Do I Just Blog For The Freebies And Should You?

Today I got myself some nice bars of chocolate from Montezumas (on Webgains) which Nicky kindly arranged for me and Matt at Hotel Chocolat was saying he'll send some more over and that got me thinking: "Do I just blog for the freebies"?

Well the short answer is no, but they're a nice fringe benefit. The real reason is the profits that can be made. Now I'm not daft enough to call myself a "super affiliate" as to me that's as desirable as "wag", but the profits to me made can be nice as part of an overall affiliate strategy.

Just looking at one site, you can guess which one (but I have many), I was doing well over 200 sales a day all from natural seo which were adding up to over £500 a day.





And what was the cost? Well only my time and some hosting. Virtually all of the products reviewed were sent to me by the merchants, although I did nip over to Tesco and Sainsbury's to get some other products to review. This is in no way "bragging" or "taking advantage" of the merchants as they were able to increase sales because of it. I ranked for generic phrases which complemented their own search marketing agency and added value - as long as I made sure I didn't damage their brand image with anything I said.

But if you wanted to do the same, here's a few tips or things to think about:

1) Receptive Merchant / Agency or Network
For the chocolate one I had a very helpful Hannah from Existem who was always helping with content ideas. I had Matt from Hotel Chocolate that was a great sounding board, previously Buy.at were great with Thorntons, but got lost in new staffers this year, Paul Nel was great with Cadbury's who, along-side Nicky at Webgains helped with stuff.

So my advice would be to choose a merchant/industry where you feel you've already got good relationships with key figures, or you feel you will be able to do so.

2) Choose a product that you're interested in
Chocolate is only one of the things I can tolerate writing about. I'm involved in other niches as well (but I might not mention them here). But with chocolate I don't find it difficult spending an evening or weekend reviewing products.

3) Choose a product / industry that you can wax lyrical about
Some products you may be interested may not have features that are different between them. With chocolate you've got white, dark, milk chocolate with a varying degrees of cocoa content and fillings. You've got different textures, methods of manufacture, market targetting (kids, adults, gourmet, etc). All this leads to the ability to write verbosely about the various features and pick up long tail keywords.

4) Choose something in high demand
Easter eggs alone are a £200m market annually. Although each sale could vary from 30p to £8ish, there's good volume available. Do some research on sales volumes.

5) Choose a product you can easily buy online
There's loads of merchants that sell chocolate, there's not many (if any) where you can buy cigarettes. Think about what options you have to promote that product.

6) Are those products "want" or "need" products?
My theory is that people are more easily swayed with content if they are a "want" product. No one physically needs chocolate, but they may want it. If you can play on people's compulsions, and get people excited about its ability to make them feel good, then you're more likely to encourage online sales, rather than them researching online and then going to Tesco to buy.

7) Is it a continually evolving market?
What I love about chocolate, and other markets I'm involved in, is that it is always evolving. There's always a new chocolate bar, there's always a new toy or gadget. You'll never be stuck to find things to blog about.

8) Think About Returns
I may be wrong here, but I think there's a much lower return rate with chocolate than other products? Only a small point, but worth thinking about.

9) Think About Social Media Spinning
Think about how easy it would be to get other's to market your site for you by referring and re-tweeting. This is a great way to get your site into places that you didn't think possible.

10) Think Voucher Codes
Are there regularly voucher codes available where you can encourage people to buy there and then via your site rather than continuing their internet searches? For chocolate merhcants, most do them. Are there many in your target market?

11) Think Product Feeds
Are there many merchants that offer product feeds? Adding a Affilistore shop to a blog is a very valuable exercise.

12 Think Product Samples Now
Now you think product samples - as they're not actually crucial. I've got affiliate blogs that do well purely based on news flows for the manufacturer, other review sites and merchants supplying information such as stock levels, voucher codes etc. I've also got blogs set up for future products where there aren't obviously any products available to sample.

Another way to think of the product sample angle is that how likely are you to get product samples from non-affiliated merchants? I get many samples for my chocolate reviews blog for retailers that I won't earn a penny from, but it helps with the diversity of the content as well as allows Google to view the site has a hub site purely because I link to relevant sites - don't be greedy with your links as an affiliate.

13) Think Next Year
Would you still be able to blog about it next year? Would you want to? That's the killer. Far too many blogs are started but die down quickly. You need to make sure that all the other factors above will remain (or are likely to) next year.