What are the secrets to making money as an affiliate?

Don't just put up an advertisement or a link to the product in your sidebar. Some people might click on the link out of curiosity, but it's doubtful that you will make many sales.

In order to get sales, you need to pre-sell the product. You need to really interest your reader in the product. You do this in a blog post, not in your sidebar.

There are a couple of ways to go about pre-selling your product.

1. Write a Product Review

If you want to write a review of the product, be sure to do it the right way. Follow these hints and you'll be on your way:

* Know your product. To really know it, you should be using the product yourself, or at least have some familiarity with it.

* Stress the benefits of the product. Remember, there is a difference between features and benefits. Features are the objective facts about the product. For example, you can say that the product helps you to increase traffic.

But what is the benefit of that? The benefit is that more traffic means more money, more admiration, the chance to be an a-list blogger, etc. These are the benefits - the things that really mean something to your reader.

* Don’t build too much hype around the product. Give it a good honest review. You might want to mention something you did not like about the product, not just the good aspects of it. It won’t hurt you to add something negative - it actually helps, since your readers see you are being honest.

* If possible, write about some real results you have achieved by using the product. For example, if it is an ebook about how to get more traffic, then tell about how it increased your traffic by 37%, or whatever the case may be. But don’t lie about it. Your readers can tell whether you are being honest with them.

* Don't do a hard sell. You don't have to sell the product; you just have to pre-sell it. All you have to do is get your readers into a receptive frame of mind and interested in the topic.

2. Make the Product a Tanget to Your Main Point

A

product review is one way to pre-sell the product. But another way is to write a blog post which gets your readers excited about the topic, and then you just mention the product in passing.

For example, do a post about the benefits of getting traffic to your site. Then in passing you can mention the ebook about getting traffic.

Or, do a post about how to do keyword research and why it is important. Then you can just happen to mention a product that you use to do your keyword research.

The idea is to get people thinking about the topic and how it would benefit them. Then when they click through to the sales page about the product, they are already in the frame of mind where they want some help in that area.

Create Interested Visitors

Whatever way you decide to do your post, remember the main points I have made:

1. Stress benefits, not features.

2. Pre-sell the product, don't do a hard sell.

3. Use your blog posts, not the sidebar, to promote your programs.

Keep those points in mind when you are promoting programs on your blog. Be sure to do your job of pre-selling, and you will make much more money with your programs.