Affiliate Marketing Tutorial - Step 6: The Importance of Content

 

Content has proven time and again to be the best sales tool available to affiliate marketers.  Nothing, not even strategically placed ad copy works as well as providing quality content that pre-sells any product that you’re promoting on your website. 

That’s your job as an affiliate, to pre-sell your affiliate products or services.  Pre-selling means that your copy, whether it is a review, and article, a tutorial, an online course, or even a blog post, speaks well but honestly about the products you promote. 

When you accomplish this, your visitors click on the text links in your copy which take them to your product’s website.  It is the company’s job to sell to the customer. 

If you sell the product and then your visitor is ready to buy, when they arrive at the product’s website, they likely have to face another sales pitch.  Two sales pitches is enough to drive even the most patient person away!

Use your content to pre-sell.

Here’s how it works.  You place articles, reports, and even books on your website about your chosen topic and embed affiliate links (provided to you by your affiliate companies) into the copy.  Take care to not promote too many products in any one article.  If you do promote several products, make sure the content is longer like a report or an e-book. 

Continuing with the rock climbing example, you could write a series of reports on where to climb with children.  Each article can highlight a specific location and offer tips for getting there, routes that are child friendly, and where to eat after a long day of climbing. 

In the report you can promote a brand of climbing gear or a guidebook that highlights the area you’re talking about by naming the company and including your affiliate link in the report to the website.  If your website visitor makes a purchase, you earn a commission.

You’re providing quality information, and quality product information, and making money at the same time.  It’s a win/win situation for everyone.  A free ebook I highly recommend on this subject is Dr. Ken Evoy's Make Your Content PreSell.  If you read one book make sure you read this one, I highly recommend it (and it's free). Click here to download it now.

Online content must be:

1.  Skimmable and easy to read.  This means lists, numbering, and bullets where appropriate.

2.  Packed with benefits.  Content that offers tips, secrets, easy ways, simple steps and the like are easy to read and easy to absorb online and they offer obvious benefits.  Next time you’re in line at the supermarket, take a look at the magazine covers in the check out line and you’ll see perfect examples of what we’re talking about.   

You’ll see:

• 10 easy ways to lose weight 

• 99 tips to help you get the raise you deserve 

• 10 great swimsuits perfect for your body style   

Formatting your articles so that they are accessible and easy to read is a great way to provide quality information to your website visitors.   

3.  Attention grabbing.  You can do this with a powerful headline.  The teasers on the magazine covers are also a great example of how to format a headline for your article, book or report.  You want your readers to identify a benefit to reading your information as well as be compelled to read it because your headline demands it.   For example, “10 Perfect locations for Family Rock Climbing Trips.” 

In all seriousness, content is the key to your website and affiliate marketing business but there are other tools that you can use to build your affiliate marketing business.  They include: 

• Advertisements

• Autoresponders

• E-newsletters

• Search Engine Optimization

• Blogs, Forums, and Chat Rooms

• Articles and publicity

• Press releases  

Our final tutorial covers the all important reason for starting an affiliate business – profits!

Next in our tutorial: --> Affiliate Marketing: Maximizing Your Profits

RECOMMENDED for Affiliate Marketing Success!: Free Affiliate Marketing eBook by Dr. Ken Evoy of SBI!  Preselling is the number one thing you can do to increase your affiliate commissions, this book shows you how - Click here to immediately download.

For information on tracking the effectiveness of your website, your banner ads and your text links here's a great tracking article.