5 Proven Tips To Higher CTR for Your Affiliate Programs

You are probably well known about clickbank affiliate marketing or being an affiliate with paydotcom, dealdotcom and some others affiliate programs or marketplaces. But when you join an affiliate program, what is it that you want to achieve? Of course, we want to gain affiliate commission from the merchant. But, how can we do that?

Affiliate commissions are gained when visitors that we refer purchase products or services on the merchant’s site. But when the visitors are at the merchant’s site, we don’t have any control, do we? So, think again. We want the affiliate commissions and commissions are only possible when we refer visitors through affiliate links, this is how we make money blogging from affiliate marketing.

In my opinion, our actual role as an affiliate is to get visitors to the merchant’s site through the unique affiliate links they provide. After that, it is all up to the merchant. There is a special term for this, known as Click-through Rate (CTR).

CTR is page views versus clicks on the merchant’s links. It is actually an index that we can use to see how effective your website is in sending visitors over to the merchant’s website. When you have 1000 page views on your blog site but you have 50 clicks to the merchant’s site, your CTR is 5%. That is already a very good CTR. Now how can you increase CTR on your blog site? Let me walk you through 5 strategies I use to boost my CTR to 20% instead of 2%.

1. Choose relevant affiliate programs

When you put up an affiliate link, make sure that the merchant has relevant products or services to match the content on that page. You cannot write about shoes on your blog and put up an affiliate link that sells computers.

2. Use text links instead of images for marketing affiliate products

People are getting tired with banner ads, so let’s get away from all that. Reports on the affiliate programs that I join show that text links out-perform graphic links. So use text links, but weave them in nicely with the text on your blog page.

3. Recommend good product, not sell

Another thing that visitors don’t really like is when you’re hard-selling the products or services. I have seen some sites that go “Buy This” or “Buy That”. Instead try “When I tried the trail Product A, it improved my bla… bla… [link]Download your copy now[link]“. I would suggest you to recommend products that you have been use and have a good experience with it.

4. Phrase your affiliate link clearly

Affiliate programs would normally give you a URL address to link back to them. It is up to you to write the phrases for your links. But give a clear picture of what your visitors are about the see at the other end of the link. Use phrases like “Download your copy here” or “YourAffiliate.com is selling them for $9.90″.

5. Do not let them escape

To do this, write clear stories and leave them with just one place to go – your merchant’s website. The key here is to put up one link, and one link only. Of course you can have your navigational links at the top, but at the end of the page do not cloud visitors with related websites, related articles, or any other links except your affiliate link. That is where we want them to go right?

With these techniques, I witnessed my CTR increase from the normal 2% to 20%. On normal days, I should get about 10% to 15% CTR. But remember to always monitor your CTR to spot the changes. Then, be sure that you continue to fine-tune your website from time to time.