Affiliate Business Tips

July 29th, 2010 by ronrod7

Presell like a pro

The number one strategy to increase your affiliate sales is preselling.

First, what is preselling? Preselling is both an art and a science. The goal is to get your reader prepped to make a purchase. Then when they’re ready, refer them to the product website so they can buy it. And when it’s done correctly, they don’t know it’s happening.

In a nutshell, you provide value. And then refer them to the product website. In just a minute, I’ll explain exactly how to presell. First, it’s important to understand why we do it. Here are a few benefits of preselling:

It builds trust – And gaining the trust of your readers helps them want to click your links. And the more traffic you can send to the sale page, the more commissions you’ll earn.
It takes your reader out of defense mode – When you’re not hyping or pitching a product, your reader lets their guard down. Unguarded reading means they’re not filtering what you say. So your message gets across.
It puts them in a buying mood – 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.
Your commissions go up – You’ve prepped them and referred them in the right state of mind. Open to the sales message and feeling safe. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
Your customers are happier – People like to make their own buying decisions. Instead of being manipulated into buying. And this makes them feel better about the product they purchased.
Your profits go up – A satisfied customer doesn’t ask for a refund. And that translates to more commission staying in your affiliate business.

The need to presell is clear. You earn more commissions. Your customers are happier. 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. So, let’s talk about how to make it work. As I mentioned earlier, it’s both an art and a science.

Part 1 – The art of it

The first step is in getting your readers to trust you and open up. Honestly, the only way to do this is to provide real value in you content. The art of this is to provide enough information to be of value, but not enough to satiate the hunger. The idea is that they want more and the sales page you send them to gives them more. And since they’re more open, they are more likely to make a purchase.

It’s also a science

There’s also a specific formula you need to follow.

The first is how you present the information. You need to know where you’re going before you begin. Your goal is to sell the product you’re promoting. How can providing information accomplish this goal? One way is to give them enough info to whet the appetite, but not enough to satisfy it. The second way is to provide all the information and let your reader discover how hard it is to actually implement it. Whichever method, you send them to a product website that solves the problem you just created.

You also have to link to the product you’re promoting discretely. Instead you link directly to the product sales page. That’s because nobody likes to click on affiliate links. But how are you going to get credit for the sale, if you don’t include your affiliate link? Well, that’s part of the science of this whole process. You use the “covert cookie” strategy.

You also want to link to the sales page from inside your article’s content. 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.

What you have now is a super powerful system for affiliate marketing success.

Unfortunately…

This process is not easy – at all! Let’s look at the skills required to pull it off: Good content. First and foremost, you have to be able to write a great article that provides valuable information. To do that you have to have enough information to be valuable and be able to present it in a useful way. Preselling skills. Yes, you must providing useful content. And you have to make the content accessible in order to provide value. And somehow also make them want to learn more. Or make the information so overwhelming they realize they can’t do it on their own.

Picking products. You also need to determine what products you’ll be preselling. 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.

Techy stuff. One of the keys to this system is using “covert cookies” for the tracking. This is actually pretty simple – just embed a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image and set your affiliate link as the “source” of the image. (But if you mess it up, your referrals won’t be tracked.)

Summary:

Now you know what it takes to be a Presell Pro. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 500%! The important thing is to use these techniques for everything you promote as an affiliate. Don’t wait another minute. The effort it takes is well worth the benefits…

Share and Enjoy: