All those who want to increase your affiliate commissions, please raise your hands!

With the kind of traffic that most SBI! sites enjoy, it’s surprising that most people make much less than what they could be making. While I have talked about product creation and product + affiliates as a traffic strategy in previous posts, I shall be talking about how to increase your income as an affiliate in this post.

First of all, I hope you have the basics covered.

• Unless you have no other options, you must use the best converting affiliate merchants. Drop the ones that don’t convert well.
• Get really good at preselling.
• Don’t put too many things on a single page – Adsense, lots of affiliate links, banners, etc. I will talk about the concept of MWR (Most Wanted Response) in a later post very soon. If I forget about it, please remind me.

Now, let’s begin, shall we?

Sell the click, not the offer

Assuming you have got the basics right and only use the affiliate merchant that converts well, it makes sense to send as much traffic as possible to the affiliate.

Suppose the merchant converts at 5%. If you send 100 people to their page, you make 5 sales. But if you send 500 people to their page, you make 25 sales. See? The more people you send to their page, the more money you make.

Everybody knows this instinctively, but where most people goof up is when they try to sell the actual offer (product, service, whatever else the merchant is selling) to the visitors. They try to convince that the product in question is the best thing since sliced bread, and so on. And invariably, they fail.

Because see, we are not salespeople. We can’t write slick sales copy that can convince an Eskimo to buy some ice from us. It’s best to leave this job to the professionals. Our job is to simply create an open to buy mindset in them.

Remember the concept of MWR? Most people don’t really understand it.

Quick question: What is your MWR on a page that promotes a product you are affiliated with?

a) Get them to buy the product b) Get them to click on your affiliate link.

If you answered b), congratulations. If you answered a), you need to brush up on the basics again.

Look, no matter how hard the visitors try, and no matter how much they want to, they CANNOT buy the product from your page.

Because you are an affiliate. You are NOT the merchant selling the product.

The merchant’s MWR from the visitor is to get them to buy the product. YOUR MWR is to get them to click on your affiliate link.

Right?

Then why do so many people try to get the people to buy the product?

Focus on the right thing (trying to get people to click on your affiliate link), and you will definitely increase your affiliate commissions.

If they can’t LICK it, they can’t CLICK it

The ability to lick something on the screen implies that it’s visible, to say the least. Not to mention that someone must be sick in their mind if they actually go and lick something on their monitor. Yuck!

Ahem! Anyway…

What I meant was, if they can’t see it, they can’t click it. Agreed?

And your job is to get as many of them to click your affiliate link as possible. Remember?

See, it’s not like visitors to our pages are hunting for our affiliate links. What they ARE hunting for, is the solution to whatever problem they have, or the product they want, or the information they want, and so on.

So in order to make them click on our affiliate links, we must make sure they can SEE the damn link in the first place.

Now, those who read your entire article will probably see the link as they scroll down, but what about the people who just hit the back button as soon as they arrive?

Here are a few things you can do that will help:

• Put the affiliate link up top, right next to the place where you are used to putting your 250×250 Adsense ad. If it means getting rid of your Adsense ad, do it (read: test it).
• Put the affiliate link in a colored box (div or table, whichever suits you) with a border around it. Give it a neutral sounding headline such as “Recommended resources” or something. If you really feel the product/service you are recommending is a good one, feel free to slip in your endorsement too. Keep it short, though. People should be able to read your main article without feeling pitched. For more information on how to create colored boxes, you can refer to the FAQ thread in the HTML/CSS forum in the SBI! Forums.

A good “Call To Action” makes a world of difference

So how do you ask them to check out the product you recommend as the affiliate?

Do you even ask them, or do you just shyly slip in a link, hoping they don’t notice the link and don’t get cross with you if they do notice you actually linked to a third party product?

Listen. You are my friend, so let me get straight with you.

You are doing your readers a SERVICE by getting them in touch with people who can provide solutions to their problems, or products that would make their lives better and happier.

Similarly, it’s NOT a wrong thing to get paid for consulting. When you recommend a solution to someone, guess what? You are playing the role of a consultant. And I am sure you know how consultants charge big sums. And in this case you are not even making your “client” pay the bill. It’s the affiliate MERCHANT who is going to foot the bill, which is a very small one anyway.

So please stop being shy and apologetic about your affiliate links. You are doing everyone a great service – your visitors, your affiliate merchants, yourself, and your family.

So with that out of the way, how should you ask your visitors to click on your affiliate links?

There are several ways, and their effectiveness depends on your preselling, context, your audience, the type of product, and several other factors. With time, you will develop a feel for it, but here are a couple to get you started:

• The standard “Click here…” link. This is VERY powerful if used sparingly. Tests have revealed that the “Click here…” type of links get more clicks than the normal “keyword loaded” links. For best results, at most two links on your whole page (including navigation links) should be “Click here…” links.
• Let them know in advance that you are going to mention a product. Then mention the product (unless you don’t want to reveal the name of the product before you link to it, to prevent them from leaving the page before they click on your affiliate link). Then tell them you are going to link to the product. And then finally link to the product. By the time they get to the link, they should be anticipating it and actually looking for it. (Don’t actually go and tell them, “Hey, I’m about to link to the product.” Be subtle about it. Of course, you know that. But I still included it for others.)

A whole new post can be written about the topic of calls to action, but the above two should get you started and give you very good results.

And do keep testing stuff and moving them around to find out what works best for YOUR site.

If someone is already going to buy, grab their cookie

Here’s what I mean.

Sometimes people research a product before purchasing it. Maybe they read about it elsewhere, or on your competitor’s site, or on the merchant’s site itself. Whatever.

The point is that they are researching to make sure if there are any negative reviews about the product before they make the big leap.

That, my friend, is a big opportunity right there for you. Wield the power of SBI!

Create a Tier 2 page called “Recommended products” or whatever. Then create a Tier 3 page for each product you recommend on your site. It doesn’t matter if you already recommend it on some other T2/T3 page. Create a separate page for it as well. And go about it with the name of the product as the keyword.

So for example, if the product was “CompanyName WidgetName ModelName” your primary keyword for the page would be “companyname widgetname modelname” and the page name would obviously be companyname-widgetname-modelname.html.

It doesn’t matter what the Brainstormer says about the demand/supply/profitability of this keyword. You are not trying to get a lot of traffic for this particular keyword. All you want to do is to win the people who are searching for it, no matter how small in number they may be, because these are the people who are READY TO BUY.

And on this page, just put some basic information about the product, like price, a short description, etc. Put in some actual user feedback as well. You can get people’s comments on forums. You can use this material on your page, but be careful not to use the whole feedback/comment, or you may be in copyright violation. Just use a sentence or two at the most. Also include a comment that describes something negative, but is really a minor issue.

Important: Be sure to put the affiliate link at the top of this page. This is one page where you can’t afford to hide your affiliate link or require your readers to scroll down till they see your affiliate link. Remember, they are not hunting for your affiliate link, they are trying to find out whether or not they should buy that product.

They already want to buy the product. So you don’t need to do ANY preselling here. In fact, preselling could kill the sale. All your page needs to do is let them justify in their mind that what they want is the right thing to do, and nudge them in the direction of buying. And when they do decide to buy, they will just click on your link, and be on their merry way.

I have made more money using this strategy than anything else, so be sure to give it a careful read, multiple times if necessary. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below.

Read the Affiliate Masters Course

The Affiliates Masters Course, as you know, is the Bible of affiliate marketing. It’s what first exposed me to the world of possibilities in internet marketing, and got me started. Before I read it, I was making money selling a little software tool that I had created, but was only moderately successful. And by the way, whatever income I had then was all thanks to the affiliates I had, which is why I keep recommending to have your own product.

Anyway, the Affiliates Masters Course is a free e-book as you already know, and is a must read if you want to increase your affiliate commissions. You can download it from Site Central after logging in to your SBI! account, or you can download it here:

The Affiliates Masters Course

That’s it then. Have fun, and hope you enjoyed this post. Do let me know in the comments below.

I was going to release the contents of this post as a paid report. But since I love my fellow SBIers (mmuuaaaahhhhhh muuuaaaaaahhhhh), I am going to just post all the preselling strategies I know here. Be sure to read it ALL. This is some good stuff, even if I say so myself.

The basics first – What is Preselling and why do you need it?

First, you don’t just need to presell when you are promoting products as an affiliate. You also need to presell when you are selling your own products, if you want great results.

In short, whenever something gets sold, whether by a merchant, or you as the product seller yourself, preselling will greatly enhance the results.

And the buyer will end up feeling much happier about the purchase as well. As a result, there will be fewer refunds as well as a higher number of repeat purchases. Win-win all around!

As SBIers, we all know what preselling is. But if you need a refresher…

Here’s a quote from my website-squad.com site that explains it better:

When visitors first arrive at a website, the site is like a stranger to them. It’s the job of the website to turn itself from a stranger into a friend in the eyes of the people that visit it. Because these people are going to buy from a friend, not from a stranger. They will follow the recommendations of a friend, and an expert, not someone who is trying to push stuff down their throats.

Pre-selling is how you make your visitors like you. Pre-selling is how you establish yourself as an expert in the eyes of your visitors. Pre-selling is why they think you are their friend, not a salesperson. Pre-selling is why you will ultimately be able to sell successfully.

Put very simply, it’s everything that you do to create an open-to-buy mindset in the minds of people. Things that you do before the selling even begins. Things that happen before your visitors are even aware that they are going to buy something from your site.

Only after you create an open to buy mindset, can you make your visitors buy anything. And what do I mean when I say “open to buy?”

An open to buy mindset is when a person is willing to consider buying something from you. Not necessarily this product or that service, but something. When the guards are down. When the resistance to a sales effort is at its minimum. When they have started trusting you because of your obvious expertise.

Hopefully that gives you some idea about preselling and what it is. It will get clearer as you read more.

But so far you have read nothing new. So let’s change that, and tell you some of the ninja stuff. How to use different preselling techniques depending on your niche, the product you are going to presell, your audience, and so on.

The right technique when used properly will greatly enhance the amount of money you make. Feel free to mix, match and adapt as you feel appropriate.

Here goes…

Preselling technique #1 – Establish yourself as the expert

This is one we all know about. When your site visitors think of you as the expert on the topic you talk about, they will follow your recommendations. You are saving them the time to do the research themselves, because you have already done it for them, and because of your obvious expertise, can make better judgements about what is best for them.

Use this form of preselling for things that are directly related to your site’s topic. For example, if your site is about fishing, you can recommend fishing equipment. If your site is about food or recipes, you can recommend utensils, cooking equipment, and so on (it’s a waste to recommend recipe books on food/recipe sites, IMHO – but do recommend recipe books when your site is NOT about recipes… read below to learn when).

Preselling technique #2 – Create desire/intrigue in their minds

When you create a desire for a video camera in their mind, for example, they will just buy the one you link to. It doesn’t matter which brand you recommend. Because right at this moment, they are not looking for a Canon, or Nikon, or whatever. They just want something that can capture those special moments with their growing kids.

Use this preselling technique to recommend stuff that is not directly related to your site’s topic, but one that they will enjoy, or find useful. For example, you could recommend a camera on a parenting site for new parents. Or a recipe book on a site about pregnancy (what to eat during those nine months that is nutritious AND tasty).

Preselling technique #3 – Be in the same boat as your visitors

Reena: Damn, I hate this pimple on my nose. How do I get rid of it?

Teena: I don’t know man, but Leena had that once, and she used Cream Poo Poo from the Shame Poo company and it seemed to work for her. You can try that if you want.

Reena: Gotcha, dude.

(OK, so I don’t know how to talk like a girl. Sue me, I’m a guy! )

Anyway, you can use this form of preselling when you are not actually an expert on something (or don’t want to portray yourself as an expert), but have still picked up some real life experience on the subject – either your own experiences, or others.

Preselling technique #4 – teach them how to do something

This is a very effective thing to do, wherever it can be done. Basically, you teach them how to accomplish a task, and not how to use a particular tool or get the most out of a book, etc. After you have taught them how to do the task manually, you can mention a neat tool that can automate much of the job and can make their life easier.

If you have ever read the Affiliates Masters Course ebook, you have witnessed this superb strategy in action.

Use this technique to presell products that are directly related to your niche, and where you have a lot of experience. In particular, use it for things that solve the problems your visitors have to struggle with consistently.

Preselling technique #5 – Teach them how to use it

This is another variation of teaching to presell. If the product or tool you recommend is complicated or hard to use, you can teach your visitors how to use it.

Use this form or preselling when your visitors already know about the product either because you have told them, or because they read about it elsewhere.

Preselling technique #6 – Point out a couple of minor flaws in the product

No product is perfect. There are always places for improvement, or minor shortcomings, even in the best of breed products.

Most affiliates just keep singing the praises of the products they recommend. But when you talk about both the good and bad sides of the product, you come across as much more honest and trustworthy.

Of course, each time you point out a flaw, remember to show how it’s a small issue that can be ignored, or give them a workaround.

Example: I found their technical support is not really 24 x 7. If you call them at night, they rarely pick up the phone. But then who needs to call them in the middle of the night anyway? Except night owls, of course!

Use this form of preselling for products that your visitors were going to buy anyway. But your honest recommendation will give them a reason to buy through your link.

Preselling technique #7 – Tell them stories

As the saying goes in sales circles, facts tell, stories sell.

We all know how SiteSell encourages their affiliates to tell their online story on their sites, to presell SBI! effectively. And on their own site, SiteSell uses case studies to show how SBI! can be used by people from all walks of life. So in this case you see both affiliates and the merchant using stories to sell/presell.

This is a technique that can be used on all kinds of products.

Preselling technique #8 – Subtly imply that they are a loser if they don’t use the product

Don’t say it out loud, of course, just get the idea inside their heads.

Example: All smart people use SBI!, and others just want everything for free, not realizing the value of their own time and efforts, foolishly wasting years of their lives unsuccessfully trying to build an online business. You should use SBI! too. All smart people use it.

This is a very subtle technique and very easy to mess up. For example, I probably messed up big time in my example above, because I used the word “foolishly,” which is too strong for a preselling message. Preselling must always be subtle. This is what makes it different from actual selling.

Use it with extreme caution and only if you are sure of what you are doing. And even then, get the opinion of a few people before putting it up on your site. Your commissions are going to be affected by this. If you do this well, you could be rolling in money, but if you mess up, all your hard work goes to waste.

This technique is best reserved for products that you really have a lot of faith in.

Preselling technique #9 – Show them everyone else wants it

This is another ninja technique. Keep yourself and your opinions out of the picture here. Just show/convince them that everyone else is getting the thing.

If everyone else is watching a particular movie, it’s hard to resist seeing it yourself. If everyone is listening to a particular album, it’s hard to resist checking it out. Hey, it’s cool to look nerdy these days. Check out these thick glasses. And don’t forget this pocket calculator to complete the look.

Preselling technique #10 – “Dropping names”

This is another ninja technique when done right. Keep mentioning a product subtly while talking about something else. Keep planting the seeds of this idea into their heads while you talk about something else. Do it at every opportunity.

The reason why this technique works so well is manifold. First, repetition plants it firmly in their heads. Secondly, when you are talking about something else, they are not expecting you to mention product X all of a sudden, so their guards are down. Third, because you never really ask them to buy product X directly, they think it’s THEIR idea to buy it, and are much more willing to buy.

For example, when people ask me about my web design work, they are usually already presold by the time they contact me, so unless I goof things up big time, I already have the deal. This becomes possible only because of the preselling job my site does. That way I have very little “selling” to do myself, which I suck at anyway.

(Did you see how I managed to mention my web design services in the above paragraph while talking about preselling? And if you remember, I also managed a reference to website-squad.com at the beginning of this post. If you see it mentioned a few more times, and you need a web design job done, and think of me, will you think it’s my idea or your idea to hire me? )

(Another note: I don’t do web design any more, so please don’t think I am using this technique on you here. I only used it as an example. Please don’t contact me for web design work. I don’t do web design any more.)

Bonus Super-Ninja Kick-Butt Preselling Technique (for those who made it this far)

This technique will put you miles ahead of everyone out there.

Create a small report (7-10 pages) about a topic related to the product you are trying to presell, and sell it for 99 cents.

Why 99 cents? Because you want them to get in the mood for shopping. You are not trying to get rich selling this 99 cents report, of course.

The whole point of preselling is to get them in the open to buy mindset. And a report that appeals to them and costs just 99 cents or 50 cents or whatever does just that. It gets them in the mood to buy. And once they are in the mood to buy, they will buy more, including the product you are ACTUALLY trying to sell/presell/recommend as an affiliate.

So on the thank you page for your 99 cent report say, “Gee, thanks for buying my report, and here’s an awesome product I would like you to check out. If you use it, you will go to sleep fat, wake up thin, and won’t even have to think about it. And I can personally vouch for this product. It’s really good.”

I am not saying the price of the short report must be 99 cents. It should just be low enough to make it a no brainer for your visitors. The actual price depends on your target prospects and the main product itself.

Use this technique for products that can be bought on impulse, and are related to your site’s topic.

There, that’s it

What do you think? Now go and use these techniques to make more money.

And can you spot which techniques I am using in my blog (whichever post that may be)? Even though I am not going to try to sell you anything, at least in the foreseeable future, I have still done a lot of preselling all over this blog. Can you tell me which technique I used, and in which post? Let’s see who finds the most. The winner will get a free copy of my kick-butt non-existent product that I would be mentioning here if I had something to sell to you. (Assume for a moment that there IS an actual product mentioned here, though.)

Comments, please?

Important: Please post any questions in the comments below, and I’d appreciate if you don’t contact me privately via email. If I answer a question via email, only you get the benefit, but if I answer it here, everyone benefits. Plus someone else can offer an answer, suggestion, or perspective that is even better than mine.

This is an addendum to my previous post about ugly Adsense ads, with a few examples.

Several of you wanted to see examples of what I mean by “ugly” Adsense ads, so I decided to look around a bit on the web. I did not find any that I would classify as “ugly” or particularly drawing attention, so I decided to create a few examples myself to help you understand what I mean.

Here is the first example. Bear in mind that these are all generated within my Adsense account, and using the Adsense preview tool in the Adsense setup wizard. For this reason the ads are not ads, but they do the job well to illustrate what I mean.

Example of ugly Adsense ad

Don’t bother clicking on the ad. It’s just an image, not an actual ad!

Anyway, as you can see, the ad has red link titles and red text as well. The link URLs are the normal blue color that is common for links. The background is white, and so is the border.

The reason why I think this will work well is that red color draws the eyes like anything. If you are on a web page and you see something in red color, you want to read it first before anything else.

Another example:

Another example of an ugly Adsense ad

Now as you can see, this is very similar to the above example, with the difference that the borders are yellow instead of white.

The reason this works is again similar to the last one. And yellow draws attention too.

Do you remember a thread in the SBI! forums where Elad talks about how he started getting better CTRs when he placed quotes next to the Adsense ads and highlighted them in yellow?

The ad above works on the same principle, but you don’t have to think of a new or relevant quote for each page/ad. It also doesn’t violate Google’s TOS which state that you can’t place anything near the ads to draw attention to them. (Or at least I think the TOS say that, so correct me if I am wrong here. )

Yet another example:

Yet another ugly Adsense ad

Once again, just like the last example, but with a different border color. Hey, gotta keep your visitors from getting used to the same ad design, to prevent ad blindness, yeah?

OK, another example, to show that you can go extreme too, if you want:

My eyes! My eyes! Help!

I wouldn’t recommend using that last ad design. It really hurts the eyes and might offend most of your visitors into leaving your site. I only included it here to show what’s possible.

Don’t let this keep you from using colored backgrounds, though. For example, check this out:

Example of ugly Adsense ad with a color background

You could try other variations and find out what works best for you. In the end, it also depends a lot on your own site’s design and color scheme. I would recommend using a color scheme for the ad that really conflicts with your site’s color scheme.

As always, testing will lead you to the right answer

I have always been a proponent of testing things, but over the past one or two years, I have begun to REALLY grasp the importance of testing things.

If it looks promising, test it to find out for sure.

If it looks silly and stupid, test it to find out for sure.

If it looks exciting, test it to find out for sure.

If it looks boring and mundane, test it to find out for sure.

The bottom line is that you never know what is going to work for your particular combination of niche, audience, your own voice, site design, and a lot of other factors. So it’s really, really important to test.

And these days Adsense lets you create ads that you can modify on the fly without having to update your pages, so it’s now even easier for you to keep testing.

Hope these examples provide a little help and you can better monetize your content as a result. Happy monetizing and do let me know what you think.

If I were you, I would read this whole post, even if some bits in the beginning don’t interest you. You will see why as you reach the end.

Here is a little story. I was trying to promote a little website I had that I created to sell a product.

(You know, one of those sites where you have a long salesletter and a big buy button that you can click to order an e-book or whatever? Yeah, that one. I used to hate them too, till I started creating them and making money from them. For example, this website I mention consists of exactly three pages and makes about $1500-$2000 per month for me in profits. Anyway, on with the story…)

So there I was, trying to use Adwords to promote the site.

(Yes, yes, I know I said Adsense in the title of the post. Bear with me, my friend!)

Anyway. So I was trying to use Adwords to promote the site. I was already seeing great results in the search network, and wanted to try advertising in the content network as well.

As you may know, the “content network” consists of the actual web sites that display all these ads that we call Adsense ads. From the advertisers point of view, it’s the Adwords ads displaying on the “content network,” and from our point of view, it’s Adsense ads.

Anyway, this is what I found:

• Unless you are willing to pay high click costs, your ads will get displayed in lower positions where no one will see them
• Unless anyone sees them, you won’t any clicks
• If you want clicks, you need to either raise your bids, or experiment with image ads (which I did) because they have far less competition than text ads
• Image ads that look like they are designed by a graphic designer tend to get very poor results in terms of clicks. On the other hand, image ads that look like “text” perform much better
• A few words on a big sized image ad work the best
• Big sized image ads with a few words on them and a horrible color combination work the “bestest”

So what does this mean for us SBIers?

What the above means is that we have just stumbled upon a cool way to make more money from the Adsense ads that get displayed on our sites. Now, read carefully here, and try to follow the logic. This is important.

• The image ads I mentioned above worked well because they drew attention
• They drew attention because they looked ugly and out of place in the website
• Looking at this from our (webmasters) point of view, the ads that draw attention will get more clicks and hence make more money for us
• But image ads typically pay a lot less than text ads, which have higher competition
• So if we customize our (text) Adsense ads to make them look ugly, we get the best of both worlds – ads that draw attention and ads that pay more

Just trying to make sure you didn’t miss that last one: If we customize our (text) Adsense ads to make them look ugly, we get the best of both worlds – ads that draw attention and ads that pay more.

I am sure you already know how to customize the look of your Adsense ads, so I won’t go into that here.

A word of caution

It’s important to be careful here. You don’t want to create ads SO ugly that they make you lose your credibility with your visitors. For example, don’t have ads that hurt the eyes, or make your site look like a kaleidoscope.

It’s a fine line you need to walk. In my opinion, always err on the side of making more money. You are monetizing, after all. You can always change it back to a little less ugly if it doesn’t work for you.

And don’t forget to do some testing of your own first. Just because it looks like a good idea, it doesn’t mean you will necessarily have success with it. Always test an idea first, before rolling it out full scale.

So what do you think of this approach? Good? Bad? Ugly? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And if you have similar (or different) experiences of your own, please share.