Affiliate Marketing BasicsAs an affiliate manager I've had the opportunity to view thousands of web sites. When I began, I was consistently surprised by the sites that produced results - that made money - and the sites that did not. And those observations taught me why, as an affiliate myself, I wasn't making money. Here, I will share some of those insights you. 1. Sell One Thing and Sell it WellRule One: Decide Whether You Want to Impress People with Design Skills - or Make Money It's important to maintain the focus of what you're attempting to accomplish by building a web site. Many web marketers want to show off their web design skills. I used to be impressed by looking at those sites. I'd approve them into our affiliate program and wait for the sales to roll in. And, they NEVER do. I now show my friends and family an occassional money-making web site of my own - most are not as nice as this site. "Plain and boring". A page full of words. Yet, they outsell - any one of them - all of the fancy sites I used to build, combined. Rule Two: Focus on "The One Thing" You want to maintain focus on your site. You want it simple and you want it free of distractions. Each page should have one, clear focus. To sell a product, to gain reader attention, to get a subscriber. Pick one and only one. And sell one, and only one, product on a page. Unless you're doing a comparison, don't say "We'll here's this course that I think is great. But, here are banners to a bunch of others if you don't like this." That's a sure route to losing sales. We call this "The One Thing". Decide what "The One Thing" is that you want a page to do. NOTE: Just to be clear, when I say sell one thing that doesn't mean you can only sell one product, period. Just keep it to only one product on a page - sometimes even a site. Rule Three: Words Sell I encourage everyone to place banner ads. They create awareness. But, no successful affiliate I know relies on banner ads to make money. Words do the selling. How to Use Your Words to Sell . . . The best thing you can do as an affiliate is to just share your experience with a product. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Really. No product is perfect and that includes ours. As an affiliate, it's best to talk about the Holothink products just as you'd talk about a movie you saw. Your approach to 'selling' a friend on seeing a movie is to just share your experience. Don't try to "sell" - don't try to employ fancy psychological tactics and all that good stuff. Just share your experience. Share your stories. Write like you're writing/talking to your best friend. The more you tell - the more you sell. The good word is . . .
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