For long term success in affiliate marketing, don’t push too hard.

When we write content, even with passion, we usually also have an eye to earning some revenue from those pages.

As you know, there are several ways to monetize a content page, affiliate links being just one of them.

In this article I want to focus just on affiliate marketing, and make a particular point about the pitfalls of trying to push too hard for the click.

First, let’s look at three different approaches to writing, let’s say, a review of a particular digital camera.

The first approach, without any thought to monetizing your review through an affiliate link, would be your honest, authentic opinion of the features and benefits of the camera. Your purpose is simply to inform and help your readers.

The second approach gives a nod to your underlying purpose, which is to make revenue from the review by having people click on an affiliate link, buy the camera, and earn you a few dollars in commission. This second approach will be a little different from the first. You are likely to gild the lily a bit. You are still writing a useful and helpful review, but part of your mind is also focused on the goal of making some money.

The third and final approach is to go in with guns blazing, and do all you can to persuade your readers to buy the camera right now. You highlight the strong features of the camera, and pass over its weaknesses. You are now writing more like a copywriter than an editorial writer. It’s no longer a review. It’s more like a sales page.

In the short term, the first approach will make you the least money, the second approach will make you more, and the third approach will make you the most.

However…you need to ask yourself whether you are in this for the short term or the long term.

While that third approach may make you the most money for a while, it is also self-limiting. There are only a certain number of times you can make what is essentially a sales pitch, and still pretend you are writing reviews.

Readers are not stupid. You may catch them the first time. But as they come to recognize that your “reviews” are always positive, all of the time, they will migrate to other websites which offer more balanced opinions.

From my own experience, I have always found the middle course to be the one that consistently generates revenues, month after month and year after year.

The key, certainly for me, is to ensure that if I write a review, it reads and feels like a review. I do point out weaknesses, and I do say that a particular product or service may be great for one of group of people, but not for another.

Of course, all this can be summed up with one word.

Trust.

If the reader doesn’t trust you as a source of honest and reliable information on your topic, he or she will go elsewhere.

So when I guild the lily in order to increase affiliate sales, I never push it too far.

The trust of my readers over the long term will always be more valuable to me than a spike in affiliate commissions in the short term.

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