Making a website for affiliate programs
Now that you have your affiliate programs and products to sell picked out, it is time that you make a website to sell these goods. There are a few different ways of selling these products. You could make a “sales letter” website, blog, or offer rebates.
Blogging to sell:
First I will discuss blogging and selling these products. The biggest mistake that people normally make when blogging is pushing the product onto people. Never post anything about how a product is the best thing in the world…it won’t sell at all. You need to build a trust amongst your readers before you throw products at them. Once you have a few posts up, mention the product in one of your posts as something you are interested in trying out and say that you will keep the readers updated on the quality of the product.
A few posts later, mention the product again. Tell them how you tried it out. Review it and tell them if it was effective for you or not. If it is a piece of anti-virus software, then tell them how it found a few viruses that no other program found. If it is a guide to making money online, do NOT expose the secrets of the system unless you want a law suit, and tell them that reason for not telling them what exactly the guide is about. If you are good with words, you should get a few sales if your readers trust you. If you have an established blog with 1,000 visitors per day, you will probably sell the product easier than someone who starts a blog the day that they try to sell.
“Sales Letter” websites:
A sales letter site is probably one of the easiest and most profitable websites. There is a minimal time investment and “sales letter” websites do just that…they sell. A sales letter website is comprised of a a few elements:
1. The attention grabber
2. A personal story
3. List style information
4. Testimonials
5. Random hope building paragraphs
6. The hook
1. The attention grabber should be a line or a few lines that will immediately grab the attention of your reader as soon as they see the page. If you are selling a “make money online” ebook, would you buy something if the site said “Welcome, I am here to sell you a guide that will make you money online.”, or if the site said “I am going to show you how I put $300 to $2,000 in my account every day, and have instant access to it through any ATM.” I know I would be more likely to buy something from the second site. It is a good attention grabbing line that makes you envy the person. If you have envy, you are more willing to do anything to make more money than him/her, even to buy his/her guide.
2. A personal story is often used to relate with the reader, but usually will only work with “self improvement” products. If you do decide to use a personal story, it doesn’t necessarily need to be about you. Make something up if you can’t think of a story about yourself or a friend.
If the product is a “make money online” ebook, then get started with the story like this: “3 years ago, I was on my last limb. With 3 children, being a single parent is one of the most difficult things I have had to do. I needed a way to supplement my income with a minimal time investment. That is when I found “XYZ’s Money Making Guide”, XYZ showed me how to make money online, step by step. It was the simplicity of the system that made it work for me. Now I bring in a few hundred extra dollars every week, and it really helps out a lot.”
3. Present the information in a “list” style format. Use bullets or numbers to present your information. Studies show that while surfing the web, people are much more likely to skim over the page rather than read every word. People are also more likely to look immediately at bulleted lists and short paragraphs rather than long paragraphs. Use your best selling points here, hit them with the good stuff and hit them hard.
4. Now insert a few testimonials to allude to how great your product is and how satisfied your customers really are. Be sure to allude to how great the product is and how successful it has made the “customer.” When you get people to try your product and like it, get some real reviews on there and your sales should bump up a few percent. Just remember not to make anything sound fake, if it does for one sentence, you just lost a lot of sales and a lot of money.
5. Random hope building paragraphs are what convince the visitor to buy the product. They should reinforce your attention grabbing line by emphasizing how great everything is now that you have started using this product or service. Just keep on saying different things like how much money you have made, how it changed your life, and so on if you are doing a “money making” ebook. These paragraphs are great for giving those people the extra push they need to buy the product or service.
6. The hook is the most important part of a “sales letter.” The “hook” is that last little thing that you say to make your product sale. On most “sales letter” sites, it is a money back guarantee. Although a money back guarantee is required by law, many people don’t know that it is and will not buy the product just for that reason. If you tell them that there is a 30 day, no questions asked, money back guarantee, you will generate more sales. People are worried about getting scammed, but normally if they know that you will give them a refund, they will be more than happy to give it a try. So that is great with your own product, but what about selling some one else’s product…? Well, ClickBank requires every seller to offer a 60 day money back guarantee for added protection against fraud. The best thing about click bank is that people who buy products and then want their money back usually do it more than once and click bank notices this and warns or bans these individuals. So don’t worry about losing sales to people like that as most people actually are honest.
Great, you now have either a blog or a sales letter site set up. If you don’t know how to set up a blog, google “wordpress”, go to their site, download it, and install it. Find a webhost that offers domain name registration as well as hosting, it will be much easier to get started this way. I use godaddy, but that is just personal preference. If you need to set up a sales letter site, I would suggest downloading a free web editing program or use templates from other websites, it is pretty easy once you get the hang of it.
Rebates:
Once you have your site set up, in order to increase sales, you may want to offer the customer a rebate. How much the rebate is for depends on how much you get paid per item sold. If a merchant prices and item at $40, and has a 50% commission, you would probably give the customer a rebate of $10, leaving you with a $10 profit. The customer still pays the full price, but after the transaction is complete, you send the customer the rebate amount via paypal or other means. It is a very good sales tactic that has been used over and over to get new customers and to “steal” customers from your competition through lower prices.
I hope that this will help you get started making money and keep an eye out for my next article.