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<\/a>\nAs a marketer you know that these top 10 sites are basically lists of affiliate offers formatted as generic \u201cTop 10\u201d lists. However, what you might not know is that some of these sites do quite well financially. Mostly because they use display ads to drive traffic.<\/p>\n
Some sites spend over $1 million a year just on display. If they can afford to spend so much on ads, clearly this strategy is worth it when you get it right.<\/p>\n
In this post we’re going to look at how these sites work, which niches work best with display and then dive deeper with two case studies that highlight companies that successfully use the affiliate review site model.<\/p>\n
Why Affiliate Review Sites Work With Display<\/h2>\n
With people spending more time online interacting with each other, more of them are buying online than in person. For example, 79% of U.S. adults shop online<\/a> with 15% shopping online on a weekly basis. With all of this online shopping, customers have turned to review sites to help them make their purchase decisions.<\/p>\n For example, 92% of consumers read online reviews<\/a> before making a purchase. And furthermore, a 2013 study by Dimensional Research showed that<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026an overwhelming 90 percent of respondents who recalled reading online reviews claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions<\/b>, while 86 percent said buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You can see that review sites have become the go-to-place for customers to make informed decisions. Especially when they’re making big purchases.<\/p>\n People are very receptive to review sites. Think about the last time you made a purchase. You probably looked at the Amazon reviews or did a Google search to see what other people were saying.<\/p>\n One of the reasons why this business model works is that there is a demand for it and it’s a solid income generator for you:<\/p>\n Plus, the information these sites provide is pure content \u2014 there\u2019s no obvious sales pitch. You\u2019re not linking people to a sales page, a video sales letter (VSL) or even asking them for money on your site<\/b>. You\u2019re just offering reviews of products these people are interested in.<\/p>\n People will be more receptive and trusting when all you appear to offer is content. Plus, when you’re clear on who your target audience is, it gets easier to show your ads alongside content that is related to your product.<\/p>\n For example, someone browsing the \u201cBusiness and Accounting\u201d section of Answers.com<\/a> will be a match for the products you review if your site reviews the top 10 pieces of accounting software.<\/p>\n Pretty much any market where there are a few different products but it’s hard to differentiate between them work well as an affiliate review site.<\/p>\n We did a little digging and found examples of niches that fit this criteria and show examples of the display ads.<\/p>\n With the growth of cloud computing, there’s no shortage of platforms available for users to choose from. Many of these review sites list the top 10-15 options available on the market.<\/p>\n Compare Accounting<\/a> is a platform designed to educate site visitors on accounting software. To drive traffic to their affiliate review site, they run ads that say things like \u201cDownload Our New Top 15 Accounting Software Report & Implementation Guide Today!\u201d and \u201cDiscover Accounting Software – Review Top 15 Software Vendors.\u201d<\/p>\n They use a combination of Google and native ads. The native ads appear as images on applicable publisher websites: Top 10 Best Website Builders<\/a> compares different website building tools to help users find the one that best suits their needs.<\/p>\n Their ads look like this: Now more than ever it’s become extremely easy for anyone \u2014 without any formal training \u2014 to build their own website. Review sites in this niche focus on listing all of the top web hosting and cloud storage solutions available to users. They’re all very similar but differ slightly in the features they offer. These affiliate review sites help users choose.<\/p>\n One example is Web Hosting Free Reviews<\/a>, which compares hosting services and rates them. These are the types of ads they use to drive traffic to their site:<\/p>\n This is an interesting niche because almost everyone has some sort of debt. To help manage the load, people look for companies that will help them consolidate their debt and manage payments.<\/p>\n One of these companies is Debt Consolidation Reviews<\/a>. They list different debt consolidation companies and rank them based on criteria like:<\/p>\n Their display ads look like this:<\/p>\n This is a great niche to operate in because whether you’re reviewing the latest diets, supplements or gyms, there’s enough variety that a review site in this niche will do really well.<\/p>\n Diet Pill Universe<\/a> ranks the top 10 diet pills every year. Each product on the list uses a ranking system that looks at features like the following to help people make informed decisions:<\/p>\n Their ads look like this: With all the apps and websites available today, this niche also offers a lot of options that need to be reviewed and compared.<\/p>\n Top 10 Best Dating Sites<\/a> doesn’t only rank dating sites but it categorizes them as well. So depending on whether users are looking for religious dating sites or something else, sites within each category are compared against each other.<\/p>\n Here’s what their ads look like: These sites contain a whole bunch of different categories of products. Credit cards, computers, eCommerce products and more. They are the hardest to get started with because you need a lot of content.<\/p>\n However, these advertisers buy a lot of traffic on display and are worth mentioning.<\/p>\n NextAdvisor <\/a>focuses on all things credit related. Its goal is to educate consumers so that they’re more savvy with credit management. In addition to general credit information, they also rank credit cards.<\/p>\n For example, they have a direct buy ad that looks like this: Most everyone could benefit by having more insight into credit management. With rising rates and cost-of-living increases making headlines these days, knowledge is more important than ever.<\/p>\n But how do customers know which credit card is right for them? The market is flooded with offers.<\/p>\n Unless they\u2019re seriously into debating the details of every card, customers don’t really care what the differences are\u2014they just want the card that best aligns with their needs. This includes extra perks the card offers\u2014like accumulating points every time the card’s used\u2014and a low rate.<\/p>\n There are so many credit cards to choose from that between the features, extra benefits, and rates, this presents the perfect opportunity for an affiliate site, like NextAdvisor, to inform customer decisions and make revenue at the same time.<\/p>\n NextAdvisor is one of a handful of affiliate review sites that focus primarily on credit card reviews. NextAdvisor also offers reviews for products and services such as auto insurance, web-hosting platforms, and email-marketing software.<\/p>\n NextAdvisor wants to capture as much of the roughly 72 million Americans<\/a> who don’t have a credit card but are searching for the best one. To make a decision, this group wants help analyzing the differences between credit cards. NextAdvisor reaches these people by offering educational content and distributing it through search and native advertising with Yahoo Gemini and through content discovery with Outbrain. In fact, NextAdvisor spends as much as $1.8 million a month to do so.<\/p>\n The main publishers that NextAdvisor uses are news-related sites. This makes sense, considering the types of people browsing these sites and their affiliate cable news channels. They’re older\u2014between 59 and 66 years of age<\/a>\u2014and looking for quality content to learn more about the issues that affect them and<\/i> use that information to make more informed decisions about the products they use. Adults 50 or older make up the second-highest group of credit card owners<\/a>, at 78%\u2014compared with 83% of people age 25\u201334. This older audience is likely to be receptive to advertising that focuses on credit management.<\/p>\n The majority of NextAdvisor’s ads, 84%, combine image and text. For example, this is a desktop ad that ran using the Yahoo Gemini Network: Each ad has a specific focus, and the corresponding landing page goes into more detail by offering a full review of the credit card\u2014its features, fees, and more. If we look again at the desktop ad above, with copy stating, \u201cPay No Interest Until 2019 With This Credit Card,\u201d this is what the landing page for that ad looks like:<\/p>\n Experiment by adding or removing the type of information you focus on to see what sends more traffic to the merchant site and boosts your commissions.<\/p>\n This site demonstrates the importance of picking the right niche. There is a very large market for beauty and anti-aging products. But more importantly, this is a very emotional and painful issue. Today’s culture puts emphasis on youth and beauty so people are willing to pay a premium to put off the inevitable as long as possible.<\/p>\n And according to a study from Transparency Market Research:<\/a><\/p>\n \u201c[The] Anti-Aging Market is projected to grow at 7.8% between 2013 and 2019. The anti-aging market is poised for a healthy compounded annual growth rate of 7.8% between 2013 and 2019 and is projected to be worth USD 191.7 billion by 2019<\/b>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n More serious people opt for more drastic solutions, like plastic surgery. However, these treatments are expensive and risky, which is why some people choose more inexpensive, safer solutions like creams and lotions.<\/p>\n Another advantage of selling beauty products, creams and lotions are that they\u2019re consumables, similar to nutraceuticals<\/a>.<\/p>\n The customer will eventually run out and need to buy more. If they\u2019re seeing results, then they\u2019ll keep buying it month after month. Plus some creams are very expensive<\/b>. The \u201cLifeCell\u201d cream that you\u2019ll soon learn about costs $189 for a 2.49 oz tube. If you can get a monthly commission off re-bills or repeat sales from your affiliate partner, the lifetime value of one customer will be very high.<\/p>\n TotalBeauty uses a few different traffic sources, but they still rely heavily on Google. When you comply with Google\u2019s terms \u2014 like offer transparency and a great user experience \u2014 they’ll make it easy for you to send traffic to your affiliate offer.<\/p>\n
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\n[Source<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n
Choose Affiliate Review Niches to Maximize Reach<\/h2>\n
1. Software Reviews<\/b><\/h3>\n
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\n<\/a><\/p>\n2. Web Hosting and Cloud Storage<\/h3>\n
<\/a>These ads focus on three main factors that do a good job of attracting traffic:<\/p>\n\n
3. Debt Consolidation<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>\n4. Health and Fitness Products<\/h3>\n
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\n<\/a><\/p>\n5. Online Dating<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n6. Review Conglomerate Sites<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\nCase Study #1: NextAdvisor<\/h2>\n
Ad Networks<\/h3>\n
<\/a>\nPublishers<\/h3>\n
<\/a>\nAd Creative<\/h3>\n
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\nOn another network, AppNexus, the ads look like this:
\n<\/a><\/p>\nLanding Pages<\/h3>\n
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\nA few things to consider when you create landing pages for your ads:<\/p>\n\n
Case Study #2: TotalBeauty<\/h2>\n
Ad Networks<\/h3>\n
<\/a>\nPublishers<\/h3>\n
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\nTotalBeauty has seen success with Momtastic, a site geared towards women with babies to teen children. Sites like this provide women with insights and ideas on how to stay healthy and practice self-care. Many women struggle with adjusting to how different their lives become after children. They’re often looking for solutions to help them put more emphasis on their needs and feeling good.<\/p>\nAd Creative<\/h3>\n