The Big Secret To Making MORE Affiliate Sales
Copyright 2007 by Willie Crawford
If you are involved in affiliate marketing either as an
affiliate or as a product owner, then you know that not
all affiliates make the same level of sales.
In affiliate marketing, less than 5% of the affiliates
make over 95% of the sales for many affiliate programs.
Why is that?
The top five percent of affiliates understand and
apply the proper techniques and psychology. Here are
two quick examples:
1) Mega-successful affiliates understand that
customers don’t like to be sold to. People like to
feel that they made the buying decision. People do NOT
like to feel like they were tricked of pressured into
buying something.
Super affiliate respond to this knowledge by making it
less obvious that they will profit from a prospect
making a purchase. One easy way to do this is by
cloaking affiliate links so that they are less “in your
face.” Cloaked affiliate links don’t scream “Buy this
product so that I can earn money from you!”
Really savvy super affiliates understand that even when
they use low-pressure tools like video, they STILL need
to cloak the affiliate links. That means that they don’t
need to send prospects to an affiliate url to view the
video, they need to direct their prospects to a video
that is streamed from THEIR own url.
I won’t get into the technical side of cloaking
affiliate links in this article. I will tell you that
the easiest way to stream videos promoting affiliate
products from your site is by using Camtasia videos
branded with your affiliate link. You can see a
demonstration of how easy that can be by watching the
short video at:
http://WillieRecommends.com/MakingMoreAffiliateSales/
2) Mega-successful super affiliates also understand
that the single biggest obstacle that you have to
overcome is that people don’t believe you. They are
convinced that all Internet marketers are scammers, and
con artists… out to TRICK them out of their money.
Your customers won’t tell you this… unless you
listen really hard.
That obstacle is really easy to overcome. You just need
to provide PROOF of what you say. You provide proof in
testimonials, statistics from trusted sources, seals
from trusted third parties, and visual proof.
For visual proof, video is the perfect tool again.
Instead of telling someone how easy a piece of software
is to use, use Camtasia screen capture software to
record a short video of you using the software. Show
them step-by-step just how easy it really is! At the
end of the software, redirect the viewer to your sales
page or order form.
In doing the above, you’ve just solved two problems.
You’ve provided that much-needed proof, and you’ve
eliminated requiring the customer to decide whether or
not to click on your link. Both of these move the
prospect toward a buying decision very powerfully.
Since I like to keep things simple, and I’m smart
enough to continue using what has proven VERY effective,
I like using Camtasia videos branded with my affiliate
url to solve the two problems outlined above. Again, my
preferred tool is at:
http://WillieRecommends.com/MakingMoreAffiliateSales/
Let’s briefly look at this from the affiliate program
manager’s perspective…
In affiliate marketing, two affiliate programs can have
nearly identical products, yet one can make 100 times
the sales of the other. Why is that?
One of the biggest, least-acknowledged factors involved
in an affiliate program succeeding massively is the
requirement for the affiliate program to nourish the
psychological needs of the affiliates.
Affiliates need to feel like equal partners with the
affiliate program – not someone begging for crumbs!
Affiliates need to have their lists and customers
respect them as the source of solutions to their
problems.
Both of the above factors mean that the successful
affiliate program manager must make it easy for the
affiliate to be the source. Instead of only providing
affiliates with tools that brand the affiliate product,
they provide affiliates with tools that brand them,
their sites, and their urls. They provide them with
tools that can be downloaded, streamed, or accessed
from their sites.
Three tools that accomplish this well, and that ALL
affiliate program managers should be providing their
affiliate with are:
1) Rebrandable PDF reports
2) Articles that they can insert their cloaked
affiliate links into and then use on their websites, on
their blogs, in their ezines, and in their ebooks.
3) Rebrandable Camtasia (Flash) videos. The tool
preferred by experienced affiliate program managers for
providing these branded videos, hands-free is called CS
Brander. The CS is an in “Camtasia Studio 
You can
see a demonstration of that powerful tool that
supercharges affiliate programs at:
http://WillieRecommends.com/MakingMoreAffiliateSales/
As you can see, the big secret to making more
affiliate sales whether you are the affiliate, or the
product owner, is to use the proper tools. You don’t
need to reinvent the wheel or create “bleeding-edge”
technology. You simply need to use what numerour very
successful affiliates have proven works.
You also don’t really need to master dozens of tools.
You need to use the ones that have proven the most
effective. In this article I highly recommended using
video, to an extent because most of your customers have
been conditioned to sit and watch video from a very
early age. Unlike reading, watching video takes no effort
on your prospect part. Your messages gets through very
effectively.
Willie Crawford has been marketing affiliate, and his
own products, over the internet since late-1996. His
innovative techniques and total dedication to his
customers makes him an in demand mentor! Camtasia video
is his favorite tool. Discover how you too can create
a flood of traffic with branded Camtasia videos at:
http://WillieRecommends.com/MakingMoreAffiliateSales/