How to Sell Beauty Products Online – Work With Brands You Love

Today, I’m going to talk about a niche that has taken over the internet by storm (in a pretty way) and turned many women into self-made online entrepreneurs. In 2016, $62 billion profit was made in the beauty industry and by 2022 (that is only 5 years away), that figure is projected to hit $429 billion dollars. 

Many brands are now looking at the direction of eCommerce to grow their sales and you can be part of this exciting venture too. This article aims to show you how to sell beauty products online, leveraging on trends and keywords, without the inventory hassle, so make sure you read until the end.

Why Work With Reputable Beauty Brands

Let’s face it. There are a ton of beauty companies out there and partnering with these brands can be beneficial in many ways.

1. You don’t require a huge start up funds for product research and manufacturing.
2. Most companies already have their own set of targeted audience. All you need to do is just to amplify their market outreach.
3. Promotional materials such as videos and product catalogs are usually available at your disposal, so there’s no need to recreate them yourself unless for personal product review.
4. When these brands are fairly established, their brand name is somewhat familiar to the public. Hence, it’s easier to obtain customers’ reviews to support your marketing effort.
5. Since you are not bound to these companies via any contract, there’s a flexibility to work with different brands that you favor.

So, what exactly is this working relationship that I’m talking about? It is called affiliate marketing whereby you sign up as an affiliate with a beauty company, promote their products online and earn sales commissions when customers purchase through you.

The job scope is something like a sales consultant, except that, you don’t need to go from door-to-door or sit in the beauty counter all day handing out samples. Instead, you can work at your own free time, use the internet as a medium for promotion and create a steady income for the long term.

Affiliate business is a lot easier to start with when compared to a brick and mortar or MLM type of earning model. There is no need to operate from a specific location, no inventory purchases and absolutely no team recruitment necessary.

All you need is a blog and some training about online marketing and you are good to roll.

How to Create a Beauty Blog Using WordPress

With a platform like WordPress, setting up a beauty blog is really easy. But before that, make sure you get yourself a custom domain as this will give more personal branding for your blog and help merchants to see your commitment as an affiliate marketer.

After you link the domain to a WordPress hosting, start by selecting a design layout. There are over 1000 themes within WordPress that can be used for free, but not every one of them is the right fit for a beauty blog.

On the user dashboard, go to Appearance > Theme > Add new and under the search tab, key in ‘beauty’.  A few relevant designs will show up and you can preview each one before deciding to use them.

Once a theme has been selected, follow this simple tutorial on how to set up a WordPress website to make your blog more functional.

How To Attract Customers Through Blogging

Before writing your first blog post, there are a few things to understand about monetizing from affiliate programs. A blog should contain information that can attract the right audience who are interested in buying something online and not just reading about it.

In other words, you need to find out what’s popular (the trend) in the beauty niche and what terms (the keywords) are being used to search about these products online. Whether you are writing an article or creating a YouTube video, a relevant topic is what drives visitors to a blog.

The more you can relate to what your audiences’ shopping intentions, the more likely they will click on your affiliate links to make purchases.

Understanding Consumer Behaviors Through Trends

Fortunately for the beauty niche, there is a lot of data you can get from Google about what to write. For example, Think With Google, a comprehensive resource, offers insights into products that are trending around the world.

According to their Skin Care Trends for 2017, ‘vegan skin care’ has a surging popularity in the US since 2012. If you look to the column on your right, the report comes with some trending terms that already give hint to some interesting titles. (Get the full report here for free.)

Understanding Consumer Intent Through Keywords

These terms can be further elaborated using the Alphabet Soup Technique, whereby Google will suggest additional words. For example, when I enter ‘vegan skin care’, this is what I would see on my search bar.

All these are called keywords that can be used to write interesting blog posts. If those aren’t enough to trigger your creativity, there are more suggestions at the end of the search result page.

By extrapolating one popular term, we now have 5 to 10 more topics ideas that are highly relevant and will provide helpful information for your readers, especially for those who are interested in vegan based skin care products.

Now let’s take the keyword research one step further and see which one is best to use to achieve good ranking on Google. If you want your article to appear on the first page of the search results, you need to aim for keywords with high volume searches and low keyword tool like Jaaxy. Within seconds of plugging in the term ‘vegan skin care’ I can already tell which keywords is best to use by looking at the corresponding metrics.

This systematic approach to keyword research is the foundation to get visitors to any type of blogs or YouTube videos. By combining trends and keyword data, your blog posts will have higher chances of attracting and converting readers into buyers.

Where to Search for Beauty Affiliate Programs

Now that a well-structured blog is in place, we can start to search for companies that you want to be affiliated with. These opportunities aren’t difficult to find as long as you know where to look for them.

For example, let’s say you love to shop from Sephora and wish to know if they have any affiliate offers. Simply enter the phrase “Sephora Affiliate Program” into Google and look through the top results.

There you have it. If you click on that link, it will bring you to the official homepage with details on how to sign up for the program. Alternatively, you could also go to a brand’s main page and look all the way to the footer, which is located at the bottom of the page. For example, The Body Shop publicly provides a link for anyone who wants to learn more about their program.

Another method to search is to join an affiliate network and use product keywords to search for merchants within this niche. For example, by typing in the word ‘cosmetics’, you’ll be able to find a list of brands and their commission rates for comparison. To save you time, I’ve compiled a list of 10 beauty brands that you may find interesting to promote through your blog.

• Sephora – 5-10% per sale (via Rakuten Linkshare)
• L’Occitane – 2.5% (via CJ)
• Violet Grey – 12% (direct application)
• 100% Pure – 8% (via ShareASale)
• Afterglow Cosmetics – 10%
• True Natural – 10-15%
• Luxy Hair – $10 per sale
• Lash Star Beauty – 10%
• Buff Her – 12%
• BirchBox – $5 per subscription order

How Much Can You Make As an Affiliate

Assuming you are into the vegan trend and promoting a vegan skin care product from 100% Pure that’s worth $50. Every time someone buys that product through your link, you’ll make $4 in profit commission, but the earning doesn’t stop there.

As long as you are churning out relevant content for your readers and finding new products to recommend, your blog posts will continue to rank on Google and generate recurring income from multiple product reviews. In the early days, you may only earn about $4 per week, but as your blog matures and gain more audience, it isn’t surprising to earn $400 per week or even more.

With opportunities so vast, there’s really no limit to how much you can make as a beauty blogger.

So, let’s recap what you’ve learned from this quick tutorial;

1. Affiliate marketing is way easier to start than other business models.
2. Setting up a WordPress blog is crucial prior to applying for affiliate programs.
3. Write your blogs based on trends and keywords selections.
4. Relevant content will increase your sales conversions over time.

At the very core, this article isn’t just about selling beauty products online, but also to provide guidance on how you can create a successful blog for the long run. If you like to get more training on the subject matter, please check out the training at my recommending blogging program and I’ll personally walk you through the step-by-step.

“Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable”. – Coco Chanel

Are you a beauty blogger? How did you first start out and what tools/techniques would you recommend for beginners who are interested in this niche? Please leave your comment in the space below.

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photo credit: Trostle Makeup Brush on White Background via photopin (license)