How to Make Money from Affiliate Product Reviews

11 months ago 33

Product reviews are a great way to make money online without having a single subscriber or any existing traffic. In the past year alone, I�ve made more than $300,000 from product reviews. They are also a great way to...

Product reviews are a great way to make money online without having a single subscriber or any existing traffic. In the past year alone, I�ve made more than $300,000 from product reviews. They are also a great way to grow an affiliate program and make sure you that your brand is well represented in search results. So how do you do write a product review as an affiliate and how do get affiliates to write them? Listen up, because I�m spilling all my secrets in this episode.

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How to Write a Product Review Post that Ranks and Converts

Review Post Guide for Affiliate Managers

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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy

How to Recruit and Work with International Affiliates

How to Make Your Affiliate Program Attractive to Affiliates

How to Create Compelling Affiliate Offers

How to Use the Holidays to Recruit More Affiliates

How to Create High-Converting Affiliate Graphics for the Holidays

How to Make Money from Affiliate Product Reviews

So how do you write a product review as an affiliate, and how do you get affiliates to write them for you? Well, that�s what today�s episode is all about. So listen up because I�m spilling all my secrets in this episode.

So today we�re talking about product reviews, one of the linchpins of affiliate marketing, one of the original ways that people made money as an affiliate. And we�re going to talk about it in two different ways.

We�re going to talk about it from the affiliate marketer standpoint. So from the affiliate writing a product review and making commissions off those product reviews. And we�re also going to talk about it from the standpoint of helping your affiliates make money by reviewing your products.

So if you�re an affiliate manager or you run an affiliate program. Anyway, this is what we�re going to talk about today, both ways about how to do this. Now, before we move on, I want to point out two guides that I�ve got.

All right, the first is for you affiliates, how to write a product review that actually ranks and converts. We�ll talk about that. Those are the two keys.

I�m going to cover a lot of that in this episode. But if you want the written version and a template that you can use to create a product review, if you go to mattmcwilliams.com/reviewpost, I�ll put that link in the show notes. You can download that guide. Now, if you�re an affiliate manager, you�re running an affiliate program and you want the review post guide for your affiliates.

Same concept, little bit different. There�s a few tweaks that we made specifically for affiliate managers. And here�s the cool thing. I am giving you permission to copy and paste everything in the guide and share with your affiliates. All right. If you go to mattmcwilliams.com/reviewpost, you can download that guide as well.

All right. So make sure you go ahead and do those. They�re in the show notes. Grab those. So here�s the thing. This is the thing I love about product reviews. Product reviews allow you to succeed at affiliate marketing when you literally have no list.

One of the best ways to succeed at affiliate marketing when you have no list getting started is product reviews. Now, are you going to build a multi million dollar business on product reviews? Probably not.

Eventually you�ll want to grow a list. Actually, you could build a multi million dollar business on product reviews if you start building a list. But the very simple reason for this is it allows you to rank.

You do a product review and we�ll talk about the strategy behind this. You show up on Google and people come to your site. When I had literally a few subscribers when I first started, not literally the day I started, but when I started a couple of months in, I had maybe 75, 100, 200 subscribers, whatever it was.

I may have had more, I might have had like three or 400 actually. But I had a handful of subscribers basically, and I was doing these product reviews, about seven or eight of them, and I would make as little as a few hundred dollars in a year to as much as over $10,000 in a month from single product reviews. Add it all up and I�m making quite a bit of money with virtually no list now.

As I grew my list, of course, then I was able to market in other ways. Now for you affiliate managers and business owners out there, here�s a question. If I google your company, if you go Google your company right now, what are you going to find?

Are you going to find a bunch of people saying great things about you, saying great things about your products? Are you going to find a bunch of complaints? Because those Google reviews, most people don�t post positive reviews of stuff.

Unfortunately, we tend to only review things when it�s negative. What am I going to find? Bunch of positive stuff, bunch of negative stuff or just nothing?

Again, one of the easiest ways to get affiliates promoting and increase your brand visibility is to have affiliates write product reviews. I mean, just imagine if you had ten, maybe 20, maybe some more posts on Google all saying great things about you. I mean, it only takes ten.

That�s the first page of Google. So if somebody types your product name in, you�re going to hopefully rank number one. Although I have written product reviews, by the way, they�re ranked higher than the company�s website.

And I�ll talk about how to do that in this episode. I�m not guaranteeing you�re going to rank higher than the company�s website. I�m just saying if you follow the principles that I teach you�ll be one of the top three product reviews.

And if you follow the principles that I teach, one out of every twelve or so could rank higher than the company�s website. I mean, I�ve probably done that four or five times, and it�s the coolest thing in the world. Like, literally, you search for the product.

I�m the number one listing. Imagine if all you had was ten. That�s the first page of Google and they�re saying great things about you. But here�s the problem. Most of your loyal customers, most of your affiliates, even, they don�t know how to write a product review that ranks and converts. And that�s key.

You needed to rank high on Google. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody�s there to hear, it doesn�t make a sound. I don�t know. So if it doesn�t rank high, it�s not going to get any traffic. If you�re 13th on Google, you�re going to get two hits a year. Five maybe.

On like a really competitive product, you might get as much as 30 whole hits. If you�re number one, two or three, you could get anywhere, depending upon the product, from 100 to. There�s a couple of reviews that I�ve written that we get over 3000 hits a year, and these are $2,000 products for both of them that I�m thinking of, we convert one to 3%.

So I make 50 times 1000 times 40 or 50% commission. You do the math. It�s really good money. So the key is you got to rank and it has to convert if it ranks high. But the post is formatted and it�s just ugly and it doesn�t read well. You wrote it with all AI.

It�s just not going to convert very well. So yeah, you get 3000 hits, but you convert two people. I�d rather get 200 hits and convert 10% of the people than get 3000 and convert sub a quarter of 1%.

So to understand the purpose of a product review, there�s two main purposes. Number one, it helps undecided buyers decide to buy. They�re searching for this product review because they�re on the fence.

They are clearly interested. And you might even argue most people that are only 20% of the way there don�t search for product reviews. They�re somewhere between 30 and 99% of the way there.

They�re just, they�re not sure. And the second thing is it helps the product creator. That�s you if you�re the affiliate manager right? Overcome objections using a third party opinion. This is the beauty of this product review, it�s a third party opinion.

I�m saying good things about this company, about this product, about this service. Go to the sales page. The person says good things about themselves. It�s kind of like the difference between looking at a dating profile versus getting introduced to know.

Of course, they say great things about themselves on their dating. You know, this is how I met. My wife is a mutual friend introduced us and recommended us to each other said, you should go out with Tara. And said, tara, you should go out with Matt. And fast forward. That was June 5. November 22, we were married. September eigth.

We were engaged. Like why? In part because of that third party recommendation. So it overcomes those objections. Now, this is an episode that I do about every two to three years. I first did it back in 2010 in an old podcast of mine for an affiliate program I was running.

I did it again 2014 15. I did it in 2018. I did one in early 2021. And now here we are in late 2023. And I�m releasing this because there are new SEO, that�s search engine optimization. For those of you who don�t know, there�s new strategies, there�s new research.

I�ve got some new best practices since I last shared this in early 2021. There are new best practices to get your review post ranking and converting. So I have to share that new stuff now.

I�m going to cover some of the old stuff. Some of the principles, honestly have not changed since 2010. I�m still going to cover those in this episode because you may be listening to this concept for the first time.

Want to learn how to make passive affiliate income from product review posts? Get my free guide on how to write a review post that ranks and converts and learn how we bring in more than $10,000 every single month in passive affiliate income! Get it here!

All right, so how do you write a review post and what is the strategy behind it? Well, I mentioned sometimes I rank higher than the product itself. I mentioned that roughly two thirds of the review post I write I am the number one ranked review post.

I�d say the breakdown is probably 70%. I�m number 120 percent. We�re number two or three, probably 8%. We�re in the four to seven range, which is like the, we get a little bit of traffic. Those are the ones that make us, quite frankly, like a couple of month. And that�s about it.

I mean, on the high end, they make us maybe 3000 a year. All right, that�s on the high end, ranked two to three. They make us between three and 10,000 a year.

The ranked number ones make us over, typically over 10,000 a year. A few of them are a little bit lower. Maybe they�re lower price points.

Things like that or other reasons, and then, honestly, like, the final two to maybe upwards of 5%, we don�t rank anywhere near top ten. It does happen, like, oh, you�re teaching me all these things and that means I might not. Yes, you might not rank anywhere remotely close to the top seven to ten.

I mean, there are times we�re outside the top 15. And you go, well, how do you claim to be an expert? Well, 19 out of 20 make us a considerable amount of money. And so it�s a numbers game.

If you write one product review and it doesn�t rank well or convert well, you don�t give up on, it�s like if you go on one date, you don�t. All women are terrible. All men are terrible.

No, that�s a terrible way to live life. You try one thing, you have one subscriber email you and say, you send too many emails or, I don�t like your content. You don�t stop writing emails, you don�t stop emailing your list because one person said something stupid.

So the big key is when you�re first starting out, I recommend selecting products that have as little competition as possible. Again, we�re relying on SEO, so your success completely depends on where you rank. The higher you rank, the more money you make, the more competition, the harder it is to rank high.

The other thing is, one of the factors in SEO is age of the content and age of the domain. For you newbies, my domain has been around since I bought it in 2003. Oh my gosh, 20 years ago, over 20 years ago.

I think I bought it in like November or December of 2003. So I�ve had this domain for 20 years. I�ve been publishing content on it regularly since 2011. I have over roughly 100 posts a year, times twelve years. I�ve got 2400 pieces of content on there. Probably more than that.

I�d have to look in WordPress. I�m actually kind of curious. I may do that after this, but I know it�s well over 2400 posts. I have all this stuff on there, right? And then I wrote my post three years ago about this product and you try to come in with a domain that�s eight months old, you�ve got six posts and your post was written last week. I�m going to outrank you.

I�m going to destroy you. As a matter of fact, there�s no way you�re going to compete with me. But if you come into a product with very little competition, maybe they�re doing a big product launch.

It�s the first time this launch has ever happened. This is one of the keys. And you write the product review, you can by default be one of the top five.

So that other product, there�s probably a lot of competition and all these things. Not only are you not going to beat me in the number one spot, but you�re not even going to beat the number twelve guy. Like, it�s just impossible.

It�s really hard to come in. But if you come in and you�re one of only six people who�s writing a product review and you follow what I teach in this episode, you�re going to be one of the top three for sure. So by default you�re one of the top six.

There�s only six people who are writing them. But following these best practices, because I know how to do this, you�re going to be ranked pretty high. And if you happen to be an older domain than two of them, well, you�re going to rank higher than those two.

And let�s say that you write a better post, you�re going to rank higher than those. And all these factors start adding up. The review posts that I�ve written, I mentioned that have performed poorly were almost always due to there being too much competition.

So take a moment, search for products, see if there are any other reviews. And if not? If not, then you want to follow what I teach.

If there is a lot of competition, I�m not suggesting you can never write a product review about it, just not now. So again, as we jump into the how to, the goal here is to write a post that number one ranks high on Google. Number two, people actually want to read.

Okay? So it�s not a bunch of keyword stuffing, poorly written garbage, right? So here are the criteria we�re going to go through one through 19.

Okay, I�ve got 19 things to share with you. Number one, aim for between 2004 thousand words. This is the sweet spot that we found anything less than 2000 words and it�s really hard to rank high.

Again, I�m speaking in terms of if we�re competing against some people, sometimes you could write anything and you could rank number one or two for those keywords just by default. There are review posts that I�ve written that have made me in excess of $50,000 that were under 2000 words. But I was also the very first person to review a very new product.

I�m thinking of one in particular that it launched in like in December of 2013 or 14. And I wrote a review post and I was number one and I was number one for a year. So here I am.

I�ve got a domain that�s like ten years old and this post is a year old and it only had maybe 1500 words and it was a year before anybody else wrote a review post. So I�m still number one for that search term. And I�ve gone in and updated that post and it�s now closer to 3000 words, if I�m not mistaken.

But I had it for probably three years that I ranked number one. And I�ve never ranked lower than number one, but I was number one for three years with less than 1700 words, probably. So anything less than 2000 words typically, and it�s really hard to rank high.

Again, if you happen to find one of those unicorns, you could write 300 words and rank high, but try to get at least 2000. Anything more than 4000, no one reads it. No one wants to read that online.

Like they�re searching for quick information. So 2000 words, my target is usually right in that middle, right around 3000. Number two, break up the text a lot. So for me, again, we�re writing a 3000 word post. You cannot just have like three 1000 word blocks of text. You cannot have just one long thing of 3000 words.

When I write a 3000 word post, the very typical thing is I�ll have six sections of 500 words roughly. Again, you can get the template that shows you what to put in there. All right.

The template will walk you through exactly what should be in this post. And it�s typically going to be about six sections of three to 700 words per section. But then I write paragraphs that are three sentences max, so there�s some white space.

Then I insert images and other graphics to break up the text. Sometimes it�s just as simple as a call out box. I did a review post the other day. The funny thing is I wrote it and I released it at like 11:00 in the morning. And this is one that�s in a, I would say a moderately competitive one. I released it at 11:00.

Eleven four, to be specific. In the morning. When I checked at 430 that afternoon, it was the fifth ranked review post. And there�s probably 40 to 50 review posts. It�s not like super competitive, but 40 to 50 is still some competition. I was ranked fifth and I had not inserted images yet, not a ton of images.

I�d inserted like five images, but I wanted to insert more, but I wanted to get this thing released because it�s for an upcoming launch. And so one of the ways I just broke up the text was there were some fun facts. I�m not going to give away what it was, but there�s like some, oh, did you knows?

And so I broke up the text like four or five times with just like a fun fact, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, did you know? Yada, yada, yada right. And so my goal is to aim for breaking up the text roughly every 100 to 200 words.

So in those six sections of 500, if I literally write a section with, say, 600 words, I want to break that up two times. So there�ll be the subheader. That�s a break.

Then there�ll be the text. Then I�ll break it up with, like, an image, and then text, then maybe like a fun fact, and then text. And then there�ll be another subheader, which is a break.

And then in that section, maybe that section is 400 words. I�ll break it up once in the middle, roughly. And again, it�s not an exact science. I don�t break it up unnaturally. And sometimes I really struggle. I�m like, how could I break this up?

What could I put here? And I�ll have to think, is there like a song lyric, or is there something. Is there a YouTube video that could go here?

What could I put here? And I have to get creative about what to do but break up the text often. Number three, speaking of images, you got to name your images well, all right.

There is SEO value to the images. So you want to make sure the file name and the alt tags are keyword optimized. Keyword optimized, not keyword stuffed. Okay, so we�re not going to name the image something stupid, like screenshot one. We�re not going to name it something stupid, basically. Right.

So if your review is about. I�m just looking around. My gym is right here in view of my office, and I�ve got the concept two rowing machine. Right? Great. Rowing machine. Love using it. It�s awesome. So I�m writing a review about the concept two rowing machine, and I�m doing a review of this now.

This is probably a pretty competitive one in that niche because, I mean, pretty popular, but whatever. I would name the image something like concept two because it�s the number two, not two. So concept two rowing machine png, something like that.

And then I would name another image, maybe like review concept two rower or something along those lines. You want to have some variety, but focus on the keywords that you want to optimize for. Just don�t stuff it too much. Right? You may want to have some that are like, concept two, exercise, something like that, and then with your alt tags, same kind of thing. I would like some of the alt tags to say, like, concept two rowing machine review.

Should I buy the concept two rowing machine, things like that. So again, use your keywords well. Name your images well, you definitely should never have a screenshot, the date, png, garbage like that. All right, number four, link often to the product.

Make sure you give people multiple opportunities to click over to the product through the review. There are a couple of reasons for this. Number one, you don�t want them to have to read 1000 words before they finally get to the link.

You want to give them opportunities, they�re convinced. Link roughly at about the same pace that I�m going to break up the text, maybe a little bit less often. I�ll typically work in between eight and twelve links in a 3000 word post.

So actually, yeah, that�s about every 250 words or so. I�m going to put a link in there. I�m going to do it early and often and certainly at the end. And secondly, so this is, number five, use good anchor text. Anchor text is, if you don�t know, is the text that the link appears in. So when I link, don�t link to click here.

Click here is not what you�re optimizing for. Put, if you buy the concept two rowing machine through my link. Link concept two rowing machine, that adds on when you do that.

It�s one of the little keys. If you think about this as like an algorithm is one way, but if you think about this as like a scoring system and the goal, if you want to rank number one, you�ve got to get, and there�s no exact formula to this, but you�ve got to get 175 points, right. And if you link a certain number of times, but not so many times, then you get five points for that ranking.

And so linking often and using proper anchor text is super important. One of the things is you got to mix it up though. So don�t use the exact same anchor text in every link, they will consider that keyword stuffing and it�ll actually penalize you.

Number six, link to your review from as many places you can. One of the simplest ways is just I put like product reviews on my homepage at the bottom of my site. When you go there, it�s like products I recommend and I�ve got links to the reviews.

That way Google can index it right away. Like I�ll write a couple of social media posts so it finds it on social media and I�ll write that and I�ll link to it from my social media if I�m talking about something. And again, if I write a blog about fitness, then I�m going to link to my concept two review post probably every six months or so.

And again, make sure you use slightly different anchor text within read like here�s the thing, you might not use different anchor text in every single one because you might not remember what you�ve used before. But as long as you don�t use the exact same anchor text every single time, you�re going to be fine. All right, number seven, don�t be afraid to be personal.

To get personal, make yourself relatable. Show how something like the concept two rowing machine by the way, this episode sponsored by the concept two rowing machine I should be getting a commission from this is all I�m saying, because it is a great rowing machine. Show how something can help others by sharing your own personal story.

Transformational stories are the best way to sell. So if you have a before and after photo, share it. If you have a before and after story, share it. I did a review post. This is actually the one that I was talking about that it wasn�t super long, and I first wrote it back in 2014. Then I updated it, I think in 2017.

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Let me just share what I wrote. I put this, I put says update. Since originally writing this review, I�ve had more than a year to process the information in the course. Here�s a quick update. In 2011, I was fired from a good, high paying job. In 2014, in part thanks to this guy�s course, I paid more in taxes than I made in all of 2011.

Do I believe in this course? You bet. That�s why I�m offering some killer bonuses worth $598 below. Blah, blah, blah. Right? So first of all, I tied it into the bonuses and I sold it.

But I used my transformational story. I was fired and then I went through this course and I made three times more money two years later. That�s a great transformational story, right? All right, number eight, this is a technical one. You�ve got to enable comments on the post. All right?

It used to be that Google didn�t care that if you had comments enabled disabled, didn�t matter. But back in 2021, this is actually after I did the last episode on this over two years ago, Google�s John Mueller, so he�s one of the heads of SEO there, said that if you remove comments from your post, which is actually a very common practice on review posts, there�s reasons why you would want to. But again, I�m just telling you what he says may adversely impact search rankings.

That is an exact quote, adversely impact search rankings. In other words, Google is factoring in comments into your rankings. So again, I mentioned before it�s a sliding scale, it�s an algorithm. And if the goal is to get to 150 points, let�s say that enabling comments is worth five points. Does that mean you can�t beat me if I have comments enabled? Absolutely not.

It just means you�ve got to do a lot of other stuff better. So why not get the full amount? It might be a race to 180 points. Maybe somebody else is competing with you and they�re doing everything right. And the only thing that separates you is they enable comments and you don�t, you will rank below them. Why would you want to do that?

So enable comments. Between us, I get like one comment per post per year that I have to answer. And usually they�re just asking a silly question, like, I live in Europe, can I buy this? Absolutely. Okay, great. I bought it. There you go. All right, another technical one. Number nine, make sure your page is fast loading.

Again, the faster your page loads, the higher you will rank. So if we�re doing things pretty equal and my page loads a little bit faster than yours, I will rank higher and vice versa. So again, I don�t know what this is worth, but let�s just say it�s worth ten points.

Because if you think about it from Google�s perspective, the reason why they have a reputation as the search engine is why? Because we get what we�re looking for and we have a pleasant experience when we do so. And if your website is slow, they are not delivering what they want to their audience and they will drop you down.

They don�t want you to rank high. It�s not in their best interest. So a faster loading website, that is an absolute must.

Nine times out of ten. The problem with slow loading pages, not slow loading websites, but slow loading pages, is images that are too high resolution. So if you can use something, there�s all kinds of plugins. Smoosh is one of them. There�s others. If you reduce the file size by half, or sometimes even 90%, it only reduces the quality by like 2%.

So you�re not even going to notice unless you�re putting up your website on a big screen tv. One to 2%, 3% reduction in quality is nothing on an image. Even on the retina displays, it�s nothing but the page load.

Think about if you have ten images on there. I talked about breaking the text up with images. For one, you got ten images. And let�s say they take collectively 3 seconds to load and you reduce it by 90%. Now they take 0. 3 seconds to load. How much of a difference that makes. So that�s the biggest reason.

If you need good host, that�s another thing, is your host, if you�re on 995 hosting, shared hosting with certain companies, it�s not going to cut it. This is a business you�re running. So if you need a good host, I highly recommend agathon.

I will link to them in the show notes. They�re our hosts. I�m going to tell you, they are not cheap. You do not need to pay what we pay. We pay like $200 a month. You do not need to pay more than $200 a month, but for 40 or $50 a month.

Oh, I can�t afford that. Okay, what�s it worth to you? You make one additional sale of any $1,000 course, you pay $50 a month, $600 a year, which you�re already paying, say $200 a year.

So you�re going to pay $400 more if you make one additional sale of $1,000 course at a 40% commission, you just paid for it. Not to mention your site loads faster, everybody else. And that�s if you make only one additional sale.

If every one of your review post rankings, let�s say they go up an average of a half a spot, you will make considerably more than you spend. So it�s a good investment. So again, there�s a lot of great hosts out there.

We just happen to recommend Agathon because they�re super easy to work with. And personally, I just love that I don�t have to worry about the tech stuff. Like when we want to buy a domain and get WordPress set up, I just email them and say, buy this domain and set up WordPress.

And they do it for me. We never log into the back end. We had an issue recently. I just called them and said, fix this, please. And they did. All right, number ten strategy.

As far as the content of the post, we�re going to get into that now. Number ten overall. But number one in this section, make it clear that the product is not a magic pill.

One of the phrases that I often put when I�m selling courses, I say, you�re going to have to work your b*** off for this product to work. I make it clear this is not like a magic thing. Like, oh, this course is going to make you a millionaire and you�re going to sit on your hammock all day. No. And I kind of use it as a challenge. I use it as a positive.

They�re like, oh, you don�t think I can work my b*** off, man. Just watch me. I�m going to work my b*** off. I�m going to take this course, and next thing you know, I made $1,000. So we�re making it clear the product is not a magic pill. Does not solve all their problems overnight.

All right, number eleven, got to give them ways to contact you. This is just like the comments. Number one, this will help you rank higher. Again, out of 150 points that you�ve got to get, maybe is worth one or two points, but that could be one or two spots in the rankings. Secondly, when you give them a way to contact you, you can sell.

So use live chat, use Facebook, give them a phone number. I use Google Voice. Don�t give them your actual cell phone number so people can contact you even if they don�t use the methods.

This is why it ranks higher. It builds trust and they�re more likely to buy online. And then when you have a phone number on the page, it actually increases your online conversions even though they don�t use it. I�ll get a text. Usually I get one or two texts. These, again, are people that are 95% of the way there.

Why would they Google a review, find my review, read all the way to the bottom of the review, and then text me if they weren�t already 95% of the way there, and they have one question and they ask the question, I answer it and they buy. It takes me two minutes and I make $1,000. Again, I don�t know about you, but I do not make $30,000 an hour.

So to spend two to three minutes to make $1,000 is a really good investment of my time. So just use a Google voice. You don�t have to get your cell number or use live chat or something and put it on there. Twelve. You�ve got to have bonuses. You got to sweeten the pot.

You�ve got to offer compelling bonuses. Not only does it attract people because they see it in the title, I usually put the dollar amount of my bonuses in the title of the post. So they go, oh, and then I put it early on in the post.

In fact, I tell them they can skip the review and just go straight to the bonuses and see those. Not only does that attract people, not only does it close sales, but it gets them into my stuff, which makes them a customer long term for some of my stuff. This helps you get traffic because a lot of people bonus shop.

I found that only about upwards of 10% of people bonus shop, but they go and they look up reviews, they look up bonuses. That�s another keyword you probably want to rank high for. It�s why I always include the word bonuses in the title and throughout.

But it adds a little extra value for purchasing through your link, which means they�re more likely to go, you know what? I�m done. I�m done shopping. I�m here. This is the guy or the girl. I want to buy stuff through this person, not, I�m going to go back to Google and look for some more.

They�re probably never coming back. All right, number 13, use paid advertising to drive traffic to your review. Now, the first thing I hear when I talk about paid advertising. I can�t afford paid ads, Matt. I can�t do that. I can�t spend a bunch of know with no guarantee of return.

Don�t worry, if you do this right, it is going to be extremely profitable. Again, when people search for a review versus just searching for terms like if they search for good rowing machines, they might, in their mind, rowing machine might cost $100. They�re not a super qualified prospect.

But if they search for the concept two rowing machine, they�ve already seen that it has 4. 8 stars on Amazon. I don�t know what it has on Amazon, but it�s probably pretty high. They�ve probably already read some customer reviews on Amazon or other sites and now they�re googling it. They are an extremely qualified prospect.

So you�re going to spend a couple of bucks to get a click and then you�re sending them to a high converting review. Let�s say you make $100 commission per sale and you spend $2 per click and you only convert one out of 25. So one out of 25, you�re going to spend $50 to make 100.

If there were a machine where you could put $50 in and then get $100 out, how often would you put $50 into that machine? I would do it all day long. I would just sit there, do it. That would be my new full time job, of course. So use paid advertising. Number 14, I touched on this earlier, but share the pros and the cons.

You are not trying to just make this a glowing review. People are coming here looking for clarity. Yeah, they�re 90% of the way there, 95% of the way there sometimes. But if you say, honestly, is this right for me? And you say, here are some of the issues that I had with this product. Number one, you�re doing them a service.

You�re doing them a solid by saying, you know what? If you�re over 6ft six, this rowing machine is not for you. My husband�s six eight and he can�t stand it. Well, here�s the thing. If they�re 511, they�re going, all right, this is probably for me. So you use the negative kind of in a positive.

And secondly, you save somebody from the trouble of buying something that they don�t want. It comes across more authentic. So I always put, like when I review a course, I say, hey, here are the positive. Boom. I love this, I love this, I love this. Here are two of the negatives.

Number one, it�s really hard to search in the system like, I can�t find anything. I have to kind of go through it sequentially or remember where it was. That�s a negative.

It�s not a big negative for me, but it is a negative. And number two, this is not for beginners. So don�t buy this if you�re a beginner, what does that say? It�s not for beginners. Oh, this is more advanced. I�m more advanced. I�m going to buy this. All right, number 15, add a video review. All right.

For years, I would have advised against this because a lot of people were fearful of, it�s called the duplicate content penalty from Google. This is when Google penalizes you for creating the same content multiple times. So if I write two reviews in the hope that they�ll rank higher, but there�s pretty much the same content, Google�s like, we�re going to penalize you.

Actually, neither one of those is going to rank. But again, right after I released this episode the last time in 2021, John Mueller, if you remember him from earlier, the comments, one from Google specifically said that identical content published in different formats. So you�ve got a video and a blog post, a podcast and a video, a podcast in blog post, it�s not considered duplicate content.

So here�s what you do. You do a video review. I�m going to tell you right now, I read the script. I write the review. Then I read the review with a little bit of extra personality in it, add a few words here and there and some asides, and then I embed it on the page. So most people are not going to watch the review.

But for the five to 10% who do, and I usually rank number one for the video reviews. And that embedding it on that review post gives it a little bit of extra SEO juice for the video. Now I�ve got two of the top spots.

And I cannot tell you how many times out of the first five listings, I�ve had two of the top five. My written post will be, say, number one or number two, and my review video will be number four, something like that. I�ll have two of the top three, four, five listings on Google.

When people search for a product review, I mean, I�m dominating it. All right, number 16, and this is a new one. The next two are also new. So just like the comments and doing a video, the next two are brand new from the last time I did it. And that is emphasize your author authority. This is due to the rise in AI content.

So this is brand new over the last year or so Google is putting a premium on content produced by real people. So make sure you include author biographies and link to the author, usually you social media profile so they are sure that it is written by a real person. John Mueller made this very clear last year, 2023.

Toward the end of last year made it very clear. So just simply put an author biography and link to social media profiles. That�s enough to emphasize that author authority. Speaking of AI, number 17 is be extremely careful with AI generated content. AI can be an extremely great tool. We use it all the time.

But you got to be very careful because Google knows. You might not believe this, but Google knows what is AI generated, what is written by humans. They know they can spot them a mile away.

So be careful. My recommendation is so I might talk through some ideas for a product review and record myself speaking, generate the transcript and then use AI to write that and categorize it. I use AI a lot for categorizing things and kind of giving me some inspiration and then tweaking it.

And it does about half the work, half of the difficult work, but the content is generated by me. That�s how I would use it if I were you on these, because they can tell and they will again, on that point scale, are they going to penalize you if you have a couple of sentences that they say, ooh, that�s a little bit AI generated. Yeah.

How much? I don�t know. Maybe they�ll dock you one point for every sentence. Well, you lost four points again. That might drop you down two spots. This is a race to see who can get the 150 mythical points.

Just to be clear, that�s a number I made up. I�m just using that as an example. And you think, oh, losing four points out of 150, not a big deal. It is if you now have 128 and the two posts above you have 129 and 132 respectively. So just think of that when you use AI. Number 18, update the post regularly.

Google loves content that is updated at least periodically. Like a good rule of thumb is that if a review is for an annual product launch, here�s what we do as a team. If it�s for an annual product launch, like it only launches once a year, about six months prior to launch, we�ll do an update.

About two months prior, one month prior, and a few days before the cart opens, we�ll update that. So about four times, maybe five if it�s an evergreen product, again, about four times a year, every two to three months, small updates are all that�s needed. I�ll add a quick little section.

So I�ll go into the who it�s for and I�ll add a new who it�s for. After watching this for a couple of years, I realize this is also really good for senior citizens who want to lose weight or whatever. Or I�ll divide like the who it�s for and I�ll take coaches and consultants and divide it into coaches and then consultants and make it two sections.

That�s a small update. I�ll add a new picture, maybe new screenshots that I name properly, of course. But I�ll update the images from inside the course dashboard or of the product itself, because I wrote the review five years ago and the products changed.

So that�s all you got to do. Just update it regularly. And number 19, link to your own internal content in the post. This is something, admittedly, that I have forgotten. And as I made notes for this episode, I went back to check our content and sure enough, we have not done it enough.

And I told our team about this. Make sure that you aren�t only linking to external links like in the post, that you�re not just linking to the product. That�s an unnatural way of linking.

Think about when you write a regular post that�s not a product review. You�ll link to a blog post that you wrote, a podcast episode that you did, a video that you did, and then a product that you like, and then a podcast episode, and then a blog post, and then a product that you like, and then a book that you read, and then so on. There�s some variety, so just find a couple of instances in the post, keyword rich, where you link to some of your own content.

Number one, it�ll help the SEO of that content, so there�s no thing there. Number two, they might go to that and find some new content and subscribe to your website. And yeah, you got a new subscriber. And number three, it makes it look more natural. Which again, I don�t know, is that worth one point out of 150? Probably.

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At most it�s worth one or two. But again, one or two points can make the difference between ranking number one and number three. So 19 things. What does it look like when you put it all together? What does it look like when you take all of this information? Put it all together again, I mentioned that guide.

Grab the guide how to write a product review post that ranks and converts mammicwilliams. com reviewpost I have updated the original guide. I released it in 2019. I did the first update in 2021. And I just updated it literally just in the last couple of weeks with brand new information on SEO.

And we�re going to continue to update it. So grab it and then I�ll let you know when we update it. There�s no rhyme or reason to every two years, I update it when it needs to be updated.

So if Google releases an update in April of 2024, I�m going to update it in April or early May of 2024 with the latest research, the latest best practices to get your review, post ranking and converting. Plus, like I said, I�ve got a template inside that allows you to see exactly how one of these posts is laid out, not only for ranking but actually converting into clicks and sales. That�s the key.

And you affiliate managers go to mammocwiams. com affiliate review again, both these links are in the show notes. You can download the version for affiliate managers to share with your affiliates. I am literally giving you permission to download the guide and give it to your affiliates so they can write their own review posts or use it yourself. You can write some review posts as well.

So again, just check out the show notes. I�ve got links to both of those. This guide has helped tens of thousands of affiliates write high ranking, high converting product reviews. Now you get to have your affiliates doing the same word. Do it yourself, right? So I�d love to hear from you.

If you have any questions about review posts, text me at 260-217-4619, if you got any questions about review posts or anything else, you just want to share your biggest takeaway with me or share a link to a review post that you write over the next couple of weeks as a result of this episode and grabbing that guide. Text me anytime.

Just let me know. Love to hear from you there. And then lastly, make sure you hit subscribe because the next episode I�m going to be sharing my predictions for next year for 2024.

All of my bold, sometimes outrageous, but I�m pretty accurate. I�m batting like 97% over the last five years with this episode. I�ve been monumentally wrong a couple of times and most of that was around Covid.

Like half the predictions I made for 2020 were just flat out wrong. Again, half the predictions people made about everything in 2020 were wrong. But I�m going to be making some predictions about the future and some pretty cool stuff.

We�re going to be talking a lot about AI and voice search and some other cool concepts in affiliate marketing that are just starting to take shape this year and I�m going to be making predictions for 2024. So make sure you hit subscribe so you don�t miss that episode. I�ll see you then.