Product reviews are a great way to generate income granted that you have some affiliate program to back you up. An ordinary informational article may introduce the readers to a product, but review articles help readers make a buying decision. With carefully placed affiliate links, you can make money off their purchase. The best part is that the reader doesn’t have to bear any additional cost, a win-win situation.
Good review articles can generate income through affiliate links as well as ads when the website gets significant traffic. In this article, we will help you write articles that sell! Let’s begin!
1. Examine the product
Reviewing a product is all about understanding its every aspect, even the subtlest of nuances. Take time to understand the product and what the company intends with its creation. Now evaluate whether the product delivers on its promises.
Even if the product does what it says precisely, you need to think from the customer side of things. What are the alternatives and how is this product different from them? And now the most important question – Is it worth your reader’s money?
Now put your thoughts into words, and see how a remarkable article takes shape.
Make sure you provide the reader with sound advice at the end. Educating the customer is taken care with the review part, however, to get affiliate sales, you need to persuade them to choose the best one. Like the famous words from Peter Drucker;
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
– Peter Drucker
Do not push the customer for a click, let your final verdict do all the work for you. Again, the only way the reader is going to trust you is by reading how product-centric your content is and this only happens when you spend your time to explore the product.
And Don’t just reserve yourself to reviewing just one type of product. The key is to explore every corner of your niche.
Review multiple products and compare them to give the readers the best advice on choosing between products. The most important thing is, to be honest with the readers.
What to do if you do not have a product in hand
We understand that it’s hard to get the actual products when you are just starting out. This part will help to create neat perfect articles. When you are reviewing a product without having it in hand, make sure that you refer multiple authentic sources for your info. There is nothing more unethical and embarrassing than giving your audience false information.
Even when you trust information from a website, refer more authentic websites to cross-check that information, especially numeric. The official website of the product is a great way to authentic info on their products.
One of the best ways to know a product without having it in hand is by referring to videos. They will help you know the physical aspects of the product and with an eye for detail, you can pick up subtle features of the product that you can include in your article to make it more authentic. And you can sure that readers will appreciate these subtle details.
By going the extra mile with research and cross-checking, you can ensure that your review is as authentic as the ones done by established websites.
2. Identify the target audience
Instead of writing a random review, pick a target audience who has a special need that to which you can cater. The audience has a mix of interests like tech, food, science, books, etc. Pool your efforts to a target audience in a specific niche.
It is no secret that some niches are more saturated than others. And when you start writing review articles, you can either go the mainstream route or pick a niche within in that is unexplored.
The problem with going the mainstream route is that it will take your articles more time to get to the readers because of the higher competition.
You can instead take a more targeted route where you explore the void that is present within your niche, an area of products that sell, but not reviewed much. It will help you get your articles ranked faster and higher in SERP.
The niche that you select must be in line with your passion. The reason why this is important is that without passion, you will not have the interest to study more about the products and the changing trends in the industry. Your writing will only guide by a short enthusiasm that will burn out when you do not see sudden results.
Some writers are adamant they will not do competitive analysis. This often happens when you are too confident in your writing. This is a sure shot recipe for disaster.
Do not get too comfortable with your own creation. Understanding your competition gives you new ideas and helps you stay on track. Trends are changing and the best ways to stay ahead of the curve is to surpass the competition. This is only possible if you understand the competition.
Recent updates from Google have made it quite hard for the new website to rank well unless they prove their mettle. And when you write something that is in line with your passion, you will not feel like you are working without no return.
After your articles start to rank, you can branch out or even hire writers for a broader spectrum of subjects.
3. Support your review with personal visuals
When you have the product in your hand, it opens up a world of possibilities. You can take your own photos of the product, explain the feel, fit and finish of the material, etc. Write about what you think about the product. Click photos of the interesting aspects of your product and add it to the mix to let the readers know that you really put effort into this effort.
Another perk of reviewing the actual product is that you can test out its features first hand. Then you can derive your conclusions and share them with the readers.
We highly advise making your own product review video with the product. All these factors help in establishing credibility to your name and brand.
Do not just review the most popular products on the market, every reviewer will be chiming in with theirs too. Write review articles of lesser known products that have a respectable customer base. You can use Amazon or any major online retailer to research on products that people buy but don’t have mainstream popularity.
This is a great way to reach a very specific audience and gain their trust. Also, look out for new startups and companies who have released new products. Reviewing their product will help you gain more audience as well as gets you recognition among those companies, which often lands you the opportunity to get their products sent to you in the future.
Stay apart from the rest of the competition by bringing your own signature into the reviews.
Make sure that each of your articles carries that vibrancy in a way that readers will prefer your reviews when to other websites. Again we emphasize that what you write should be with the audience in mind.
4. Properly format the text
Having chunks of text laid one after the other doesn’t make a good read. Making your articles visually appealing is one way to gain the reader’s attraction. Some of the best ways to improve your content’s visual appeal are:
Use a summary box: A summary box is a condensed form of your review. It contains pros, cons, price, and verdict from your side. It should not be complex, but descriptive enough to give the readers a buying decision.
Photos, gifs, and videos: Visual content like photos and videos are a great way to help the readers understand the product more. You can add photos and videos from other sites granted that you link them sources.
Short paragraphs: Use short lines and paragraphs. Being concise in every line you write makes it a more pleasurable experience for the readers. Short paragraphs are much easier on the eyes than large chunks of text.
Use multiple headings: Structuring your content using heading and subheadings adds to the visual appeal as well as the helps you in regards to SEO.
Short and concise descriptions often land your text in the featured snippets section. If your content is shown as a featured snippet, be ready for more traffic.
Use specific keywords in the meta tags: Strategically adding high ranking keywords into the paragraphs is a great way to ensure a spot in features snippets. Use a reliable keyword research tool like SE Ranking Keyword Research tool or Google Keyword Planner (free) to get high ranking keywords with low competition.
Diversifying your content using some or all of these methods will help you structure your content in a very user-friendly manner. With each addition, you are making the content easier to read, and also improving the information in it.
5. Use the AIDA funnel to close sales
The AIDA funnels is a tried and tested method that you can use to land a sale on your website. It is all about guiding the readers through a subliminal though the process. The steps involved in AIDA are:
Awareness: Create awareness about the product.
Interest: Spark interest in the reader by mentioning the benefits of the products.
Desire: Connect the product to the reader in such a way that a sense of want or need is generated within them.
Action: Some readers who are interested in a product might only need a slight nudge from you to click on your affiliate links. So when you are confident about a product, use a catchy call to action to help them make their buying decision.
Caution must be taken not to recommend every single product you review when you feel that the customer is getting a bad deal out of it.
Evaluate your progress through metrics
Track all the relevant metrics on your website regularly. Part of making a good review website with affiliate links is to know what works and what doesn’t, and numbers are a great way to determine just that!
See how your website is performing in terms of traffic, link clicks, on page time, bounce rate, etc. Using online software like Post Affiliate Pro can greatly reduce your workload as it collects all the data and presents them on an intuitive dashboard. When you are writing review articles, having the aid of such software will give you real-time info on what’s happening with your website.
Writing in-depth about a product does pave the way for powerful content, but you should also give importance to search engine readability. And this is where SEO comes in.
Include best SEO practices like adding relevant keywords, hyperlinks, meta descriptions and using proper headings to make the content SEO optimized.
Being aware of SEO doesn’t just mean adopting best SEO practices, but also staying away from black hat SEO methods. There are many black hat SEO practices like buying backlinks that may seem like a great option to get your link to top spot on Google, but once the bots from Google will inevitably find out about such suspicious activity, your site will never be ranked in the top positions for a certain period of time or indefinitely.
Bottom line
The most important advice is to have patience and consistency when starting your own venture. By building up content, your website will gain authority in the eyes of both the readers as well the search engines. However, do not expect results to come pouring in the first day. With time, your articles will start to rank and with each hit, you will find the fruits of your labor.
Writing click-worthy affiliate link article isn’t easy, but that’s that what makes the final results totally worth it.
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