4 Ways To Reach Your Target Audience (& Up Your Affiliate Commissions!)

If you're not already an affiliate marketer, then you may not be aware that the business of affiliate marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to make money online ... assuming that is something that you would like to do!  This is because there are so few start up and maintenance costs that it greatly increases your bottom line. 

There is also the fact that you do not have to deal with product development, shipping, customer service or product maintenance. This frees up a lot of time to work on engaging targeted traffic that will convert on the offers you are promoting, which in turn will increase your profit margin.

How do you increase affiliate income?  This can be achieved through building more traffic, however, there are always other things you can do to increase revenue from existing affiliate offers and any new potential ones you may plan to promote.

4 Powerful Methods To Increase Affiliate Commissions

1. Choose High Paying Offers (Naturally!)

Look for the best programs and products to promote that offer high payouts. Your bottom line can increase exponentially when the commissions are high and obviously, you want to promote a program that will enable you to achieve the greatest profits in the shortest possible time. This tactic allows you to earn more from less traffic, and as the buying traffic increases so do your earnings.  As a side note, I find it much more beneficial to promote products for my affiliates when I am passionate about what they are offering.  Then I am able to promote these products from an earnest and heartfelt place, and my readers can sense that.

It is of course important to make sure and select high quality products that are highly targeted to your audience, but, there is typically plenty to choose from in the thousands of niches being sought after online.

Make sure the products and services you promote fit well with your target audience (ie: conversions in weight loss products promoted on a golf site will not yield desired results).

You may even consider promoting CPA (cost per action) offers that typically pay much better than % based affiliate payout structures. In CPA, a set amount is paid for some type of action that the user you refer takes on a merchant’s site. Many high end brands offer $25 + for free trials and leads and these tend to convert very well, especially, for well-known brands.

Take this example into consideration - promoting a coffee maker that costs $35 with a 4% commission, such as that offered with the Amazon Associates program, will yield $1.40 commission for each sale. This means that you have to sell almost 36 of these coffee makers to make $50.

However, if you promote a CPA offer that pays $25 commission for each converted lead, it only takes 2 sales to make the same $50.

2. Optimize For Mobile

Ø 

As of 2013 there were 1.4 billion smartphones in use across the world and that number is rising daily.

Ø  Americans spend 2 hours per day on their mobile devices, shopping and browsing the web for information.

Ø  The mobile market will generate $400 billion by 2015, which, is a 35% increase over 2012 that generated $139 billion.

Ø  57% of users will not recommend companies to friends and families and through social media that do not render properly on their mobile devices.

These statistics prove one thing: you must optimize your sites and affiliate channels for mobile in all of your online endeavors. You can increase commissions substantially on your sites when they render correctly on various mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

Using a responsive design is no longer an option, but a definite requirement. It is also quite important to test your site for all possible screen sizes to see what users will see when they visit your site.

Free Tool To Check Mobile Design

Responsinator is a great free tool that shows you in real time how your site looks in the most popular smartphones and tablets in use today.

Never leave this to chance as you can easily lose out on substantial earnings when visitors leave your site because they cannot view it properly on their phone or tablet.

3. Presell Your Traffic

No matter what niche or industry may be, your target audience always has something they are looking for, and those people are seeking products or services that will help them to find what they are looking for. 

This is precisely where pre-selling your traffic can go a long way to increasing affiliate commissions.

Never send cold traffic directly to the merchant’s site and rely on them to have a converting sales page, it is much more effective to pre-sell them before they land there!

The art of pre-selling involves illustrating to that traffic (before the "call to action"), as to its uses and benefits and specifically how it can help them to find the information that they seek. Sometimes your target audience may not even understand their search in its entirety.  This means that you need to be as comprehensive as possible in your approach, and offer them with great clarity what you, as the marketer, are bringing to the table.  

The use of various forms of media such as video and images illustrate features and benefits very powerfully. 

It’s a fact that sales pages with video convert 80% better than those with text alone.

Of course, the methods will essentially differ, depending on the products that you promote.  It’s not always possible to do a video demonstration for every product, but it is always possible to provide a strong message that provides as much as information as possible.

4. Become A Valuable Asset

People tend to trust recommendations from those they consider a valuable asset in a niche. Consider writing free reports or short eBooks about relevant topics on your site, and then give them away to site traffic.

The most effective way to do this is by offering these through an email marketing opt-in form. This way you can capture their email, add it to your list and create another marketing and support channel.

Make sure the free content you offer provides the most value to your audience because value leads to loyalty ... and loyalty can be the biggest driver of conversions. 

Offering free information that serves your audience’s needs distinguishes you from the potential of many other affiliates who may be promoting those very same products.  

Be sure to include related product affiliate links in the reports, but try not to be over promotional, and always make sure to recommend only the best.  It goes without saying that your credibility is one of your biggest assets!

There is a delicate balance between weaving a sales pitch and providing useful information. If you continuously provide useful information and continue to strive to be helpful, you will build a sense of trust with your readers that will lead them to supporting you by buying your products.  I cannot emphasize enough how important this trust factor is.

Continue to cater to your email marketing list, no matter how small or how large ... as this is a powerful tool that goes well beyond getting one sale and moves into the nurturing of a lifelong relationship with a target audience that can support you greatly on an on-going basis.