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by Caitlin Castelaz on Mar 12, 2023 1:01:00 PM
Publishers with brand E-E-A-T can help readers navigate the best deals—and those with an Amazon affiliate integration can surge their revenue while they're at it. Here’s how publishers can take action to earn more revenue annually from July's two-day digital event.
It’s hard to overemphasize the opportunity publishers have with Amazon Prime Day. Over the last 8 years, Amazon has successfully created a consumer froth in the middle of the summer usually reserved only for Black Friday, with Prime users buying more than 60,000 items every minute during 2022's event, driving approximately $12 billion in sales worldwide in two days. Here are 4 tips to help publishers looking to increase their revenue each year during Prime Day.
#1 —> Build a reputation for endemic product expertise
Publishers can lay the groundwork for a successful Prime Day early by cultivating an editorial identity based on reader trust. Writers, researchers, and editors of brands that see success during Prime Day understand what readers value: expertise, experience, and unique insights that come from a thorough understanding of one’s publishing niche.
When reviewing products, writers and editors can gain reader trust by providing information about the best deals and perspectives on the most relevant and useful products, while also linking to a diverse group of sites and partners that sell these products at the best prices.
Publishers can also build trust by using their underlying technology to create engaging experiences via product cards, tables, carousels, and other calls to action. The name of the game is user-centricity that drives conversion, where even small enhancements such as inserting a best picks summary module at the top of the page can help to increase sustainable audience and revenue growth.
Other elements that provide readers with useful insights while also increasing trust in a publisher's site include content blocks that list features, pros and cons analyses, links to other user tests/reviews, a comprehensive FAQ, and a clear establishment of author expertise and credibility.
Once editorial teams create content, another important step is outlining the strategy for continuing to keep content current via ongoing updates. Prices and stock information, for example, often change; it's the same thinking for well-received content that helps readers stay informed.
Other tips for updating content
Remember, one of the best channels for earning affiliate revenue comes from free traffic in the form of optimized SEO. Management of huge libraries of affiliate content can be labor-intensive, and operational efficiency in this effort translates to real revenue. This is where SaaS like Organic's affiliate’s “magic” linking feature can automate the laborious article updating process.
In addition to the overt revenue potential of readers purchasing products with publishers’ affiliate tags, brands known and trusted for high-quality, reader-relevant product information—particularly those leveraging SEO and affiliate features found in Organic's content management SaaS—may expect higher traffic from search, syndication (such as Apple News), and other sources during major sales events like Amazon Prime Day. As brands become known for insightful and accurate affiliate content, they can create relationships with readers that increase click-through and conversion rates, the benefits of which compound during and immediately after Prime Day.
#2 —> Create content specifically about Prime Day deals
Amazon Prime Day offers thousands of deals across every category; it's overwhelming for shoppers to parse what they’re seeing on the Amazon website. That’s why the majority of shoppers rely on publishers to help them make sense of the offerings and find the best deals on the best products in a given endemic category. As a result, editorial E-E-A-T now comes most in handy, as straight-forward “These are the best [publishing/consumer niche] deals this Amazon Prime Day” pays large dividends.
Outdoor Life is the authority when it comes to hiking gear on Amazon Prime Day
When planning content cadence leading up to Prime Day, publishers should refer to their analytics dashboards to learn what types of affiliate content have received the most engagement in the past. This is a good indication of the kinds of content that readers most want to see from a domain, as well as what can’t easily be found elsewhere. It may also indicate which content could rank highest for a given brand in Google's search results pages.
Prime Day is an ideal time to be judicious and showcase brand expertise. Not all Prime Day deals are equal: A basement bargain price on a subpar blender is fine if you really need the blender at that price point, but a lower-than-usual price on a high-performance blender may be just as useful for some shoppers. Knowing a brand’s audience and their values, and providing them with information about different options can help them navigate Prime Day successfully — without any risk of buyer’s remorse.
(After all, publishers don’t receive earnings on products that are ultimately returned; they also commonly receive a commission for the total value of items in a given shopping cart at checkout). Because so many deals sell out quickly, and so many deals come online at once, Amazon will share embargoed press releases about Prime Day deals ahead of time. Working with Amazon to get the intel, publishers can prep articles ahead of time, and publish accordingly — the key is publishers scouring the Amazon-embargoed documents for products they know their audience will enjoy.
#3 —> Update often during Prime Day
Prices can fluctuate greatly over the lifespan of a product available via an Amazon link, which can make high-performing content stale and underperforming.. To make the most of reader attention during this brief window of time, it’s smart for teams to dedicate editorial resources to updating Prime Day deals articles multiple times over the course of the two-day sales event. This may include updating prices, removing deals that have sold out, or adding additional deals to an article. Feel free to add new deals in the comments of high-performing social posts as well.
Editors can signal to readers that content is fresh and up-to-date by using Organic's Update Timestamp feature. This feature allows editors to keep the original publish date intact in the source code, while displaying an updated timestamp as well. During a fast-paced sales event like Prime Day, having the latest information can be a great asset to readers who want to snag a deal.
#4 —> Learn from hits and misses
Even after Prime Day has passed, there is much to glean from the event. Publishers should look to their content traffic analytics and Amazon affiliate sales dashboards to learn what worked and what didn’t. Are there any surprises? Any clear winners in the editorial output? Successful publishers take note of these learnings early and consider how they might serve the brand during Black Friday, next year’s Prime Day, or during the course of the normal editorial calendar.
By adjusting editorial output based on experience, publishers can continue to reach readers, build trust, and compound their affiliate successes during the months and years ahead. Please also feel free to reach out to Organic Support via email (support@organic.ly) or the Help Desk to learn more.