What is an affiliate offer and how to use it in your benefit

The world of affiliate marketing is full of brands who are avid for people to sell their stuff. The problem is, especially for a marketer who starts in this business to identify which one is a genuine and honest affiliate offer from those that are just scams, and maybe more important than that, which are those that better fit with the audience in your niche.

Different profitable offers in the online world

From the diverse ways, you can find to monetize your website perhaps the simplest (if you get approved) is the adsense ads and other similar advertising programs, although we must say here that you need tons of visitors doing click on these ads to make substantial revenue.

In contrast, the hardest, although the more profitable way to make money with your site, according to many of the most recognized experts in the field is by creating and selling your products.

In the middle, so to speak is affiliate marketing.

Indeed, you can take advantage of these three methods and many more to monetize your business, however, the benefit of sticking to affiliate marketing at least at the beginning is that without your stuff you can make a good way of living as complementary or full-time income by promoting the products or services of several brands or advertisers.

You might also like: 6 Ways to Make Money with Your WordPress Blog

Positive and negative signs of a merchant or advertiser

Now, the fact that there are thousands of products or services out there to promote for revenue doesn’t mean that any of them are the best for you to take.

First of all, it’s critical to consider who are you choosing to do business with and I mean the brand, merchant or advertiser and obviously which products or services they have to offer, as well as the conditions of the affiliate agreement and the revenue for you at the end of the process.

It’s not the same Amazon, Apple, Canon, Macy’s or Puma to name a few, that a new author who just created a not yet tested digital course and sell it through Clickbank or Udemy. Do I mean that first mentioned brands are better just for being huge companies? Not precisely, because we can find that the unknown author has created a hidden treasure with the full potential to earn huge profits, however, you have to agree with me that the big brand causes the first impression, do you?

Let’s say however that we are (again) in the midpoint. We find a brand, that is more or less positioned in its field. It’s not a big brand, but it’s not a newbie either. How can we know if it’s a trustable one if its stuff is good enough to recommend to others? How can we know if the quality control division standards are high enough or if we or our audience can rely on its customer service or shipping?

Well, the best way to know about the reputation of a brand or an advertiser if through the comments of satisfied or disappointed customers left on many sites like in the comments section of the same merchant page, in forums, social media, blogs, etc. Likewise, when you recommend a doctor or a lawyer by a word of mouth recommendation, so are the opinions and reviews you can get over the network. As the saying goes: The facts say more than a thousand words!

Products can be promoted by buying bots that say lovely things about them, but opinions from customers who claim about low quality, abusive charges, delayed deliveries, bad experiences with customer services will prevail.

Your audience first

At this point, you probably are thinking that quality control, customer service, or shipping are out of your sight, that they are not your problem but a one between your referral and your affiliate partner.

Be careful because it can prove you are wrong.

Your audience is the main asset of your business. If you leave them unprotected, exposed to get hurt by buying something not quite suitable for them, then you’ll lose them and eventually your business will start to suffer for bad reputation even if you are just the intermediary between the advertiser and the customer. Recall that they get to the affiliate offer for the trust they put on you first.

Besides, even if the brand and product you promote gather the best qualifications not all the products and services of the advertisers are suitable for you and your audience although they offer high quality, great prices, excellent services and are profitable. Why so?

Remember that over any other consideration, you are not just making a commercial transaction which can occur at any moment and give you a profit. What you are trying to do is building a long-lasting business over the trust of your audience.

Caring for your audience will create respect for your brand, authority, and loyalty from your visitors. They are coming to your site because they are looking for answers, for information, for facts BEFORE they buy something. If you try to hunt them by selling them at the very first opportunity you have to do so, it’s entirely possible that you get the opposite effect: scare them and make them leave quickly from your site.

Many of your visitors came to you because they were looking for enough data to decide on some product or service. As your business grows and creates authority, the content you provide through your posts and reviews will create a source of reliable information that could lead to an undecided person to make a choice. Then you can in an organic way, without any pressure, show the best option in a contextual environment.

So help them not sell them.

If you push a person over an offer even if it is contextual and relevant enough, she or he can reject the simple act of being forced to make a decision.

The worst scenario is when people come to your site searching for information on a specific subject but not necessarily for buying something, and suddenly you overwhelm them with a storm of irrelevant, and unexpected offers of any kind.

These people will flee for sure faster from your website than from a haunted house.

Go for long-term consistency and avoid shiny objects

It is easy to get lost when choosing which affiliate offer is better to take advantage of it on our websites when the internet is literally flooding on great options.

If you become an affiliate partner of a highly productive advertiser or if you are part of an affiliate network sooner or later your email inbox will overflow with hundreds of amazing products that even you will want to test for yourself before sharing with your audience.

DON’T!

Every now and then will happen that you’ll have to buy some very exceptional product both to improve some area of your business and to recommend to your visitors as well. However, this should be the exception, not the rule. Why?

First of all, because you are like a barista or a wine taster. You should know as much as you can about the coffee or wine you taste, but you should avoid getting too much caffeine or ethanol in your body as it can harm you and your activity. Likewise, buying each and every significant issue that comes to you could damage your finances more than help them

But more importantly, you are trying to build a long-term business by building trust first, and you’ll do by matching with surgical precision the right kind of offers your audience really wants.

Here is an example. Your business is about sport shoes, so you’ll look for sports shoes affiliate offers. An offer comes to you about the best basketball shoes, those that any basketball star will crave for. But your audience is focused on running shoes which despite being sports shoes have many differences compared to basketball ones. Besides they are too expensive for the demographics, who are coming to your site.

Result? You’re gonna lose this specific audience with time because they are not getting “exactly” what they are looking for. Yes, they can get impressed or even tempted to take your offer but at the end of the day, if it’s not for them, they are going to leave it.

Think first in what specifically your audience is looking for, doesn’t matter if it’s not the “new kid on the block” because if they get what they want from you the very first time… they’ll keep coming back!

If you have to go… preserve the spirit of the brand of your website

Sometimes you’ll face the dilemma (among others) of deciding between the affiliate offer that best matches the interests of your audience but a low or medium payout and a second good option which would give you high royalties. Which one you’ll choose?

And why such a dilemma? Is it not possible to recommend both? Well, yes, in principle but at some point, someone would ask for your opinion for the best of them.

This is something that you’ll have to solve in private only you and your conscience; however,, always keep in mind that your business is also a brand like ones of the advertisers. Your brand tells people everything about you and your ethics. It is like a scent that gets impregnated in every post of your website.

The research you do to write the information you provide in your site, the impartiality of your judgments in your reviews, the honest help that you offer before the intention for profit, all these aspects of your behavior as an affiliate marketer will talk with the time of the value of your brand. Will you build a business based on helping people, or will you build a company based on making money?

The first one usually will stand the test of time… and at the end will make more money as a result!