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.
