One of the most effective ways to generate affiliate sales is by creating gift guides holiday editions. Especially around the holidays, these handy gift guides are a great way to push several different affiliate products at one time. You definitely want multiple gift guides blog posts on your site to maximize your affiliate earnings over the holiday period.
But really, you can use gift guides holiday posts to generate sales all year ’round. Depending on the type of products you choose, these are good for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and there are birthdays, anniversaries and other gift-giving occasions throughout the whole year. So don’t make them tied to a particular holiday like Christmas or people aren’t likely to click on them at other times.
Creating these gift guides holiday posts is simple, but I will warn you that they are a bit time-consuming. It takes me from 6 to 8 hours to create each one and your mileage may vary. But if it brings in several hundred dollars worth of revenue throughout the year, then it’s definitely worth the time investment.
I’m going to scatter some pins throughout this post to show you samples of some of my gift guides.
This one is my MOST successful, my cruise items.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
For those of you who may be fairly new to affiliate marketing, here is how it works. First, you sign up with companies to be their affiliate. There are too many choices to name because most large businesses see the value of affiliate marketing and have some type of affiliate marketing program already in place.
But Amazon is probably the 800 lb. gorilla in this space, so let’s start with them. However, be aware that Amazon has fairly LOW commission rates and they have a LOT of different rules that you must follow to stay on their program. But that’s a post for another day…
So what you do is you go to Amazon, find their affiliate sign-up page, and you sign up with them. You tell them what kind of site you have, what type of business you are running, what your traffic is and they review you for approval.
Some companies are VERY picky about who they will accept, some not so much. Amazon is one of the easiest to get accepted to and they are one of the most popular. Hopefully, they give you an affiliate account and magically, some new info pops up in your Amazon header so you can find your special affiliate links.
When you include these special links in your post, your social media, or your newsletter, and people click on them, it sends information to your affiliate partner and says this person is coming from YOU. Then if they buy something you get a small cut of the sale credited to your affiliate account. It’s a very easy way to earn money, especially if you can generate it in volume.
And keep in mind what I told you about that 24-hour cookie (it’s usually a much longer period for anyone other than Amazon). If you are sharing a link for a deck of cards and they also buy some jewelry, a couple of books, and a flat screen TV, you get a cut of ALL of these things. That’s a nice little bonus and that’s why it’s worth including some items just for the curiosity factor. They don’t have to BUY the original item to set the cookie, they just have to click over and LOOK at it.
PRO TIP: Don’t go for the ORDINARY ITEMS. Everyone has gift guides with watches, kitchen mixers, water bottles, etc. Go for things that are helpful, unusual, and even a little bit KOOKY. You want to engage their curiosity and GET THAT CLICK.
This is from my terrific tech items gift guide for MEN. It’s been very popular, especially around the holidays.
How to Get Started with your Gift Guides
So, let’s get started creating your gift guides. The first thing is to get your affiliate account set up and running. Doesn’t matter if it’s Amazon, Target, The Container Store or Sonoma Kitchens. You just have to be able to find and use your affiliate links for it.
I use Shareasale a lot, because they represent a whole stable of different companies and they’re pretty easy to work with. Most companies will pay you by the month, but only when you reach a certain threshold – usually around $50, so it helps to be able to lump several together. And Shareasale helps you get approved easier especially, if you have low traffic.
Now it’s time to do your research for your gift guides. First, you want to pick your niche and like I said, get fairly specific. Think of that hard-to-buy person on your own list. I’ve created gift guides for nerdy types, men who like gadgets, business travelers, cruisers, or people who like a very organized home.
But I’ve seen them for family game night, car enthusiasts, gardeners, bloggers, teens who love Minecraft, mermaid lovers, or crafters. Poke around Pinterest for a bit and you’ll get a ton of ideas. Try to pick a niche that isn’t done by zillions of bloggers, but maybe don’t get too obscure or you won’t get many clicks.
I think my next one will be a “get well” basket for people who’ve had surgery or just had a baby. That seems like a good idea for year-round sales. Things like items to pull up your socks, bathe with a cast on, little snack packs, scented candles, cozy blankets, and a caddy for the remote!
Gathering and Organizing Your Affiliate Links
Now it’s time to go shopping for items for your person. First of all, open up a spreadsheet – either a Google doc or a regular spreadsheet. This will make it MUCH easier to create your gift guide at the end. Create headers for the Title, URL, a basic description, price, your affiliate link, and some keywords or testimonial phrases – works great, long lasting, smells terrific, etc.
(Per Amazon’s pesky rules, you can’t actually USE the testimonials from their users, but you can always say people like that this item is super helpful or everyone likes it that this product does something in particular) I usually pick from 12 to 15 items in each guide. You can do more, but it makes for a really LONG post and a lot of work!
As you find your items, note down the information on your spreadsheet. Go ahead and copy the more important parts of the description. You won’t use this verbatim, but you will be able to use it for picking out features and benefits in your own description. And it will save you a lot of jumping back and forth.
You will want to capture BOTH the regular link for the item (for your own reference) and your affiliate link. Usually, there is a special button at the top of the page to grab your affiliate link and it gives you the option to include just a text link, or a link with a picture. I usually just use the text link because it’s more versatile.
Think about price points when you are selecting your items. I generally choose items between about $25 and $40. If you go lower, you won’t make very much off the sale, but if you go too high, you might really limit your sales. But I have seen some unusual high-dollar items that do well, so I would tend to go higher rather than lower.
However, DO NOT put a price in your post – it is against Amazon’s rules, and even on other sites, prices change frequently. A reader is likely to become very upset if you are advertising a very low price and they click through to find a much higher price. You are smarter to advertise features over price, or at least be vague and just mention that it was a “bargain” or a “good deal”.
Also pick items with nice images that will look good on your page. Again, per Amazon’s pesky rules, you MAY NOT use their images directly, but you can use a code they provide to add them to your site. I have been guilty of this myself and I need to switch around some images in many of my posts.
Pro Tip: If you want to use images in your pins, you there are a couple of tricks you can use. For one thing, you can just purchase a couple of the items and take your own pictures. Those do better on Pinterest anyway. Another way to do it is to locate the manufacturer and use images from them. But do not use Amazon’s images in your pins as I have done in many cases.
This is from my Eeeesey peesey Weight Loss Post
Getting FREE Stuff for your Gift Guides Holiday Edition
You may be able to convince companies to send you some free stuff to include in your gift guides. I’ve had some luck with it, but especially if you have great traffic or have had success with gift guides in the past, that makes it easier to approach companies to request samples to include in your gift guides. Start early – at least a couple of months prior to the holidays – they get a lot of requests.
I don’t know about you, but I really LIKE getting free stuff to play with! But you’ve got to be fair and give the companies some return for their investment. So unless the item is just AWFUL, I generally will include it in my guide.
For my weight loss gift guide, I simply chose a selection of items that I already used and loved, and that’s a good way to go too.
Creating the Pins for your Gift Guide Items
Now that you’ve selected your products and gathered all your links, info and images, you’re ready to create your pin images. I generally do the pin images before I do the post, but since you can batch produce them, it typically is not a time-consuming process.
If you have 7 items, you typically would create about 8-11 images. You want one separate pin per item plus 1 or more collage pins of the various items. Here is a typical pin of an individual item and you can see the collage items throughout this post.
Note that your pins don’t need to be too fancy. You aren’t necessarily trying to get them to fall in love with your site or jump onto your newsletter, you are just trying to get a little click out of them and hope they buy something. So keep it simple and then just duplicate the pins a bunch of times and keep switching out the images and descriptions.
This one is from my Organizing Products Gift Guides and I got a little lazy on this one and didn’t create a collage image. But you can see how I am clearly showing and identifying the item as well as including a little blurb about what it does.
Now, as for linking up these pins, you have two choices. Since Pinterest does allow affiliate pins on it, you can link them up with the direct links to the products. But if you are using Amazon links, that’s a no-no per their dumb RULES. So I typically default to just linking them straight to my post and then have the product links within my text and images. Also, that way, they will see some of the other items and may choose to look at multiple items.
Once I have my pins ready, I set them aside until I’ve created my post, but once I publish, I add them to my Tailwind loop. I have my 8 gift guides group boards set up and I will run all my different items on a recurring cycle throughout the year. Then I add an extra push of manual pins around various holidays as I mentioned.
Time to create the Actual Gift Guides Blog Post
Whew! I did tell you at the outset that this was a LOT of work. But if you advertise these properly, it should be worth your while. I originally learned this in a mini-course in one of my Facebook groups and the people who took the time to create them found them very helpful for their affiliate income. Those are still the gift guide boards I’m using two years later to keep cycling my pins through. #bloggerssupportingbloggers #communityovercompetition
PRO TIP: Make your links FREQUENT and OBVIOUS. I try include each link four times – in the title of the item, in my description, linked to the image, and I usually include a Buy on Amazon button with a fourth link.
Your post will be organized into a number of small blocks. You’ll have one block for each item with the title, the pin or the photo (if you prefer a smaller size), and a brief description of the item, it’s benefits and features, and maybe a snippet from some of the reviews.
Each time you mention the product, add your affiliate link so it shows up in a color. You also want to link each pin or picture to your affiliate link. Make sure you follow good SEO rules and include several strong SEO keywords and hashtags in your descriptions, your photos, your boards and your pins. That’s going to help you a lot.
Some of my guy items got repinned to a bunch of about 20 high-ranking boards over Father’s Day this year and that created a big blip in my earnings.
Then it’s just lather, rinse, repeat for each of your items. I typically use one of the collage pins as the general image for the post. Then when you’re done, just promote, promote, promote. Good luck – hope this helped you!
Here are some other posts you may enjoy:
How to Use Black Friday Deals for Your Blog
Why You Need an Expert Pinterest Review
Join the Pinterest #5Ways2Thrive Challenge
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