There is nothing more frustrating than getting excited about writing a review for an affiliate product that you love and watching it flop in terms of actually making money.
It’s happened to me – I’ve used a product, loved it, thought it was the perfect fit for my audience, wrote up a grand review, published it, and saw nothing but crickets in my Clickbank, Ejunkie, or other commissions report.
So what can you do to ensure that you make money with an affiliate review post no matter what? Try this approach.
Researching Products I Use
As a user of both StudioPress and Thesis themes, I’m constantly asked why I chose to use one over another for a particular website. I also kept receiving questions about the main differences between the two and which one was really better. The truth is, for me, both are great for different reasons.
So I decided to do a little keyword research. It turned out that there was a small amount of people who search for the phrase thesis vs genesis.
While this is a pretty low number (and not even really accurate), it did show that there were people looking for this information. And regardless of the low search volume, the point is the people searching for those keywords are the people who are most likely to buy.
Creating a Comparison Guide
Since I love both themes, creating a comparison guide for them was quite easy. My 2,500+ word post on Thesis vs Genesis turned into a relatively non-biased review of both themes all rolled into one.
From an affiliate standpoint, it doesn’t matter what decision the reader makes at the end of the post. If they choose Thesis, I get an affiliate commission. If they choose StudioPress, I still get an affiliate commission.
The key to why this works for making money online through an affiliate review? People don’t feel like you are pushing one product onto them to make a buck. Instead, it gives people a choice at the end – and people love getting to make their own decisions. A plus is, if you’re reviewing two great products, you’ll also get a lot of support for one or the other in the comments.
Throwing in Extra Options
When it comes to comparing two products, the other thing that is nice to do is give further alternatives. In this case, I thought that maybe people don’t want to spend around $80 on a premium WordPress theme. So I tossed in a few lesser priced options including Elegant Themes which offers 76+ themes for only $39 (assuming you don’t need the developer’s edition) since that is half the price of the other two theme options.
If you can also thrown in supplementary products that compliment the main products compared, you can make a little off of those as well. For those choosing Thesis, including options such as Thesis skins by Thesis Awesome gives you an opportunity to capitalize on income from those who may already have Thesis and don’t decide to switch to a new theme in the end.
Marketing the Guide
Once you’ve created a comparison guide / affiliate review, your next job is to market it to get more traffic and build some link juice. This is where Google Alerts comes into play. Since people search thesis vs genesis, one can assume they would post about it as well.
I created alerts for that phrase along with thesis vs studiopress, thesis genesis, and thesis studiopress. Then, each time someone posted a question in a forum or other network about the two themes, I could share my post as a reference. Sometimes I did it through private messages vs. on the forum itself as many forums would consider that spamming (even though the post legitimately answers the question), but regardless, it worked. More traffic came in and I got the chance in some places to build links to my post.
The Results
Today, my post ranks at #2 for thesis vs genesis. It’s also my second most popular post of all time. And as far as income goes, here’s the breakdown of what I’ve made.
- $3,724.00 from StudioPress commissions.
- $561.00 from Thesis commissions.
- $949.00 from Elegant Themes commissions.
While that may not be a lot for super affiliates, it’s good for someone who usually doesn’t do that well with affiliate reviews. And really good considering it is from one post – not many people can say they made over 5K with one blog post. As an added bonus, it also did well in terms of social shares.
It’s not often you get a ton of tweets for an affiliate product review unless that review is super informative.
Sharing The Results
An added bonus when you create a comparison guide for two affiliate products is that you learn what people like more between the two. And that makes for a great followup post! So after a year of my Thesis vs. Genesis post going live, I posted stats straight out of Shareasale showing which themes people choose between the two companies. StudioPress won, and Thesis tied with Elegant Themes for second place.
The nice part is a post about Premium WordPress Themes – Which Ones Do People Buy is again informational and leads to traffic back to the comparison guide plus a boost in affiliate sales for both products.
There you have it. Maybe it’s not much of a secret – perhaps it’s more of a case study. Either way, give it a try with two similar products. And if you’ve done a comparison of two products for an affiliate review, share your results in the comments!
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