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How to Use Social Decision Making To Increase Your Affiliate Sales Posted: 02 May 2008 02:30 PM CDT Almost a year ago I started experimenting with a new technique (new for me at least) of creating ‘Best Seller Lists’ as a technique to drive more sales at Amazon’s Affiliate Program. The concept was simple: Analyze the things that customers have bought previously from your affiliate links to Amazon (they give you this information in their reporting area) Pull together a list of the top selling items (those that are relevant to your niche of course) and list them in a post Link to these items again with affiliate links I wrote up the technique here. Today I was looking through my Amazon statistics and realized that this technique has been responsible for around 40% of my earnings from Amazon over the last 4 months. A lot of the success comes from one page, the example I gave in my original post - Popular Digital Cameras and Gear but there are three others (Top 10 Point and Shoot Digital Cameras, Top 20 DSLR Models and Best Camera Bags). Why does it work? I give a few reasons in the post about the technique that I’ve linked to above but increasingly I’m convinced that it’s got something to do with our social nature as human beings and the way that we often make decisions as groups rather than as individuals. I see it in my own ‘real’ life also. Among my friendship group four couples have purchased the same car, most of my good friends shoot with the same brand of camera to me, we’re all talking about sending our kids to the same schools…. the list goes on. Social Proof and Affiliate Marketing - Two More ‘Techniques’ This idea of social decision making is powerful - particularly when it comes to affiliate marketing on blogs. Reader Reviews - The other time I’ve seen it’s power is when I’ve posted a reader’s review of a product on DPS. I have posted quite a few photography book reviews over on that blog - most of which I’ve written myself. They tend to convert quite well (depending upon the quality of the book) but the thing that I’ve noticed is that they convert up to 100% better when it’s a regular reader of the blog who posts the review and not me. For example this simple reader review of the Digital Photography Book did better than my own review of the same book! I don’t think it’s because I’m not a convincing writing - I think the reason is that readers trust the opinions of other readers. Social decision making at play again! When ‘Join Me’ Converts - Let me share one more example of this social decision making. Earlier in the week I posted here at ProBlogger that I had enrolled myself in a course to learn to make better videos for the web. This was a genuine post - I’ve enrolled in WebVideo University (it’s early days but it’s quite good so far). Of course the post contained an affiliate link (I’d like to pay for a new video camera for my videos somehow). A number of ProBlogger readers signed up for the course (I think it’s around 10). It wasn’t a massive conversion but in talking to 3-4 of those that signed up I found that they were not only motivated by the course topic - but also by wanting to do something with me, to share the experience. I didn’t use the ‘join me’ approach to the post to get more people to sign up and increase my earnings - but it did. Now the course doesn’t give a lot of interaction between participants - but there’s still something about doing something that someone else is doing that I think comes into play here. The course is good and will fulfill a need but perhaps it’ll become more special to those doing it for the knowledge that others like them are also participating. A quick aside - while I’m talking about ‘joining’ - if you’ve got a spare $8.62 check out a great book called ‘Join Me!‘. It’s about a guy who started a world wide movement of people simply by placing an ad in a local newspaper inviting people to ‘Join Me’. It’s one of the funniest yet also insightful books I’ve read in years. What Do You Think? I’m thinking out loud a little with this post - but have you experimented with these ’social decision making’ ideas in your own affiliate marketing? PS: Social Decisions Making and Blogging OK - now I’m thinking out loud a little more (forgive me, it’s late on a Friday night… and I may just have had a couple of beers…) but I the more I think about it the more I realize that this social behavior goes beyond the purchases that we make and comes into play in a variety of areas of our blogging It’s probably behind the way that many big blogs with their RSS counters on their blogs grow so much faster (people want to be a part of a blog that others are obviously a part of). The same thing is probably true for blogs with lots of comments (people are more likely to interact on a blog where others are already doing it) I’m sure there are other examples - looking forward to you adding to my list. Come on - think out loud with me my friends! Share This

A Secret to Blogging Success - Build Upon What You Build Posted: 02 May 2008 09:02 AM CDT This week we’ve been looking at how to reach our potential by overcoming Blogger Inferiority Complex - a condition that cripples many bloggers. Yesterday I suggested two steps to overcome this problem: 1. Identify What You Have - don’t focus one what you don’t have but instead focus upon what is at your fingertips that can be the foundation on what your future lies. I suggested 11 questions to ask yourself as a blogger to help you work out what you have. 2. Build Upon What You Have - starting with what you’ve got - begin to build from that place rather than being distracted by what others are building in their blogging. Today I want to suggest a final step - one that comes out of my own experience as a blogger and from watching others succeed in blogging also. 3. Build upon what you Build Here’s a ’secret’ that I think sets highly successful people apart (in all walks of life) from the rest of us. They don’t just take what they’ve got and build upon it. They then build upon what they’ve built upon and then build again upon that…. and so on. Many people get to a point with what they do where they become satisfied, content and where complacency sets in. They rest upon their laurels and stop pushing forward. I’ve seen this with a number of bloggers who quickly rose through the ‘ranks’ of blogging to build blogs that began to get attention and notoriety. But then they began to get comfortable and lost some of the drive that they may have previously had and pull back on the level of work that they were putting in - content just to enjoy the success they’d already had rather than to push into new ground. The key is to push forward and ask some of the above questions on a regular basis. Here’s how it worked for me (this builds upon what I shared of my own story in yesterday’s post): After six of so months of blogging on my first photography blog I sat down and looked at what I’d built. I realized that despite making some mistakes I’d covered some ground and what I DID have had grown. I remember making a list of what I’d achieved at that point. The list included: I had a blog on photography that was paying me enough to start to think about going full time on the project. I had a new laptop that didn’t crash every hour (I was still on dial-up) I had gathered some knowledge and experience of making money with blogs I had some new blogger friends in my niche (and outside it) - some were beginning to talk about working together I had a little more profile in blogging I had the possibility of a little extra time on my hands as I’d completed my study I looked at what I’d built and decided to bounce off that in a couple of directions. Firstly I decided to put my extra time into blogging more on the photography blog. I also decided to start a few other blogs on technology related to cameras. In a sense I used what I’d already build as a springboard or leverage to the next thing. I also decided to take my experience of making money from blogs and start blogging on that topic (at first on my personal blog). Then began another phase of grow and building. After another 6 or so months I made a similar list of what I’d achieved and progressed to have. Out of doing that I decided to shift all my archives on blogging about blogging from my personal blog to a new blog here at ProBlogger. The process has continued over the last couple of years (ie every 6 or so months pausing to identify what I’ve got and where the energy was and then building on that). This resulted in a number of new things and continued growth of existing projects. For example: out of having built a little credibility and profile with ProBlogger I was joined with other bloggers to build b5media out of 2 years of blogging on digital cameras and growing an audience in that field I decided to launch Digital Photography School out of reaching a point where I earned six figures in a year from blogging I joined with another blogger to launch Six Figure Blogging out of all of these experiences I took the decision to write the ProBlogger Book with Chris Garrett. Now I don’t want to use my story here beat my chest and grow my ego but as an example of the principles that I’m talking about. I didn’t start out to build what I’ve built - I started out, looking at what I had and determining to build upon that. That’s all I wanted to do at every step along the journey. If I’d looked at the big picture too early or compared my meagre efforts with others in my early days I would have become overwhelmed and disillusioned. Instead I focused upon what I had and what I could do and grew from there. Then I’d repeat the process. The results have been an evolutionary growth in my own personal development as a blogger and that of my business. Let’s Revise Don’t define yourself by what you’re not Start with what you have Build upon what you have Build upon what you build Share This

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