clicks leading to actual sales? Don’t waste your time looking at too many numbers and start eliminating all of this data noise by focusing on numbers that actually matter and create conversions. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics that determine the effectiveness of all your marketing efforts. KPIs can translate which campaign ended up in most sales, which campaign isn’t creating any return, and which campaign can be tweaked. 

Here are a few metrics that you should keep your eye one:

• Click-through rate (CTR): This metric measures the number of clicks in comparison to the number of views. It can be used to review the performance of digital ads, links, CTA and more. 

  
  

• Conversion rate: This metric measures the number of conversions in comparison to the number of clicks. While conversion tends to relate to sales, in affiliate marketing that’s not necessarily true. Conversion can be any step you want your audience to take including signing up for a certain event or downloading a certain document.

  
  

• Revenue by traffic source: This metric measures the total income generated from different sources. This metric is used to determine which of the platforms you are present on generate the most revenue eg: Website, Facebook, YouTube etc.

  
  

• Average time spent on page: This metric measures the average amount of time your visitors spend on a specific webpage. Use this KPI to figure out which pages do your audience find valuable and which can be reviewed or edited. 

  
  

Regularly check your KPIs & use each metric measure to help increase your affiliate sales.

2. Write (Or Update) Product Reviews

Reviews are a powerful tool to use. 93% of users read reviews online before purchasing a product or service. Your reviews are a great way to help generate traffic and increase your online presence as a result increasing your affiliate sales as well. 

How to start? Here are a few suggestions to help get you started:

• What problem does the product or service solve?

• Did it live up to its expectations? For example before and after usage

• Is it worth the price?

• What are your personal favorite features of the product?

• How can the product or service be improved? 

One thing that is critical in giving reviews & recommendations is that they need to be honest and accurate. Affiliate marketing is all about building relationships hence loyalty and trust is crucial. 

3. Add Call-To-Actions (CTAs) to Your Long-Form Articles

Long-form articles are defined as ones that are of 2000 words or more. These articles are your gateway to an in-depth discussion on topics and are more likely to be shared than an average post. Not only that, but they can also generate as many as nine times more leads. 

Generally, call-to-actions (CTAs) allows your users to interact with your platform. Most typically, they are embedded as hyperlinked text, buttons or images. In affiliate marketing, CTAs are used to direct your users to a sales-focused landing page.  

Combining both your long-from article and CTAs help you distribute the opportunities for conversion throughout your article. It’s common to add a CTA at the bottom of your article; however, we’d recommend and advice including one in the beginning of your article and a few ones in the middle. By applying this, you will be able to reach and connect with your readers whether they are skimming through one section of the article or reading it entirely. 

4. Improve Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is used to get your content to appear at the top of relevant search results. 

This is critical as based on research, 75% of people do not go past the first page of search engines. Improving your website’s SEO can affect your search results greatly by putting your service or product ahead of your competitors. It will hence, increase your organic traffic and improve your overall ranking as well as user experience. 

But how to do that? Keywords, URLs, alt-text, links and site speed are just a few of many ways you can improve your website’s SEO. While this may not seem to have a direct impact on affiliate sales, while improving your SEO your website and content will be shown to a larger audience. The more people engage with your content and see it, the more likely you will increase your affiliate sales. 

5. Promote Brand Discounts

Need we say more? Deals and discounts are the best way to encourage sales. As an affiliate for a brand, you are most likely to receive campaign goals, target audiences, promotion copy and 

visuals in advance to any sale. Put these elements to use and promote on your platforms brand discounts. 

6. Leverage the Power of Facebook Groups

Affiliate marketing is all about building and maintaining relationships. As you increase your community, more people will be introduced to your content and hence to your affiliate links. 

There are several ways Facebook groups can help you with developing these relationships:

• Create your own private Facebook group

This will help you to interact with your community on a more personal level by answering their questions, linking relevant videos or blog posts and creating a space where your audience feel they belong and are surrounded by like minded people. This group can be open for anyone or for a certain segment. 

• Join a pre-existing Facebook group 

This will help get you started and connect with new people. Once joined, engage with people within your similar niche and build your brand authority. 

• Join you affiliate network or program’s Social Media Channels

Grow your knowledge and competency by learning more about affiliate marketing and how to increase your affiliate sales. 

7. Publish Comparison Pages

Comparison pages are not the same as standard product reviews. Their main aim is to put two options against each other and allow the shopper to determine themselves which one best fits their needs. It is usually a win-win since you can earn commission on either offerings. So regardless of the product you are recommending, you have the opportunity to generate a sale. 

Conclusion

To conclude, affiliate marketing with no doubt is a great way to earn passive income but it is not always easy to sell. In this blog, we shared 7 proven ways to help kickstart your affiliate sales no matter the industry you are in. 

These tips and tricks range from optimizing your content creation and links to building and strengthening your community and reach. Start implementing them today and see the results yourself.