One of the most popular ways to market an affiliate product is by creating a website, and writing a sales page that pitches the virtues of the product.
To do this, you are going to want your own domain, which you can get from any number of domain name services like Godaddy.com or Namecheap.com
You are going to be reviewing the product, so the website name should reflect that. The reason for this is simply that reviews generate more sales than in your face sales pages.
A website name like “fatlossproducts” or “weightlossproductreview” would be good.Then you are going to pick a hosting company, like Hostgator or Bluehost, so that you can host your website.
If you know how to design your own website, that is great - you can save a lot of money that way.
If you dont, you can find website designers at places like rentacoder.com, guru.com, and elance.com.
You can also upload blogging software like Wordpress. This has some advantages and disadvantages.
The downside of Wordpress - and any other blogging software - is that it is laid out like a blog.
You can always pay someone to reconfigure it for you, but it is pretty hard to make a Wordpress blog look like a sales page.
Blogs do have their uses, but they do not make an ideal sales page because of their layout.
One of the best things to do when you are getting ready to design your sales page, or have someone design your sales page for you, is to look at the sales page of your competition, and tell your designer which sort of page you like. Its not a good idea to make direct copies though – you could get into trouble.
But how do you find these sales pages?That is very easy.
Go to your favorite search engine and type in the name of the product that you are going to be promoting.
Most, probably all, of the results that come up, are going to be sales pages designed by affiliates who are promoting the same product.
Its a good idea to spend a few days studying sales pages for numerous Clickbank products. This way, you are learning from people who are already out there selling.
You should look at the headline at the top of the sales pages and see how they entice their readers to keep reading further.You should look at where they place the affiliate links. You should look at the color scheme and graphics.
And you should definitely ask yourself: which of these sales pages would make me want to buy? Those are the sales pages that you should emulate and be inspired by. Note that were saying “be inspired by”, not “copy”.
The typical sales page is going to take one of two approaches.In both approaches, the page looks like a review page. In one approach, you will present yourself as someone who has used this product, who had a problem that they needed solved before they discovered this product, and who found that the product worked really well to solve their problem.
The key to a review page like that is not to sound too gushing or overly enthusiastic, or you will sound as if you are writing an advertisement rather than an honest review, and lose the trust of your readers.
It is best, in fact, if you can find some minor flaw in the product.Yes, thats right, a flaw.
You do not want to trash the product, or you will not be able to sell it. (If you truly dont like the product, then pick a different product to promote! There are many excellent, high quality products out there; there is no need to promote a product that you dont like.)
What you want to do is pick a minor flaw that will not take away from the products effectiveness.
For instance, if you are promoting “Fat Loss 4 Idiots” you could say something like “Most, but not all, of the recipes, were very good. There were a few recipes that I wasnt crazy about, but the way the fat melted off me...I really didnt mind!”
This reinforces that the product does what is says that it does, but it does not sound like an over-the-top “advertorial” - an advertisement disguised as an editorial.
For a product like “Run A Car on Water” you could say something like: “This product was a little complex to put together and it really took me a while to understand the science behind it.
However, once I was able to understand it, I hired a mechanic to build and install the system for me, and I have nearly doubled my gas mileage!”
So that is one common type of review site.Here is the other kind: you write a product review page in which you review at least three similar products, all in the same category.
You give the page a name that reflects that, like “bestfatlossproducts” or “trafficproductreviews.”
You will rate each product using some type of rating system, often using stars - say, from one to four stars or one to five stars, with five stars being the best.
You will put the product that you recommend the most on top.
Someone may have found your page because they are researching the second rated product that you mention, and they may have their heart set on that product.
So you will want to say that the first product was great and it was the best at doing what it was supposed to.The second product was also good but not quite as good, or it cost more and did the same job as the first product.
If you are reviewing two dog training products, for instance, you could say that the first product was extremely comprehensive and had so much information that you literally would never be able to read it all.
The second product is geared only towards puppies. It is excellent if you want to learn how to train a puppy but has no information on training an adult dog.
The third product isnt very good and doesnt have that much information, and is not well written.Now, here is an important question: Do you have to actually buy all three products?
Well, in a perfect world, you would buy and try all three products for your product review page.
However, this could get quite expensive, especially if you expand and have a lot of product review pages.
There are ways to get around buying each of the products. You should not lie and claim that you used a product that you have never used, but here is what you can do.
You can get a LOT of information about the product from the merchants sales page. This is an example from the popular Sit Stay Fetch home page. Sit Stay Fetch, as you probably guessed, is a dog training eBook, and also has a series of videos.
It also tells you that if you buy this eBook, it offers unlimited dog behavior consultations with the Sitstayfetch team.
It tells you that you can download this eBook instantly.
And on another page of the website it actually tells you specific dog problems that are addressed AND it tells you what page addresses those problems!
So, without buying this eBook, you could very legitimately describe its contents and the problems that it can solve for dog owners.
Here is another example from a clickbank product, No Nonsense Muscle Building.
Again, without giving his secrets away, the author of this eBook does give you a long list of techniques that he is going to give you which will show you how to build muscle quickly.
And he spells out what he does NOT do, with a list of what he calls Dirty Little Lies that various people and industries spread when they claim they can help you build muscle.
So you can say on your sales page that this eBook does NOT rely on fad supplements or liquids, etc. etc.
And you can do this for every product that you plan to review, whether you will be writing a negative or positive review. Go to the sales page, read the information, and you will have enough facts to tell your readers what the product does.
Heres a final tip: if you cant afford a web page to begin with, there are some free sites that will allow you to create a web page.
www.squidoo.com allows you to create what they call a “lens”, which is a web page, and many affiliate marketers use squidoo to test out products.
The downside of Squidoo is that you do not own your domain name; your site is hosted by Squidoo and your domain name will have Squidoo in it; for instance, if you name your lens dogtrainingsecrets, the website address would be www.dogtrainingsecrets.com/squidoo.
Also, Squidoo lenses have advertising on them which can distract from your sales message.
There are other sites that give you free hosting and template design, including www.weebly.com, and www.blinkweb.com.
The advantage of using those sites is that for a simple website, you wont have to hire a graphic designer; you can use their premade templates and upload any graphics that you want.
Now, in our next chapter, were going to talk about how to drive traffic to that sales page, and some other methods of making affiliate sales.