The importance of preselling

The number one strategy to increase your affiliate sales is preselling.

Before we start, let’s talk about what preselling actually is. There are two components to it – art & science. And it’s function is to prepare your reader to buy something. Then sending them to the product sales page to make the purchase. And when it’s done correctly, they don’t know it’s happening.

Basically, you give them some content. And then refer them to the product website. In just a minute, I’ll explain exactly how to presell. Before we get into that, you should understand what’s in it for you. Some major benefits of this process:

• It helps your reader trust you – And gaining the trust of your readers helps them want to click your links. Which obviously means you’ll make more sales.
• It disarms your reader – Nobody likes to be sold something. By not doing that to them, your reader is less defensive. Unguarded reading means they’re not filtering what you say. So your message gets across.
• It puts them in a buying mood – Your readers are now receiving your message. And in turn, they’re open to other messages, as well. This includes the sales website you send them to! Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
• Your commissions go up – They arrive at the product website prepped to buy. With a feeling of trust and openness. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
• Your customers are happier – People like to make their own buying decisions. Instead of feeling pressured or “sold”. So they are happier with their purchase.
• Your profits go up – A satisfied customer doesn’t ask for a refund. Less refunds means more affiliate money stays in your pocket.

The need to presell is clear. You earn more commissions. Your customers are happier. It’s a win-win-win!

OK, so how do you do it?

You’ve learned the importance of preselling. And I hope you’re resolved to being preselling, too. So, it’s time to break down how it works. Like we talked about before, it’s an art. And it’s a science.

Mastering the art

The first step is in getting your readers to trust you and open up. And the only method of doing this is to give exceptional value to your readers. Now, providing enough info to be useful, but still making them want more – that’s the art of it. That is, they have to be wanting more when you refer them to the product sales page for the product you’re trying to sell. And since they’re more open, they are more likely to make a purchase.

Scientific preselling

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

The first is how you present the information. You need to know where you’re going before you begin. Your goal is to sell the product you’re promoting. How can providing information accomplish this goal? The first method is to provide enough info to get them started, but not enough to finish. Or you can give them so much information that it feels overwhelming to do what you’re talking about. Either way, the product sales page solves the problem.

You also have to link to the product you’re promoting discretely. You have directly to the home page of the product. This increases your clicks. But how will you earn affiliate commissions if you don’t use your affiliate link? Well, that’s part of the science of this whole process. You use the “covert cookie” strategy.

Next, you want to make sure you’re linking on related words and phrases. 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.

What you have now is a super powerful system for affiliate marketing success.

Now for the bad news…

Doing all of this right is really hard! Think about everything that goes into crafting an effective preselling article: Good 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. Writing to presell. Yes, you must providing useful content. And you have to make the content accessible in order to provide value. While at the same time making them want more. Or make the information so overwhelming they realize they can’t do it on their own.

Choosing your products. You also need to determine what products you’ll be preselling. Even if you can pull off writing and great article. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

Techy stuff. One of the keys to this system is using “covert cookies” for the tracking. This is fairly simple – you use a 1 X 1 image and set the “source” to your affiliate link. (But if you do it wrong, you won’t get paid for the traffic you send.)

Wrapping it up:

Now you’re armed with the information needed to effectively presell. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 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…