Your readers know what you're doing.
- You're spicing up that review of yours with a little positive twist. - Your readers know it. Your review is practically pointless.
You can't make an affiliate sale because... Although you're really telling your readers the complete truth about the product you're selling, they will always think otherwise. People aren't stupid.
They know that the product you're selling them is either:
- A Scam.
- Will make you money.
But Taylor, I am really telling the truth.
Don't tell me. Tell your readers.
Telling your readers you're affiliated
"Say what? Are you serious? You want me... You want me to tell my readers I am trying to make money by selling the product I am reviewing?"
Building Trust By telling your readers that you're affiliated with a product, you will build more
- Trust
- Subscribers
- Links
- Traffic
- Authority
- Sales
How to say you're affiliated with a product
By all means, don't overestimate what I am telling you to do. Don't go out to all of your affiliate based pages and put at the top of that page: "This is an affiliate review," in large bold letters. If you do that, you may as well consider yourself done.
Instead, at the end of the review, put something like the following:
"If you feel like you may enjoy this product, feel free to make your purchase through one of the two links below. The top link is an affiliate link. The bottom link is a regular link. Feel free to purchase this product through whichever link you'd prefer. Also note that the vendor offers a money back guarantee. See this page: ______ for more information about that also."
You just gained a lot of brownie points. Nobody does this and I really can't say that I know why they don't. People are so used to ads these days. Most of the stuff they see and read is perceived by them as untrue.
By putting the little note above at the end of your affiliate based articles, you're giving your readers that much more reassurance that you're a trustworthy source and you're not just out there to make a buck.
4 comments:
I've seen 2 ppl doing what you said "Nobody does it" so far, but I didn't take notice of the URL. I think it's good to say,"If you enjoy this info about xxx, please check out blah blah which is my affiliate link. Or else you are free to check out Wikipedia for more info on xxx."
Full disclosures are good although I think more people are compelled to buy because an authoritative figure guest-posted or wrote it or recommend it (not because you mentioned you're an affiliate).
Text testimonials aren't as good as video or audio testimonials.
BTW, thanks for starting this discussion! :)
Hey Kelly - First. Sorry it's taken me a few days to respond to your comment. I just started college so I have been crazy busy with homework. I guess it's probably only going to get worse.
Anyway, everyone has their own opinion on the situation. The only way to gain knowledge of the true numbers is to simply get somebody who has a really high traffic affiliate page and then have that person run tests on what way works better.
Either way, I still believe it's better to be honest with your readers. But like you said, maybe doing it even more subtly would be even better.
Good to hear you're busy Taylor! :)
Lol if you say so.
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