The dos and don'ts of selling affiliate products on your mobile app

by App My Site DIY App Builder

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online.

As ad monetization is slowing down and dropshipping begins to erode, affiliate marketing remains a reliable formula to make money online.

If you don’t want to bother yourself with setting up an ecommerce infrastructure, it makes sense to lean on affiliate marketing.

Since app development has become easier, there is yet another channel you can promote your products on. You can easily use an app creator online like AppMySite to start your own app.

This piece covers the dos and don’t of affiliate marketing on your mobile app.

Do - Choose an app maker with external product support

Affiliate marketers are generally bloggers with little to no background in coding. They naturally use free app makers like AppMySite to start an app of their own.

These automated tools enable users to create a shopping app using their ecommerce website.

It is important to choose an app maker that provides support for external products. Many affiliate marketers list external products on their WooCommerce stores.

Some app makers do not display these external products, making it difficult for affiliate marketers to display them on their apps.

The first thing you must thus make sure is that the app maker you use offers support for external products.

AppMySite provides complete support for external products for all apps with code version 1.3.4 and above. This basically means you can display all the affiliate products on your WooCommerce store on your app as well.

Don’t - Add advertorial formats to sell affiliate products

Many marketers add flashy banners and ad slots on their website and app to promote affiliate products.

This is simply meant to promote affiliate products in a more direct manner and earn commissions.

While this may seem like a sound tactic, you should avoid promoting affiliate products overtly. Affiliate marketing generally works when you take the time to explain the features and benefits of a product or service.

Pushing advertorial banners and ads will make you no different from any random advertiser. You will lose the special trust you have with your users by posting simple ads on your mobile app.

Ads are already on their way out. Phenomena like banner blindness and ad fatigue are already making online advertising a dicey prospect

You should thus completely avoid pushing ad-like assets on your mobile app. Use organic discovery tactics to encourage users to give more attention to your affiliate products.

For example, you can change your home screen to give more visibility to external products. You can also make in-app navigation easier so that your users can move across your app with greater ease.

Do - Use blog content to promote affiliate products

There are major differences between affiliate marketing and regular sales.

In regular online sales, you are more interested in using conversion-oriented messaging to get a prospect over the line. It is very direct and precise.

Affiliate marketing is like walking a tightrope. You cannot seem very salesy to your audience because your job is to recommend products, not sell them.

Your tone does not necessarily need to be neutral. You must however make a justified case on why your readers must buy a product.

Using blog content makes great sense for affiliate marketers. Blogs provide enough room for marketers to explain the product to their users in great detail.

Long-form content also cuts down the advertorial quotient of the entire exercise. With product-oriented blogs, you are presenting users with all the information they need to buy a product.

Tools like AppMySite further enable you to integrate your WordPress blog posts to your WooCommerce app.

This option is brilliant for affiliate marketers looking for a long-form medium to promote external products.

Don’t - Avoid disclosing affiliate agreement

Beginners in affiliate marketing often feel shy about disclosing their affiliate partnership with a brand.

This is partly because affiliate marketers don’t want prospects to feel that a third-party is benefitting from the purchase.

You don’t really need to have such a level of opacity when promoting your affiliate products.

It is best to upfront about your affiliate agreement with the company whose products you are promoting.

Many of the best known affiliate marketers around have a disclosure agreement available openly on their websites. Since marketers provide their app users all the product info they need to make a purchase, coming clean on the affiliate agreement is not a big deal.

Some of your loyal app users are in fact more likely to make a purchase if you make this disclosure upfront.

Honesty is rare in the sales and marketing world. By making your affiliate agreement open and public, you are helping your users make a more informed choice.

Do - Optimize mobile app performance

A fast mobile app is very important for greater sales.

The practice of affiliate marketing is geared towards extracting the most out of every purchase journey. Your prospects will only buy a product if their purchase journey proceeds without any hiccups.

Without fast app speed, seamless navigation, and instant screen loading, your app performance is nowhere near where it should be.

There are many ways you can optimize your mobile app performance. If you are using AppMySite, you can purchase the WordPress web hosting add-on. This add-on will enhance your website speed by migrating it to WP Engine, a prominent web hosting platform.

This will have a knock-on effect on your app as well. Your app speed will also increase and thus contribute to the overall app experience in a positive way.

Don’t - Choose any random affiliate partner

There are many affiliate partners you can choose from. Beginners generally choose the most popular affiliate program they can find.

This is the wrong way to approach affiliate marketing. You need to account for certain factors before settling down with an affiliate program:

Cookie life: Refers to the time for which a website cookie will last in the local memory of your app user. Let’s say the cookie life an affiliate partner offers is one month. This implies that if a user from your platform visits your affiliate partner and makes a purchase within a month, you will get a commission. A longer cookie life is thus much more desirable.
Quality of products and delivery: The last thing you want is your users and readers blaming you for recommending a poor product. You must thus find an affiliate partner known for quality products and robust customer support.
Good deals and discounts: A good affiliate partner will always roll out attractive discount deals for your users to incentivize sales. Make sure you choose an affiliate partner keeping this in mind.

In conclusion

Affiliate marketing is not easy and takes a lot of time. However, a mobile app environment is perfect for affiliate marketers as it is more conducive to modern online shopping.

This piece provides the dos and don’ts you should remember while promoting affiliate products on your mobile app. There are a number of other points you should know as well, but these points will nevertheless set you on the right path.