The Secret Ingredient in the Most Trustworthy Affiliate Posts in the World
Affiliate Examples #2
It wouldn’t be right to run an affiliate newsletter and not talk about the biggest affiliate website (well, subfolder) in the world.
If you’re in affiliate marketing and haven’t heard of The Wirecutter then I don’t quite know where you’ve been hiding.
Long referenced as the biggest and best example of a multi-niche affiliate website in the world, thewirecutter.com was acquired by The New York Times for more than $30m back in 2016, and the newly rebranded Wirecutter was migrated onto the official NY Times website at nytimes.com/wirecutter/ in 2020.
And despite seemingly publishing a buyer’s guide for almost every product invented since the dawn of time, the site has a knack for delivering a high quality, trustworthy review every time.
It can be hard to write authoritatively if you’re writing about the best ukuleles one day and the best canned tomatoes another — yes, these are two real “Best Of” articles I found on Wirecutter — let alone have a high level of expertise and product knowledge come across within the content.
However, the strategy that Wirecutter staff currently use to come across as authoritative and trustworthy (two very important things if you subscribe to the concept of EAT) is an idea you can steal and employ on your own sites.
Here’s the trick:
Most affiliate reviews cover the what — i.e. which products are selected — and the why in terms of explaining why a specific product is a good recommendation for the user.
Wirecutter go one step further and include the how — how they reached the verdict for the what and why — and openly explain this within their review.
In their guide about the best canned tomatoes, their “How we picked and tested” section first explains their process for narrowing down the product list before embarking on the review. In this case, they polled other employees that lived in 10 different US states about brands that were easily accessible where they lived.
Next, the author studied ingredient labels and explained why they avoided certain types of canned tomatoes.
Finally, they explained the process for their blind taste test, including how many people tested the products, who those people were, and the criteria for evaluating those products.
In their ukulele guide, their selection criteria is explained as being based on size, price, build quality and accessories. Their testing criteria was based on how easily a ukulele plays, how good it sounds, how well it stays in tune and how it looks. All of this is brought together in a simple photo showing the author surrounded by ukuleles.
How You Can Make This Work for You
Most affiliate marketers don’t have the time, money, energy or desire to put such a high level of effort into their affiliate guides. Bad affiliate. Naughty.
However, there are a few things you can do to implement something similar to this without going as far as Wirecutter do (though you really should be aiming to try to beat Wirecutter where possible, not simply mimic them with a poor imitation).
If you’re worried about the cost of buying so many products to review, remember you can always sell them on afterwards — so you’re probably looking at a cost of somewhere between 10-30% of the actual purchase price after factoring this in. Still, this can end up being a costly investment. Check out Affiliate Examples #1 for a tip on boosting the profitability of this exercise.
If you have no intention of actually buying and testing the products, and want to stick to overviews instead of reviews, you can still incorporate your How with an explanation of how you selected the products that you did: What was your criteria for selecting the products? Did you pick based on a combination of specs and pricing? Demonstrate all of this to users within your review.
One thing that’s worth noting with this approach:
Wirecutter still focus on getting their products (and affiliate links) in front of their readers.
The How is supplementary content that comes after their top picks — they’re still focusing on getting a sale, but then they hit you with the trust factor if you continue scrolling.
Their post structure can be summed up as: What, Why, How.
What: The product(s) they are recommending
Why: Why they’re recommending the product(s) in question
How: How they tested, reviewed and reached their conclusions
This has the benefit of making your reviews more trustworthy for readers and Google reviewers.
At the very minimum it gives you a chance to boost your word count, relevant keywords and session durations — if you care about those things.
This issue of Affiliate Examples was published by Luke Jordan before giving the project away. For more info on this, watch here: https://youtu.be/AQZ8M9LI0Ew