What makes a good affiliate marketing product review?
How to write a product review for affiliate products?
Product reviews are some of the most common types of content bloggers, and affiliate marketers write. Most brands collaborate with affiliate marketers to get the word out on their products to their niche markets.
Writing authentic and compelling reviews on products is one of the important aspects in an affiliate marketing world. An affiliate marketer can drive traffic to their affiliate website and increase their affiliate sales through product reviews.
Before purchasing a product, consumers look for reviews from people who have had firsthand experience with the product. As an affiliate marketer, your followers rely on you to give honest feedback on products without bias.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If someone makes a purchase through affiliate links, I may earn a small compensation. For more, please read on to privacy policy and disclosure.
While it may seem easy, writing attention-grabbing and eye-catching product reviews is not the easiest task. You can make numerous mistakes as an affiliate marketer that can jeopardize your ability to drive traffic and promote sales. This article contains information and tips to help you write a good product review right for the first time to avoid these mistakes.
Quick navigation
What Is a Product Review and Why it Matters
A product review is simply content centered on informing consumers of the benefits and disadvantages of a product. As an affiliate marketer, you can test the products yourself or work with a product tester to get honest feedback for your review.
Ideally, product reviews should be written by independent authors (affiliate marketers) or consumers after trying the product to avoid bias. A brand that writes a review on its products may lack credibility because it may fail to mention the drawbacks of its product.
Why Product Reviews Are Important
Product reviews offer many benefits to companies and brands. Apart from making a product more enticing to the target market, they can boost the brand’s image by making it the go-to product. Online reviews play an integral role in branding and marketing.
Based on statistics, most consumers invest in products after reading reviews. They see reviews as social proof, which helps to foster trust and build loyalty.
Product reviews can also boost the credibility of a product, and by extension, the brand. This is because a product with more reviews shows that it has been tried by numerous users, making it easy to trust. This is especially effective when the reviews come from people with no affiliations to the brand.
The Benefits of Writing a Review for an Affiliate Product
According to statistics, at least 88% of consumers rely on reviews to inform their purchasing decisions. As an affiliate marketer, you play an important role in helping shape consumer decisions in the market.
As an affiliate marketer, you also benefit from writing product reviews.
Some of the benefits include:
Making money – brands pay affiliate marketers to test and review products.
Building authority – as a reviewer, you build authority, making it easier for people to trust your opinion and judgment on a product.
Freedom – working as a freelance affiliate marketer gives you the freedom to choose which products to review and endorse on your platform. This helps you create a niche for yourself in the market.
Generating traffic – through your content, you can drive traffic to your affiliate website, helping your site to rank highly in search results for given keywords. This can translate to sales if you also sell the products you review.
Note: If you want to make money with reviews, find some amazing affiliate marketing job opportunities here. It’s a good place to find relevant jobs for affiliate marketers.
Mistakes Marketers Make When Writing a Product Review
As an affiliate marketer, there are common mistakes you are probably making when writing product reviews. These mistakes can be costly to your business and can affect your earnings. To ensure you are not wasting your time and resources, ensure you avoid making the following mistakes.
#1. Copying Reviews
As a product reviewer, it is a very bad idea to copy reviews from other marketers. While it is important to research a product by reading other reviews, copying another writer’s review is unethical.
The best way to avoid copying other people’s writing styles or content is to develop your outline, unique to your style and needs. This makes your reviews stand out from others, making it easy for your readers to identify your brand with your style.
#2. Mistaking Promoting for Reviewing
As an affiliate marketer, you need to ensure your content does not promote a product but rather reviewing it. Your content should be structured like a customer reviewing a product after trying it. This allows you to remain honest and unbiased in your review.
#3. Writing Shallow Reviews
The success of any review is in the details given on a product. A shallow review makes the writer look unfamiliar with the product, making it hard for readers to trust their opinion. As a rule of thumb, always write in-depth reviews to let readers learn more about the product through your review. The main goal of a review is to inform potential buyers about the product. Do not leave anything out.
#4. Forgetting to Use the Product Name as a Keyword
For every review you write, the product’s name should be in the list of keywords and should be used in the title. Whenever you review a product, including the product name in the keywords helps in search engine ranking while informing the reader what of the product reviewed.
#5. Failing to Compare Other Similar Products
If you are looking to increase your conversion rate, you should offer product comparison in your reviews. By comparing different products, you make it easier for your readers to make informed product choices. This is especially helpful if you also sell multiple similar products.
Comparing them allows you to showcase other products to boost traffic to product pages and promote sales.
#6. Failing to Ask Your Readers to Purchase Through the Affiliate Link
As an affiliate marketer, you can also make money from selling products from different brands on your platform. Most marketers forget to include affiliate links on their product reviews, which hurts their bottom line. Ensure you include the purchase links and remind your readers to buy through the link if they liked the product from the review.
Most people also don’t use an affiliate disclosure. When you promote affiliate products, you have to mention clear affiliate disclosures that you will make commissions for every sale. You can get a professional and lawyer approved affiliate disclosure here. Thousands of bloggers and entrepreneurs trust these templates, and they are easy to customise.
Things to Consider When Writing a Product Review
Before you start writing a product review for affiliate marketing, note down following points;
#1. Test the Product Yourself
To be able to write an influential product review, you need to test the product yourself. You can purchase the product yourself or pitch the brand to give you product samples for review. In most cases, brands would be more than happy to grant you access to their product for a review.
Testing the product gives you firsthand experience with it. This ensures you have reliable feedback and content for your readers on the product.
#2. If You Can’t Test It, Check Other Reviews
Sometimes, it is impossible to get your hands on a product or test all products you review. If you want to review a product that you cannot get your hands on, you should consider borrowing data from other reviewers.
To ensure that you give your readers accurate information on a product, you can compare different reviews and pick consistent content in all the reviews. This way, you are sure to deliver accurate information on a product even without trying it yourself.
#3. Cover Only Ones Relevant to Your Audience
Once you start seeing your website traffic going up and the bottom line increasing, it is tempting to begin reviewing more products, even those not in your niche. This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a reviewer.
As a rule of thumb, only review products that are relevant and useful to your target market.
Remember, you have created a name as an authority in your niche. Therefore, you need to ensure you continue delivering relevant content as per your readers’ expectations. This is the only way to ensure you continue growing your brand in your niche and keep ranking for the right target audience on search engine results.
#4. Be Honest About Your Experiences
When writing a product review, you need to avoid sounding biased. The best way to do this is to ensure your tone remains neutral by not exaggerating the product. You also need to stay 100% truthful about your experience with the product. Mention the benefits you enjoyed and the downsides you experience from using the product.
Being honest about your experience with the product makes it easier for your readers to trust your opinion by showing your dedication to delivering reliable information that is not promotional.
Readers want to know that you care about them and are not just out to sell products, and an honest experience review will make this happen.
#5. Make the Review More Attractive to Attract Buyers
Studies show that user-generated images can significantly boost site conversions. If your reason for reviewing products is to get your readers to buy through your affiliate website, you need to set up your reviews in a way that is attractive to the reader. Consider including social proof to show that other people are also interested in the product. You can also use visuals like high-end images and graphics on your review to make it more eye-catchy.
To ensure your review is attractive, aim for a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio between pictures and images. This means that you can include an image after every three or four paragraphs. This will give the review the much-needed visual flow.
#6. Include Pricing, Purchase, and Shipping Details
If you promote products through your affiliate website, you need to make the process of buying from your website seamless. The best way to do this is by having highly informational product pages. Once a reader clicks on the affiliate link to make a purchase, you need to make the experience as easy as possible.
To do this, you need to ensure all information about a product is displayed on the product page. You should include a brief about the product cost, shipping details, product details, and a buy option. Having everything visible on the same page increases the chances of converting a visitor into a buyer.
#7. Define Who It’s For
As part of your product review, you need to tell the readers who the product is made for. You need to tell them how the product can make their lives better and why they need to purchase it if they fall into the niche market.
The Bottom Line
Writing the best product review for affiliate marketing is all about mastering the art of influence to deliver value. If you need your reviews to turn into sales, it requires you to do some legwork.
With this guide, you are better placed to write reviews that deliver real value to your readers, who will not hesitate to thank you by buying through your affiliate links.
Other Posts To Read;
#1. Top Paying Affiliate Marketing Programs To Join
#2. 23 Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Make More Sales
#3. How to make First $100 with New Blog
Guest Author
Lianna Arakelyan is a content writer and digital marketing expert at MuchNeeded.com, with a knack for social media marketing strategy and implementation. She is extreme in her work with a deep goal of always being updated on online and offline marketing, technology and science news around the world.
Fizza Hassan says
Hi, I enjoy reading your useful blog. Where, how and when I can start to earn money through blogging? Help
Arfa Nazeer says
Thanks Fizza for your comment. There are different ways through which you can make money from your blog. You can learn all strategies and methods here. It’s such a comprehensive guide for bloggers on making money online.
Affan Khan says
Seriously, some of the best tips I ever received on writing product reviews.
This blog is a jewel for aspiring bloggers & marketers.
Kudos to Lianna & Arfa.