🧠 Living Off The Net Academy: Insider Advertising Report

Chapter 10: How To Advertise An Affiliate Product

When it comes to advertising for affiliate products such as an ebook from Clickbank, most advertisers simply advertise the affiliate link directly, like this:

http://userid.productname.hop.clickbank.net/

This means the prospects will see the sales page of the product straight away.

I’m not saying you can’t make money doing so. In fact, many advertisers make money that way. But the success is never comparable to the method I’m going to show you.

Number 1 Responsibility Of An Affiliate

In affiliate marketing, there is a famous saying:

The job of an affiliate is to presell.

This is the secret of becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

Actually, I don’t think it’s a secret.

You see this concept almost everywhere.

The difference between amateur and savvy affiliates is that

amateur affiliates sell, savvy affiliates presell.

What is presell?

Instead of selling or pitching, a savvy affiliate marketer will share how he or his friend has benefited from a product, and show you how you can achieve the same.

That’s presell.

In other words, he is building your confidence

• in him (by being personal),

• in the product (by showing how it has worked for him or his friend), and

• in yourself (by showing how you can achieve the same).

Presell works because it builds confidence.
Sales is a transfer of confidence.

Difference between sell and presell

You may wonder, what is the difference between selling and preselling?

The difference is in the perspective.

If you talk like a salesman, you are selling.
If you talk like a user sharing an experience, you are preselling.

See the example below…

A ‘sell’ message looks like this:

Want to get 1000 leads for your business?
Accelerate your sales growth by 200%!
Be amazed by the results.
Click here to check it out.

A ‘presell’ message looks like this:

I just got 1000 leads for my business.
My sales have increased by 200%!
I was amazed when I saw the results.
Click here to check it out.

‘Selling’ gives you the feeling of a salesman pitching to you.
‘Preselling’ gives you the feeling that someone is standing by your side, sharing something that is tried and tested.

How To Write A Presell Page

A Presell Page is written from the perspective of the user.

Other than that, a Presell Page is similar to a Sales Page.

When I say ‘similar’, I mean the objective is similar.

The objective is to build prospects’ confidence in you, the product and themselves, but from the user perspective.

Let’s look at a real-life example.

The example on the right is a Presell Page from an affiliate marketer, Irene.

At the start, she said that she earned more than $300 daily and she was going to explain how she did it. She even showed her bank statement to prove that she was rich!

This starting serves two purposes:

1. As a bait to entice people to read further.

2. To build prospects confidence in her.

She further includes more earning proofs and testimonials from others who had purchased the product through her affiliate link.

She even listed down the number of people who have purchased through her link so far.

This is a powerful presell concept because it shows that the product has helped her and many others. It implies that it can help the prospect to make money too!

Can you see why this Presell Page is converting so well now?

Disclaimer: I’m showing you this example because it has worked very well in advertising. I’m not related nor endorsing any product here.

“But Kenneth, I’m just a newbie. I’ve neither income proof nor testimonial. What can I do?”

I know your concern.

Before giving you the solution, let me tell you a secret.

Irene had never advertised with me, but this ad had been advertised on my website times and times again.

How can this be possible?

What happened was Irene was kind enough to create a duplicate of her website for anyone who had purchased the product through her link.

It was the other purchasers who advertised with me, not Irene.

This is the power of “leverage” in advertising.

To answer the earlier question:

If you have neither income proof nor testimonial, you can leverage on other people’s income proofs and testimonials in your Presell Page.

This brings me to a simple yet powerful concept in affiliate marketing…

Make use of an affiliate product to build yourself a list!

How to use an affiliate product to build yourself a list?

As you know, in order to build a list, you need a bait.

A bait is usually a freebie that you give away in exchange for the email address.

Here is the twist.

How about using an affiliate product as the bait? Then you don’t have to prepare a freebie.

Let me explain how…

Let’s say you are promoting product X. If product X has a good sales page, it should have some form of proof such as a cheque or an earning screenshot.

Here’s what you can do:

With the permission of the product owner, take a copy of that proof and write a simple squeeze page that looks something like the ad on the right.
(By the way, this ad had an opt-in conversion of 7%!)

A few things to note from this ad:

1. The advertiser didn’t mention that he had made this kind of money. He said he was going to show you how you can make that kind of money.

2. He was building a list while promoting an affiliate product.

What happened was, that after people submitted their names and emails, they were taken to the actual sales page of the product that he was promoting.

They received a welcome email with the link to the product.

Lastly, the advertiser sent follow-up emails to them and built their confidence.

Here’s a summary of the strategy:

1. You use an affiliate product as a bait and entice prospects to opt-in to your list.

2. Once they opt-in, send the prospects to the product’s sales page.

3. Continue to follow up with the prospects, sending them more presell emails that build their confidence (note: not sending sales pitches).

You can also recommend other complementary products to them or send them to your blog, if you have a blog in the same niche.

Last but not least, once you have a decent list, you can do cross promotion with other list owners and further increase your list size.

Don’t be an affiliate marketer who only sends traffic to other people’s sites.

Be one who actively builds a list because a list is an asset that you own and have control over.

Next Chapter: How To Advertise An Online MLM Program