Affiliate marketing is a rapidly evolving and changing industry. It’s hard to always stay on top of the trends, but there’s one strategy that’s stood the test of time, even though fewer affiliate marketers are doing them – writing affiliate product reviews. Done right, your product recommendations will convert well and help you become an affiliate standout!
There are no easy shortcuts when writing reviews but when you take the time to do them right, they pay off repeatedly over time with little maintenance.
Conduct Due Diligence
You’ll need to conduct your due diligence and sometimes even purchase and try the product out. Intimately getting to know what you are going to promote is essential to being able to write an honest recommendation. After all, you want be able to stand behind products you’re sending your own audience to, right?
Take Extensive Notes
When reviewing a product, jot down…
- benefits
- features
- special elements
- anything unique that you notice
- other products you’d like to compare this one to
- whatever comes to mind.
Even if you don’t end up using every point you record, you’re building your ” article foundation” with the notes you take as you explore the product.
Evernote is an excellent tool for doing this type of research and taking notes. Evernote helps you gather together what matters (i.e., supporting docs, photos, etc.) and keeps you focused on moving your ideas from notes to completion.
Assign Time Caps To Tasks
Writing high converting affiliate product reviews takes time, there’s no question about it. To make doing reviews manageable, break tasks down into sub-tasks and cap the time you spend on each one. An original review for the average product should take no more than 2-3 hours, depending on your research and writing skills. Developing a template that you use again and again for your reviews will further help you keep the time spent on them shorter.
Here is an example of the time it may take you to create a thorough, honest review…
- Affiliate Program due diligence (get to know the resources and tools available for promoting) – 1/2 hour
- Product due diligence (includes the note taking you’ll do to write the article) – 1/2 – 1 hour
- Outline – 15 minutes
- Draft – 1/2 hour
- Polish – 15 minutes
- Publishing – 1/2 hour
- (approximately)
Use a simple tool like EggTimer to help you stay on target with your time caps. You’ll be surprised by how much this technique helps keep you focused!
Outline and Draft The Review
At this point you will have a pretty good idea as to whether this is a product you want to promote to your followers. If so…
Using your due diligence notes, create an outline and begin to write a balanced review. Aim to be fair and honest. Talk about pros and cons, things you’d do differently, highlight cool features, go into a little more depth about something you know will be especially useful to your readers. Always strive to keep your review relevant to the context with which you’re writing it.
Where To Leverage Your Review
Decide ahead of time the best way to leverage your review once it’s complete. There are myriad ways to do this but start with your top six. Beside your site, blog or newsletter, what other platforms resonate best with your audience? You should already have a good idea whether your followers gravitate more to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google + or other social media platforms.
Each social sharing platform calls for its own unique presentation of content, in this case your review. For example…
- Facebook – create a short post and link it to your main review on your site
- Twitter – tweet a 140 character summary leaving room for a shortened URL that links to your review
- Pinterest – is there an info-graphic available within the product’s affiliate program? Pin it and link to your review
- Google + – make a post and add a screenshot of that especially cool feature you highlighted and link to your review
Time Well Spent
Making your product review highly relevant, balanced and far reaching will allow it to work and presell for you indefinitely. Set it and forget it for a time but be sure to calendar out periodically to refresh your article and send it out again with a fresh angle or twist, like new features that have been released. That’s two or three hours well spent, don’t you think?
Are you interested in reviewing SBI! and/or SBI! for WP, recommending them to your audience and earning high commissions for your efforts?
Signup here – affiliates.sitesell.com
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