I’m assuming if you read my blog it’s likely you either blog yourself, run PPC campaigns, or content sites of some kind, or at least write articles to promote products as an affiliate.

Something we often forget when writing content as affiliates is that our content pages (blog posts) are “landing pages”. They’re pages that we’re trying to have rank in the search engines that people will land on, have a read of, and then hop on through to our affiliate link to make a purchase…

So while the job of a piece of content or a blog post as an affiliate is rarely to “sell” it still has the role of pushing the reader in a direction that you desire… sometimes called “pre-selling”.

But we don’t often think of our blog posts as “landing pages” and hence don’t see the need to “optimize” them for “conversions”.

But we should.

The more people you get clicking on your affiliate links, the more sales you make. And there’s a lot of things you can do to ensure that of the people reading your blog posts the highest number possible are clicking through to your offers and hopefully making you money.

I just read a REALLY detailed article on 30 Ways To Improve Your Landing Page Conversion Rates and I knew instantly I had to share it with you and point out how relevant it is to affiliate marketers and bloggers too.

The guy lists 30 things you can do to improve your click through rates on your landing pages – plain and simple.

I knew I liked it after point 1 which was “know your visitors”… something I tell our Firepow members ALL the time.

He mentioned some killer strategies like…

“6. Consistent message: A landing page’s design should match the related promotional creative as much as possible. If a user clicks on a PPC ad (or a link on your blog): “10% off lawn mowing service,” they expect to see the same headline on the landing page. If the user clicks on an ad with a blonde model dressed in a red cashmere shirt, they expect to see that same blonde model as they arrive on the landing page.”

Gotta confess, I don’t even do that, but it makes SO much sense… KILLER tip!

Or…

10. Build their trust: It’s always risky to enter into an online transaction with someone you don’t know. People may fear giving you money or their personal information because they do not know you. How can you get potential customers to trust you without ever meeting them? Trust is established through credibility.

And he goes into building credibility too.

These are simple tips that you can go out and change on your blog posts, articles, and landing pages and see serious improvements in income.

Seriously, the post could have been a $47 ebook.

You’ve gotta check it out then COME BACK and tell me your thoughts and the changes you’re going to make to your blog content, and affiliate landing pages!

This is so obvious, it can hardly be called a “tip”

I was prompted to remind you about it after an occurrence that took place as I was humbly answering some support tickets for Firepow members last week…

A member had asked me to look at something on his blog.

The blog happened to be on a topic that I already have some interest, namely NLP.

Nonetheless, normally I’m in psycho super speed mode while I’m answering support tickets, so I’d never take the time to read a users blog content…

But this blog sucked me in!

I ended up staying 5-10 minutes on his blog, and now, a week later, I still remember what his blog looked like, what it was about and the piece of content I absorbed – despite the fact that I look at hundreds of blogs each week.

Why?

What did he do?

I feel guilty for the big leadup because what he did is certainly nothing special but…

He used a Youtube video in one of his blog posts!

The picture of the video caught my eye, I clicked play, and before I had time to think, I’d been on his blog for 5 minutes.

People talk plenty about how video content is hard to monetize (because people get sucked into the video and don’t look at surrounding ads or links)…

And they talk about how it’s less valuable if it’s not unique and you didn’t create it…

But maybe these people overlook the most simple benefit of all…

Targetted videos keep people on your site longer.

People on your site for longer means more opportunity for them to click on your ads, subscribe to your feed, and most importantly, fall in love with you.

The clincher is this…

Since, as I and many others believe that “length of time a visitor spends on your page” is a factor that Google uses to determine the quality of your page and in turn your search engine rankings…

Using Video on your site could also indirectly increase your perceived authority and SE rankings too.

So I say add relevant videos to your wp blog posts where ever possible and appropriate, and get them above the fold of your “more” tag so they’re visible on the front page of your blog too.

It’s easy – it’s free content you don’t have to create, and it can improve your SE rankings and make your visitors love you more! What more can you want?

Anyone using youtube videos in their content and seeing great results?

Don’t worry, I’m not spying on you as you read this… YET

I started using an incredible tool this past week that I think is going to at least double my profits in the coming year.

Furthermore, if you’re an online marketer with any kind of website that’s currently getting traffic I think you could double your profits with it too.

It’s not the latest “fast money” tool but ironically, it could be the fastest money you ever make.

Check out this little video I made about it here:

If you think this tool is powerful…

It is!

Yes it costs money and it’s an investment that won’t be right for everybody. But if you can spare it, I know it’ll be worth your while.

You can get your hands on this thing and multiply your own profits by heading to www.watchyourvisitors.com.

I’d love to hear from anyone else already using this tool, or from anyone who joins after my recommendation. We can compare spy notes!

I would love to hear your views on this:

I’ve undergone a debate in my own head of late, on the subject of “Sliperiness Vs Quality Content”

The debate was stoked again after the chat I mentioned I had with Robert from the 30 day challenge.

What I’m talking about is this:

Say you’re promoting product XYZ as an affiliate.

You have two options, as per this debate.

1. You can put up any old content. The point of your page is to get a visitor there, whether from the search engines or wherever, and get them OFF the page and to your affiliate link as quickly as possible. Hence the term “Slippery”.

The theory is that the more relevant people you pass on to your merchants page with your affiliate link, the more sales you’re going to make.

2. You can develop quality content. The point of your page is to “presell” your customer on the product, so that they get a positive outlook from your review THEN click through to the affiliate link.

The theory here is that by building a little trust, presenting the product in a positive light, and giving some added information, your CTR may not be as high, but you’ll convert a higher number of the visitors that you DO push through to the merchant’s page.

Now, there’s no right or wrong answer here.

Both of these strategies will make you money. But before we continue this discussion, I’d love to know what your thoughts are on this subject at present.

Let’s hear it…

I had a fascinating chat with a fellow Australian marketer last Friday afternoon.

His name’s Robert, and he’s one of the minds behind the yearly 30 Day Challenge that we hear as being associated to Ed Dale.

We had a great chat about SEO, site structures, affiliate marketing and more.

I thought I’d share with you just one of the little snippets that were mentioned because it contains a great lesson…

As I mentioned in my last niche research post, it’s generally the nature of our beast that some sites you create are winners while many are losers.

One of the keys to success then is being able to quickly abort the losers and identify the winners.

While I’ve never been one for stringent rules, and generally just used my own judgment to decide when it was time to move on with a site, Robert reminded me of the proper way to go about this.

Put simply, he goes about things like this:

1. He picks some longtail keywords in a certain niche, that gets extremely low competition, but decent search volume.

2. He sets up his site, optimizes for those keywords, and tries to get quick rankings for the very long tail term.

3. He doesn’t do anything else, doesn’t start building links or submitting articles, just waits while the little bit of SE traffic trickles in.

4. He waits until the main money page of his site has had 200 visits. If it’s had at least 1 sale in 200 visits, he decides the site is worth pursuing. If not, he either a) tries another affiliate program or b) slaps up some Adsense and moves on to another site.

If it does convert at over half a percent, he knows its a site that will be able to make some money. After that, he starts building links to obtain long term rankings, expands to other key phrases in his niche, and so on.

Here’s what’s great about this strategy:

First, he doesn’t put any more effort into any site than he needs to. He waits to see if the site will be profitable BEFORE committing to any long term effort on it.

Next, he knows that when he DOES commit effort, it will pay off – because he knows prior to doing so that the affiliate program converts for that keyword and it can only make more money with more traffic.

Finally, his decision about what to do with a site is based solely on information, not emotion. It’s like trading stocks, and knowing when to buy or sell – it doesn’t matter that you’ve spent months developing a site (that’s BEFORE reading this post) and you feel emotional attachment to it… if the information is showing that it’s not going to convert and make you money, abandon that thing – “churn and burn baby!”  (it’s been a while since I heard those words in a positive light!)

I know that this post both arouses as well as answers many questions, but hey, we’ve got time!

Long title…

One major problem that I face as an affiliate marketer is that not enough online merchants know how to sell a product.

You know what I mean right?

It’s easy to drive traffic to a merchant’s page, but once they get there, there’s not alot we can do to secure the sale. If the merchant can’t close the deal properly for us, it’s bye bye ROI…

And some of them suck at it so badly… Particularly online stores. The product page has a list of a supplements ingredients, it’s intended user, a small blurb written by a low rate salesperson at the company and finally a button saying ADD TO CART (what’s wrong with saying BUY NOW!). What about a quality headline to catch attention? What about calling out the users by introducing an problem that will be solved by the product? What about benefits, reasons to buy, testimonials, special offers…

Too often a well searched, lowly competitive product has it’s potential for profit ruined by a crappy marketing team.

Anyway, rant over with.

What I was recently reminded of is the ability we have as affiliate marketers to use our own content to do what this crappy product description page cannot, that is, properly convince this person that they should buy a product!

Of course pre-selling is not a new concept, but let me put a little twist on what you might know about it.

The concept of pre-selling is gently describing the product, providing neutral information in a positive way before passing a lead on to a proper sales page to be completely sold. This is great when you’re promoting a product that has a proper sales page and CAN close a customer that has been presold – but what if your merchant’s product don’t got that?

One of the reason’s why it’s better to use a landing page for affiliate promotion is that you can use your own page to do a better job of selling the person on the product, and in doing so increase your conversion rates and ROI – in the above situation it was by preselling but in the case of the petty online store, you don’t have to just pre-sell, you have to SELL SELL.

What do I mean?

I’m talking about using the content on your site, the article you have about XYZ product, to SELL the thing.

I don’t mean write a sales letter for it but I do mean putting in there the selling triggers that the merchant hasn’t – just in a way that is also informative and article like.

The content on your site can’t be penalized for being too salesy like it can in an article directory. You can lose respect from a viewer by seeming to promote a product too blatantly but you can get more sales from the visitors by disclosing the benefits, and reasons why people should buy the product.

For example, there’s no reason why you couldn’t include a sentence or two like the following in your product name articles:

“As customers of product XYZ who have had positive experience would tell you, product XYZ has shown to be:

(List Benefit)
(List Benefit)
(List Benefit)

Furthermore, if you’re the kind of person who has XYZ problem, you’d know how frustrating it can be blah blah (highlight their pain) and you’re probably always looking for a solution to the problem. IT seems that so far, many people such as yourself have found product XYZ to be the solution.

I even notice in the sales material (impartial tone) that certain customers have said product XYZ has given them

(Reason to Buy)
(Reason to Buy)

etc etc”

You see how you can sell while being informative but WITHOUT being a salesman.

I guarantee that articles like this will get you greater CTRs and great conversion rates on the clicks you do receive.

Of course you do have to guage the appropriateness of a technique like this on the merchant you’re promoting for. If they have a great or even decent sales letter of course it’s not necessary but if you’re driving plenty of traffic through to them with no result it might be worth a shot.