Why No One is Buying Affiliate Product from You and How to Fix it [With Our Affiliate Marketing Earning Proof]

Unable to find why people are not buying affiliate products from you and how to fix it?

Donโ€™t worry Iโ€™m going to help you with this problem.

In this guide, we are going to talk about:

  1. Reasons why people are not buying affiliate products from you
  2. What you can do to make them buy products from you
  3. Our affiliate marketing earning proof for motivation purpose

First of all, let me tell you itโ€™s a common problem. Even the top bloggers who are making a living from their blog now faced this problem in their early stage.

But they never give up and find ways to sell products with their affiliate marketing skills.

Our Affiliate Marketing Earning Proofs

We are sharing our affiliate marketing income proofs not to brag about our earnings but to motivate you in your affiliate marketing journey.

The blog you are reading right now earns over $15,000 every month with affiliate product selling. Sharing a couple of our affiliate income proofs:

Semrush Affiliate Revenue:

We earned over $650,00 from the Semrush affiliate program so far.

Semrush affiliate earning proof

If you are thinking of promoting Semrush, you should try this product first. You can get Semrush 14 days free trial from here.

Bluehost Affiliate Income:

We made over $86,000 from the Bluehost affiliate program so far. Have a look at one of Bluehost affiliate marketing earning proof:

Bluehost affiliate income proof

If you follow our advice, you will definitely find better ways to get more affiliate sales. Let’s discover a few proven ways to find the right products to sell.

5 Major Reasons Why No One is Buying Your Affiliate Products

Why No One Is Buying Your Affiliate Products

If youโ€™re struggling to increase affiliate commission, here are 5 major reasons. Try to avoid them and you’ll slowly start increasing your affiliate sales no matter what industry you are in.

1. Lack of Awareness

Are your audience aware about the products that you promote? Do they know what solutions your affiliate products provide? If not, no matter how much you hustle to sell your products, it becomes very difficult to sell it.

So how do you create awareness about the products you promote?

1. Write product reviews: One of the simplest ways to create awareness about your products is to write product reviews which are actually useful. Most people write product reviews just for the sake of getting more traffic. Whatโ€™s the point of getting more traffic if you donโ€™t add any value to your audience?

So make sure to write in-depth reviews along with pricing, pros, cons and all the other useful benefits of the products that you recommend to your audience. Thatโ€™s how you create product reviews that sell.

2. Do videos: Creating video tutorials around the products that you promote is one of the most powerful ways to drive more sales. If youโ€™re promoting iphones through your website, you can do a video around unboxing it explaining all the features of it along with the problems, pros and cons and pricing.

Make sure to give an affiliate link where your interested audience can buy those products using your link. Thatโ€™s how most YouTube vloggers make a ton of affiliate sales.

product awareness tips

2. Lack of Trust

Did you know that Pat Flynn (top affiliate marketer) makes over $100,000 from affiliate marketing every single month?

Yes, you heard it right. He earns millions of dollars by promoting the best affiliate programs. Do you know what his success secret is?

He builds trust. His audience trusts him like anything. He rarely promotes new products. He promotes affiliate programs that he personally uses and satisfied with. He creates engaging content around the products he promotes.

These are all the ways he creates trust and strong rapport with his audience. The result is massive affiliate sales and more commission to him.

So how can you build trust? Weโ€™ve a simple tip for you: use affiliate link disclosures.

Using affiliate link disclosure is one of the best marketing practices. That means, youโ€™ll be telling your audience about the products you promote every time youโ€™re using an affiliate link.

An example of it looks something like this;

โ€œNote: Some of the links mentioned on this page are affiliate links. That means, when you use those links to buy products, I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. That way I can run this website for years to come.โ€

disclosure affiliates

If your audience come across something like that, they will like you for 2 reasons:

  1. They will like your honesty for telling them that youโ€™re using affiliate links
  2. They want to support you by buying products from you

So there you go.

Read: Best affiliate link cloaking plugins for 2024


3. Pricing

High priced products often gives you huge commission. That means if youโ€™re selling a $1000 product, you can make $100 per each sale (even if they are offering only 10% as commission). Thatโ€™s the reason why most affiliate promoters sell high priced products.

But what happens when youโ€™re new and trying to sell high priced products?

No one ever buys. So start slow by promoting highly relevant, useful and affordable products to start your online marketing journey. Once you master the art of selling affordable products, youโ€™ll learn how to promote high priced products more effectively. Thatโ€™s how most people become successful in digital marketing.

Here are few more tips you can use to find and promote the RIGHT affiliate products.

  • Use surveys: To effectively promote your products with the right pricing, conduct simple surveys by involving your website audience. You can use social media sites, quizzes, giveaways, email list etc to start taking the surveys from your audience. Your main intention should be to find what kind of price your audience are willing to pay for those products that youโ€™re going to promote.
  • Perform A/B testing: A/B testing or split testing is one of the most advanced and effective ways most affiliate marketers use to increase their sales and website conversion rates. You can use tools like Crazy Egg to find out the best performing headlines, call to action buttons, offers etc to find the most high performing ads to increase your product sales.
  • Find out top performing products: You can use affiliate marketplaces like CJ, ClickBank, ShareASale, Amazon etc to find highly relevant products that you can promote through your sites. Just try to find affordable products that solve your audience problems.

4. No Special Deals or Discounts

Why should I buy from you instead of buying products I want from your competitors? Whatโ€™s your unique point? Are you offering me anything special like a discount I canโ€™t get anywhere else or any deal exclusively for me if I buy something from you?

If youโ€™ve something exclusively to offer, youโ€™ll increase your odds of earning more commission by selling products no matter what niche you are in.

Did you know that online holiday shopping to reach over $910 billion? It shows the growth of online sales during holidays.

offer deals to boost sales

You can try these things to offer special deals or discounts to your website audience.

  • Ask the product developers (by email or social media) for any offers. Almost every service and product has a dedicated affiliate manager who has special offers, deals and discounts. So unless you get in touch with them, you wonโ€™t get them.
  • If youโ€™ve any premium tools, services or products, you can offer them for free to your audience who buy products from you. Itโ€™s a great way to increase your product sales especially when youโ€™re struggling or getting started.
  • Analyse how your competitors are promoting their products during special events like christmas, new year eve etc to find out any sneaky promotion ways to increase your income.

Read: Black Friday Case Study: How We Made $13,000 In A Week


5. Your Content Marketing and SEO Strategy is Meh

Content is the king that can make or break your websiteโ€™s conversions. Your content is what helps you increase your websiteโ€™s traffic and also sales.

But most people do it wrong. Their content and SEO strategy just sucks. Thatโ€™s why they get pitiful of sales from their products.

That being said, hereโ€™s a better way to layout out your content marketing strategy for more affiliate sales.

  • Create case studies: When we talked about how Semrush increased traffic to our website, we included every detail like how much traffic we got along with the benefits of that product. Case studies like this perform really well in terms of more traffic and sales. So if youโ€™re struggling to increase affiliate sales, focus on creating more case studies, talk about how youโ€™ve benefited from the products that you use.
  • Track your results: Each month, make sure to track your stats, traffic, conversions and find out whatโ€™s working best for you and whatโ€™s not. Thatโ€™s the only way you can leverage the power of both SEO and content marketing.
  • Attract more links: Start writing guest posts for others, do blogger outreach and do whatever it takes to build white hat backlinks which is the most effective way to increase your overall websiteโ€™s traffic from search engines.

How to Find People Who Canโ€™t Wait to Buy Affiliate Products from You?

Over the years, here are few tried and tested ways we used to increase our website product sales and commission, so use them to your advantage.

The rule of 7: Use It to Your Advantage

Have you ever wondered why marketing ad agencies use so many ads on TV shows, websites or social media?

Itโ€™s because of the rule of 7.

According to the rule of seven, a prospect needs to see or hear your marketing message (or your product or service) at least seven times before they take action and buy from you.

rule of 7 marketing

So if youโ€™re struggling to increase your product sales, just apply and use the rule of 7 to your advantage. So how can you use the rule of 7 in online marketing?

Here are few things you can do.

  • Creating content (articles, videos, podcasts so your prospects can hear or see your content or your websiteโ€™s name)
  • Doing interviews with influencers (this is the fastest way to spread your name online)
  • Writing guest posts for others (so you can attract new visitors from other blogs)
  • Facebook ads
  • Using Google AdWords
  • By writing on Quora and Medium
  • And the list goes on

Rank for Commercial Intent Keywords

Are you getting a lot of search traffic to your sites but still struggling to turn that traffic into sales? Donโ€™t worry, youโ€™re not the only one whoโ€™s facing the same problem.

Whatโ€™s the most effective way to increase your organic traffic that also increases your sales?

The answer is: start ranking for commercial intent keywords.

Commercial intent keywords are those keyword terms that people in use Google search before they buy something online. Here are few keywords that most commercial keywords contain;

  • Discount
  • Top 10
  • Buy now
  • Free shipping and so on

That means, you can talk about;

  • Any affiliate product with discounts
  • Top 10 products that you promote along with comparison
  • Products with limited sales or early bird accesses
  • And so on

The examples include;

  • Buy iphone
  • Cheap iphone
  • Top 10 iphone alternatives
  • Discounts on iphone and so on

Here’s a great image that tells you the importance of commercial keywords.

commercial intent funnel

So how do you find commercial intent keywords in any industry?

Without SEO, itโ€™s impossible for anyone to increase their affiliate income. Search engine traffic plays a major role in driving qualified visitors to your sites who are willing to buy affiliate products from you.

Here are few tips to find low competitive commercial intent keywords.

Use Answer The Public: This is a free and fantastic platform to find all the questions that your audience might have for any keyword phrase. Just enter a keyword of your choice to find a ton of relevant questions you can use within your content to drive more affiliate sales and quality traffic from search engines like Google.

Use Amazon: The best way to find commercial intent keywords is to use Amazon best sellers product pages or categories. You can pick any category of product that your website is relevant to.

Use Semrush: One of the best ways to find commercial intent keywords is to use the most effective SEO tool called Semrush. Using it, you can easily find a ton of long tail and low competitive commercial intent keywords no matter what industry you are in. Just filter the results by CPC (Cost Per Click) to find highly profitable keywords. Make sure the KD (keyword difficulty) is below 50 so you can rank easily.

Write genuine reviews about the products: People love to buy anything online if someone is providing genuine help.

Always write unbiased reviews about the products you use and tell your readers why they are good. If they are convinced with your product reviews, they will definitely use your affiliate links to increase your affiliate sales, as simple as that.


Learn from Your Competitors

Here are few ways you can use your competitors to increase your product sales when youโ€™re struggling with sales.

  • Check your competitors credibility: If your competitors are showing social proof and increasing their affiliate sales, maybe itโ€™s working for them really well and you can also give it a try to boost your website conversions.
  • Check your competitors promotion strategies: Keep an eye on your competitors promotion strategies to see how they are promoting their products to increase their affiliate commission. Also make sure to subscribe to their email lists to see how they are using them to get more sales.
  • Fill the gaps: Find out whatโ€™s missing in your competitor websites to effectively layout a strategy where you can fill the gaps to increase your affiliate sales. Are they not creating regular content? Are they not active on social media sites or YouTube? Find out the gaps and fill them.

Sell, Donโ€™t Hammer

One of the biggest mistakes most people make is they plaster their product banner ads all over their website to increase their product sales. What happens when you hammer all your ads instead of helping?

No one buys. The #1 rule in is: no one buys products from strangers. So thereโ€™s no point of hammering ads or selling hard because itโ€™s not going to help anyhow.

What else can you do then?

Use your banner ads effectively. You can promote only 1 or 2 products 80% of the time that youโ€™re personally satisfied with (instead of promoting way too many products at once).

Create interaction and build rapport with readers: Without readership you wonโ€™t make any success in selling your products. Readers are everything in building a profitable blog. Here are few ways to build a long lasting relationship with your readers.

Write detailed posts: No one is reading short posts now unless you are a Seth Godin. Short posts donโ€™t provide any value either to your readers or search engine crawlers. Usually long and detailed posts that consist of 800+ (1000+ words are even better) words rank higher in the search engines, they also help you build a great relationship with your readers.

Post consistently: Lack of consistency can kill your blog readership. Most blogs are abandoned because of inconsistency in their posting frequency. If you are consistently posting great articles on your blogs, you will pull more audience attention to read, share and buy your stuff.

Respond to their queries: Let it be comments, emails or general feedback, whenever you get a response from your blog readers โ€“ respond to them as soon as possible. This helps you build credibility and trust in the long run.

Take baby steps: It takes a lot of time to make decent income by selling your products. No one became a millionaire overnight, they learned, they made mistakes and by following few tactics they are now be able to make a living from their businesses.

Read: Most Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes And How to Avoid Them


Be Prepared for Special Days and Events

One of the best marketing strategies is to make the most out of holiday seasons and special days during when you can boost your product sales really quickly.

Here’s a screenshot of our affiliate sales during one of holiday seasons.

hostgator affiliate sales

Here are few ways you can make more product sales during special days.

  • Be prepared: As we always say โ€œbe preparedโ€. If black Friday season is coming in November, you should be start working for it even before 6 months. Start creating content around deal pages, build backlinks and do proper on page SEO to make sure your deal pages are ranking well for various keyword phrases.
  • Always build relationships: Itโ€™s essential for every affiliate promoter to build strong rapport and relationships with the product vendors to get extra deals and discounts to offer to your target audience.
  • Review your plans each year: Whenever black Friday week comes, we create a thorough strategy and plan to increase our product sales. We always review and tweak our plans in order to get more sales each year during special seasons.

Optimize Your Website Well for More Traffic and Sales

One thing that frustrates anyone online while browsing a website is slow loading times. If your website is taking too much time to load, your audience will simply leave your site and buy from your competitors websites.

Make sure your site is mobile friendly: Almost everyone is using smartphones to browse information online and they are also using the same for buying products. So if your site is not mobile responsive yet, youโ€™re missing a lot of leads to your competitors. Use a premium responsive design or simply install any free plugin like WP Touch to make your site responsive.

Move to https: One of the easiest ways to increase your websiteโ€™s trust and sales is to move your site from http to https version. Google also started giving better results to the sites with https version when compared to those sites with non https. You can install SSL certificates from your hosting service to get this job done.

Get a better web hosting service: Hosting services like WPX hosting offers a lot of features like dedicated hosting, SSD storage, free SSL certificates and so on and also helps your site to load really faster. So invest in the right hosting service if youโ€™re running an affiliate based site.

More Affiliate Marketing related resources:


FAQs

How to find affiliate products?

You can find affiliate products on the companyโ€™s website itself or you can take advantage of affiliate networks like ClickBank, ShareASale, Amazon Associates, etc.

How much can I earn from Amazon affiliates?

Though the commission varies from product to product, one can earn overall a decent amount of money from Amazon affiliates depending on the niche you are working on, affiliate products you promote, the website traffic and all.

How to sell affiliate products on my website?

The very first step is to join the affiliate program, get product affiliate links you want to promote, and then start using these referral links or related promotion material like banners, widgets, in the blog posts, or at the relevant places in your website.

How to sell my product through affiliate marketing?

You can take the advantage of eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Instamojo, etc. Where people can easily generate the affiliate link of your products to promote and while you can do the tracking of clicks and conversions with ease.


Final Thoughts

When youโ€™re new to affiliate marketing, itโ€™s very common to struggle with getting more affiliate sales because no one knows you and you probably donโ€™t know how to sell to your website audience.

Thatโ€™s why itโ€™s essential for you to give it some time, implement the tips mentioned in this post and analyse your competitors to start making more sales.

Do you have any recommendations to make more money from affiliate marketing? Please leave your thoughts below.

About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of Bloggerspassion. He is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade Now. He has been featured in Over 100 Publications including Forbes, The HuffPost, HubSpot, Shopify, Semrush, Kinsta, Bluehost, Hostinger and G2.com etc. Know more about Anil Agarwal from here.

Reader Comments (30)

  1. Really informative and motivational for beginners like me. Been trying this for months but have had no luck and sales. Gonna apply all the tricks you have mentioned. Thank you.

    Reply
  2. I read your post but the big hurdle of mine is how can I buy the products to give the genuine review? I am running a Fashion blog but I am not earning.

    So it is impossible to invest money on buying products when I am not earning.

    Reply
  3. Your blog is wonderful. I have to start affiliate marketing of Amazon products. I am still thinking if to start with amazon.in or amazon.com?

    Reply
  4. Hi Anil,

    As usual, you have presented the post with great efforts. I could realize the uniqueness of your blog posts than others. Any topic you are talking about, you are navigating through all its edges. In this article, thanks for your valuable thoughts on bringing awareness to every affiliate marketer about what to consider to bring sales. Keep rocking!

    Reply
  5. Hi Anil,
    Yes! this is the mail issue mostly time we bloggers see that we are running all kind of campaigns but still low sale why ?
    here today i got to know about some special kind of tips !
    and hope so i am going to apply on these on my site too for getting good sales revenue.
    Thanks !

    Reply
  6. Hi, Anil…

    another amazing post. These are solid points telling why no one is buying the affiliate products that we promote.

    Reply
  7. This is an interesting piece.

    I’m also asking myself the same question but I think my biggest challenge here is lack of awareness. I’ve not done much to create awareness about them.

    However, I will correct it soon.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Emenike

    Reply
  8. This is such an awesome meat-packed post, Anil. Affiliate marketing reminds me of a quote I read somewhere ‘The greater the glory, the greater the difficulty.’ Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, and it takes hard and smart work put together, but the rewards are well worth it. I believe it takes a lot of learning and testing too, like figuring out which blog posts convert the best, where to place your affiliate links and other tricks.

    Reply
  9. Hello, Anil!

    I never ever jumped into the affiliate marketing thing as of yet.

    But… after reading this post with the good care, I feel like it has made my self-made doubts cleared in many ways.

    I will definitely test it with your given instructions!

    So, thanks for that! ๐Ÿ™‚

    ~ Adeel

    Reply
  10. Hello Anil!

    Thanks for sharing this wonderful blog post.

    Making money from Affiliate marketing is the dream of every blogger but however unfortunate, not many bloggers achieve that dream. Some who did can barely survive with it.But i like no 4 and 5.Its Good

    Reply
  11. Hi, Anil..

    These are solid points telling why no one is buying the affiliate products that we promote.

    One of the best tips here is to rank for commercial intent keywords and learn from your competitors.

    Our competitors can be our best teacher. If we follow the strategies they use.

    Reply
  12. Affiliate marekting is one of the most best part for a Business as this is Affiliate time & making mistake in Affiliate won’t be good.

    Thanks Admin for sharing this nice post about Affiliate.

    Reply
  13. I believe folks now treat affiliate banners in the same way as they treat AdSense ads.

    I think it makes more sense to promote your affiliate products through content.
    A #Resources page could bolster affiliate sales.

    Anil, I must say this is a thorough post taking it all the way to the basics.
    Keep up the good job.
    Cheers.

    Reply
  14. What an awesome point on awareness Anil.

    I used to wonder why eBook sales flagged a bit. Until I realized I did not promote my first eBook much at all, LOL! Now it is a full blitz, all the time, and it is the only thing I actively promote. This same concept holds true for affiliate products too.

    Bloggers sell stuff as affiliates and never do reviews, create videos or even create content remotely aligned with the product. How can folks know what you’re promoting if you hide it, or never create content aligned with it?

    Rocking post bro!

    Ryan

    Reply
  15. Hello Anil,

    I actually did not have any luck with AdSense and I am stuck with affiliate marketing. I still remember the days when I first earn $300 by promoting hosting affiliate program and till then affiliate marketing is one of my favorite ways to monetize my blog. You are right, To become successful in affiliate marketing you have to build trust and authority online. Thanks for sharing these helpful tips here.

    Have a Great Day ๐Ÿ™‚
    Vishwajeet

    Reply
  16. Hello Anil!

    Thanks for sharing this wonderful blog post.

    Making money from Affiliate marketing is the dream of every blogger but however unfortunate, not many bloggers achieve that dream. Some who did can barely survive with it.

    One method I have come to learn fast and stuck with it is to promote a product you know how it works. Share your personal experience with the product in your honest review and your blog readers will heartily buy through your link.

    Emenike Emmanuel

    Reply
  17. Hi Anil!
    Great article. I am fairly new to blogging and just signed up for affiliate marketing to sell through my blog. I have few questions for you if could help with: firstly is it a good idea to keep shuffling the displayed products after every few days or so. Do you think that would help viewers with variety? Also if you could take a look at my blog and suggest me about the products I have chosen plus is it decent number or you find it cluttered ? Your suggestion would help me as a beginner. Thank you ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
    • I was just trying to open your blog. Looks like you either entered the wrong URL or your blog is deleted by Blogger team. Please let me know if you need any help from me.

      Reply
  18. Ah.. Finally Google send me here to read awesome article and this article able me to understand how i can promote affiliate and convince reader. Thankx buddy for such a nice article.

    Reply
  19. Anil, thanks for your write up. You have said it all; the best way to make people buy your affiliate products or buy through your affiliate link is to build relationship with them because they buy based on trust.

    Using attractive incentives can really help a lot to make people buy from your link. However, experience in writing a convincing review is also important, and this must never be overlooked.

    Do have a lovely week.

    Reply
  20. affiliate marketing is great . Because you can get more money at a time from affiliate marketing. While asense gives you very little amount of money at a time. Thanks for such a great post anil sir. I am looking forword to use PPC tools on my blog.

    Reply
  21. Helllo@Anil:- First of thanks for this wonderful articles which provides mostly all the important informations for a newbie blogger who have never tried affiliate on their blog.
    I’m agree with all your points but to successed in the affiliate marketing there are some other imporant points is also need. i.e. you must have a well established blog having good page rank, good alexa rank and most important the you must be very honest to your readers. In my opinion these are some other very important points that a affiliate marketer must have to remember, in addition to all those points that you have mentioned in your article.

    Reply
      • Hello@Pramod:- I’m also conveince from your points that a page rank zero blog make good number of sales. But If a page rank zero blog make good number of sales then, then the main reasons for that is that the owner of that blog is very popular in the blogosphere. He knows perfectely how to get success in the affiliate marketing.

        Reply
  22. Many professional says that affiliate marketing is far better than Google adsense, but I think that affiliate marketing is much harder one. If someone follows all above carefully then he may successful but it will take time.
    One more point is that if you convince your readers that you are also using the product then it can get more results.

    Reply
    • Pramod, I must say. No doubt affiliate marketing is much harder to crack than Adsense kind of pay per click programs. But the benefits are also huge. You will always have higher chances of making more money with affiliate products if you are doing it right.

      It always make sense to promote those products only you are using or worth your use.

      Reply
      • Hello@Anil:- I also think that affiliate is the best and the quickest way to make money as compared like adsense, infolinks, buysellads etc. ,but the major problem is that you can not make huge commissions or money for all types of product. It also depends upon which types of product you are trying to sell to your clients..

        Reply

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