Archive for October, 2010

Presell like a pro

The most important thing you can do to increase your affiliate commissions is to presell properly.

Before we start, let’s talk about what preselling actually is. There are two components to it – art & science. It’s a process of taking your reader and getting them ready to buy. Then sending them to the product sales page to make the purchase. And if it’s done properly, the process is completely sub-conscious.

In a nutshell, you provide value. And give them a link to the product you’re preselling. In just a minute, I’ll explain exactly how to presell. But before we do, you need to know why it’s so important. Some major benefits of this process:

  • It builds trust – Readers who trust you are more likely to click your links. Which obviously means you’ll make more sales.
  • It takes your reader out of defense mode – Nobody likes to be sold something. By not doing that to them, your reader is less defensive. Unguarded reading means they’re not filtering what you say. And your intention is conveyed more easily.
  • It preps them to buy – Now they’re open to hearing what you’re telling them. And in turn, they’re open to other messages, as well. Like the info on product sales page you’ve linked to. Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
  • It increases your sales – They arrive at the product website prepped to buy. With a feeling of trust and openness. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
  • Your customers are happier – Plus, they feel they’ve made the buying decision on their own. Versus being pitched or convinced. And this makes them feel better about the product they purchased.
  • Preselling increases your bottom line – Satisfied customers are less like to refund. Less refunds means more affiliate money stays in your pocket.

The need to presell is clear. You increase your profits. And produce happier customers. That’s a clear win-win.

OK, so how do you do it?

You’ve learned the importance of preselling. So, hopefully you’ve decided to start preselling. You’re ready to learn how to do it properly. Like we talked about before, it’s an art. And it’s a science.

Mastering the art

First, you have to gain the trust of your reader, so they let their guard down. And the only method of doing this is to give exceptional value to your readers. Now, providing enough info to be useful, but still making them want more – that’s the art of it. That is, they have to be wanting more when you refer them to the product sales page for the product you’re trying to sell. And since they’re more open, they are more likely to make a purchase.

Part 2 – the Science

You also have to include some very specific things.

First of all, it’s important HOW you present your information. You need to know where you’re going before you begin. Your goal is to sell the product you’re promoting. There are two ways to accomplish this with great content. First, you can provide useful but incomplete information. The second way is to provide all the information and let your reader discover how hard it is to actually implement it. In either case, the product you’re referring them to solves the problem for them.

You also have to link to the product you’re promoting discretely. Instead, you use a direct link to the product website. This increases your clicks. But how will you earn affiliate commissions if you don’t use your affiliate link? This is all part of the science of preselling. You use the “covert cookie” strategy.

The next trick is to hyperlink specific words and phrases inside the content of the article you’re providing. Hyperlinked words are clicked more than anything else. And when the words are in context like this, it makes perfect sense for your reader to click them.

Putting all of this together creates a powerful affiliate marketing formula for success.

Unfortunately…

Doing all of this right is really hard! Let’s talk about everything required to put this plan into action: Good content. First and foremost, you have to be able to write a great article that provides valuable information. Which means you need to be both knowledgable on the subject and capable of writing a high-quality article. Strategic writing. First, you have to give good information. But, you also need to know how to present the information in a way that give value to the reader. And still leave them wanting more. Or provide so much information that they see how hard it will be to implement.

Picking products. After that you have to figure out which products you want to promote. Even if you can pull off writing and great article. All your efforts are wasted if you send your reader to the wrong sales letter.

The technical know-how To be most effective you have to use the “covert cookie” method. This is fairly simple – you use a 1 X 1 image and set the “source” to your affiliate link. (Just don’t mess it up. Otherwise, you won’t get credit for your sales.)

In closing:

Now you know what it takes to be a Presell Pro. Preselling properly will boost your affiliate profits up to 500%! So, start now and develop preselling content for all your affiliate promotions. Don’t wait another minute. Put in the effort to reap the greater rewards.

Everyone knows the number one thing you need to be successful online is traffic to your website. Obviously, this assumes you actually have a reason for wanting this traffic. After getting the traffic you just need to convert it into subscribers and customers . . . but that’s the easy part. The important thing is getting the traffic and sustaining it.

Let’s talk about how to generate traffic…

Here are a few of the most popular way to get traffic to your site – for free:

  • Web 2.0
  • Article Marketing
  • Video

Let’s talk about each of these.

Web 2.0 Sites

Web 2.0 simply means the new family of websites that have user-generated content. These are great sites to work with because they allow you to participate in this content creation. Because these sites get so much traffic, Google and the other search engines treat these sites with greater importance in their algorithms. And that’s important to you because it means that Google and the other search engines treat links from these sites as more meaningful than links from other sites. So, if you place links to your own site inside your content, you get a search engine ranking benefit from those links. This is the hidden benefit of using Web 2.0 sites. There are many more web 2.0 traffic tactics we don’t have time to get into here, but this will get you started.

Article Marketing

The natural next topic is article marketing. This is because article websites are really web 2.0 site. In typical web 2.0 fashion, article sites rely on user-generated content (i.e. your articles). Just as with the other web 2.0 sites, having your content included gives you immediate traffic and search engine ranking. But you also get the extra benefit of other users taking your article and putting it on their site. And because the terms of the directory say they have to include your “resource box” you get links back from all these other sites, too. Here are a couple article marketing traffic tips:

  • Figure out what keywords you want to go after
  • Write specifically to target these keywords
  • Use anchor text links in the article and the “resource box”

Video

And finally, we need to talk about getting traffic from videos. Just like article directories, video sharing sites also rely on user-generated content. So, just like article marketing, video marketing enables you to add content to authority sites. And if all that wasn’t enough, you also stand a much stronger chance of getting a high search engine ranking for the keywords you want with video than you do with text-based content.

Here’s how to get free traffic using video

  • Set up your YouTube account
  • Make your profile uncluttered by turning off all the modules
  • Put relevant “tags” in your profile
  • Include a link to your main site in your profile
  • Add at least one video to your profile
  • Include your keywords in the title, description and tags

Putting it all together.

This is a great overview to get your started generating massive traffic to your site.