Affiliate Business Tips
Why you must presell
The most important thing you can do to increase your affiliate commissions is to presell properly.
First, what is preselling? Preselling is both an art and a science. And it’s function is to prepare your reader to buy something. Then when they’re ready, refer them to the product website so they can buy it. When done correctly, your reader will not even notice.
In a nutshell, you provide value. And give them a link to the product you’re preselling. In a second we’ll talk about how to do actually it. First, it’s important to understand why we do it. Here are a few benefits of preselling:
- It builds trust – Once you have your readers’ trust, they will click your links more readily. And the more clicks you get the more sales you’ll make.
- Preselling is disarming – Nobody likes to be sold something. By not doing that to them, your reader is less defensive. And in turn they read to understand what you’re saying. And your intention is conveyed more easily.
- It creates buying readiness – 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. Being open to a sales message is what it means being in a buying mood.
- Your commissions go up – They arrive at the product website prepped to buy. With the guard down and trusting your recommendation. The only thing that can result is increased sales!
- Your customers are happier – People like to make their own buying decisions. Instead of feeling pressured or “sold”. And this leads to greater satisfaction with the product.
- Your profits go up – Happy customers ask for refunds much less often. Less refunds means more affiliate money stays in your pocket.
Obviously, it’s important to presell. You increase your profits. And increase your customer satisfaction. That’s a clear win-win.
Now, here’s how preselling works:
OK, now you understand why it’s so important. So, hopefully you’ve decided to start preselling. So, let’s talk about how to make it work. Remember, there are two components – art and science.
Mastering the art
Effective preselling requires gaining your readers trust in order for them to let down their guard. Honestly, the only way to do this is to provide real value in you content. But you can’t give them so much that they think they have everything they could need, and that’s what makes it an art. So you send them to the product website with a hunger for more of what the product provides. Plus they’re not guarded, so they’re more open and likely to purchase the product.
Scientific preselling
There are also several key elements that need to be included.
One of these key elements is the presentation of the information. You need to know where you’re going before you begin. In the end, you want to sell a specific product. 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 other method is to explain all the details and expose how difficult it is to do what you’re explaining. Either way, the product sales page solves the problem.
Next, you have to use “convert linking” methods. Instead you link directly to the product sales page. When you do this, you’re click-throughs go way up. But how will you earn affiliate commissions if you don’t use your affiliate link? Well, that’s part of the science of this whole process. You use an image tag to cookie your reader before they leave your site.
Next, you want to make sure you’re linking on related words and phrases. Hyperlinked words are clicked more than anything else. Plus, if you link on relevant words, it only makes sense to click on there.
Putting all of this together creates a powerful affiliate marketing formula for success.
OK, here’s the not-so-good news:
It’s extremely difficult to do this correctly. Let’s look at the skills required to pull it off: Good content. First of all, you actually have to write great articles and give value to your readers. Which means you need to be both knowledgable on the subject and capable of writing a high-quality article. Preselling skills. Yes, you must providing useful content. And you have to make the content accessible in order to provide value. And still leave them wanting more. The other approach is to reveal a self-evident problem through the information.
Product selection. Next, you’ve got to pick the right product to presell. Even if you can pull off writing and great article. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.
The technical know-how To be most effective you have to use the “covert cookie” method. 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 do it wrong, you won’t get paid for the traffic you send.)
Wrapping it up:
Now you’re armed with the information needed to effectively presell. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 500%! It’s absolutely critical to do this every time – and to do it correctly. Don’t wait another minute. The effort it takes is well worth the benefits…