Saturday

How I increased my affiliate link clicks and transactions

I've been using affiliate links for a while now but never really had much success. That is, until I actually started putting some effort into them and I saw a huge improvement. In October, my clicks increased by 500%, my transactions increased by 375% and my commission jumped up by a huge 700%. Don't get me wrong- I'm hardly making a fortune but it's still amazing what a massive difference has been made just by putting the effort in.
Increasing affiliate clicks transactions and commission
FYI, I also wrote a beginner's guide to affiliate links which might be a handy place to start if you're not really sure about what they entail. 

ON THE BLOG

This is where I've always shared affiliate links and relying on this method alone was what let me down, but I'll come to that in a minute. For me, the most natural posts to place affiliate links are my OOTDs and beauty reviews. That's what I've done for a long time, with very limited success. Lately, I've been creating a lot more outfit posts which gives me an opportunity to share affiliate links. I pop them in the post twice- once at the beginning in list form and then again in the body of the post. I've also started hunting down items that are similar to the ones I'm featuring if they're unavailable online, such as Primark items or ones that are a few seasons old. It takes a lot longer to write a post when you're looking for a grey cable knit jumper that's as similar to your Primark one as possible, but it's worth it!

ON SOCIAL MEDIA

This is where the bulk to my improvement has come from. I never, ever shared affiliate links on Twitter before and ever since I've had, my success rate has shot up. It makes sense seeing as I have my highest follower rate on there, so why wouldn't I make use of that? All I do is find an item I like, share the affiliate link with an image and bingo! It's super easy, really quick and very successful. In theory, I'd like to share three tweets a day but in reality I tend to forget. Something I bear in mind is to use sites that followers a naturally going to shop from. Since I earn commission on any sales within a certain time period, it's not so much about convincing people to buy that specific item so much as enticing them to visit the site. This is why I usually share ASOS items, since it's such a popular retailer. The only problem I've found is that there's a lot more temptation- I share something cute and all the positive comments convince me that I absolutely need it!

WHICH NETWORK?

There are a huge range of different affiliate link networks such as ShopStyle, RewardStyle, Affilinet... The list goes on. I use Affiliate Window which includes brands such as ASOS, New Look and House of Fraser. To be honest, I'd rather use ShopStyle as they have some really handy tools and pay by the click but I'm having an absolute nightmare trying to log into my account so Affiliate Window will do for now! The downside to this network is that you only get commission on actual sales rather than clicks. I wrote a lot more about this in my beginner's guide to affiliate links.

DISCLOSURE

I'm going to leave this fantastic post by Caroline Hirons here as she's said everything so much better than I could. In her post, she explains why it's important to disclose affiliate links. Personally, I don't feel comfortable sharing affiliate links without making them clear (especially on social media) and I really appreciate bloggers who are transparent when using them. I've seen lots of different ways to disclose but my preferred method is to write "This post contains affiliate links" at the bottom of posts and to put (affiliate) at the end of tweets. I figure you can't get much clearer than that! 

None of the steps I've taken are groundbreaking. There will be a thousand other bloggers applying the same process. The ultimate lesson is that when you put the effort in, it pays off. Rather than just popping in the odd affiliate link and hoping for the best, coming up with a more defined strategy gives a much higher success rate. 

Affiliate links have been used in this post

http://i1208.photobucket.com/albums/cc369/BeckyCee/affiliate-link-increase_zpsi0lyzv15.jpg
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4 comments :

  1. This is a really useful post - lots of things I didn't know! Heading over to your intro to affiliate links now too!
    Tori x www.torisworld.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've never thought of posting them on twitter. Thanks for this, I'm definitely going to give it a try.
    I just stumbled on your blog through the LBloggers chat on twitter. I'm to check out you other posts.

    Laura // http://thatgallowaygirl.com/
    xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  3. I do really need to have a look at this. I've still got your other post pinned ready for when I have time to sit down and properly look at it haha!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This post is so great! I am happy to have found your blog!

    ReplyDelete

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