It’s no secret, you’ve heard it before, articles and content are awesome ways to pre-sell products.  When you gain your readers trust and warm them up to the product…PRESTO!…your bank account just had a deposit.

You need to make a plan for your affiliate marketing articles.   It’s important to select your topic carefully,  offer good correct information, and your article needs to be fun to read.  Then you will be able to draw your readers interest to the product.

How to Select Your Topics

Make a list of topics for each of the products you are promoting.  Put yourself in the mind of your customer.  Your topics should revolve around problems that the product actually fixes.   Those topics are the seed for your articles.

Create Good Information

The topics you listed will steer the type of information you will provide.  A couple of ideas for simple articles are:

Top ____ Ways to ____

____ Steps to _____

Keep your articles simple.  A captivating introductory paragraph, a couple of informative bullet points in between, and a summary paragraph to finish it off.

Remember not to give the whole enchilada.  You want to be informative and give your readers a good picture of their problem with a portion of the solution.  But direct them to your product for the complete solution.

Compelling Product Links

You will find that the most productive links and recommendations will be in the context of your article.  Find an appropriate place in your article and make your product recommendation, something like “_____ is what I recommend most”

At the end of your article is another great place to put an extra recommendation. 

Obviously you will be limited by the venue you are posting your article too. 

 If you are putting it on an article directory you will probably be limited to recommendations in the resource box.  If posting to another persons site or ezine they will have their rules.  The most freedom is posting to your own site or blog.

This is kind of a wierd post for many of you….

I put this post up so that folks that accepted the free report “Quit Your Job in 90 Days” could come and comment on the report.

If you did not get an opportunity to get it click here

After you read it, and put the plan into action…come on back and give us a comment please.

Its no secret, you’ve heard it before, articles and content are awesome ways to pre-sell products.  When you gain your readers trust and warm them up to the product…PRESTO!…your bank account just had a deposit.

You need to make a plan for your affiliate marketing articles.   It is important to select your topic carefully,  offer good correct information, and article needs to be fun to read.  Then you will be able to draw your readers interest to the product.

Selecting Your Topics

Make a list of topics for each of the products you are promoting.  Put yourself in the mind of your customer.  Your topics should revolve around problems that the product actually fixes.   Those topics are the seed for your articles.

Creating Good Information

The topics you listed will steer the type of information you will provide.  A couple of ideas for simple articles are:

Top ____ Ways to ____

____ Steps to _____

Keep your articles simple.  A captivating introductory paragraph, a couple of informative bullet points in between, and a summary paragraph to finish it off.

Remember not to give the whole enchilada.  You want to be informative and give your readers a good picture of their problem with a portion of the solution.  But direct them to your product for the complete solution.

Drive Them to the Product Link

You will find that the most productive links and recommendations will be in the context of your article.  Find an appropriate place in your article and make your product recommendation, something like “_____ is what I recommend most”

At the end of your article is another great place to put an extra recommendation. 

Obviously you will be limited by the venue you are posting your article to.  If you are putting it on an article directory you will probably be limited to recommendations in the resource box.  If posting to another persons site or ezine they will have their rules.  The most freedom is posting to your own site or blog.

Summing Up

Help your readers by giving them good information and direct them to products that solve their problems.  Then you will be smiling to the bank, and you will know it is an honestly earned commission.

Here’s a phrase you’ll grow sick of: The money is in the list.  It might grate at your nerves, but it’s smacking you in the face for a reason – it’s the truth!  Just so we are on the same page, let’s answer the question, “What is a list?”

A “list” in Internet marketing jargon is the contact information for your prospects.  So if you have a product or promote products about gardening and I sign up for your list, I’m a prospect that you can market to repeatedly until I unsubscribe.

So why is building a list so important?  Picture this you are an affiliate marketer.  You find a niche you truly enjoy and you start working what you’ve learned into traffic for your affiliate links.

Over a period of 30 days, you funnel 5,000 prospects from the World Wide Web who are interested in your niche right through your affiliate link to the product owner’s site. 

They even buy – yea! You’ve made a 50% commission with an industry standard 2% conversion rate.  That means 2 out of every 100 people you sent bought the product, and your share was $26.00 (as an example).  You earned a cool $2,600 this month – good for you!

But you’re leaving money on the table.  Those 100 people who bought from your 5,000 clicks?  They’re now on the product owner’s list, not yours. So what he’s going to do is send them more offers over the coming weeks.

After all, they are proven buyers.  Over the next 30 days, those buyers fork over some more money for products that complement the original one they bought.  That money goes to the product owner, not you – because you passed on building a list the first time around.

A better way to build an Internet marketing business is to start with a list from day one. Before you let a single person slip through your link without capturing their name and email address, have your system set up to build a list.

You can have unlimited lists for different niches using a simple tool like Aweber.  Every day you can log in and see how many people have signed up, and you can create automated messages to send out to help convert your list into more sales.

Why should the product owner get to cash in on that person again and again when you’re the one who brought him the customer in the first place?  Stake claim to each prospect and leverage your relationship with him for future sales and commissions.

Click here for a FREE report with more information leading to making money online.

We have all heard the storiesabout how people just don’t like to click through affiliate links.  I don’t know if it is because they thing they will pay more or its just plain mean spirited. 

Personally I have not been very diligent about cloaking affiliate links.  I think I just didn’t want another step to mess with.  But I found a very simple way to do the job at Barry Wells’ blog. 

He posted the following video on You Tube, watch it here then click the link under the screen and you can get our copy of the free software if you would like….

Here is the link if you want the software  http://barry-wells.com/cloaking-your-affiliate-links-the-easy-way

Till Next Time

Scott