One of the first things I learned about, when starting my own business was the principle of adding value. It’s especially important if you’re selling a product as an affiliate. Affiliates don’t actually own the product, someone else does, and it is these creators that are providing the initial value, because the product they’ve created, serves some good, or is of some use to the end user.
As an affiliate marketer you are a middle man, you add value to the creator, whose product you’re selling, by putting it in-front or your audience, an audience the creator might never have been able to reach. The creator than rewards you by paying you a commission.
You also add value to your audience, who you hope will buy from you. You add value for them by making them aware of the product, as they may never have heard of it had it not been for you. However you might be one of many affiliates selling the same product, and who are all offering the same value added aspect. These other affiliates are your competitors, along with the creator of the product. You’re prospective customers can buy the product from any number of sources and get the same result, if they are contacted by them.
So it’s necessary to add as much extra value to the transaction as you can. You should try to stand out from all the other affiliates and even the actual creator of the product in some way. How do you do this? Well it’s about giving something extra that no one else is giving.
The image above illustrates some of the ways you can add value for your audience/ prospective customers. You can tie the value-added-bit into the transaction. So they only get the benefit of it, if they buy the product from you first. You can take a chance and offer something for free with no strings attached prior to the purchase and hope they feel a need to repay you and buy using your affiliate link after the fact. The choice is yours. Testing the two options is a worthwhile consideration.
Think of adding value in a bigger sense
Adding value can be something you do in all aspects of your life, not just business. It can come from simply smiling at someone who is walking past you on the street, or a thoughtful gesture towards a loved one. It can become a “state of being” that you live your life by. I recently tried to adopt this way of living, a value added life. It feels nice to be nice. I’m not saying I was a bad person before, far from it, I’ve always been pleasant and polite to other people, always. I’ve always been happy to go out of my way to help people. But I’ve never thought of such interactions as adding value, but they are.
Now I like to think adding value is also a way of making people feel better. To change their state in some positive way.
- If they’re sad, making them feel a little better,
- if they’ve lost something, helping them to find it,
- if they’re fearful, helping them feel safe,
- if they’re worrying, help them feel some peace of mind,
- if they’re frustrated, help them feel relief or a sense of accomplishment,
- if they’re feeling despair giving them a sense of hope.
Adding value in this way can be done one interaction at a time, on an individual basis, it’s small but it’s important, it’s important to someone..
Helping people over and over again
Adding value as affiliate marketers, with the tools at our disposal means we can help our visitors over and over again with one video tutorial, one insightful article, one honest review and recommendation. Once it’s done it’s there to help people over and over again. So next time you’re writing that review, scribing that case study, crafting that white paper, remember you’re doing it to add value to people’s lives.
Hopefully I’ve made you think a little bit more deeply about the concept of adding value. Let’s make the internet and the wider world a better place to be, by focusing on adding value to every part of it, one bit at a time.