I read an interview with Al Carlton today in the book Blog Blazers, a fantastic book in which Stephane Grenier interviewed 40 high profile bloggers.
Al Carlton is the owner of Coolest Gadgets, a gadget blog with over 65,000 RSS subscribers. When asked about his most successful blog post, Al mentioned his post about a Really Cool Portable GPS Tracker. Posted 2 years ago, this post only took 15 minutes to write and has since been viewed over 100,000 times and generated over $2,000 in sales. This is a fantastic example of how you can use your blogs influence and traffic to generate some additional affiliate commissions.
Have a look at Al’s blog post. Notice how :
- The post has a lot of information about the product, what it does and why it’s so good.
- There are links to where you can buy the product and how much it costs.
- At the time the product was just released. Many people were not aware that you could purchase a portable GPS device so were very interested in it.
- The product is highly targeted towards the blogs readership.
Coolest Gadgets does have a readership which is more likely to purchase recommended products than other types of blog readers but the key thing to note here is that the product pretty much sells itself. The owner Al Carlton didn’t have to do the hard sell. All he did was say how cool he thought the product was and posted some affiliate links to them.
Gaining the trust of your readers is very important and if you want to recommend a product to your readers, how much you make via affiliate commissions could come down to how much your readers value your opinion. However, there are certain products which don’t need to be pushed onto readers because the product or service is so good.
For example, let’s say for arguments sake that 50% of BloggingTips readers trust my opinion and 50% of readers don’t. If I was to recommend a new blog hosting service then half the readers of BloggingTips will trust my judgement and consider using the service and half will not. Now let’s imagine I recommend a new domain name registration site which is offering domain names for $5. Most if not all of BloggingTips readers would be interested in this. Whether they value my opinion or not is not really a concern because it’s such a great deal and the product sells itself.
The above is a basic example though I’m sure you understand what I’m trying to say. If you recommend a great product then you are more likely to generate a sale. In other words, don’t just promote products which offer high affiliate commissions. 
Have you made a lot of money by recommending a great product or service? I’d love to hear what has and hasn’t worked for you.
Best of luck and have a great weekend
Kevin
teraom | November 21st, 2008 at 1:32 pm #
Sounds a cool idea, on two aspects.
1. you offer some good stuff to readers
2. You also get affiliate commissions.
Donace | November 21st, 2008 at 2:29 pm #
Think you also have to be wary of overselling to your readers…if I see you recommending a product everyday then would make me less likely to rely on your opinion. Though if done right…as mentiones can be very profitable.
Technogadge | November 22nd, 2008 at 5:31 am #
Coolest Gadgets is one of my favorite sites. Well, I am just a starter and trying to learn the tricks of the trade. After reading this I will definitely try to recommend products by providing good information on my blog.
Thanks
Clare @ Top Christmas Toys | November 22nd, 2008 at 9:04 am #
I just read the book last night and read this interview with interest too. I run a book review blog that gets a lot of traffic both search and repeat visits and every time I review a book I add the link to amazon - so far this year I think I’ve sold 6 copies! I think sometimes you need to get lucky with the product.
Angel Cuala | November 22nd, 2008 at 11:02 am #
I am just stating affiliate marketing so I can’t tell yet which strategy will work or not. But I did made some product reviews outside my blog, in which a client pays me on a fixed price. My (former) client was generous enough to teach me how to do it efficiently. Here are some of them.
1.0 Write it as a user, not as a writer.
2.0 Do not sell the product. Convince your readers that the product is a necessity for them.
3.0 Talk to your readers as if they are eating lunch with you.
4.0 Introduction is very vital because first impression last. Observe quality writing.
Now, I am reading a lot of affiliate marketing posts that can help me more and some of them are here in your blog, Kevin.
Thanks.
Internet Business Ideas | November 22nd, 2008 at 11:51 am #
Thanks for the tips.
It is always better to recommend something you used and had experiment with no matter what is the product.
Tanny
Free Internet Home Business Ideas
Kevin Muldoon (Post Author) | November 22nd, 2008 at 4:35 pm #
@Donace - Very true. It’s important not to oversell.
@Clare - It’s a great book isn’t it
@Angel - I agree. It helps if you are passionate about a subject. If you’re a gadget geek yourself then your enthusiasm will show in your posts, including posts which promote products.
Logo Designer | November 22nd, 2008 at 7:07 pm #
Thank you for sharing I am currently looking at affiliate sales for my logo design website. I think that it was an excellent point to make about recommending products tht sell themselves instead of the ones that just pay good money to associates.
Link Analysis | November 22nd, 2008 at 9:57 pm #
Of course, we must establish “trust” among the readers at the beginning, else they won’t simply listen to your recommendation.
PennySeeds.com | November 24th, 2008 at 7:59 am #
Sounds great, I was thinking of doing something similar with my blog.
Robert | November 25th, 2008 at 1:54 am #
Great ideas. i love to read it. will be back again later. thanks for sharing.