Update your evergreen content
Publishers in our network drive 40% of their revenue from articles that are more than 60 days old. So we recommend you find your well-indexed content and take full advantage of it. Update links throughout the existing article, avoid tampering with the URL and you should increase traffic for much less work than writing a new piece of commerce content.
Offer price and brand comparisons
Shoppers want more than ever before: more brands to choose from and more price points to consider. So whenever you write about a product in an article, make sure you offer alternative items from different brands and at different price points. This gives your readers maximum choice and increases your chance of driving conversion, by enabling your content to inspire people of all budgets. Affiliate revenue can increase up to 300% when publishers use price comparison.
Make your content mobile compatible
Mobile matters. It is the browsing channel of choice, but bad mobile experiences mean conversions lag far behind desktop: mobile conversion rate in our network on Black Friday is a third lower than desktop. A simple way around this is to deep-link wherever possible. Drive people direct to product pages and you vastly increase the chance of earning a commission.
Use audience development teams
If you expect commerce content to perform well, ensure you’ve passed it to social and email teams, who can amplify traffic by spreading it far and wide. Top publishers in our network leverage audience development to maximise traffic and commissions. Among the top earning articles of last year, we saw the same article URL appear three times, showing the social and email campaigns a publisher ran to promote the commerce content.
Combine conversion and commission rate in your merchant choices
Pick merchants that convert and offer a high commission rate. Of course, ultimately, the merchants you write about must be an editorial decision. But, once you know the content your audience likes and the merchants they look at, optimize your selection further based on conversion data and commission rate information.
Think beyond Black Friday/Thanksgiving
Sales start earlier and earlier, and Google Trends shows traffic picks up from August. There are commissions to be earned from then through to the start of the new year. For example, once Thanksgiving weekend ends, you can create content around the holiday season and secure commissions too. “Urgency” related content performs particularly well in the US with last-minute shoppers as shipping periods close between December 10 and December 15.
Target shoppers based on time of the season
Write content with different holiday personas in mind. Start of the season you can target “early birds” who shop from November 1. End of the season? The “last-minute” shoppers who’ll purchase just before Christmas Day. During Black Friday? Self-gifters who invest in big-ticket items to improve their homes instead of gifts for family or friends. And after Christmas? Think about “sly shoppers” – people that use mobile to shop under the radar for replacements for unwanted gifts and avoid offending family members.
Be responsive
Be reactive to items that start trending in the holiday season. It might be a must-have toy, or a can’t be missed fashion deal. Whatever the trending opportunity, talk to your social media team and ensure they’re passing you the latest trends, so you can react to them and incorporate them in your holiday coverage.
Honestly – don’t just write commerce content around Christmas
People are savvy and see through you. If you’re trying to make a quick buck, you may have some success, but not nearly as much as if you’re writing commerce content all year round, understand your audience and their interests, and now the kinds of gifts their going to be looking for at the biggest gift-buying time of the year. The holidays are the high consideration purchasing period and it should be the time where quality commerce content publishers shine. But you can’t do that to the fullest extent if you haven’t done the groundwork in the first place.