Using Twitter for affiliate marketing

The power of Twitter is nothing new to us, but recently I did feel that marketers didn’t have the same power they once had, but leave that aside. This post deals with using Twitter for sending traffic towards affiliates and generating sales. All of us know that most of the tweets made on Twitter are self promotional and contain a lot of affiliate links, from the time I started to use Twitter I wanted to know the success affiliate marketers had with Twitter,  but I understood it best when I myself started to promote affiliate products on it.

I started to promote products and services such as 31DBBB, Adgitize and The Thesis Theme and I had a quite a bit of success, so I still stick to this that Twitter is no good for affiliate marketing, maybe this is because of my low follower count or because I wasn’t very active. If you still want to try your luck on Twitter below are some points which will help you make the best of it,

Relevancy in all sides

This is a common in affiliate marketing anywhere on the web, so I shouldn’t find you doubtful about this. In Twitter you must make sure that your followers should be interested in the products you promote, so get to know your followers needs and professions and try to promote the best product for your audience.

Another side of relevance is the tweets you make, your tweets should contain information, humor and persuasive words all at the same time, so make sure that you make the best of the 140 characters. Just a link won’t do anything, and it will lead to very less conversions and annoys your readers.

Be human

Twitter works the best when your followers don’t realize that your trying to sell a product, it doesn’t matter on what you promote, but on the way you write your tweets, just see the examples below -

Tweet 01 : Download Joel Comm’s Adsense secrets here (the affiliate link).

Tweet 02 : Hey guys I just read Joel Comm’s adsense secrets and it just rocks, check it out here (affiliate link)

I suppose you have got the differences between the two tweets, one is like a general ad which makes everyone understand that your trying to sell something, but the other tweet sounds more like a personal recommendation and I’m sure that it will lead to more conversions than the first one. One more reason is that a personal recommendation gives you a lot of feedback, replies and retweets, which increases your niche to other networks.

Be informative

By this advice I don’t mean to make you waste time by teaching your followers about your niche or anything, I meant that instead of sending out one or two tweets recommending the product, you can make a series of tweets about the product, its use and tips to effectively use it.

Do not forget to put a cloaked link on every tweet you make about the particular product, this is the method I use to promote my blogs articles and till now its worked out well. When I’m promoting my blog I usually make 20 to 30 tweets for each post, I usually break up my article into tweets and post a direct link towards it.

Be useful

While recommending an affiliate product or service make sure that the particular product is useful to your followers, relevancy is a part of it, but goes beyond it. I’d say to tweet one affiliate link for every five normal tweets, this is because you may loose your reputation and people may start un-following you if they find out that your tweets are only affiliate links.

Another aspect of this is the quality of the product, you can’t just promote an unknown product just because of the commission you get out of it. If your product is bad it won’t have any effect on you, but if its real good then your followers may thank you in twitter publicly or retweet all your links which can be priceless in the long run.

Pricing

If you’d read my previous posts on affiliate marketing I always advise that pricing doesn’t matter, but when it comes to Twitter products with a low price tag tend to perform well. Most affiliate marketers who have already used Twitter recommend that the price of your product should range from $3 to $20.

There are always exceptions as it usually depends on your followers, if you have medium rich and famous followers, then expensive products perform well, but when your followers are in the common class then an affordable product works the best.

On to our readers

I have been trying Twitter for affiliate marketing from the past two months and till now I have made small profits, but I’m sure you can make big income if you invest more of your time and follow the above steps. If you have any suggestions on this topic please do share it with us below and follow me on Twitter.