If you are someone who loves to indulge in skin and beauty care like me, then you’ve probably used The Body Shop’s products before. But do you know that you can actually build an online business from this interest? In this week’s article, I am going to reveal how The Body Shop Affiliate Program works and why this is such a profitable opportunity.
Understanding Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an online business model whereby a publisher (that’s you) joined an affiliate program and earns a commission when the customer he/she refers to the advertiser (the company who pays), purchase something from the site.
How Does The Body Shop Affiliate Program Work
The affiliate program is available through the Rakuten Linkshare network and you can apply to join for free. Once your application is being approved, you will get access to the affiliate links – text, product images, and banners – which you can use for conversion on a website.
These links will bring readers to The Body Shop online store and when they purchase something from the site, you’ll make a certain commission for each sale.
What Can You Promote
If you go over to their online store, you’ll find a ton of products in various categories. Let’s have a look at what they are;
- Bath and Body (shower gels, fragrance, moisturizer, etc.)
- Skin Care (facial cleanser, lip balms, serums, etc.)
- Makeup (eye shadow, lipsticks, nail polish, etc.)
- Hair (shampoo, conditioner, hair treatment, etc.)
- Fragrance (body mist, perfume oil, reed diffuser, etc.)
- Men (deodorant, shaving, cleanser, etc.)
The program offers more than 600 affiliate links that you can use so you shouldn’t be short of any products to promote to your readers at any given time. Now, let’s see how we can get those product reviews to turn into sales.
How Do You Attract Readers?
Step 1 – Domain and Website
The first step to starting any affiliate business is to build a website and to give this website a name, you’ll need a domain name. Whether you are promoting one type of product or the entire range, it’s important to note that you shouldn’t use the term “The Body Shop” in the domain as this is considered as copyright infringement.
However, you can come up with something creative that reflects a particular niche such as;
- Naturesmoothness.com
- Clearorganicskin.com
- Greentoiletries.org
All these domains go very well with promoting Body Shop products and you can purchase them for a reasonable fee at SiteDomains. For as low as $13.99/year, the fee also includes privacy, protection, and email support.
After securing your domain, you just need to connect to the SiteRubix hosting and launch a WordPress website within minutes.
Step 2 – Keyword Research and Conversion
Keyword research is basically a technique to help you create content that matters to the readers in the form of articles. People go online every day to search for a variety of things, and if your articles appear on the first page in the search results, they are more likely to read it and buy based on your recommendation.
These are all influenced by the type of keywords that you used to target a specific audience. Remember all the different products in The Body Shop online store? A good way to attract people to your site is to write product reviews. Using the Jaaxy keyword tool, I discovered some low-competition keyphrases that are pretty interesting.
- The Body Shop shaving brush review
- The Body Shop Maca root shave cream review
- The Body Shop home fragrance oil
- Body Shop makeup reviews
- Body Shop shampoo reviews
Say you are writing a review for the Maca Root Shave Cream, you would use the high-quality image product links provided through the affiliate program and get readers to check it out on the online store.
Alternatively, you can think of each product as if they represent a certain group of people. Who would buy this? How can it help to solve their skin/body problems? Why should they buy it from The Body Shop store? These are some of the questions to think about when writing informational or how-to articles.
I did some brainstorming for you and here are some trending low-competition keywords that you can use.
- What is the best face wash for sensitive skin
- Vegetable-based soap brands
- Organic makeup for black skin
- Best shampoo and conditioner for natural hair
- How to apply body mist
To get your readers to convert, you would link these articles to your product review pages and that will direct them to purchase at The Body Shop online store.
Step 3 – Share Blogs and Get Comments
Once you have published an article, share them on your favorite social network, niche forums and invite other bloggers to leave comments on your blog. The more social engagement you get, the more content you are creating and that will actually improve the overall search engine rankings and traffic to your site.
Another method to promote a product is to create video tutorials to show people how to use them effectively. In the video, you can post a link to your product review articles so that they can go and check it out themselves. Here are some bloggers who are actively promoting The Body Shop Products on their YouTube channels.
How Much Can You Make?
There are two types of affiliate programs; The Body Shop US pays between 3%-9% commission and The Body Shop Canada pays 8%.
Say you are an affiliate with Canada and someone buys the Maca Root Shave Cream for $18, you’ll make about $1.40 from the sale. Free shipping is offered for orders $75 and above, so if the shoppers wish to take advantage of that, you’ll get a minimum of $6 per total sale.
Generally, the more articles you publish, the more commission you’ll earn so there’s really no limit to how much you can make. It’s all about finding the right keywords, generate traffic to the content and let shoppers do what they do best.
Is The Body Shop Affiliate Program Worthy of Your Time?
Here are some of the advantages of being affiliated with this global brand;
- The Body Shop is a trusted brand that has been established since 1976.
- The brand advocates Community Fair Trade that offers good trading practices and independence building prices with suppliers from 21 countries from all over the world.
- It’s well known for its green practice – no testing products on animals and striving to create a sustainable environment for the community.
- The variety of product choices can translate to more sale commissions for affiliates. This kind of sales could drive a lot of traffic during the shopping seasons.
- The company’s online store offers a great shopping experience such as customer ratings for each product and a smooth checkout process.
- It’s actually cheaper for shoppers to buy from The Body Shop than to buy from online marketplaces like Amazon.
I hope these techniques and facts have given you a better understanding of how to start an online business with The Body Shop affiliate program. If you wish to learn more, connect with me on Wealthy Affiliate and I’ll be more than happy to walk you through the process all over again. Talk to you soon.
Do you have any thoughts or questions about this affiliate program? Let’s hear about it in the comment area below.
juliettsstyleglam says
Hi Cathy, Is this program available in France? I use their products lots and this is a wonderful opportunity
Cathy says
Hi there Julie, I’ve only been able to find their affiliate program targeting the Canadian market via Linkshare. I can’t read French so I couldn’t tell if there’s one in France under a different affiliate network. What you can do is scroll all the way down at the footer area of the official homepage and see if there’s any link that suggest affiliate application/referral program. Let me know how it goes.
Darren says
Didn’t know that Body Shop actually had an affiliate program. But it might be one of the easier products to sell because their company has already done all the branding and marketing for you. As long as you have traffic coming to your website and you’re targeting the right keywords, you’re almost guaranteed to make some money.
Don’t even think that there’s a product in their repertoire that will not sell. Excellent program. I might steal this idea :p Thanks.
Cathy says
Hey Darren, if you like to build a niche website around this affiliate program, by all means, take the idea and run with it 🙂
Alan Roy Hocking says
Hi Cathy
That’s interesting, I didn’t realize that the Body Shop had an affiliate program.
My wife loves all the Body Shop products so I’m definitely going to be looking into this a bit more.
I think it could be the perfect online business to set up for her.
Alan 🙂
Scott says
Hi Cathy,
Great article. There is a ton of information here. What percentage do The Body Shop affiliates make on sales? Also, how long do the cookies stay active on people’s browsers after they click on one of the links? Is it possible to get repeat business after the cookies expire? Being a consumable product, the hope would be that they would come back for more before the cookie ran out.
Also, I liked the segue into the website building site, called Wealthy Affiliate University. It sounds like a great place to learn about online marketing. With all of the lessons(100’s) video tutorials and chat rooms, it seems there is a wealth of knowledge there. Do they teach you how to blog there too?
Thanks for all the insights into affiliate marketing,
Scott
Cathy says
Hey Scott, you have some good questions there so let me answer them one by one.
1) Commission range between 3%-9% depending on which country you apply from.
2) The cookie period is 7 days.
3) “Is it possible to get repeat business after the cookies expire?” – we’ll need to ask the affiliate manager about this.
4) Wealthy Affiliate teaches you how to write good quality content to promote your online business and a huge part of that is through blogging (a.k.a content marketing) using good keywords selection. Up until 2 years ago, I’ve never written a blog before, but after publishing 100 articles or so, I am starting to get the hang of it. It feels good to know that you are helping someone who’s trying to start their own online business.
Dmitriy says
Hi Cathy,
While The Body Shop affiliate program is awesome in itself, the fact that you can join it through Rakuten is also really good – I’ve been a member of their network for almost two years now and it’s really easy to join other programs through them.
So if you go for The Body Shop, you may as well try other programs that will compliment it greatly.
vivia says
Hi Cathy,
I had no idea that The Body Shop had an affiliate program…any idea if it is available in the UK? Most people that I know love their products and I would definitely be interested in promoting them. You have also given all the essential information needed in order to promote it successfully online.
Thanks so much,
Love and light
Vivia
Cathy says
Thank you for your interest Vivia. The Body Shop does have an affiliate program for people in the UK. You can apply via the Rakuten Linkshare network. Hope this helps.