If you’re going to be successful in internet marketing, you need to build a list. It’s the one thing above all else that matters most. Once you have a list built, you can market to it again and again. It’s a resource you can tap at any time and generate income.

OK, but how?

Here are the three components of list building:

• Your Landing Page
• Your Bribe
• The Opt-in Success Page

The Squeeze Page – The landing page is the page that has your opt-in form on it. It’s the page where you ask them for their email address. That’s why it needs to look like a professionally designed page. And have an easy to understand opt-in form. And your call to action must be clear!

Failure to include a great “call to action” will result in failure. This is a definitive message that tells your visitor what to do. You opt-in rates will take a dramatic nose dive without it. The funny thing is that people just don’t know what to do unless you tell them.

If you want to add some extra juice to your opt-in page make it a video squeeze page. Adding video will help keep your visitors attention. And you can repeat the call to action several times int he video. Then at the end of the video you can print “sign up now” on the video.

It’s OK, if you’ve never made a video before. You can hire freelancers to do this for you for a few hundred dollars. Or you can get email list tools that have everything pre-built for you.

Your Bribe – Next, you’ve got to figure out what your bribe is. People won’t give you their email for nothing. Most people are very protective of their email address. So make your “bribe” a good one!

The key to a good bribe is that is has value. It has to be something that people actually want. And can benefit from. Here’s some examples:

• An eBook
• Software
• A video
• An email series

Basically, you just need some content. Something that’s useful and helpful to your visitors. And of course it has to be free. Bottom line is it’s got to be worth more to them than their email address.

Once again, don’t worry if you don’t know how to create the freebie. It’s super easy to hire someone to create it for you. You just pick the topic and they create the training. A 5-part email series is a good freebie. Each email will cost between $20 and $25. So, you’ll get the whole series written for under $150.

There are also list building products that include the follow up email series. There are two important things about the email series. The first thing is that it delivers value to your subscribers. And second, it needs to make you money. Mixing some affiliate products into your email series is a great way to do this. This is such a simple solution because you don’t have to create the product. And make money right away from your list.

Your Confirmation Page – The last bit is the thank you page. This is where your visitor goes after opting into your list. It’s nice to give them some great content right away. This helps them feel they’ve made the right decision giving you their email. It also sets the foundation for your relationship with them. Then they’re more receptive when you email them.

You can use a “done for you” email marketing system. You can also put the whole thing together on your own. And write it all yourself. Or have someone ghost write for you.

Final thoughts

It makes no difference whether you build your opt-in, bribe and thank you page. Or pay a freelancer to write produce it all for you. Or if you get a ready-done package. The key is to start building your list. Because as soon as you’ve got your own list . . . You can basically write your own meal ticket.

If you’re not preselling, you’re losing money

The number one strategy to increase your affiliate sales is preselling.

Before we begin, we need to first define what preselling is. Preselling is both an art and a science. The goal is to get your reader prepped to make a purchase. Then sending them to the product sales page to make the purchase. When done correctly, your reader will not even notice.

In a nutshell, you provide value. And then refer them to the product website. We’ll get into how to do it correctly in a minute. Before we get into that, you should understand what’s in it for you. Here are a few benefits of preselling:

• It helps your reader trust you – Readers who trust you are more likely to click your links. And the more traffic you can send to the sale page, the more commissions you’ll earn.
• It takes your reader out of defense mode – When you’re not hyping or pitching a product, your reader lets their guard down. And in turn they read to understand what you’re saying. So your content get absorbed.
• It preps them to buy – Now they trust you and feel open to your message. Being open means, they are open to everything you give them. This includes the sales website you send them to! Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
• It increases your sales – You’ve prepped them and referred them in the right state of mind. With a feeling of trust and openness. The only thing that can result is increased sales!
• It boosts customer loyalty – Your referral now feels like they decided to buy. Instead of being manipulated into buying. So they are happier with their purchase.
• It boosts your profits – Happy customers ask for refunds much less often. And that translates to more commission staying in your affiliate business.

The need to presell is clear. You increase your profits. And increase your customer satisfaction. That’s a clear win-win.

How does it work?

Now you know whey preselling is critical. So, hopefully you’ve decided to start preselling. You’re ready to learn how to do it properly. As I mentioned earlier, it’s both an art and a science.

The art of preselling

First, you have to gain the trust of your reader, so they let their guard down. Honestly, the only way to do this is to provide real value in you content. The art of this is to provide enough information to be of value, but not enough to satiate the hunger. So you send them to the product website with a hunger for more of what the product provides. Plus they’re not guarded, so they’re more open and likely to purchase the product.

It’s also a science

There’s also a specific formula you need to follow.

The first is how you present the information. You have to have your end in mind. Your end goal is to make a sale of the product you’re preselling. How can providing information accomplish this goal? The first method is to provide enough info to get them started, but not enough to finish. The second way is to provide all the information and let your reader discover how hard it is to actually implement it. Whichever method, you send them to a product website that solves the problem you just created.

But you can’t link to your affiliate link. Instead, you use a direct link to the product website. This increases your clicks. But how will you earn affiliate commissions if you don’t use your affiliate link? Well, that’s part of the science of this whole process. You use an image tag to cookie your reader before they leave your site.

The next trick is to hyperlink specific words and phrases inside the content of the article you’re providing. It’s habitual to click on words and phrases that are hyperlinked. And when the words are in context like this, it makes perfect sense for your reader to click them.

Putting all of this together creates a powerful affiliate marketing formula for success.

Unfortunately…

Doing all of this right is really hard! Let’s look at the skills required to pull it off: Good content. The entire process depends on your being able to provide useful information to your readers. This means you have to be able to write well, and have enough knowledge to be useful. Writing to presell. Yes, you must providing useful content. But, you also need to know how to present the information in a way that give value to the reader. And still leave them wanting more. The other approach is to reveal a self-evident problem through the information.

Picking products. You also need to determine what products you’ll be preselling. Even if you get the article written. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

Techy stuff. One of the keys to this system is using “covert cookies” for the tracking. This is fairly simple – you use a 1 X 1 image and set the “source” to your affiliate link. (But if you mess it up, your referrals won’t be tracked.)

In closing:

Now you know what it takes to be a Presell Pro. Preselling properly will boost your affiliate profits up to 500%! The important thing is to use these techniques for everything you promote as an affiliate. Please don’t be lazy. Make the extra effort required to propel your affiliate business to the next level.

The most important thing in any web business is traffic – lots and lots of traffic. Obviously, this assumes you actually have a reason for wanting this traffic. Once the visitors arrive you can have them join your mailing list, purchase a product or subscribe to your RSS feed. So, the critical step is to generate a steady flow of visitors.

How, then do you get traffic to your site?

Here’s a short list of great, free traffic generating methods:

• Web 2.0
• Article Websites
• Video Sites

Let’s talk about each of these.

Web 2.0 Methods

Web 2.0 simply means the new family of websites that have user-generated content. These are great sites to work with because they allow you to participate in this content creation. And because of the highly interactive and popular nature of these sites, Google and other search engines “index” their content regularly. The benefit of this to you is that your content is now considered as part of these sites. And any links in your content that point to your own sites count as a strong “vote” in favor of your sites – lending you credibility in the search engines. This is the hidden benefit of using Web 2.0 sites. There are many more web 2.0 traffic tactics we don’t have time to get into here, but this will get you started.

Article Websites

Article marketing really builds on the Web 2.0 concept. Article directories fall under the category of web 2.0 sites. Article directories are sites where users (including you) can upload articles they have written. And because they are also considered authority sites by the search engines you get all the benefits of other web 2.0 sites just by putting your articles on them. And the hidden benefit here is that your reach grows as other people take your articles and put them on their blogs and sites. And because the terms of the directory say they have to include your “resource box” you get links back from all these other sites, too. In order to get the most free traffic make sure you:

• First, spend the time to determine your keywords
• Write your article for the keywords you’ve chosen
• Use anchor text links in the article and the “resource box”

Video

Our discussion would not be complete without talking about video. Once again, this is really a sub-set of web 2.0. And it carries all the same benefits of article marketing. And if all that wasn’t enough, you also stand a much stronger chance of getting a high search engine ranking for the keywords you want with video than you do with text-based content.

Here are just a few video marketing tips:

• Set up your YouTube account
• When people view your videos, you want them to visit your site, so turn all the other modules in your profile off
• Put relevant “tags” in your profile
• Add a link to your website
• Add 1 or more videos to your profile
• In the title, the description and the tags for each video, include your main keywords

Putting it all together.

If you take action on the items listed here you’ll have free traffic in no time.