Get a FREE Apple MacBook!

Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Internet Marketing’

Affiliate Business Tips

September 2nd, 2010

Preselling for profit

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

Before we begin, we need to first define what preselling is. There are two components to it – art & science. The goal is to get your reader prepped to make a purchase. Then you send them to the site that sells what you’ve prepared them for. 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 a second we’ll talk about how to do actually it. But before we do, you need to know why it’s so important. Just a few of the reasons you want to presell.

  • Preselling creates trust – Once you have your readers’ trust, they will click your links more readily. Which obviously means you’ll make more sales.
  • It disarms your reader – When you’re not hyping or pitching a product, your reader lets their guard down. And in turn they read to understand what you’re saying. So your message gets across.
  • It puts them in a buying mood – Now they’re open to hearing what you’re telling them. So they become more receptive to other messages. This includes the sales website you send them to! Being open to a sales message is what it means being in a buying mood.
  • You make more money – They arrive at the product website prepped to buy. With the guard down and trusting your recommendation. The only possible result is more sales!
  • It boosts customer loyalty – Plus, they feel they’ve made the buying decision on their own. Instead of being manipulated into buying. And this makes them feel better about the product they purchased.
  • Preselling increases your bottom line – A satisfied customer doesn’t ask for a refund. And that translates to more commission staying in your affiliate business.

Obviously, it’s important to presell. You increase your profits. And produce happier customers. It’s a win-win-win!

Now, here’s how preselling works:

OK, now you understand why it’s so important. And hopefully you’re convinced you need to start doing it. So, let’s talk about how to make it work. Like we talked about before, it’s an art. And it’s a science.

The art of preselling

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. Now, providing enough info to be useful, but still making them want more – that’s the art of it. The idea is that they want more and the sales page you send them to gives them more. And because you’ve gained trust, they’re more receptive to the sales message and more likely to buy.

The science component

You also have to include some very specific things.

First of all, it’s important HOW you present your information. You’ve got to map out your strategy before you start writing. Your end goal is to make a sale of the product you’re preselling. There are two ways to accomplish this with great content. First, you can provide useful but incomplete information. The other method is to explain all the details and expose how difficult it is to do what you’re explaining. 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. That’s because nobody likes to click on affiliate links. 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.

You also want to link to the sales page from inside your article’s content. It’s habitual to click on words and phrases that are hyperlinked. 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…

This process is not easy – at all! Think about everything that goes into crafting an effective preselling article: Great content. The entire process depends on your being able to provide useful information to your readers. 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. 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 make the information so overwhelming they realize they can’t do it on their own.

Product selection. After that you have to figure out which products you want to promote. If you can manage to get the article written well. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

The technical know-how And finally, you need the technical know-how to embed your image tag and make sure you get credit for the sale. 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.)

Summary:

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. Take action now. Put in the effort to reap the greater rewards.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

presellpro Uncategorized , ,

Traffic Generation Tips

August 31st, 2010

If you’ve got traffic coming to your site, you’re 99% there. Of course you also need to have a valuable offer for your visitors – a reason for them to transact with you. Once the visitors arrive you can have them join your mailing list, purchase a product or subscribe to your RSS feed. The important thing is getting the traffic and sustaining it.

Here are some tips for generating website visitors:

These are the best and fastest ways to get free visitors coming to your site:

  • Web 2.0 Sites
  • Articles Directories
  • Video

Let’s talk about each of these.

Web 2.0 Methods

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. Which means the content on them gets “indexed” faster and with more weight. And any links in your content that point to your own sites count as a strong “vote” in favor of your sites – lending you credibility in the search engines. That’s the real benefit of adding content to this sites – search engine ranking means ongoing free traffic. 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

Article marketing really builds on the Web 2.0 concept. Article directories fall under the category of web 2.0 sites. Just like web 2.0 sites, article websites allow you to upload your own content – as 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 along with your article, they have to include your author information and a link back to you – so you get more free traffic and SEO benefits. In order to get the most free traffic make sure you:

  • Do your keyword research
  • Write your article for the keywords you’ve chosen
  • Be sure to link to your site on the keywords you’ve chosen. Do this inside the article itself and in your author’s bio.

Video

The last of this group is video marketing. 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 in addition to this, because Google and the others love video so much, you can get listed for highly competitive keywords much more easily.

Here’s how to get free traffic using video

  • Get a YouTube account
  • When people view your videos, you want them to visit your site, so turn all the other modules in your profile off
  • Use the tags in your profile to enter the keywords you want to rank for
  • Add a link to your website
  • Add 1 or more videos to your profile
  • In the title, the description and the tags for each video, include your main keywords

In closing…

If you want to get traffic to your site, then follow the advice in this article.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

presellpro Uncategorized , ,

Membership Niche Selection Tips

August 30th, 2010

Let’s talk about niche selection. This is very important to ensuring the profitability of your membership website.

Step 1 – Find a Fanatical Market

The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership website. Fanatic is defined as someone with an irrational enthusiasm. These are the people you’re looking for because they are so enthusiastic they’re willing to spend money on their topic of fanaticism. Here’s how to find fanatics:

  • Here’s something you may not have considered – magazines! We’re so internet-based these days, it’s easy to forget about them. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to run a print magazine. So if you see one on the shelves you know they are making money, which means that there are enough people interested in what they’re saying to make it profitable. This is a very good indication that it’s a good niche for you to go into.
  • Pay attention throughout the day in your regular activities. See what people are talking about on the radio, TV, at parties, in public, etc. People generally talk about things they are interested in. And that may also mean they’re willing to pay money to learn more about it.
  • Don’t forget about clubs and organizations. If there are enough people to to build a club, there are certainly enough people to start a membership site on the same topic. Likewise, if there are enough people to hold a convention, there are definitely enough people to fill your membership website.
  • What about your interests and hobbies? If you’re interested in something, it’s highly likely others are, too. And, as an added bonus, it’s much more fun to build a business around things you’re interested in.
  • Google Trends. This is a great way to figure out what people are interested in. This service shows you the current most popular search terms. These topics are the hottest topics because lots and lots of people want information about them. Hot topics that people are excited about make great niches for your membership website.

Next – Figure out if there’s money in it

OK, so you’ve got a great idea for your niche membership business with lots of fanatics. But will they actually spend money? One way to figure this out is to see if other are making money in it.

Here’s a punch list for figuring out if anyone’s making money in your niche:

  • Are there blogs or forums in this niche? Take the name of your niche and search for “niche name blog” & “niche name forum” in Google to see if there is an active group of people talking about and interested in the niche. This tells you there are people who are actively interested in your niche.
  • See if other people are creating and selling product in this niche by searching in Google Shopping, ebay and Amazon. It’s a good sign if there are because it tells you people are making money here.
  • Look at Google Adwords for the same ads are running over time. If people are running the same ad over time it means they are making money in the niche. They would not continue to spend money on the ads if there were not making a return from them.

Last, but not least… How hard will it be to break into this niche?

Once you’ve found a niche and figured out that there is money to be made in, you need to determine if you can break into this niche. Here are some things to look at to figure this out:

  • Look at the product types in this niche. You want to find a niche where information products are being sold as the norm. That’s because it’s much easier to build a membership business around information vs. any other kind of product.
  • The next thing to look at is the competition. You don’t want to try to break into a saturated marketing, so figure out how many people are already selling in this niche.
  • Unless the market is just so big that it doesn’t matter how many competitors there are, you want to limit the competition. So evaluate the size vs. the competition.
  • How ready is the market for marketing messages, and how willing are the fanatics to buy. Every market is different. Sometimes people are looking for information and are ready to pay for it right now. And sometimes it takes weeks, months or even years for them to make the decision to purchase.

Putting it all together

OK, now that you’ve figured out what niche you’re going to go into. Determined there is money to be made and that the competition is not too strong to break into it. You’re ready to start your membership business. If you’ve followed along with these steps you’re success in practically guaranteed. The only thing left to cover is exactly how to run your membership business

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

presellpro Uncategorized , , ,

Traffic is King, but this comes FIRST

August 28th, 2010

The best way to ensure your success is to build automated traffic sources to send you visitors day and night.

Traffic is useless . . . unless…

The first thing you need to do before you start going after any traffic is keyword research. Why? Because you have to target these keywords if you are to have any hope of actually generating traffic for them. This means it’s critical to select your keywords properly.

A couple things to keep in mind when doing keyword research:

  • Will you be able to rank for these keywords? Take a look at the “strength” of others websites (and how many) are already targeting these keywords.
  • Will the keywords you’re targeting bring buyers? Some keywords will bring lots of traffic, but none of them will buy. What you want is buyers!
  • Another thing to think about is affiliates. Generating your own customers is great – having other people do it for you is even better. So, it’s important to also target affiliates in the keywords you go after.

Of course, this all takes time if you plan to do it yourself. Experts are expensive and don’t guarantee results. And that’s why most people skip this step! If you’re smart you will use website traffic software to help you with this process. This way you get this critical step done fast and done well.

Once you know your keywords…

Now that you’ve completed your keyword research, you can begin using these keywords to get traffic to your website.

Powerful Traffic Tactics:

  • Something you may not have ever considered is Surveys
  • “Help” Websites
  • Video

Surveys

People love filling in surveys. You can use this fact to provide “sticky” content for other website owners. It’s a win-win. They get a great perk on their site and you get a link back to yours. The beauty of this is that it generates website visitors for you with no work on your part. Most people think surveys are just for collecting data, but in this case you don’t even care about the answers. So, get creative and make up a survey that’s wacky to get other people interested in putting it on their sites.

“Traffic Traps”

Maybe you’ve seen these help sites where people post questions and other people answer them. But, like the surveys, that’s not why you’re going to pay attention to these sites. The other thing they can be used for is to get traffic to your site, leads for your business and sales! Now, you can do this all by hand – visit a classified ads or answers site and one by one copy and paste contact info. But a much smarter method is to use website traffic software to do it for you. This allows you to do the things in your business that can’t be automated and let the software just give you the leads.

Video Sharing Sites

No doubt you’re aware of YouTube and other video websites. These sites generate massive traffic and people watch over 2 billion videos a day on YouTube alone . If you’re not taking advantage of this rich source of website traffic, then you are really missing out.

You don’t have to be able to make awesome videos for this to work. It’s really easy to just start with an article or something you’ve already written. Then just do a screen capture of yourself going through it. You can even get software that will automatically do this for you.

Summary

Getting traffic is not that difficult. Use your noodle and come up with things other people aren’t doing. Plus, there’s lots of great software out there to help you.

So, start right now and:

  • Step 1 is researching your keywords
  • Set up some viral surveys
  • Take advantage of the “help” sites
  • Capitalize on video!

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

presellpro Uncategorized , , ,

Affiliate Marketing Secrets

August 27th, 2010

Winning Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Affiliate marketing is by far the fastest way to get started making money online. Affiliate marketing means that all you do is sendhits to someone else’s website, they make the sale and deliver the product, and you earn at least a 50% commission

Here’s just a few benefits

  1. You can start instantly with no up-front costs and no need to develop a product, write the sales page, develop the website, develop marketing materials, or do support, billing and maintenance.
  2. There’s no time required on your partbecause the product owner does all the hard work of support, maintenance and billing.
  3. There’s no risk for you, because the product owner has already made sure the product sells. So you know that your traffic will result in sales.

Obviously affiliate marketing makes sense – these benefits make it a clear winner!

The downside is…

After all your hard work of generating traffic to the sales page, you will never see any of those visitors again. Unfortunately, the majority of those visitors (at least 90%) will not buy on their first visit. The 10% or less that make a purchase now belong to the product owner. She can sell them additional products, but you can never sell to them again.

Is there are way around this?

What you need to do is capture the contact info of your visitors before sending them to the product website. This way you can follow up with them and keep sending them back to the sales page to increase your chances of making the sale. And if you’re really on top of your game, you’ll then send to a content mini-site in between.

Here’s what these affiliate marketing strategies will do for you:

  1. You’ll be building your own list of potential customers that you can market to again and again.
  2. You’ll be warming them up by providing valuable information and then casually linking to the product sales page in the context of this information.

Here’s what you’ll need to create affiliate tools like this:

  1. A lead capture page, preferably with video
  2. At least a few pages of great content
  3. An email series with at least 5 high-quality content emails

You’ll use the squeeze page as the place to send your visitors instead of using the product website. Your squeeze page adds your visitors to you autoresponder. This is how you start building your list, and at the same time begin sending them useful information. Once your visitors have been subscribed to your email series, they are sent to your content pages.

The content pages provide valuable information for your visitors and make them more receptive to the sales message that you’ll link to from inside the content. And even if they don’t buy on the first visit, your email series sends them back to the product sales page again and again to increase your sales.

There’s no doubt that it’s worth the effort to put a system like this in place, because doing so will increase your profits by 500% or more. After setting it up, you simply send visitors to your squeeze page instead of the sales page. And the rest runs on auto-pilot.

Setting it all up yourself requires some skill, and if you’re not up to it, you can use a service like Affiliate Silver Bullet. Services like this design the enter system (the video, the video squeeze page, the email series, the content pages, etc). The benefit is that it’s much less expensive then you could do it yourself, and it’s instantly set up. The drawback is that you won’t be the only one using these affiliate tools. But the internet is huge, so this shouldn’t really affect you.

The other route you can take is to hire people on Elance to create and implement the various aspects for you. Either way, it’s an important step that you need to take if you’re going to be serious about your affiliate marketing.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

presellpro Uncategorized , ,


Sitemap