TOTD: Create Gift Guides to increase your blog’s affiliate income

The holidays are not too far away, and everyone wants to give their loved ones a gift to remember. With so many sales from major retailers and different personalities on the shopping list, holiday shopping can be overwhelming and feel like a chore. This is where gift guides play a huge role. Gift guides inspire your readers and aid in the shopping experience by narrowing down choices. They also serve as valuable content building your authority as a go-to resource for your readers. Most importantly, publishing quality gift guides for your audience can also increase your blog’s affiliate revenue during the holidays.

Here are a few tips to help you get started:

1. Create niche specific gift guides for your readers

Start by thinking about your target audience and the people that are most likely on their shopping list. Write down different interests and create a gift guide catered to each of those personas filled with relevant products. If you’re having trouble brainstorming, start with yourself. What type of people are on your shopping list?

Next, make a list of useful products from your top merchants. Resist the urge to present a long list of gift ideas and instead focus on a handful of useful and trendy products.

As you create gift guides, consider sharing your thoughts and details about the products you’re recommending in the gift guide. Writing up a paragraph reflecting why you chose those products builds trust and makes shopping through your gift guides feel personal.

2. Promote your gift guides

After you created a collection of gift guides, it’s time to share them. To make sharing your gift guides easier for your readers, add a Pinterest Pin It hover button to your blog. There is an awesome WordPress plugin called jQuery Pin It Button For Images that allows readers both on desktop and mobile to share your images via Pinterest. This way, readers can share your gift guides on Pinterest and increase traffic to your blog.

Be sure to share your gift guides on all your social media channels and email. Gift guides are a great way to reach a larger audience. For example, use different hashtags and tag relevant social media accounts based on the interests of each gift guide. New visitors to you blog can turn into loyal readers. The way you promote and share your guides are important as the content. Reach wider audiences in order to increase your traffic and generate conversions.

3. Use ShareASale’s gift guides as inspiration

If you’re stumped on how to create gift guides or confused over what products to offer based on different interests, take a look over at ShareASale’s gift guides found on our blog. During September, we will be posting a themed gift guide each day filled with products from different ShareASale merchants. While browsing, we hope you find inspiration and discover new merchants for your content creation.

4. Keep track

With all the effort you put into creating gift guides, make sure you are tracking the performance! Track how your gift guides are performing with ShareASale’s Affiliate-Defined Tracking. The afftrack=value at the end of your affiliate links allows you to input any string and see it reported in ShareASale Affiliate reports. For example, you can add “&afftrack=GiftGuides2018” to the affiliate links in your gift guides and see which transactions resulted from clicks on those particular links.

This upcoming Q4, be sure to use holiday gift guides to your advantage. Gift guides can help your readers during the busy holiday season while boosting your affiliate revenue. Shoppers need help finding gifts for their friends and family and your gift guides lead them to the right direction to make purchases they might have overlooked.