How To Write Blog Posts That Generate Actual Affiliate Sales

How To Write Blog Posts That Generate Actual Affiliate Sales

When I first got into the affiliate marketing world back in 2008, the first thing I have read online is that any entrepreneur should have a blog. I still remember reading an old article on entrepeneur.com that talked about the blogging phenomenon and how new sites started to blow up in days with just one viral blog post.

 I took this advice to heart and started my own blog. I wrote 2 articles every single week for months, and despite my initial doubts – I started getting a little bit of traffic, which grew steadily over time.

To try and capitalize off my blog’s meager amount of traffic and get into the affiliate marketing game, I have joined dozens of different affiliate programs in order to promote their products and earn commissions. 

Nevertheless, no matter how many hours I have spent on writing and optimizing my content, I just couldn’t turn my existing traffic into something tangible. 

Years later, I have learned the most important lesson when it comes to creating blog content:

Blog posts can be the #1 method for organically growing your audience and generating affiliate sales, but only if you write them based on proper keyword research and with the clear intent of solving a real problem. 

It may sound obvious to you, but doing all of that together is not easy at all. It took me years of experience to get even remotely better at it. 

What helped me the most to improve my writing process is following 4 simple steps that are the pillar of any affiliate-oriented blog post, which I’ll share with you all today. 

We would do it by closely reviewing the following article from one of my blogs: 11+ Best Virtual Assistant Services, and the logic behind each of its sections.

So let’s get started!

Step 1 – Conduct a proper keyword research (Find a topic with the right intent)

Your  first step to create a blog post that generates sales is to stop writing based on hunches and personal preferences, and instead base all of your content on actual keyword research that you’ll do properly prior to anything else.

Before you even start thinking in terms of specific content ideas, you need to have a clear picture of what you are looking to get from the blog post. In our case here, the goal is to write an article that would generate affiliate sales on Fiverr. 

How can we do it?

By identifying a keyword that has a clear buyer’s intent and making sure our blog post can act as a valuable spot bridging between the potential buyers and Fiverr.

People go to Fiverr because they are looking for a service provider who could fulfill their current need. So naturally, we as bloggers need to try and fill the gap between their issue (Searching on Google for a certain kind of service they need) and the place who can solve it for them (Fiverr).

When it comes to the actual keyword research process, we would need a tool to help us get some numbers in order to make a wise, calculated decision. My personal recommendation is SEMRush, but there are viable free alternatives that you can use such as Ubersuggest.

While searching for a strong main keyword for our article, I keep the following criteria’s in mind:

1. 4000 or more monthly global searches.
   
2. KD (keyword difficulty) score of 65 or less – Keyword difficulty is a SEMRush parameter that can help you estimate how difficult ranking for a certain keyword would be. 
   
3. A clear buyer intent- I am not looking for any informative topics; we are writing to generate sales, so the keyword we would target has to attract actual buyers.

The easiest way to find keywords with buyer-intent is to search competitor sites or filter a large number of results with words such as “buy”, “best”, “how to get” and “services”.

In the case of our example’s article, I went through a large list I have gathered in SEMrush, analyzed the displayed keywords one by one and eventually found the keyword “virtual assistant services” over here:

As you can see below, it passes all of my criterias – 7800 monthly searches, keyword difficulty of 61% and a clear buyer intent:

Step 2 – Come up with a killer title

In a world dominated by search engines, a bad headline is basically a death sentence to your blog post. If your title won’t be attractive and stand out, you won’t get visitors regardless of your actual ranking on the results page.

Here are a few pointers to lead your way in regards to writing compelling titles:

• Use numbers and specifically – odd numbers whenever you can. It may sound funny and particular, but researches show that odd numbers are perceived by the wide public to be more trustworthy and showcase authenticity.
• Try to create an emotional response when reading your title. It can be done by using power words with a strong emphasis, such as “Heartwarming”, “Massive”, “Revolutionary” and “Step-by-step”.

Step 3 – Write a strong opening 

Writing a compelling opening is usually the hardest part for me. Over the years, bloggers came up with plenty of formulas to help facilitate this part of the writing, but my personal recommendation is using facts and trusted referred sources.

You do it by writing a few introductory paragraphs talking about the topic in general, immediately followed by answers to relevant questions.

In our case for example, I have used the opening to answer two big questions that are relevant to the topic: what is a virtual assistant (setting the baseline for the rest of the article) and what services do virtual assistants offer.

The second question directly leads us to the main portion of the post and the section where we would try to teach our readers what are the best virtual assistant services, and where they can get them.

Step 4 – Give your readers exactly what they look for, and more

After the opening paragraphs, it’s time to get right into the meat of the article and give your readers exactly what they are looking for. In our case, it’s the place where we showcase the best available services that can solve their issue of finding a virtual assistant.

As we are writing with the intent of generating Fiverr affiliate sales, Fiverr would be the first place on our list and would get a featured spot:

The whole goal we have in this section of the blog post is introducing Fiverr to those who are not aware of it, establishing why it’s the best option from our perspective and what are its advantages over other platforms.

It’s very important to not only provide general information regarding what is Fiverr, what are the best benefits of using it and where can you find virtual assistant services – but to make sure that we showcase specific high-rated sellers and highlight why the readers should give those sellers a try.

When it comes to blogging, it’s all about making it personal. Recommending sellers that you have already worked with, and even ordering services yourself to test them out before you feature them in your article. 

Sure, it may cost you a few additional bucks to test those sellers quality of service, but it would turn your blog post into a real piece of content, with screenshots of delivers that would help you readers understand that you have actually invested both your time and money into ensuring you recommend only the absolute best Fiverr can offer. Nothing less.

The Fiverr section of the article should be the most detailed, but afterwards it’s important to include other viable options and alternatives, especially in list-oriented articles like the one in our example here, which is all about gathering and showcasing a list of different platforms.

Make sure the next few sections in the list are still quite detailed, but after number 5 you can make them shorter and shorter, according to the reader’s attention span.

Conclusion

If I can leave you with only one takeaway from this article, it would be the following:

Always write with a purpose.

Whether it’s generating affiliate sales, selling your own product or growing your email list – make sure that all of your blog content is:

• Targeting a specific keyword (after comprehensive and smart  keyword research)
• solving an issue or a problem related to your keyword
• Serving a specific and clear purpose