A little background story –
For around 10 years, I was co-founder at a WordPress themes and plugins store.
During that time, one of the obvious revenue streams that we worked on growing was, recruiting affiliates.
One of the strategies with which we had some success was, to offer help with creating content for the affiliate’s website. Not necessarily a product review, but a how-to post that covered a problem or use case related to our product – based on the affiliate’s audience of course.
But honestly, now that I am an affiliate, and on the other side (thanks to this blog), I realise it’s not easy.
There have been times when I’ve wanted to review an interesting product, but haven’t been able to, because I don’t have a premium copy of the product.
Which forces me to simply rely on the product documentation and screenshots.
I don’t enjoy writing about a product that I haven’t checked out myself.
And I haven’t been accepting sponsored posts for this website, because I want to keep this website bias-free. So there’s no chance for me to get a review copy.
Recently though, an affiliate manager from a popular plugin store, reached out, via what I am guessing must be a general ‘what-can-I-do-to-help’ outreach email to all affiliates. And when I replied and asked for a review copy, he promptly arranged one for me. That was ultra useful to say the least.
I am relatively new to the affiliate world, so old-time affiliates, what has been your experience?
What do you think product owners should do to make it easier for affiliates?