9 affiliate marketing secrets to drive revenue fast

Looking for affiliate marketing secrets to increase income fast? Read on and discover our top 9 tips to boost your affiliate marketing.

1. Quality content is King

Did you just create a short review of the benefits of your affiliate product? Don’t kill your credibility with overly promotional reviews. Instead, focus on bringing your clients valuable in-depth product knowledge. 

Content-rich articles get better ranking and more organic traffic from Google. There is also a correlation between word count and backlinks to an article. Web pages that rank in Google’s top 10 have an average word count of 2,000 or higher (source QuickSprout).

Quality content with a generous amount of words is therefore important for ranking and bringing potential referrals to your page.  One idea is to find product-related questions. Discuss these in an extensive product tutorial. Your best chance to convert your audience into paying customers is to bring real value and address their concerns.

2. Don’t focus only on Google. 

So you created a product review on your blog, Awesome!  But if you really want to increase your referrals and commissions, don’t rely solely on organic traffic from Google. 

The best affiliate marketers make sure that an unexpected penalty from Google will not disrupt their income for the month. That’s why you should also focus on other referral sources such as Social Media, Forum Marketing, Email Marketing and Video.

Any clients that could benefit from the product? What about a call to action on LinkedIn? The more platforms you use to spread your content, the faster commissions come rolling in.

3. Be dedicated to your promotion

One of the most important affiliate marketing secrets is that more quality content makes you appear as an expert on the topic. 

Once your audience notices the value you bring by addressing their questions, chances are they might come back for more information. Stay in the picture and keep bringing value to them, you might be there when they’re ready to buy a product.

4. Find affiliate programs with Lifetime Commission

When choosing an affiliate product to promote, a good fit with your website topic is essential. Don’t overlook your opportunity to pick the right affiliate program, either. 

Commissions can vary widely in affiliate marketing. Try to find so called ‘’Lifetime commission’’ programs. These affiliate programs do not just provide a single commission for referrals, but will keep giving you commission for as long as your referral is a customer. 

Lifetime commission programs work on the idea that you persuade your audience to sign up for a subscription. The more referrals you bring in, the bigger the amount of recurring commissions you receive each month. These types of programs will help you earn more commissions each month, even without putting more effort into your marketing.  

An example of a lifetime commission program is the Supermetrics partner program. This program offers you 20% recurring commission for each referral you bring in. Supermetrics offers products for reporting automation. Several subscription options are available, making it a great affiliate program to receive recurring commission.  

5. Find discount and coupon offers 

Another great tip in the category affiliate marketing secrets is to offer discount codes to your audience. 

The main type of affiliate websites are:

• coupon websites, 
• cashback websites, 
• comparison websites 
• and content websites. 

With the 27% share, coupon websites are the biggest group of affiliate marketing websites. This is for good reason as discount codes are a great incentive for people to purchase a product (source Hosting Tribunal).

Many affiliate programs hand out discount codes to help convert your audience into paying customers and a discount might just be what makes your reader take the leap to buying the product. 

If no discount seems to be available, send an email to your affiliate program manager and you might get lucky with an exclusive promotional code. 

6. Promote a trial or free sample

Most people want to have a taste of what they are buying before committing to a larger purchase or subscription. 

By promoting a trial or sample of the product, you give your audience the chance to do just that. 

For B2B products an impressive average of 66% of trial users convert into paying customers. Promoting free trials are therefore a great way to increase your commissions from referrals (source Marketing Charts).

Most affiliate links leave a cookie, so you will be able to receive commission for your promotional efforts after the trial. Always check the cookie regulation of your affiliate program to find out when your referral still counts as a sale. 

7. Find similar products of competitors 

Most affiliate marketers (42%) promote between 1 and 10 products. A smaller group of affiliate marketers (23%) promote even more products with 11 to 20 products (source AffStat)

There are tons of affiliate programs out there waiting for your promotion, but don’t promote everything under the sun. Your goal is to establish yourself as a trustworthy expert in your field.  

Promoting non-related products makes you look like a sell-out and will do harm to your business. On the other hand, well-picked products that fit your industry and audience can be a perfect match for bringing you revenue. 

If you’re already successful within an affiliate program, do some research on competing products and consider including them in a comparison article. Your audience might be interested in learning more about similar products.

8. Be honest in the weakness of a product 

Do not only address the benefits and usability of a product. People get skeptical when reading an article that only describes the product as the perfect solution. 

By discussing the weaknesses of a product, you gain trust. Your content will appear more honest and it will give people realistic expectations of the product. Providing well balanced product information will increase your chances of earning commissions. 

9. Focus on mobile conversions

Customers are buying more products online on their phones than ever before. Nowadays 60% of search is done on a mobile device. This high amount of searches means that 45% of digital sales are done on a mobile phone. This is expected to be 54% in 2021. Optimising your affiliate page for mobile use is, therefore, one of the best kept affiliate marketing secrets (source Statista).

Besides this, there is a correlation between website loading time and conversion rates. Getting your mobile webpage to load 1 second faster can increase sales conversions by 27%. Websites that load in 3.3 seconds or slower have a 20% higher bounce rate (source QuickSprout).

It is, therefore, crucial to optimize the mobile interface of your affiliate website. Make sure your site has a responsive design, which is built to adjust to different screen sizes. Always check your content on different devices yourself. 

Discover more affiliate marketing tips in our Ultimate guide to affiliate marketing. Or check the Top 10 mistakes made by new affiliate marketers.

And join our Supermetrics partner program to earn 20% recurring commissions from each sale.

About Hetty Korsten

Hetty Korsten is a Partner Marketing Manager at Supermetrics. She has worked for fast growing SaaS startups in Copenhagen and Helsinki. Currently, she’s growing the in-house partner program at Supermetrics. Feel free to connect with her on Linkedin.