Many people with a website or blog are under the impression that they can slap an OUTsurance or Silver Sands online poker affiliate banner on their site and sit back to watch the sales come rolling in. When the sales don’t come, they see it as proof that affiliate marketing doesn’t work and they give up. Affiliate marketing is very different to your usual Internet advertising, it is all about a carefully constructed presell.
Millions of dollars worth of products are being sold across the Internet each month through various affiliate deals yet many of these are not happening through banner advertising. Why? Quite simply, banners don’t work. A much more successful method of using affiliate marketing to make money online is to set up a specific page from which you can presell products and services to your visitors. For instance you could set up a page within your website and call it something like ‘Latest Specials’. This latest specials page would be nothing more than a page full of affiliate deal links but needs to be presented in such a way that readers do not view it as advertising, text links work best for this. You basically want your reader to see it as a place that you are sharing some of the best special deals available at the moment on the Internet.
Setting things up this way leaves your reader thinking that you are helping them and not only are the chances high that they will purchase something but they will probably keep an eye on your ‘Latest Specials’ page for upcoming deals and bargains in the future. Most people won’t even realise you’re getting a cut out of the sale.
This is precisely what preselling is all about, you are subtly affecting a potential clients mind to make them become more receptive to an offer. This just cannot be done with banners. Trust is a big thing as well when it comes to successful preselling, your visitors need to feel they can trust you and your opinion. That way, when you share with them how different products can help them look younger, feel sexier, make them more money, improve their memory etc etc, they will be a lot more receptive to it. I run a number of affiliate based websites and if all I did was place banners on them I am certain that sales and my commission would become less than half of what it currently is.
You need to be aware that the targeted marketing factor comes into play here too. Apart from your presell technique, you should also make sure that the affiliate deals you are offering are matching the topic your website or blog is covering. It is no use having a site about cars with affiliate deals offering your visitors the latest in Dog Shampoos, won’t work. Look for campaigns that are related to the topic and niche that your website is focused on and combined with your preselling strategy you should see your affiliate marketing efforts improve greatly.