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Also... a theme-based site may attract visitors in different stages of the buying cycle. The ones decided to buy are probably not looking to be presold but sold to? Won't they get bored with the preselling or will it simply reinforce their determination to buy when they finally click-through?
Now if the e-commerce site just throws up a landing page with a couple bulleted items, the price, and a buy button, this is your opportunity to do well what they've ignored. You can list the features, comparisons, reviews, price if you can get it. Add as much as you can without overdoing it. Make your page a page you'd want anyone interested in the product to visit, whether they know a little or a lot. For those in a research mode, your site will be one they'll come back to when they need that final bit of information they'll need to understand enough to buy. For those who are mostly convinced they want to buy, your site will do to the job to convince them to click through to the e-commerce site and buy it.
Now all that work won't do you any good if the e-commerce site doesn't have the product competitively priced. Part of the work of finding a profitable niche is finding products that should sell well based on the product features and the e-commerce price. It doesn't do you a lot of good to be an amazon affiliate if buy.com has the item 10% cheaper. It doesn't do you a lot of good to be an affiliate of the manufacturer if amazon's price is 10% cheaper.
You wants your site visitors to trust your content with an e-commerce partner they can also trust. People will pay a little more to go with amazon, knowing that they can trust amazon with their credit card information and actually ship them the product in a timely manner, than save a few bucks to buy from some web site they've never heard of before.
There are a lot of variables involved. To be successful, you should know your products and know your visitors, and build off of your experience with both.
Anyway the main thing about pre-selling is that it's simply a matter of removing all roadblocks to your site visitor getting our his or her credit card and making an actual purchase at your partner's site. Such as...
The general consensus seems to be that affiliates have to presell and leave the selling to the merchant.
Pre-selling is not about giving the potential purchaser the hard-sell, that is, as you said, the job of the merchant and the merchant's site should have enough information to do this for visitors who arrive direct.
However, as wrgvt said, the best way to pre-sell is to become an expert. But do it in a subtle way, as the idea is for the punter to click through and buy without realising he's been "sold" or feeling like he's just done ten rounds with Mike Tyson.
They just list the features and put a big red button with BUY on the page?
That's why these types of merchant like having affiliates pre-selling their product. Your job is to butter-up the punter, by writing a glowing review (or not, as is sometimes the case, people have been known to buy things despite negative reviews!), waxing lyrical about the product, or whatever you do to encourage the potential buyer to say "I want one".
Done right, by the time the punter clicks through to the merchant's site, all he's looking for is the BUY button, he wants to click that big red BUY button. He needs to click it. He will click it. Kaaching, sale. Commission for you.
I'm wondering, however, if recommending a particular product will hurt my status as an expert. Sure I could be crap at preselling (which I probably am) and my visitors will, at the end when I call to action, see right through me and say "uh oh, something's fishy here".
How do you call to action without stinking of salesman? I can't decide between:
a) linking the brand's name (when talking about it in articles) to the review page where I give the good and the bad. The review page is then given prominent place on every page, much like an ad for my own review.
b) linking the brand's name straight to the merchant.
c) only including aff links at the end of the article when I call to action, e.g. give them the last push to make them click.
How many times can/should an aff link be repeated in a page without hurting my site's credibility? Is that even advisable?
I'm VERY eager to learn and experiment with all the knowledge here at WebmasterWorld... hence all the questions. Thanks for bearing with me.
I know "test test test" is the mantra around here which I will do.... I'm just so confused right now that I need a little steering, not much, just a little.
I feel there's a conflict somewhere... in my book experts are knowledgeble AND objective.... for my particular niche
Not really! You've actually hit your own nail on the head, so to speak. By being knowledgeable, you are viewed as an "expert", and by being objective, your "pre-sell" smooths the way to a sale.
Remember, it's "pre-sell" not "hard-sell". Don't beat your readers up with "selling" the product, inform and convince them instead.
If visitors are coming to your site already interested in buying, your knowledgeable and objective copy should convince them they made the right choice. At the same time, anyone visiting your site who was merely curious about the product should be left, having read your copy, with the feeling that they DO actually want to buy one.
Hairycoo, only you know your readers, so yes, test the three suggestions you posted and see which works for you.
Just keep revising and refining your site. My rule with every project is that every new iteration makes the end product a little better. After 10 or 20 passes, the difference can be like night and day.
My rule with every project is that every new iteration makes the end product a little better.
So true.
