If done right, affiliate marketing could be your get-rich-quick scheme. Amid the boom in eCommerce and manufacturers selling directly on numerous platforms, affiliate marketing is thriving.
The race is on. In such cutthroat competition, brands want more traffic. And they don’t mind even if they pay a few bucks — as a commission — for it on every sale.
If you’re a marketer, you can leverage product reviews to earn a few bucks through affiliate marketing.
According to Mediakix, more than 80% of brands have affiliate programs.
A survey by BloggingX revealed around 40% of marketers worldwide consider affiliate marketing a crucial skill.
And there are hundreds of statistics and case studies available on revenue generated by affiliate sites.
Affiliate marketing will test your skills. And, of course, expand them; you’ll gain some terrific insight regarding customer psychology.
But your biggest challenge will be writing product reviews. How are you going to write reviews on hundreds of products when you’ve hardly tested only 5-10 of them?
This article will teach you how you can write unbiased and helpful product reviews to help people buy the right product for their needs.
1. Choose Your Niche
You will never be a jack of all trades. One of the mistakes affiliate marketers and affiliate writers make is they pick niches based on saturation, not interest. How are you going to write about women’s fashion when you have no interest in it?
Or how will you promote hockey accessories when you don’t even know how many players each team has in a hockey game?
Leave the niche if it doesn’t intrigue you. You will never be able to make money out of it because you lack original ideas. You will never be able to create unique angles when reviewing a product.
The same is true if you hire writers to write those reviews. They will rephrase and steal ideas from your competitors. And worst, their writing will lack clarity.
2. Do Lots of Research
One thing buyers hate about online reviews is fluff. And fluff occurs when the writer is either trying to reach a certain word count or hasn’t done any research.
Make sure every single review you write is based on research. This could be from forums or the same marketplace you’re associated with as an affiliate marketer.
Quora and Reddit are the best public forums to gather reviews. Those reviews might not be specifically about your product but a product similar to what you’re promoting.
For example, you’re writing a review on best cue sticks. Upon researching, you learn cue sticks are available in three different materials, including wood.
Now your job is to learn what material people prefer in cue sticks and what are the pros and cons of choosing it in wood material. The deeper you go, the more precise and valuable your product review will be for the user.
Another place to dig out some useful insights about the product is the customer reviews. For example, you’re promoting Amazon products. In the Customer Review section, you can see what all buyers liked about the product and the most common gripe, as well.
3. Be Honest
Be honest with your readers. Treat your affiliate site as a shop. The more honest you will be, and the more useful your information will be for people, the more likely they are going to come back in the future.
Conversely, exaggeration or wrong information will turn them off. They will never come back again. After all, they are doing you a favor if they buy from your link.
Keep these things in mind while writing a review, so you don’t step over the line.
- Never make false claims — This pillow will end all your sleep problems. ( Are you sure it’s because of the pillow or something else, probably a health issue?)
- Make sure you write all the specifications accurately. Nothing pisses off buyers more than getting a different color or size than the one they actually ordered.
- Mention the cons with every product to keep the review balanced and honest.
- If you’ve never used the product yourself, write from a third person’s perspective.
4. Compare With Other Products
Comparison helps a lot when the reader is confused between two or more products. Even Google’s last update about Product Reviews emphasized comparing products.
You can compare products in terms of material, lifespan, specs, and pros and cons.
If you want to grab the reader’s attention and remove ambiguities from his/her mind, talk about circumstances in which a certain product might be better than the other one.
Once again, to go this deep, you must have prior knowledge and lots of research done to talk about the use cases of a certain product.
5. Write as if You’re Having a Discussion
As it goes without saying, you’re not writing a Ph.D. thesis or a school essay. You are reviewing a product, and you can be a little casual and witty. Don’t just get lost in specifications; talk about the benefits — create real-life scenarios where the product and its features will be useful.
Add a bit of personality to your reviews, so people can know you’re really passionate about golf sticks/cricket bats/ perfumes, or whatever you’re reviewing.
Don’t create analogies that your readers can’t understand. Every niche has a different audience. Football enthusiasts won’t understand the jargon used by cricket lovers.
Remember, 90% of the people reading your listicle are really passionate about whatever you’re reviewing. Otherwise, they would have solely relied on customer reviews on the platform.
So they need an external view, a bit of additional information, and a sense of kinship!
Final Words
Writing product reviews is a huge responsibility — if you take moral values seriously. Misguiding someone would earn you a few bucks, but you will never grow as an affiliate marketer. Just keep in mind when writing reviews, you’re supposed to solve their problems. So pick your products wisely. And writing a useful and honest review would be a lot easier.
