If you're not preselling, you're losing money

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. Preselling is both an art and a science. It's a process of taking your reader and getting them ready to buy. 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.

Basically, you give them some content. And then refer them to the product website. We'll get into how to do it correctly in a minute. First, it's important to understand why we do it. Some major benefits of this process:

• It helps your reader trust you - Readers who trust you are more likely to click your links. Which obviously means you'll make more sales.
• Preselling is disarming - 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 content get absorbed.
• It preps them to buy - Now they're open to hearing what you're telling them. Being open means, they are open to everything you give them. 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 - You've prepped them and referred them in the right state of mind. Open to the sales message and feeling safe. The only possible result is more sales!
• It increases customer satisfaction - People like to make their own buying decisions. Instead of being manipulated into buying. So they are happier with their purchase.
• Preselling increases your bottom line - A satisfied customer doesn't ask for a refund. Less refunds means more affiliate money stays in your pocket.

Clearly preselling makes sense. You make more money. Your customers are happier. Everybody wins!

How does it work?

You've learned the importance of preselling. And I hope you're resolved to being preselling, too. So, let's talk about how to make it work. Remember, there are two components - art and science.

Becoming an artist

The first step is in getting your readers to trust you and open up. This can only be accomplished by providing actual value in the information you’re presenting. Now, providing enough info to be useful, but still making them want more - that's the art of it. 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.

Part 2 - the Science

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

The first is how you present the 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. 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. 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. You have directly to the home page of the product. When you do this, you're click-throughs go way up. But how are you going to get credit for the sale, if you don’t include your affiliate link? There's a trick to make this work… You use an image tag to cookie your reader before they leave your site.

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 if the words you hyperlink relate, your reader will naturally click them for more information.

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

Unfortunately…

Doing all of this right is really hard! Let's look at the skills required to pull it off: Great content. First of all, you actually have to write great articles and give value 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. Strategic writing. First, you have to give good information. You also have to present the info in a way that provides real value. While at the same time making them want more. The other approach is to reveal a self-evident problem through the information.

Product selection. You also need to determine what products you'll be preselling. Even if you can pull off writing and great article. Your efforts are completely wasted if you don't pick a winning product.

Technical skills. And finally, you need the technical know-how to embed your image tag and make sure you get credit for the sale. 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 know exactly how to presell effectively. Preselling properly will boost your affiliate profits up to 500%! So, start now and develop preselling content for all your affiliate promotions. Please don’t be lazy. The effort it takes is well worth the benefits…