Hair styling products brand Ella Bella targets listicle blogs to drive traffic and conversions to its Amazon product pages.
List-based articles, like “The Top-10 Hairdryers,” are key revenue drivers for hair products brand Ella Bella.
The web-only brand primarily sells its products on Amazon.com, and Ella Bella needs outside sources like these blogs to drive traffic to its products, said owner Paul Nicoll.
Nicoll has operated Amazon-mostly brands since 2018, with Ella Bella being his newest one launching in 2021. Sales and good reviews grew for the haircare brand, but it struggled to make a profit, Nicoll said.
How the Levanta affiliate platform works
A colleague introduced Nicoll to Levanta, a platform that connects Amazon sellers to affiliates that primarily promote Amazon products. Brands can contact the 7,000-plus affiliates on Levanta’s platform and offer them a commission to promote their products.
After reaching a deal on Levanta’s messaging platform, Levanta handles the administration tasks of attributing Amazon sales to the affiliate and paying the commission. This step is a large time savings for brands that manage multiple affiliates, Nicoll said.
Listicle affiliates drive long-term sales for Ella Bella
Ella Bella targets list-based articles as affiliates, commonly referred to listicles, because this type of content typically generates sales over a longer period of time compared with social media influencers, Nicoll said. Single-time blogs or posts often lead to a bump in sales but then it quickly dies down. Listicles continue to drive sales for months without Nicoll having to recruit another affiliate to promote its product or ask the same affiliate to do another post.
“The listicle sites, they’re constantly driving traffic, so it’s like every day we get sales from them,” he said.
It’s best for Ella Bella to be the overall pick for these articles (i.e., the best hairdryer), which typically goes to the brand that pays the highest commission, he said.
Ella Bella continually monitors its position on the list and if it ever drops down a ranking, it works with the affiliate to get it back to the top spot.
How everyone gets paid
Levanta uses Amazon’s attribution program. In this program, Amazon pays a commission to brands that bring shoppers not on Amazon.com, such as consumers reading a blog or browsing Google, to Amazon, who then make a purchase, Nicoll said.
For example, if Ella Bella pays an affiliate a 30% commission for each conversion on a sale, and Amazon pays Ella Bella 10% commission for each outside conversion it brings in, the net impact to Ella Bella is only 20%.
The cycle of Amazon sales
While 20% is still a large commission on the sale, getting these outside sales is important to the brand’s overall growth, Nicholl says.
Blog sales become a positive reinforcement cycle on Amazon.com. Once Amazon sees a product that is converting shoppers with good reviews, and the brand bringing in shoppers that were browsing on other sites, Amazon will begin to boost that product in the organic rankings, Nicoll said.
“When you find someone that’s not on Amazon, bring them to Amazon and they buy the product, the Amazon algorithm likes that because this person wasn’t on Amazon that came here that bought it,” Nicoll said. “If you get enough people doing that, Amazon says, ‘This is a super relevant product. People off Amazon really like it. I’m going to bump this further up the page on Amazon.’ So when someone types in curling iron or hair dryer, instead of us being down in position 18, if we get enough of these sales, we’re up in position two or three.”
Being higher up in the organic rankings helps Ella Bella more as Amazon.com shoppers then find its product faster. Today, Ella Bella generates about $400,000 a month in Amazon sales attributed to Levanta affiliates plus another $800,000 a month from organic Amazon sales. Nicoll forecasts Ella Bella will finish 2024 with $15 million in sales.
Why it’s harder to make money on Amazon than ever before
This sales waterfall effect is almost essential for brands to grow on Amazon, Nicoll said. While he has successfully launched, operated and then sold other Amazon-mostly brands, he also has had a handful of brands that have failed.
From his experience, it’s much harder for brands to generate significant sales on Amazon.com without a sophisticated marketing strategy. Previously, sellers could have $500 to launch a business on Amazon or run a business as a side project.
“I’ve definitely spoken to people who started in 2012 with $500 and built a million-dollar business. I just don’t think that’s possible anymore,” Nicoll said. “You need more money to get going, and you need to treat it as a full-time serious business.”
He points to increased competition from large brands, especially during the pandemic, as the reason why. Large brands have teams of people and more money to run a successful business on Amazon, making it harder for small sellers to compete, he said.
Levanta charges brands $150-$750 per month, plus 3.5%-5% of the affiliate sales revenue, according to its website. About 1,000 Amazon sellers use Levanta, according to the vendor.
Levanta recently closed a $20 million Series A funding round led by Volition Capital.
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