Ristvin Marketing Blog

What they are and What they Mean to you…

In an earlier post I said that keyword research was the backbone of affiliate marketing.  Pre-sell landing pages are the heart of making money as an affiliate marketer.

Your landing page is where you send visitors that might be interested in buying the affiliate product you are promoting.  Usually, this is the page that you try to pre-sell them on the product, and from that page, you send them to the merchant’s sales page where the sale is made.

Think of pre-selling pages like “priming the pump”.   You pre-sell the product or service and sell the click… It is not your job to sell the product or service, that’s the job of the merchant’s sales page or catalog’s duty…

To quote Ken Evoy in his  Make Your Content PREsell! eBook (it’s free)… “PREselling is the online version of relationship-building.  PREselling warms up and builds trust and respect…”

As an affiliate, it’s your job to get the visitor interested in the product and in a buying mood… Your job here is to simply to recommend the product by giving an unbiased assessment and to send them to the merchant’s sales page to decide for themselves if it’s for them…

To this affiliate marketer, pre-selling is the art of creating a positive image in the visitors mind… an image that shows them the benefits of owning the product/service… Pre-selling is about presenting the benefits, not features of the product/service… Showing the visitor that you understand their problem and have a solution that will help them out…

Types of Pre-sell Pages

I’ve had the best luck with reviews.  There are two types of review pre-sell pages:

1. Straight reviews of a product/service – a personal testimonial
2. Comparison reviews

Another way to market an affiliate product is that you can include recommendation links in normal pages on your website.  These just go with the flow of the page that you are making…

For instance, I could recommend a membership site where for a once only fee…  You could get a membership to a training site that offers high quality training on building an online affiliate business done through free blogging sites at BUMBlogging. (incidentally, a membership site which I have learned a lot from and is updated all the time and for a one time only fee)

Let’s Look at Straight Pre-sell Review Pages

A straight pre-sell review page is directed at one single product or service… I like to make these a personal testimonial for a product or service that I have personally purchased and know are worth the money.

An example of an affiliate pre-sell review can be found on this blog at: KRA Pro review.  This is a total review that stresses what this software can do and how much I use it for doing keyword research…

Your visitors want to see that you, as author of the web page, understands why the product or service is so cool and fully reinforce and endorse their decision to buy the product.

Remember that you are not trying to sell the product/service (that’s the merchant’s job).  It is through a simple, editorial style review that you are trying to give your objective opinion on the product…

How About Comparison Review Pages?…

Comparison review pages compare two or more products in the same niche… I personally like to compare two products but you can compare more.  When comparing more than two products, I’d advise you to have a rating system to rate the products visually.

The most common rating system is the five-star rating.   If your review site is a Wordpress blog, you can find a number of WP plugins that will allow you to do this effortlessly and seamlessly into your site.

I prefer to write a two product review… An example of one of these is where I review two real estate investment products at: Real Estate Investment Review.  Note the conclusion section at the bottom of the page and how it makes the visitor want to buy the preferred product…

Comparison review pages are very effective if written in an editorial style.  Be objective and give the benefits of both products…. Then give your overall opinion of which is the best product to buy, and why… If the visitor is in a buying mood, they will probably go with your recommendation.

Do’s of Pre-Sell Pages

• Speak benefits, not features… if you mention features be sure to tell the visitor why they are a benefit to them…
• Write in an editorial style… this shows objectivity and the hype style that many affiliate marketers use turns people off…
• Base yourself as an expert and authority on a subject, then recommend the product based on your use of it and your opinion of the product/service…
• Warm the visitor up to buying the product using social proof and making them receptive to the merchant’s sales page…
• Story telling is a great way to make the visitor stay on the page and read your whole pre-sell…
• Focus on the “Pre” not the “Sell”…
• Try to include your affiliate links in more than one spot in the page… Try near the beginning of the page, the middle and of course at the bottom.
• Make the page scan-able if at all possible… most visitors won’t read the whole page…
• Provide information but don’t make it too long and boring..
• Include a “call to action”…

If you’re into affiliate marketing, I highly recommend using a pre-sell page to increase your commissions.  If you craft your affiliate pre-sell landing page properly and follow the above rules, you will see higher conversions and increased profits…

Be sure to check out your affiliate program as often, the merchant will provide some pre-sell tools and scripts that will make your job of making a pre-sell page that much easier…

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• Affiliate Marketing – Great Way to Draw Traffic for Free | Blogza.in.th
• Successful Affiliate Marketing « Bulk News – bulk.net
• Understanding the Great Helps of Affiliate Marketing Software
• A Brief Overview For Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Mistakes : Exclusive Affiliate Marketing
• Work From Home Ideas: Affiliate Websites | Chris Fox + Jerome Chapman = CB Predator
• Affiliate Product Landing Pages – Three Tactics That Sell (Dan B. Cauthron) « vici blog
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Tags: affiliate, affiliate marketing, affilliate pre-sell, pre-sell landing page, pre-sell page, review pre-sell pages

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