How To Write Affiliate Product Reviews Like A Pro (9 Steps)

Knowing how to write affiliate product reviews that will entice a reader to buy takes some key strategies and strategic planning. Affiliate marketing is my favorite way to monetize a blog.

You don’t have to be a ‘big blogger’ to be successful as an affiliate marketer, but it does involve being a savvy copywriter with a few educated tricks up your sleeve!

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If you are a blogger getting started with affiliate marketing, there’s a good chance you are looking for ways to increase your conversions.

Update: In April Google had a product review update that affected a lot of websites. We have a new post with updated info on how to improve affiliate product reviews on your blog!

So, how do we write affiliate product reviews that make us more affiliate commissions? How can we encourage our blog readers to take us up on our affiliate offers?

Guest contributor Keegan Kraemer joins us today to share her amazing expert tips today, on how to write affiliate product reviews so good that your audience simply has to click and buy after reading them!

How To Write Affiliate Product Reviews That Convert To Sales

Written by guest writer Keegan Kraemer

Affiliate marketing is a great way for new bloggers to start making money fairly quickly.

Seasoned bloggers can also use affiliate marketing to add another income stream to their blog.

Affiliate marketing is also easy in that it takes much less time to get up and running than it would to create, market, and sell your own products or services.

You don’t need to worry about creating landing pages or complicated sales funnels with drip email campaigns, fancy videos, graphics, and swipe files.

Often times your affiliate manager will even provide you with email swipe files and copy to use for sharing the product or service with your audience. How much easier could it get than that!?

Affiliate Marketing: The Right Way And The Wrong Way

However, there is a right way and a wrong way to do affiliate marketing. So often affiliate marketing is touted as an “easy” way to make money online.

We see “gurus” on our social media feeds every day talking about how simple affiliate marketing is.

“Just put some links in your posts or on your Facebook wall or Instagram feed and you will start racking in $100’s or $1,000s a day!” ….Right?

Wrong!

Is Affiliate Marketing “Easier” Than Creating Your Own Product And Marketing It?

In a sense yes it is.

A great way to get started with affiliate marketing is to write review posts.

How to write affiliate product reviews? You can write a review post for a physical product, online course, service, or other digital product (ebooks, etc).

There are so many great reasons to write a review post. Often when people are searching for terms like “review” or “the best…,” they are looking to purchase the product or service they are researching.

Providing the reader with a review post that is easy to understand and provides them with the information they are seeking might just make them open their wallets!

So let’s get into how you can structure a review post so that you can maximize your conversions for your affiliate links.

How to write affiliate product reviews and increase your affiliate sales

What Makes A Good Affiliate Product Review Post?

How to write an affiliate product review post in a few steps: A good review post can significantly boost your conversion rates for your affiliate links.

A good and honest review post will also help to establish trust and authority with your audience.

The key here is honesty. You want to establish trust with your audience, not mislead them.

So don’t sugar-coat your review, include your honest thoughts and opinions both good and bad.

If you are only talking about the positive aspects of a product or service then that will cause doubt in your reader.

Which could, in turn, lead them to search elsewhere for a review they feel is more forthcoming. Giving someone else the commission.

How To Structure Your Affiliate Product Review Post For Maximum Conversions

A well-structured review post will greatly benefit your conversions and your wallet. Keep everything easy to follow and honest and your audience will thank you.

Below I have outlined how to effectively structure a review post for easy reading and maximum conversions.

How To Write Affiliate Product Reviews Step By Step

Intro

As with any type of blog post you need to write a good intro that catches your audience’s attention.

Prepare them for what the post is going to be about. Let them know right away that it is a review post and if they decide to make a purchase how awesome it would be if they purchased through your affiliate link.

When you made the purchase

This is particularly relevant when you are reviewing a course or something that is affected by a timeline.

For example, I purchased X course on [this] date, which helped me to increase my pageviews by X% in so many months.

It can also be helpful for topics such as weight loss or anything that warrants a before and after type scenario.

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Product/service history

Every product has a story to tell. Whether it’s a course created out of a need the creator saw.

A physical product created to help solve a problem. Or a program created out of personal experience.

Talk about the history of the product, or the person who created it. Your audience might be more inclined to make a purchase through you if you tell the story in a relatable way.

You never know where your audience is coming from and how they might connect with you or the product or service you are reviewing. This also creates a great segway to the next part of the post.

Why you made the purchase

This is another great way to connect with your audience on a more personal level. Maybe they are in the same place you were in when you decided to make the purchase.

Try to put yourself in the mind of the person who will be reading your post. Speak directly to them! As I mentioned earlier, when someone who is looking for a review post, they are generally in a buying mindset.

Be honest here as well. Did you hesitate to make the purchase, if so why? Was it the price point? Did it not have everything you were looking for?

Generally speaking, you will want to review products and services that you use or have used in the past. Also be sure to let your audience know if you were given something to review. Again, honesty is key here throughout the entire post.

If you can remember, talk a little bit about the affiliate’s sales funnel here. Not in technical terms, but like you are talking to a friend.

Don’t babble on about how they had a landing page that led to a optin for a free email course that was delivered over so many days and blah blah blah….

Instead, write in a conversational tone,

What were you looking for when you came across the product or service?
Were you looking to solve a certain problem and found a post on Facebook or Pinterest that caught your eye?
Did you sign up for a free email course that you just couldn’t get enough of and need more?
Where their ads just so funny and well done that you didn’t even hesitate to make a purchase?

Again, when you write affiliate product reviews, try to consider your reader’s mindset here.

What is it all about?

Are you reviewing a course that you purchased? Give some screenshots from the inside (with permission from the course creator, of course).

Talk about everything you get in the course or with the product. Is it a physical product? Snap some shots of it being used or show how it could be used.

Try doing an unboxing post or video, those are wildly popular.

What makes it unique?

What are some of the other like products or services?
Who are the competitors?
How is the product or service you are reviewing different from others out there?

You might want to consider referring back to the “story” of the product or service here. Really hit on the points that make what you are reviewing different or better from other like products or services.

Pros and cons

Honesty, honesty, honesty! Like I said before, don’t sugar-coat things!

Don’t only talk about the positive things about the product or service. Include some of the downfalls and flaws without turning your reader away.

Here is where you can really work on your copywriting skills. The negatives are “opportunities for improvements.”

Talk about additional things you would like to see in the product or service.

If it is a course, is it missing some topics that you were looking to learn about?

If it is a product, what is something that would make it even better? Could it be available in different colors/shapes/sizes?

You want to be honest here but not necessarily deter people from buying through your link.

However, if there are more negative aspects than positive about the product or service, then offer an alternative if that is an option.

Or perhaps the product or service has a higher price point, then you can offer your audience some options at varying price points or more budget-friendly options.

The WireCutter is a great example of this. If you are reviewing a physical product, take a look at to how they have structured their posts.

They offer a table of contents, which could be used for any type of review post to help organize and help readers easily find what they are looking for.

They also offer options for products at several different price points.

Not only is this beneficial to the reader who may be looking for a budget-friendly option, but it also benefits the writer in that there are multiple options for affiliate sales.

Perhaps the reader did not like the original option and chose the less expensive option, which still led to an affiliate sale for you!

Speaking of affiliate links, don’t be afraid to use them. Every time you mention the product or service name make sure to insert your affiliate link.

You don’t want to miss that opportunity for someone to make a purchase through you. You’re writing the post, you deserve it!

How has it helped you?

How did this product or service make your life better?

Referring back to our course example from the beginning of the post, what did this course help you to accomplish?

Has your income increased? Your pageviews? Your Pinterest followers? Give some specifics here.

Your audience wants to know exactly how the product or service helped you or your business. This will help them visualize how the product or service can help them.

Include some stats and screenshots. Add any type of before and after discussion or images here again.

How To Write Affiliate Product Reviews – Final Verdict

Would you purchase it or use it again? Would you tell all your friends about it?

Give a bit of a summary about everything you talked about here.

Are there testimonials about the product from others?

You can add those here to help show social proof that it’s not just you who enjoys the product or service.

Whenever you write affiliate product reviews if you think this is the best product or service, give your final recommendation here and tell them why it is the best one.

If it is not the best product or service, point your reader in the right direction. Give your reader the option to purchase something else that you would recommend.

How To Write Affiliate Product Reviews: Bonus Tips

If you can interview the creator or owner of the service or product, share that information with your audience.

This goes along great with being able to tell the story and how this product or service is different.

I recently wrote an affiliate review post on the Billionaire Blog Club Course Review – Honest and In-Depth where I use the exact structure that I have outlined for you here.

One of the things you will notice in the review post I wrote is that I offered a bribe. I have seen many bloggers do this.

How To Write Affiliate Product Reviews: Offer A Bribe

A bribe is when you offer one of your own products at a discount or free bonus someone will get if they purchase another product through your affiliate link.

In fact, just a few months ago I bought a product that Chelsea from HerPaperRoute was promoting just to get her Micro Influencer course for free!

There are endless possibilities to offer for a bribe when it comes to trying to increase your affiliate conversions.

Not sure what to offer for a bribe? Here are a few ideas:

Ebook
Strategy call
Coupon for another product or service
Blog audit
User experience test
A free complementary course

Other Ways To Increase Your Conversions From Writing Affiliate Product Reviews

Earlier I mentioned that affiliate marketing was easier than creating, marketing, and selling your own products or services.

This is true, however, if you really want to play with the big girls you will need to up your game.

Chelsea is an amazing example when it comes to going above and beyond for affiliate marketing. In her April 2018 blog income report, she outlines exactly what she did to earn $3,007 in one week from promoting the Ultimate Bundle.

In this post she outlined how she:

Created her own sales page
Gave away an exclusive bonus
Used a video she created to promote the bundle on her sales page
Wrote and scheduled a series of 12 emails
Created custom pins and scheduled them on Pinterest, and promoted the pins using Tailwind Tribes

She also mentioned that she was competing with other bloggers with much larger lists that had been promoting this particular product for years.

So you see, affiliate marketing is what you make of it. Granted Chelsea did not write a review post about the Ultimate Bundle, but why not combine the two strategies.

These strategies can be used with products and services that are sold for a short period of time or for evergreen products or services.

The Difference Between High And Low Tier Affiliate Commissions

It is also worth noting about commissions!

You could go ahead and create an epic review post about something that is going to pay you a few bucks in commission per unit sold, but then you have to make sure you are selling A LOT.

Or you could find something that is going to pay you really good commission and put a lot of work into it up front and then just promote the heck out of it.

I love that Chelsea outlined exactly what she did to promote the Ultimate Bundle. Take note, people!

Instead of creating a landing page, you could:

write a review post and add in a bribe
create a video (people love videos)
create your own series of sales emails
use ones provided to you by the affiliate
create different pins and put them all over Pinterest and Tailwind Tribes
Don’t forget to share on your other social media platforms as well!

Lastly, don’t forget about your keywords! Do your research! Search on Google and Pinterest specifically to see what keywords people are typing in.

Use that to your advantage. Create a plan for your review post and implement it!

You got this!

Keegan Kraemer blogs full-time at TheDailyChangeJar.com, a site dedicated to empowering women to take control of their finances through frugal living and savvy side hustles. As a wife and mother of 6, she knows a thing or two about living frugally and making extra income through side hustles. Be sure to get your free copy of Keegan’s Savvy Girl’s Guide to Financial Freedom.

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