Net Frontier Marketing

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Ok, back to business.

Time to write an affiliate pre-sell of the first type: The Walkthrough Pre-Sell. I don’t use this model much on the blog you are reading but it is extremely effective in certain situations.

• If you run a blog with existing traffic, this type of pre-sell provides valuable content to your readers. Something without overpowering commercial overtones that they will actually enjoy reading.

• You can almost always plug some keywords into this review, notably the “how to do XYZ” string, which is bound to net you some healthy targeted traffic.

Since NetFrontier is as much about Affiliate marketing as SEO and Pay Per Click, I’ve chosen to make this sample pre-sell about a product that will be useful to many affiliates.

Step One: Choose a product.

This product should be targeted to your niche and you should first ensure that you can build a story around the problem it resolves. You should also own the product itself and be able to vouch for its quality. This kind of review is not as hit and run as the Leech method and you will generally be posting it on a content site that aims to build a readership and reputation.

The point is, you want the people who buy the product to think: “Gee, I’m glad I found that article, the product I bought is really useful, entertaining, educational, etc…” Not “Damn you Alex, for selling me to the wolves for a $17 commission”.

Since NetFrontier is as much about Affiliate marketing as SEO and Pay Per Click, I’ve chosen to make this sample pre-sell about a product that will be useful to many affiliates.

The product in question is Ninja Cloaker, a new software by Matt Haslem which allows you to cloak your affiliate links and send your traffic to any page you want while setting the cookie. At the time of writing this, I’m not sure what the price point is but I believe it to be around $50.

Step Two: Form a coherent story.

You want people to read your pre-sell to the end and you want them to leave with a happy feeling even if they don’t end up buying. The best way to accomplish that is to make it interesting by telling a story. The story will dictate the entire structure of the review to come.

My story, for the upcoming pre-sell is a true one. Basically, I want to be able to by-pass merchant shenanigans like squeeze pages and send my traffic directly to the page I want, without having to ask for special treatment.

This same principal holds true when I want to promote a product that is good, but the sales page is so poorly written it couldn’t convince an ice-cream sandwich to melt in the Gobi Desert.

So my story for this example is that I want to promote products that have flaws in their sales processes and I found a solution to those problems. Here we go.

Step 3: Write a compelling title:

As mentioned above, this will generally involve a good old fashioned “how-to”. You may skip those words for brevity but they do convert well.

Here are some potential titles for this pre-sell:

“ How to double your affiliate commissions by eliminating commission theft and hiding cloaking your links”“How to by-pass annoying squeeze pages and merchant ineptitude”

“How to sell affiliate products when the merchant is a clueless dipshit”

Yes, you can even afford to be slightly controversial. Many advise against it but I prefer to ignore their whining and inject a dose of personality in what I write.

Step Four: Situate your reader with the story introduction.

This makes for a far more interesting read and people like conclusions. Even when you watch a dreadfully awful movie, it’s hard to turn it off before the end because you want closure. That’s why the story format works so well.

It’s time to write the introduction which basically serves to explain the problem you came across, why it was a problem and how you went about resolving it.

Here’s my story: (It’s all true, down to the keyword. Thanks in advance to the unimaginative wannabes that steal my niche.)

Last Friday, I was doing research for my very profitable dating niche sites and campaigns, trying to find new angles and keywords.

Many of these are incredibly saturated, so you can imagine my glee when I came across a couple of terms with moderate search volume and virtually no competition at all.

I could already hear the cash register ring with all the affiliate commissions I was going to make. Now they say “don’t count your chickens before they hatch” and apart from being extremely irritating, “they” are often right. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the case here.

I was able to find a perfect product that I was certain would sell like hot cakes on the superb keywords I had unearthed. Here is one of them for you “Mail Order Russian”. Russian girls are supposedly good looking, docile and great in the kitchen, so it’s no wonder lazy North Americans with poor social skills might be interested in ordering one through the mail.

I found a site that offered a catalogue for sale as well as credits for contacting these Russian women. The product looked solid and perfectly matched to my keywords.

Only trouble is, the sales page for the product was repugnant and clueless. It had all sorts of links out to other sites and products that wouldn’t pay me commission. The sales language was clumsy and full of mistakes, and of all things, the page was plastered full of Adsense ads.

It was the only product of its kind, and sadly, sending traffic to it would have been a complete waste of money, since I would have more chances of paying my visitors into Adsense Clicks and leakage than actually making a commissioned sale.

What a waste, I thought as I prepared to file the entire episode into my “gross merchant ineptitude” folder.

Step 5: Applying the Solution.

Up until now, my story sets an excellent premise that is relevant to my market. I’ve also shown that I could extract a clear financial benefit if it wasn’t for the pesky problem that seemed insurmountable. Of course that’s not the case and up my sleeve, I hold just what the doctor ordered.

So here I continue the story and even add more examples of how the product solves my problem.

Story continues:

That’s when I remembered this piece of affiliate cloaking software I had sitting on my hard drive. Turns out this thing is just what I’ve been looking for in more ways than one.

It installs in about 15 seconds and asks 2 simple questions: What’s my affiliate link and where do I want to send the visitor. In other words, I can send the visitor to a blog post or mini sales letter I’ve completed myself. One that doesn’t contain someone else’s Adsense Ads…

Perfect.

I immediately realize that this will also allow me to run another campaign I had my sights set on. Joseph Matthews has an ebook called the Art of Approaching. It’s perfect for my horny 20 year old niche. The problem is this guy forces affiliates to send traffic to his optin page before they see the sales letter.

I even emailed him about it and he said “no, everyone gets squeezed”. Not on my watch friend. I’m already squeezing the visitor on my side of things and I’m not that keen on paying to build your list.

With Ninja Cloaker (aff link), I can just send the visitor straight on to the sales page no matter how greedy the vendor is.

So I get these two campaigns running and bingo, my hunch is confirmed. Both products are converting like gangbusters. In fact my commission payouts on the ebook are higher than almost any I’ve had before on a clickbank product.

It dawns on me. Commission theft or removal. These ungrateful sods are stealing my commissions or by-passing me! Not with Ninja Cloaker. Not only does it go to the page I want, it also shows a nice, pure URL. No funky characters, no question marks, no sign of an affiliate link.

After trying it in other niches, I can confirm it makes a bigger difference than I ever imagined. For all of $50, this is one of the best investments I’ve made all year.

Step 6: Optional call to action:

Notice how my affiliate link and product mention only come towards the end of the article and the endorsement is light and casual. This is one of the keys of this method.

If you want to seem sincere (and you are being sincere right?) then you can’t try to force it down the customer’s throat.

If I were to include a call to action, it would look something like this.

“All in all, I’m glad I remembered this little jewel. If you’re doing any affiliate marketing, you should definitely check it out.”

Conclusion:

That’s all folks. Nothing more to it than that.

Next up, I’m going to write the slightly more slippery “Leech Method” review. It’s going to be exactly for this same product which is launching in a couple of days.

Stay tuned.