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Next Issue is supposed on 7th May 2006.

Today's Feature Article

Effective Pre-Selling In Affiliate Marketing
Mark Flavin

Pop quiz: name the fastest way to online success?

If your answer is product creation, then you would have to reconsider the time and effort needed to come up with merchandise that would sell. While creating your own product is by far the best way of making the a lot of money it may not be the fastest way.

If your answer is telecommuting, then you would have to remember that such is almost tantamount to being an employee and working for a boss, albeit, in the comforts of your own home.

The answer is quite clear. The fastest way to online success is something that does not require an onerous financial investment, if ever such is demanded which is rare, and something that does not entail product conceptualization and execution. It does not even require other obligations like the retention of a payment processor or the installation of a digital delivery service.

Affiliate programs have long been hailed as the easiest and speediest way to earn a fortune online, and for good reasons! You won’t have to build your own products and test-drive them to death. You’d have an entire inventory of proven products to choose from! You won’t have to come up with a digital store that would process payments from a variety of payment solution options in the World Wide Web. This would be provided for as well. You won’t have to hire an expensive copywriter to prepare a sales page for you. One would be provided, with a proven conversion rate at that.

What’s best is that you won’t be limited to only one affiliate program to join. You could enroll in as many affiliate programs you want! The more programs you join, the better your chances are of earning a lot!

Affiliate programs, of course, are agreements between an affiliate merchant and an affiliate, which would be you, for the latter to pre-sell the products of the former. For every successful sale that the affiliate would refer to the affiliate merchant, the affiliate stands to earn a commission. Not just piecemeal commissions, mind you. But generous commission in the range of 20% to 95%!

The keyword in affiliate programs is pre-selling.

Pre-selling is very much different from actual selling. You won’t concern yourself with the usual demands of actually distributing a product for profit. All you have to do is to market the affiliate merchant’s products and drive people to affiliate merchant’s sales page. Thereafter, the affiliate merchant’s system would take care of the rest, from accepting and processing payments, to delivering the goods, to customer support.

So how do you effectively pre-sell an affiliate product?

You would be given an affiliate link for every product you would choose to pre-sell. The trick is in displaying this affiliate link in as many places in the World Wide Web as possible, so that it would be exposed to many people.

Here are some proven strategies you could employ to drive people to the affiliate merchant’s sales page en masse. Hopefully, the probabilities are much higher when you manage to generate referrals in droves.

ARTICLE MARKETING. Write an article about a topic related to the affiliate product you are pre-selling. Include a resource box which contains your affiliate link. Submit the article to as many article directories as you could find. A lot of people refer to these article directories for information, and once they read your piece as well as your resource box, you’re bound to win some referrals.

FORUM MARKETING. Join as many relevant forums as you could find. With your membership in each of them, you’ll be allotted a signature box where you could place your affiliate link. Your signature box would appear in every post that you would make. Try to make informative posts instead of sales pitches, as the former have been proven to perform better.

BLOGS. Blogs figure prominently in search engine page results. Having your own blog would help your promote your affiliate links. Simply pattern your entries as reviews or informative pieces with suggestions, and strategically place your affiliate links therein.

HEADQUARTERS. Having your own website would help centralize your promotional campaigns. You could have your links displayed like products for sale, even though you’re just pre-selling them. All you have to do is to generate traffic for your website through some marketing strategies and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

These are just some of the more popular ways of pre-selling the affiliate merchant’s products. Remember, there is always strength in numbers, so try to drive as many people as possible to the affiliate merchant’s sales page, and you’re guaranteed to enjoy a rewarding experience with affiliate programs.

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Today's Surprise Super Conference 2006! Michael Port is hosting an action-packed two-day conference in New York City on May 11th and 12th called The Power of Collaboration: Enlightened Business Building Through Collaboration Not only is this a live conference but it's also being broadcast live over the Internet. Yes, the entire event is available via web broadcast - the first in our industry. Why is COLLABORATION so important? Look at your mentors. The people who are doing what you'd like to do. The folks who are up to big stuff. They work with others. They learn from others. They have extraordinary networks. In fact, they don't even need to market their products and services any longer because others do it for them. It's truly amazing. Would you like to collaborate? To really learn how to build an enlightened business through collaboration? If you are, you'll stop feeling like you've got to push your marketing to make something happen or have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Michael Port, Andrea J. Lee, Milana Leshinsky have opened up registration for their New York City two day business building conference on May 11 and 12. Not only that... but they are offering web broadcast seats. For a couple of bucks you can watch (and participate) in the entire conference from your home! All you need is a computer and a high-speed internet connection. Only 100 webcast tickets available. Don't know how long those will last. Not very, I imagine. Go there now! http://www.thecassiopeia.com/superconference2006.html

Today's Motivational Reading

How Juries are Persuaded
Ankesh Kothari

Let's take a quiz today, shall we?

Q: Courtroom research shows that jurors are most persuaded by:

• a. Expert witnesses that use easy-to-understand languages and terms

• b. Expert witnesses that use technical jargon and hard to understand terms

• c. Expert witnesses that have a commanding voice and speak with confidence

Most public speaking coaches will tell you that it doesn't matter what you say, but how you say it. They'll cite statistics that claim 93% of communication is nonverbal and people gain more from your body language and your tone than the actual words you use. If you agree with them, you might have gone for option c.

Most marketers and copywriters preach that we should go after the lowest common denominator. We should use the language that even 5th graders would understand. If you agree with them, you might have gone for option a.

In both cases, you would have been wrong. The correct answer is option b. According to research done by 3 psychologists - Joel Cooper, Elizabeth Bennett, and Holly Sukel - jurors are most persuaded by witnesses that use technical jargon and dollar words. Surprised?

Read on to understand the psychology behind the surprising phenomena…

Why do witnesses that use technical jargon persuade most jurors?

People want to be sure of their decisions. They want to make the right choices. And to make the right choices, they seek help from an expert.

And nothing tells them that a person is an expert better than technical terms!

By using technical language to describe your product, you will in effect be reassuring people that you are an authority in your field. Even though people won't understand the technical terms, they will have confidence in you.

The Caveat

Jurors are made to sit in one place by the judge. They can't move. Thus an expert using a lot of technical jargon will have their attention even if he seems boring.

But in the real world, you won't enjoy such attention if you use technical jargon excessively. You'll bore people and drive them away.

So What To Do?

Simply start using 2 little words. These 2 words will make sure that you keep your prospects attention as well as make him perceive you as an expert and start trusting you. What are the 2 words?

“Which Means”

Start with the technical jargon. Then follow it up with simple terms. Connect the technical jargon with simple easy-to- understand words with “which means.”

Technical jargon > which means > easy explanation

For eg: as a marketer, I often say:

You need to raise a good USP to gain an edge over your competition. USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition - which means - you should promote a benefit of your product that identifies you as being different from all your competitors. USP is simply a declaration of what makes your product different.

Your USP should offer a special benefit to the customer. This benefit should not be promoted by your competition. And this benefit should be important enough that it drives people away from your competition towards you.

Action Summary:

Don't believe all the marketers when they tell you to stop using technical jargon.

Use the technical jargon because it paints a picture of you as an expert. And then follow it up with simple explanation.

Use the 2 connecting words “which means” to go from the technical jargon to the easy-to-understand explanations.

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Today's Subscriber Article

Use These Two Numbers To Double Your Business In 12 Months
Charlie Cook

Everyone wants to see growth in sales and net revenue. It's important for small business owners to set income goals and to watch sales results, but too much emphasis on these numbers can prevent you from reaching your goals.

Using your revenue figure to guide your marketing is like driving by looking in the rear view mirror the whole time. That number tells you where you've been. It doesn't tell you how to get where you want to go.

There are a couple of key numbers and ratios to keep in front of you that will help you get to your sales 'destination'.

Like an Iowa farmer growing soybeans, you've got to carefully plant seeds and nurture plants to maturity to ensure a good harvest and a good profit. The amount of seed you plant and the percentage that germinates and grows well determines your farm's profitability. The same is true in marketing and sales; the number or leads you generate and the number you convert to sales determine your income.

These are the two most important numbers to pay attention to in marketing. Use them to evaluate your marketing and determine how many sales you'll generate:

1. The number of qualified prospects in your database. These are people who've told you they have a concern or problem you can help them with and who want to hear from you again.

2. Your prospect to client conversion rate The percentage of qualified prospects you convert to paying clients.

The math is simple; the more qualified prospects you have and the higher your conversion rates, the more revenue you'll generate.

Your sales will stay frozen at present levels if you focus on how much revenue you're making and ignore the importance of building your list of qualified prospects. You could double your business in the next few months by building your database of qualified prospects and improving your conversion rates.

Marketing Numbers
You don't need to be a math wiz to become an expert at marketing math. Pay attention to these numbers on a weekly basis;

• The number of people who saw your ads, read your articles or received your mailings.

• The percentage of these people that responded to your ad or article. It's not how many ads you run, but how many people pay attention to your ads that matters.

• The percentage of respondents that actually gave you their contact information and added themselves to your database. These are the people who have identified themselves as qualified prospects who are interested in learning more.

If you're marketing through your web site, it's incredibly simple to identify these numbers daily and weekly to track the success of your marketing. Here's how:

1. Look at the number of unique visitors to your web site daily or weekly.

2. Divide this number by the number of people who contacted you. This is your conversion rate of site visitors to qualified prospects. If your site is set up correctly, at least one out of ten people should be contacting you and adding themselves to your list of qualified prospects. If you use Google Ads to drive visitors to your site, you can send visitors to specific landing pages and increase your conversion rate to 20 or even 25%.

What should you expect from your web site? For every hundred unique visitors to your site per week, 10 to 25 should be sending you an email requesting more information about your products and services. Each month your list of qualified prospects and your sales should grow.

Before you finish this article, make a commitment to apply this simple marketing math to grow your business. Set a goal for your business. Look at how many qualified prospects your marketing is currently generating.

Write this number down, then put a diagonal line across it and next to it write down the number of qualified prospects you want to add to your database each week.

I've been doing this little exercise for two years with my current web site. My goals for acquiring qualified prospects get larger each month as my business grows. My latest goal is 500 new prospects per week. This translates into 6 to 7 percent more business each month. With a little planning, you can see your business grow just as fast.

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The author, Charlie Cook, helps service professionals, small business owners and marketing professionals attract more clients and be more successful. Sign up to receive the Free Marketing Strategy eBook: 7 Steps to get more clients and grow your business here:
http://www.marketingforsuccess.com

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