20 Tips To Increase Your Affiliate Sales (Always Works)

Affiliate marketing in my books is the best way to earn passive income. Yes, you can earn while you sleep, eat, or are on a holiday in The Caribbean.

But the truth be told. Affiliate marketing is not a piece of cake. It takes a lot of perseverance, patience, and hard work to earn your first dollar. The world of the Internet is crowded and it is not an easy task to make your mark.

But I won’t say it is an impossible task. There are thousands of bloggers out there who are generating great passive income through affiliate marketing and if anyone else can do it, then there’s no reason you can’t do it.

I’m not a big-shot blogger or affiliate marketer yet. But I sure have some hands-on experience and I’m here to share my 20 quick tips to increase your affiliate sales and earn a handsome passive income.

Disclosure: Some links in this article are my affiliate links. If you buy any product through any of these links, I’ll get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Such a commission helps me to stay motivated and produce more such content. Thanks in advance if you buy anything from my affiliate links.

These are some tips and methods that have worked absolutely well for me. Aren’t you curious to know them?

Let’s get started.

1. Create great content

I cannot emphasize more on the fact that high-quality content is the key to your affiliate marketing journey. Leave all other things and focus on creating great content first.

Yes, content is king.

When someone reads a low-quality piece of content, they can easily figure it out. Because just as high-quality content speaks for itself, low-quality content also does the same. You also need to make sure that your content is free from errors and grammatical mistakes.

One important thing is to support your content with facts and statistics. A study shows that content that shows stats is shared way more than content that doesn’t. The more your content is shared, the more the chances of people buying from your affiliate links.

Apart from high-quality, your content also needs to be unique and your own. The information that you are going to provide has already been provided by a thousand other blogs but what makes the difference is the uniqueness of your content.

If you are planning to copy-paste articles from other blogs or rephrase other articles and publish them as your own, then affiliate marketing is not for you.

Long-form content

Another important aspect of content quality is long-form content. Anything that is above 2500 words is considered long-form.

Studies show that long-form content rank higher in search results than pages with 1000 or 1500 words.

Make sure that you write at least 2000 words as a beginner if not more than 2500 words.

I have a blog post on my website about starting a blog for free. That blog post is around 7800 words.

People like to read detailed and in-depth content. For example: If I had written this blog with just 5 tips, not many people would have read it. So I made it to 20 real tips.

But also make sure that you don’t write just for the sake of it. Write as much as you know. Do not add meaningless stuff in your content just to make it lengthy

Types of content you can make

Here are some popular content types you can create for affiliate marketing:

• Product comparisons: compare two or more similar products

• Product Reviews: Review a product that you have used and give your honest feedback

• Listicles: List several products of similar nature with each one’s pros and cons.

• Case studies: A case study is a form of content that is published to outline your success or discuss how you solved a real-life challenge.

• Tutorials: people want to solve their problems. So make tutorials related to your products about how to use them. For example, how to generate a sitemap and submit it to google.

In all the above content types, include your affiliate links.

2) Improve your SEO

You need to strongly agree with the fact that in the long term, organic traffic is going to be your best friend. The higher the traffic to your blog, the higher the chances of affiliate clicks which in turn increase your affiliate sales.

These are all good but paid traffic is only good for as long as you’re willing to pay.

The same goes for your email list. You blast out an email, then the traffic fades into nothing after a while.

Now, what about social? Same thing! You might get some nice spikes in traffic, but that will likely drop back to normalcy.

Organic traffic on the other hand can produce the opposite effect. Free, passive, and hopefully growing traffic that doesn’t fade over time.

In order to reap the benefits of passive organic traffic, you need a strong SEO strategy. You need to focus on keyword research, link building, meta tags, etc.

• Keyword research helps you find topics that are highly searched but have relatively low competition.
  There are various tools you can use. I recommend using SEMrush.

• Link building is another important SEO technique. It is one of the top 3 ranking factors of google.

Recommended: How To Get Backlinks To Your Website – 10 Effective Ways

• Create catchy titles that people can’t resist clicking. The one thing that separates your website from a user is a click. Fail to get clicks and you fail to get traffic.

Since most people will find your web pages through search or social, you want to craft a headline that accurately represents your article without sounding boring.

Here’s a basic on-page SEO checklist for 2023:

•  Use Focus Keyword in the SEO Title

• Use focus Keyword inside SEO Meta Description

• Try to include the Focus Keyword in the URL

• Write at least 1500 words if not more

• Try to include the focus keyword in subheadings

• Link out to external sources or other websites

• Add internal links to your other posts

• Use short paragraphs

• Include your focus keyword in the ratio of once every 200 words

• Add images to your posts

3) Be a teacher

This is one of the most effective and important ways to increase affiliate sales. Not just increasing affiliate sales but also making you a successful content marketer. People love to search for informational content much more than commercial content.

We tend to trust those people who teach us something and not the ones who only do product reviews.

I am in the field of blogging and affiliate marketing, so most of my blog posts are centered around teaching blogging and affiliate marketing.

And when an audience is developed this way, such an audience is loyal to you and will always come back for more.

4) Create a free tool

Your ultimate aim is to get traffic to your website. If you can get traffic, sales are bound to happen. A very popular and effective way of getting traffic to your website is having a free tool on your site.

People love free tools. They get shared like wildfire. Also, free tools tend to get many backlinks.

You don’t have to build a tool from scratch if you don’t have the expertise. You can add one to your website for $10, or even $15 or $20.

All you have to do is go to a site called CodeCanyon where you can find a tool related to your industry and just purchase it, and you can just add it to your website.

In other words, you’re taking a tool someone else created, you’re buying the rights to it, and you can white label it, meaning put your own logo, your own colors on it, pop it on your website as if it’s yours, and it’ll help you generate a lot of traffic and backlinks. Sounds cool right?

All that traffic that comes has great potential to increase your affiliate sales.

Recommended: 10 Best Affiliate Marketing Tools For Bloggers

5) Make the most out of special days

Events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the time of the year when affiliate marketers earn the most.

During such special events, all the products are at ridiculous discounts and what’s more, companies also raise the commission rates during these special days.

So more sales because prices are low and more commissions owing to high commission rates. Can’t miss that one, can you?

What to do?

• You need to prepare for such special days well in advance, say 4-5 months.

• Write new and updated blog posts about your affiliate products

• Create a page on your blog which is only about Black Friday deals. List all your products with their discounted rates.

If you have decent traffic to your website, then you are sure to make a fortune. Also, people wait for such special days to come so that they get a bang for their buck.

6) Don’t sell too many products

Do not go around selling everything and anything. Focus on a maximum of three products at any given time. Selling more products certainly won’t increase your affiliate sales.

When you are selling a lot of products, your efficiency is lost and you end up selling a lot less.

Also, sell similar kinds of products. I had an acquaintance who was selling web hosting products and Asia Pacific Newsletter on the same blog.

Those are two completely different products. You don’t want to confuse your audience as to what you are specialized in.

7) Support your content with tutorials

Always remember that when people actually see how a product works, their chances of purchasing it are high.

Provide in-depth tutorials on your products and teach your audience how to use them. Not only that, you can support your blogs with tutorials even if you are not writing about the product.

For example: In my blog post on how to write a blog post that actually gets traffic, I use SEMrush to do some important keyword research (See below).

8) Call-to-actions

A call-to-action is necessary for affiliate marketing. Just writing content is not enough. Just when you know that your audience is interested in your content and develops a desire to buy the product you are talking about, you need a CTA to convert that reader.

Ultimately, the goal of affiliate marketing is to guide your audience in the buyer’s journey so they eventually make a purchase.

CTA is a part of a webpage, advertisement, or piece of content that encourages the audience to do something (buying your affiliate products, in your case).

You can use different CTAs like buttons. Buttons work well for me. In my product comparisons and product review blogs, I include colored buttons for readers to click through.

What would you click, a colored button like below or just a plain simple text link? I would click the button.

Another example of a CTA is Try For Free. Finding a website or digital platform without a free trial is quite rare. This is due to the fact that people really ADORE free things and won’t hesitate to pay if they believe the product or platform is worthwhile.

There are several other popular CTAs for affiliate marketing.

9) Give multiple chances for readers to buy

What is the most obvious thing to do to increase affiliate sales? Simply, give enough chances for your audience to buy from you. Do not just include a call-to-action in the beginning or at the end. Provide it in the beginning, in the middle of your content, and at the end.

This must not be confused with hard selling.

You should do it in a manner that flows with the content and doesn’t sound or seem like overselling.

10) Create a resources page

Creating a resource page on your blog will work wonders for you. When your audience is loyal to you and they have confidence in you, then they will try to know all tricks and techniques, and tools you use for yourself.

A resource page on your site will serve this purpose. List all the tools and resources that you use for your blog and don’t forget to add your affiliate links to all of them.

11) Offer promo codes to increase affiliate sales

All of us love promo codes, don’t we? People are always looking for promo codes before buying anything. I always do. You can provide special promo codes to your audience.

If you have generated enough sales for an affiliate program, then you are eligible to request promo codes from your affiliate companies. Most affiliate programs have the option for you to request promo codes from advertisers.

I use Hostinger for hosting my website. When I log inside my Hostinger control panel, I have a special page for Referrals there. I automatically got qualified for the Hostinger affiliate program when I purchased their hosting.

And as their customer, I am eligible to provide a 20% discount to anyone I refer, meaning if you purchase web hosting through my affiliate link, a discount of 20% is automatically applied to your purchase (see below).

12) Write product reviews in the form of case studies

This is a proven method to increase affiliate sales. Simply writing product reviews is one thing. But writing product reviews in the form of case studies from your own experience adds a lot of additional value to your content. Share your own results and benefits that you got from the product.

When your audience can see how you have benefited from the product, there are bright chances they’ll make a purchase.

Always remember these tips while crafting a good product review:

• Focus on the product, and not on selling it. Don’t just brag about your product for the sake of making sales. It doesn’t work generally. Focus on explaining your product’s ins and outs, pros, and cons, so that people can decide for themselves if the product is worth their money.

• Make sure that you have used the product which you are writing about. You need to believe in the product first, then go around selling it.

• Be honest with your audience. Don’t just state the pros but also showcase the cons. Honesty is the best way to impress your audience. They may not purchase from you but will surely develop some confidence in you and might purchase sometime in the future.

13) Build an email list

I wish I had built an email list for my blog earlier. Email marketing never goes out of fashion.

If you are providing quality content on a regular basis, then email marketing will work wonders.
You can send out emails to your subscribers about new blog posts.

You can also teach your subscribers the benefits of using your recommended products and see how well they convert.

There are a lot of tools that you can use to fetch the emails of your website visitors.

If you are using WordPress, then there are a lot of cool plugins that will make your work easy. Some of them are WPforms and Optinmonster.

I personally don’t use a plugin. I use GetResponse for this task. GetResponse is a lifesaver when it comes to email marketing. I highly recommend it.

I have a complete email marketing series of posts that teach you how to set up an automated email marketing system for your blog or business.

Make sure to join my email list if you never want to miss out on such newer articles in the future. You can find a form in the right-hand side sidebar and at the end of this post.

After building your email list, you need to send out emails to your subscribers regarding new articles that you publish. You can even run a weekly or monthly newsletter and send emails regarding the same.

I highly recommend using GetResponse for your email marketing needs. It has a free plan that offers everything you need for a small website or blog or business.

14) Leverage paid ads to increase affiliate sales

This might not sound good for beginners who aren’t willing to pay. But if you are an experienced affiliate marketer and have generated enough revenue, then consider reinvesting some of it into paid advertising on social media sites.

For example, Facebook has over a billion members globally, so if you want to reach a global audience that includes young people, you can’t ignore it. Men and women make up a roughly equal number of users.

Around 25% of Facebook users are between the ages of 25 and 35, followed by 18% from 35 to 44 and 17% from 18 to 24 (according to Statista). Due to the fact that it reaches many firms’ target groups, Facebook becomes a potent marketing tool.

15) Publish more and more content

As I mentioned in the 1st tip, content is king! Add this tip to the 1st tip. Along with high-quality content, you also need to have a lot of content. Yes, you heard it right. Write as much high-quality content as you can.

A study shows that Google starts to recognize what your blog or website is about, only after you have written at least 25 posts. And here you were, thinking that you have enough content.

Set a target of at least 75 posts. Abundant content improves the reputation of your blog and people develop a sense of trust in your website.

And don’t stop even after 100 posts. Neil Patel has over 4000 blog posts on his website. Yes, you heard it right, over 4000. He is a content-generating machine and also a millionaire.

16) Don’t hard sell

Never hard sell. When you do, people can easily figure it out by your tone. Don’t project yourself as a seller, rather focus on providing value to your audience.

When people know that your only focus is to sell your products, they are not going to buy from you, no matter how hard you try.
Try to solve the problems of your audience and you’ll notice that you did not even need to sell in the first place.

There are some blogs that have so many ads on their web pages that sometimes it gets difficult even to read the text. As a result, people leave your website.
You really don’t want that!

17) Put stress on your visuals

When it comes to the internet, “the first impression is the best impression.” Make visitors hang around on your blog if you want to turn them into customers.

No matter how wonderful your content is, if your blog article has a cluttered design and poor typography, nobody wants to read it or share it.

To increase your sales, you should spend time and money establishing an appealing design because the design is king.

Use Infographics on your blog as much as you can. Neil Patel was able to build 41,142 backlinks just by adding Infographics to his blog.

Warning: Never download images from Google images to use on your site. Most of them are copyrighted. You don’t want to get into unnecessary trouble.

18) Create a YouTube channel

I know this might sound a little hard to do. But trust me, starting a youtube channel will not just increase your affiliate sales but will skyrocket them.

People are most engaged when they are watching something, especially a video. And videos tend to explain things better than text. You can create tutorials on your products through videos.

When people actually witness a product with their own eyes, their chances of purchasing that product increase exponentially.

19) Promote your content

Why should you promote it? No one’s gonna come to your content if you sit and wait. Spend more time promoting your content than you spend writing.

Promoting your content will increase traffic to your blog and naturally increase your affiliate sales.

Places you can promote your content:

• Quora: It gets around 800 million monthly visitors. You can promote literally any type of content on Quora

• Pinterest: It has a majority of female users. So, niches like graphic designing, cooking, baking, painting, and gardening are the best ones you can promote on Pinterest.

• LinkedIn: It is the place on the Internet to create contacts and get noticed. Repurpose your content on LinkedIn. It is a proven technique for promoting your content.

• Medium: It is a highly popular platform known for its high-quality content. Provide a gist of your content on Medium and then persuade readers to click the link to your original piece to read more.

• Triberr: It is a give-and-take platform where your content gets shared by others, provided you share other people’s content. Triberr is highly recommended.

Related: 10 Best Content Syndication Platforms In 2023

Writing in detail about how you promote your content on each of these platforms would make this post ridiculously long. I will make sure to write a post on each of these platforms, but the good news is I have written a detailed post on getting traffic from Quora.

Check it out: How To Get Traffic From Quora To Your Website

20) Thank people in advance for buying from you

Thank people in advance for buying from you. It’s a small but effective trick to increase affiliate sales.

Most companies require you to disclose in your content that some of the links are your affiliate links.

What I do is, in my disclosure, I thank people in advance if they decide to buy from my affiliate links. This way people get attached to you. And if you really solve their problem with your content, then they will definitely buy from you to support you and what you are doing.

After all, it’s at no extra cost to them.

Tips To Increase Your Affiliate Sales: Final Thoughts

The most important thing in affiliate marketing is your content. You should focus on creating great content before applying any of these tactics to increase affiliate sales. Create in-depth content that provides real value to your audience.

Try to figure out your audience’s problems and then recommend products from your experience.

Build a system or funnel to guide your audience in their buying process. Keep yourself in your audience’s shoes and then try to figure out what influences you to buy anything from anyone. This will help you a lot in structuring your content well to increase affiliate sales.

If you found this article helpful, consider sharing it with your friends or people you think might benefit from it. It motivates me to create more such content.

And I only wish you the best!