Affiliate marketing has taken tremendous leaps and bounds since the early days, all those years ago, in 1997. It has also had it's dark days. But, all in all, anyone wanting to start an online business quickly and inexpensively can build a strong foundation with affiliate marketing. However, it has to be done the right way. That means effective PREselling web content that drives large amounts of already sold visitors to the merchant site. Again, anyone can do it. It doesn't take a PhD in marketing, nor do you need to be the world's greatest writer. PREselling, very simply, is the art of leading a web site visitor, who is more encouraged to buy after being comforted by a relationship with the words, to a merchant site, or your own product sales page. In PREselling you are taking the offensive, instead of the defensive approach to affiliate marketing or online advertising. What I mean by the offensive is you are not sitting back waiting for the flood of visitors to come. You are actively seeking them with high quality, PREselling web content. A defensive posture would be one where you put up a sales page that practically begs the reader to buy from you. Benefits, features, testimonials are all good to have on a sales page, but not on a "first contact page" or as a way to capitalize on traffic from advertising. For instance, if you are using Google Adwords for a majority of your advertising, either for your own site or an affiliate site, you're playing Russain Rouellette with your money. You're willing to lose a certain amount of money for the benefit of maybe making some commission. That's lunacy! I know. I fell into that trap myself. I did ok, but still lost money that I could have put to use somewhere else. Until, I really got serious with PREselling. Now, all my affiliate sites and landing pages contain page after page of content that OVERdelivers on what the visitors is searching for. What is effective PREselling? I have just started a homeschool site. Since I have been homeschooling my kids for a few years now, I've learned a few tricks here and there and have written several "articles" that make up the content on my site. I receive a tremendous amount of free traffic from Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and several other search engines because of my content. No Adwords, no expensive advertising campaigns, no SEO tricks... just plain content. Actually, PREselling content. This site is, while not a six figure income earner, a very good supplement to my monthly Adsense, and affiliate income. Effective preselling has three major ingredients. You must have these in place within your web content to ensure effective PREselling. PREselling content needs to build relationships. Ken Evoy, who wrote "Make Your Content Presell" (http://mycps.sitesell.com/glimmersales.html), says, "In 'the real world', business people build relationships with you, the customer. Now, get ready for a radical concept that very few online small business people understand. PREselling is the online version of relationship-building." Building relationships with your website visitors, through the words that are on your site, is the number one way to reach higher and higher conversion rates (the number of people who buy). And anyone can do it. You just write your content with personality. People love to give their money to the person they feel most comfortable with. Your words are a way to make people feel comfortable. You do this by: writing about personal experienceswriting like you talkusing short, active sentencesbecoming a real person instead of a 'sales page'.PREselling content needs to be unique We are all unique. It's something that all of us have inside us. And potential web site visitors are looking for unique. If you've noticed, people are tired of getting the same old information. Ezines that republish articles, websites that redo what's already been done... they lose subscribers and repeat visitors. The sites that are making their own voice, being unique, presenting fresh ideas, and being original are the ones that are profiting online. Again, anyone can do it. You just find out what people want to know about. Magazines, online forums, message boards, search engines, and other websites... all contain a gold mine of ideas. To research article ideas for my homeschool site I spend a few minutes each day lurking in a homeschool forum to see what questions are being asked. Then write an article to answer it.... in my own way. When people are looking for a website they are looking for information, not you. They have no idea you exist unless you provide unique, personal content. PREselling content needs to be sincere One of the complaints against using content for higher search engine rankings and PREselling web visitors is a lot of it is fake. You can buy such and such software that spits out hundreds of pages of content for your site in minutes. But, it's garbage and you can tell as soon you start reading it. Real, honest web content does take time to create but the rewards are worth it. People can 'feel' it when they read it. They know you're sincere about helping them solve a problem, figure out 'how to' do something, and providing real recommendations. When they 'feel' that, they buy. And yes... you guessed it... anyone can do it. Just be real. Don't waste your money on automated content builders. PREselling creates traffic from words Content will always the the number one traffic provider on the Internet. It was true five years ago, it will be true 15 years from now. Real, relevant, relational content. Use it to it's greatest advantage and begin building high quality (yes, you can do it!) content for affiliate programs you promote or your own products. It will pull in free traffic from search engines, PREsell those visitors more effectively, build relationsips for repeat sales, and provide people with what they are looking for. |
