Debjit Saha Mattress facebook marketing tips

Online Mattress buying is a big industry in the US. I was not at all aware of this high-commission-payouts niche until I needed one for myself recently.

I was using cheap used mattresses for many years which never cost me more than 70 - 80 dollars and lasted me through school. However, when the time eventually came to buy a new one, I was simply shocked at how high-ticket price items these are.

Here is a brief timeline of the events that led to my mattress search:
1. Finished grad school
2. Got married.
3. Moved in with my wife to a totally new city in the US

After spending more than about 1000$ we bought a mattress that was matched all our requirements and we were happy. Amidst all this, my affiliate marketing brain was just calculating numbers - like average sales values, possible commissions and what not.

In my research I found that on an average buyers pay $1400 for a latex mattress, $1600 for memory foam and $1300+ for foam ones. Users even spend north of $4000 on high end mattresses.

Although the online mattress industry is highly competitive but the key to making big affiliate commissions here is going super niche. So instead of starting a website on mattresses in general. I decided to focus only on "Memory Foam mattresses for couples".

I looked for affiliate programs on Shareasale and joined the one with Saatva Mattresses and signed up for a few more on flexoffers dot com. The key here was that I reached out to the Affiliate managers for all these programs in order to negotiate on the commission rates and surprisingly they were happy to bump up rates based on sales number clusters - after all they are looking to make money as well wink emoticon No amazon or walmart affiiate here owing to the miniscule commission rates.

In addition to the above affiliate, I also tried something different this time. I got in touch with the marketing managers of 3 brand name stores in the city I am currently in and told them what I do (bring more customers to businesses). They gave me a sweet commission deal on prospects that I would send to their store and extra on a successful sale. This is not just affiliate income - this is lead generation as well! (more on traffic generation to follow)

Created a wp website with 10 pieces of 1200+ word content solely focussing on:
1. the benefits of memory foam mattresses (made this an epic list post),
2. average prices,
3. how to fix mattresses,
4. how to maintain a mattress,
5. a review section (based on the more than 10 plus mattresses that we had looked at in person before we bought ours')
6. how and where to get the best deals while you go memory foam mattress shopping.

Next, I setup 1 Facebook page and 2 Pinterest boards that were aimed at providing:
1. Decor ideas for using mattresses without bed frames (just the foundation)
2. Tips and tricks for memory foam mattresses

The trick I used to drive traffic to this website was FB ad targeting based on life events. This is very powerful indeed. You can target based on users' life events demographics like Newly Wed, Recently moved, Graduated. Couple this with cities that have huge population and you have a winner. I also targeted based on age (young couples), Income > $150000 (obviously they are the ones who would not think twice before spending 3000 - 4000$ or more on mattresses).

The traffic quality was not that great initially and was not converting (no email signups, no affiliate link clicks). I was wondering what went wrong. Found out that users were leaving after reading just 1 or two pages.

I knew the content was great quality. So I had that confidence and tweaked the articles with more compelling images and also invested in Facebook re-targeting by setting up a new campaign. I had to spend more than a month A/B testing layouts as well before I gradually started noticing increased email signups and affiliate link clicks.

I also generated leads for the local store signups and in the second month of the website - I was sitting on $1700 commissions just from the affiliates - 6 mattresses were sold in the first month. (this figure does not include the cash from lead generation income).

I have been running the website for more than 8 months now - commissions have only increased. I also joined a few more affiliate programs. However, I still have to spend money on the FB ads to get more and more new users for the website but that spend does not cross 100 - 150$ a month.

This idea can be copied and you can make money on repeat and rinse. NO need to worry about SEO, no outreach, no PBN hassles. For the more enthusiastic ones, you could also sell low priced items like sheets and linens for more income!!!

All the best.

PS: I signed up a big ticket SEO / IM client in the interior design industry by the virtue of this project.