Reviews are one of the most popular ways to promote products online and it’s with good reason.  Every time a product launches there can be thousands of potential customers who have heard the buzz surrounding the launch but want to find out what the product is – how it can benefit them and if it really works – before they commit to paying any membership fees.

This is great for affiliates as it means that you can build a strong relationship with your visitors.  Consequently they will be more inclined to look at your reviews next time they come to purchase a product online.

It can be quite difficult writing product reviews – particularly if you’ve never tried before and there are huge differences between a ‘good’ review and a ‘bad’ one.  This is why we’ve put together a few tips that we hope will help you to write some great product reviews.

Decide where you plan to feature your review

Do you have your own website or are you planning to start a new discussion in your favourite forum?  It may seem irrelevant at this point but knowing your audience is key to how you structure your review.

If you have your own website, think about how you are going to lay out your review by considering the following:

–          Do you plan to review more than one product per page?
–          Are you going to compare different products?
–          Will your review be short and to the point or full page and in depth?

Once you have thought about the above, you will be better prepared to decide whether you are going to dedicate a full page of your site to each product that you are reviewing or whether you are going to provide your visitors with one page where you’ll review several products in less detail and maybe feature a “Product of the Week”.

Whatever you decide, be sure to include plenty of calls to action for your reader to purchase the product through your Affiliate link.

Make your review visually exciting.

One of the worst things you can do is present your visitor with a big slab of uniform looking text.  If you’re lucky they might read the first line, very few will persevere and read your article through to the end. Break your text down into easy to follow paragraphs, you can even pull out key lines and use them as captions in your review.  Make your review look eye catching by including images, banners and buttons in your review as well as different font sizes and colours.  Many ClickSure Sellers and Advertisers have provided banners in the Marketplace for their offer.  You can download the code for these banners which has your Affiliate ID built in.

Know your audience.

If you don’t know who your target audience is, you’ll struggle to connect with them and convert their clicks to your review into sales.  Before you write your review you should decide who you are aiming your review at.  Then you can think about what it is that your audience will be looking for, how you can phrase your review to make your readers feel included and involved in your content.  Say, if your target audience is affiliate marketing beginners, if you use any terminology that is advanced you should include a brief explanation or example. The last thing you want to do is isolate any of your readers as this will result in them clicking off your page.

Be honest. But not too honest.

You should never completely slam a product – it’s just not good practice.  However, if you didn’t like a product, then it’s not always a bad thing to include in your review features or elements of the product that you didn’t like, but maybe you could try to turn what was a negative feature for you into something that might benefit somebody else.

You should also be transparent about being an affiliate when you’re writing a review. Somewhere on your page you should state that you will earn a commission if somebody clicks through your link to purchase the product.

Use your voice.

By writing your review in a personal manner, the reader will relate more to the points that you are raising.  Writing in an overly professional manner, that may not necessarily come naturally to you, will show in your finished review and could come across as sounding false or insincere.

Know your stuff.

You should always fully research the product and niche that you are reviewing.  If you haven’t got a copy of the product you can often request a JV copy from the Seller or even purchase the product yourself.  Alternatively, you can research the product by reading other reviews and summaries of the product.  If this is the route that you chose, you need to ensure that your copy remains unique and that you do not replicate other Affiliates’ work.

Don’t try to sell anything.

The sales page should do this! Most people who have searched for a review on a product will have already seen the sales page.  When they look for a review, they want to know how the product can really benefit them.  They don’t want to read a re-write of the sales video – they want facts about how they can use the product, whether the product is suitable for them and they want to read this first hand from somebody who has seen the product and, preferably used it.

Be helpful.

One of the best ways to build a relationship with your readers is to make yourself available to help them.  Add an email address or contact form for your readers to contact you via. If your readers have queries that you’re able to help them with then you immediately gain their trust.  You become a helpful figure who they can rely on to provide relevant and informative advice rather than just a faceless affiliate who only wants to make sales.

Benefits, benefits, benefits!!

Don’t just talk about the features of a product. Think about what you would want to know if you were looking into making any purchase.  You wouldn’t necessarily want to hear or read about the ins and outs of how the product worked but you would want to know about how the product would be of benefit to you.  Before you start writing your review, try to list 10 features of the product.  For every feature write down how that particular feature will benefit the user.  For example, my chair has wheels – this is a design feature of the chair.  The benefits of my chair having wheels are that they enable me to move my chair easily from under my desk; I don’t have to pick it up to move it and it doesn’t make a loud noise each time I stand up.

So, you’ve got your very own website, you’ve been working hard and spending your spare time promoting some of the products in the ClickSure Marketplace. You’ve made a few sales but you’d really like to shift things up a gear, so you need ideas to help improve your ClickSure commissions.

Don’t worry, I’ve compiled a list of useful tips and tricks to help boost your affiliate earnings with ClickSure. These tips will help to turn more of your visitors into customers.

1 – Learn Everything You Can About The Product And How To Promote It Effectively To Your Target Audience

As an affiliate, you need to build a website to ‘pre-sell’ the product or products you are promoting. ‘Pre-Sell’ is simply getting the visitor more interested in the product, through a review, list of benefits, case studies etc.

The visitor reads your content, has their interest peaked and clicks through to the official product site, where they hopefully buy.

However, it’s no good just having a few paragraphs of text and a banner, then expecting your visitors to eagerly buy. You need to make your site attractive, informative and appealing for the visitor.

• Basically, it’s your job to get them excited about the product and make sure they understand how it will change their life for the better. Some of your visitors will already be familiar with the product, but most will not. What you tell and show them, will have a huge effect on whether they click through or not.

• The visitor may not fully understand what the product is or how it will benefit them and they could be in browsing mode. As you can imagine, the more positive your site is about the product, the more you can show them that it’s the best choice, the more testimonials you use, the more likely the visitor will click through and buy.

• Make sure you cover any questions the visitor may have regarding the product. Tell them about what it is, what it does and why it’s the best. You can get all the info you need from the product website. Many product vendors will have pre-written reviews, articles, etc you can use and you can normally use any testimonials and case studies too.

• Get to know the products you’re selling inside out and it will make a massive difference to your results. If you can successfully get the visitor excited about the product, you’ll make more sales.

2 – Promote One Product At A Time

Remember to promote one MAIN product on your site. If you have a review site with multiple products, make sure you choose one as a winner/favourite/best. And explain why it’s the winner/favourite/best.

Everything should lead to that one product. Obviously, someone may buy one of the other products you’re reviewing, but in general visitors will go for your main suggestion.

Be careful about including other offers, banners etc on your site.

Many affiliates have multiple ads, banners etc for other products, but I would say avoid that approach. You don’t want to confuse your visitors and offering one product at a time is the best way to go.

3 – Set Yourself Up To Get Free Traffic From Google

The more visitors you get, the more sales you should make and you can get visitors in 2 ways. Paid traffic and free traffic.

You can buy as much traffic as you want, but it’s obviously best to try and set your site up so it attracts plenty of Google lurv and start enjoying the wave of free traffic. Also, because traffic that comes from Google has actually searched for what you’re promoting, it tends to convert into sales well.

To get ranked in Google you need plenty of good content based around your subject matter and keywords. As you’ve probably noticed recently, Google is getting rid of weak, content light sites. Make sure yours is high quality and informative and include plenty of links to your chosen product.

Another important part of getting your site ranked is updating your site regularly.

Google will visit your site when it’s new and ‘index’ it, so it can show it in the search results. It will keep coming back as long as you have new content on your site each time. If you stop posting new content, Google will visit less and you will find it hard to get ranked for your keywords.

No rankings = no free traffic.

To avoid this happening, have a blog on your site and post a couple of articles each week. They don’t have to be regarding the exact product, but make sure they are relevant to the product. Remember, you’re educating your visitors so they see you as an expert. They’ll be far more likely to trust you then and buy your recommendations.

It’s simple to get info for your articles. Google your subject and you’ll find a world of info you can re-write. Look at other sites in your niche for useful info, buy PLR articles you can use as your own and re-write them or even hire an outsourcer to write content for you. It’s not expensive and will be an investment in your business.

Obviously you redirect people back to the product you are promoting throughout the article or post.

4 – Use A Headline On Your Homepage

Your website needs to grab your visitor’s attention. As humans our attention span is pretty low, for most things. However, our online attention span is even lower.

If you don’t grab your visitor’s attention immediately, you’ll lose them with one click of the mouse. If they click away, they are not going to buy anything you are promoting, so you won’t earn any commission.

The best way to draw them into your site is with a headline. If you tell them immediately ‘What’s in it for them’, you’ll keep their attention longer. If it’s a review site, even having something general such as:

“I’ve Spent The Time, Money & Effort Reviewing All The Best Products In The Making Money Online Niche . . . So You Don’t Have To”

Is better than no headline at all. It gives something for the visitor’s eyes to go to when they land on your site. If they like the headline, they’ll read the next bit and so on. Make sure your headline offers them a benefit, peaks their curiosity or makes an irresistible offer. You’re much more likely to draw them in than just having “Welcome To My Site”.

The longer you can keep them on your site, the better. How long they stay, or your ‘Bounce Rate’, is another thing Google takes into account when ranking you for your keywords.

Video on your homepage is a good idea. If someone watches a video, they stay on your site at least a few minutes, which improves your bounce rate.

5 – Start Building A ‘List’.

A ‘List’ simply refers to a list of email subscribers. You’ve seen the websites where it asks for your email in return for a sample, free report, video etc? They are building a list of subscribers.

Once you put your email in the box, the email is stored in what’s known as an Autoresponder. You also upload email messages into the autoresponder and it sends them out to your subscribers at pre-set intervals. You can set it for daily, weekly, monthly etc, it’s up to you.

Your visitor gets a confirmation email, minutes after putting in their email address. They click on it to confirm it’s actually them subscribing.

They begin getting the rest of the email series which should be a mixture of help, advice, tips, news etc, with some product promotion thrown in every few messages. Because they have given you their email, they are obviously interested in what you are offering, so you can pick up a lot of sales when they begin getting your emails.

The beauty of this is that it can be set up in a day, with 20 or 30 emails lined up and ready to roll. Then it becomes autopilot, as a percentage of your visitors will sign up, read the emails and end up buying the product, without any more effort from you.

You can build up to having 1000’s of people on your ‘list’ and make a good income from that alone.

You’ll need to set up an autoresponder and the most popular ones are:

http://www.aweber.com
http://www.getresponse.co.uk/
http://mailchimp.com

Check each one as you can normally get a deal for the first month, or a free account with a set amount of subscribers allowed, to get you off to a start. Remember, to be successful online, you must be prepared to invest a little money.

If you can’t afford this yet, wait until you get your first commission check and re-invest some of it. Having a good subscriber list is worth its weight in gold and can bring in a serious income.

Last Thing, Keep Working At It . . .

Don’t give up on the dream of financial independence. Keep working towards it by chipping away each day and you’ll be there in no time.

But please understand that you can’t build a site in 10 minutes, then expect to do nothing else with it and for Google to automatically send you customers and sales. You have to learn how to attract visitors and improve your results, then keep applying yourself a little each day.

And before you know it, you’ll have a raging success on your hands!

To become a successful affiliate you need your own website. You can make some money without one, but to be really successful and continue to be successful for many years to come, you need your own website.

The more of your website visitors become your customers, the more money you make. So how do we increase the number of visitors who become customers?

There are a number of things you can start with to push up your conversion rates and we’ll go through them one at a time.

NOTE: Conversion rate simply refers to what percentage of your visitors become customers and actually spend money. If one in every hundred visitors buys something, your conversion rate is 1%. If you can get that up to 2%, so two out of every hundred visitors buys, you will be doubling your profits, so this is very important.

Your Website Needs To Look Attractive

To have a successful money making website your design and appearance is critical. If customers visit your site to find a dull, tacky, out of date website the likelihood of them continuing to browse is low.

An attractive website has a big effect on potential customers, increasing their confidence and trust in your site. If you take a minute to look at the most popular web pages such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram they all have simple yet attractive sites. Anyone who visits these sites instantly trusts them due to their recognisable design.

First of all though, you have to decide what you want your visitors to do on your site. If you decide this first, it will be much easier to design your site.

Do you want them to click on a link for one of the products to read more? Input their email for a free report? Read reviews of products? It’s important for the design, as you can use design and obviously copy, to guide and influence your visitors and get them to do what you want.

It’s the job of the copy (the words on your site) to get people to buy, but design and especially images, can have a massive impact on the look and functionality of your site.

TIP: Blue is one of the best website design colours and it has been proven to convert visitors into buyers in many online tests.

Including quality, relevant images is very important for making your site attractive and appealing. As the famous saying goes ‘A picture speaks a thousand words’ and this is the case when creating a successful website.

Include images in articles, blogs, posts and just generally throughout your site where you feel they are needed.

TIP: Images of happy people and especially happy people using or benefiting from the product you are promoting, go down really well with visitors.

One of the very best tools for creating high quality, professional looking websites is WordPress. Not WordPress.com, which is also for website creation, but your site is built on their server and at their mercy. Not the best scenario.

Remember, you need your own site on your OWN server, so we are talking about installing WordPress on your own site, which is a piece of cake and takes around 3 clicks of the mouse.

The great thing about WordPress is the fact that you can get 1000’s of different ‘Themes’ for it, which you can use to make your site look how you want. Some themes you have to buy but there are lots of quality free ones, so have a good look round online first.

Themeforest.com is a great resource for the highest quality paid themes and simply type Free WordPress Themes into Google for free ones.

Your Website Needs To Be Easy To Navigate

If your website has lots of pages, make sure your site easy to navigate. Name your pages clearly and make sure everything is listed in your navigation.

Always have a Home button, so your visitors can get back to your Homepage if they need to.

You Need To Ensure All Your Content Is High Quality

Once you get your site looking all glamorous you need to turn your attention to your content. This is also where your focus will remain as this is the most IMPORTANT aspect of any successful website. This is what attracts customers to your site and gets them to visit again and again.

Providing your visitors with quality content which is useful and informative is crucial when creating a successful, profitable website. You want your visitors to view your website as a resource centre packed full of advice and relevant information.

It is important to add content several times a week in order to maintain your SEO. If you do not update content regularly Google will view your site as stagnant and your site will start to fall down in the search engine rankings.

Make sure the majority of your content is unique. Obviously, some posts relating to other posts online is fine, so there’ll will be some duplication, but writing your own content is the way to go for the most part.

Your Website Needs To Grab Your Visitors Attention

As humans our attention span is pretty low, for most things. However, our online attention span is even lower.

If you don’t grab your visitor’s attention immediately, you’ll lose them with one click of the mouse. If they click away, they are not going to buy anything you are promoting, so you won’t earn any commission.

The best way to draw them into your site is with a headline. If you tell them immediately ‘What’s in it for them’, you’ll keep their attention longer. If it’s a review site, even having something general such as:

“I’ve Spent The Time, Money & Effort Reviewing All The Best Products In The Making Money Online Niche . . . So You Don’t Have To”

Is better than no headline at all. It gives something for the visitors eyes to go to when they land on your site. If they like the headline, they’ll read the next bit and so on. Make sure your headline offers them a benefit, peaks their curiosity or makes an irresistible offer. You’re much more likely to draw them in than just having “Welcome To My Site”.

The longer you can keep them on your site, the better. How long they stay, or your ‘Bounce Rate’, is another thing Google takes into account when ranking you for your keywords.

Video on your homepage is a good idea. If someone watches a video, they stay on your site at least a few minutes, which improves your bounce rate.

So there you have it. So much more we could go through, but follow these tips and you’ll be off to a great start and you can improve and test as you go along.