Day: July 5, 2016

Honesty and full disclosure is a necessary part to building a loyal reader base.

Just as the term implies, your customers need to be able to see who you really are on social media platforms. Don’t over-think what your image should be or try to be something you aren’t. Your authenticity will translate as both honesty and integrity to your customers.

Always disclose your affiliations. Your readers will appreciate your honesty, and will feel better about contributing to your earnings. If they sense that you are being less than honest about your affiliations, they are savvy enough to bypass your link and go directly to the vendor just to avoid giving you referral credit.

You should have nothing to hide. Kind of. Yes, you should be up front and personable via social media. However, you should not over-share either. Trade secrets, tedious company details, and your heartbreak over a recent break-up do NOT need to be disclosed. Rather share what is appropriate and engaging, share often, and always keep it professional.

They know they are supporting you by using your referral links. Make them happy and eager to do so.

If you are tweeting from your personal account about a fantastic company product, you need to share your connection to your company. Not only is that an ethical social media standard, but the FTC insists upon it.

Without a doubt, transparency is a fundamental part of most successful social media connections and campaigns. And your company’s willingness to be transparent in a way that customers have come to expect will only mean further brand loyalty in your future.

PRACTICE TRANSPARENCY. It will pay off in the long run.

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1. Focus on Getting Traffic

Find ways to get more and more people to see your product. I was at a booksellers’ convention recently, and a bookstore manager said that he noticed people stayed around more when he offered free coffee. As they lingered, more people bought books. The he added a coffee bar, and his in-store traffic doubled and his sales went up too.

In the same way, you want to increase your online traffic to your site for your affiliate marketing business.

2. Choose Products Carefully

You do want to offer people good products. Check out what people have to say about them online. You may not be able to try many of the products yourself. Sometimes that makes us feel a little odd about promoting products we have not tried, but do you think the people in retail stores own all of the products they promote.

Just do your due diligence in getting good products to promote.

3. Choose Products with Good Sales Conversions

One measure of this is the “gravity” for the product. This is a number that perhaps has a technical formula to produce, but the higher the gravity, the more sales that have been made recently. Some people shy away from products with high gravity because they think the competition might be too high.

On the other hand, you do want a product that sells well. Products with high gravity do sell well.

4. Build Trust with Your Audience

You want people to buy from you, so you want to sound trustworthy to them. How do you do that? You write, truthfully, honestly, and naturally.

Sometimes it is difficult to build that trust when you only have one opportunity to talk to your prospective customers.

This can be remedied, however, by giving people the opportunity to sign up to receive information from you. If you can give them something (builds trust) in exchange for their email addresses, you can begin to build their trust over a longer period of time.

5. Build Your List with Care

Building an email list is one of the greatest affiliate marketing tips you can get. Your list has prospects on it who will begin to look to you for information on a certain product. The list gives you the opportunity to build trust and establish a relationship with your prospects.

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