Mini-Course: Lesson #4: “Start Selling!”

With your main blog up and running and traffic flowing in, it’s time you add a product you can promote to your readers, so you can start making money . After all, that (making money), is the reason for starting your online business in the first place.

But before you go crazy filling your blog with products, there are a few things you need to know to increase your blog’s sales potential.

1. Type of product:
The best product to offer your readers is one that has the least impact on your time. In other words, look for a product that already exists so you don’t need to create it.   Also make sure the product includes:

- after sales customer support.
- returns or exchanges.
- credit card processing.
- sales promotional materials you can use.
- sales support (for you).
- fast delivery.
- two tear commissions (I’ll be sharing an in-dept post about this).

An ebook, a report, an instruction guide, software, a toolbar or a training video are perfect examples of products that fit the criteria above.

Additionally, only promote products that are of top quality. Don’t spend your time with junk stuff. You will only hurt your business and your pocket.

Finally, match the products you want to promote as closely to the topic of your blog as possible. Keep your products limited to only two or three tops. Offering your prospects too many products will only confuse them.

2. Where to find the product to promote:
Digital affiliate products usually fit the requirements above and thus are best suited to promote on your blog. Usually it’s easy to join the sales network as an affiliate since the owner of the product is eager to increase her sales figures.

Good places to look for affiliate products are:

- Clickbank.com
- PayDotCom.com
- CommissionJunction.com

or you can search for specific affiliate products in search engines. Just specify your topic followed by the word ‘affiliate’.

Example: dog training affiliate

Use your main keywords in your search for a close match to your blog. Before you sign up as an affiliate, review the product and ensure yourself this product has all the ingredients you are looking for (see above).

3. Promote the product:
From experience I can tell you that gentle persuasion works better than blatant, in your face selling.

Although I am not against having an image of the product you’ve decided to promote, on your blog, don’t past it everywhere and anywhere.

Instead, write several posts where each post deals with a specific part of the product. Include your affiliate link in the post as part of your regular writing.

Example:

“3 Quick Tricks To Get Your Dog To Sit In 10 Minutes or Less!”

A dog can be a loyal, devoted and wonderful friend. But when he doesn’t obey your commands, a dog can be a real pest. The most basic of these commands is to get your pooch to sit when you tell him to.

The next 3 easy tricks will have your pet sitting down patiently and attentively. And it will only take you 10 minutes to train him.  …

Having your affiliate links embedded throughout your posts is more effective and you will get more clicks. Just don’t overdo it. About 3 links per post is ample. If your post is short, one link is enough. Always have one link in the last paragraph of your post.

—- NOTE —-

Always cloak your link before including it in your post or have a link redirect file.  Lots of marketers loose commission because other, less ethical, marketers will replace the affiliate ID in the link with their own ID and steal the commission without doing any of the work.

Also, prospects have become immune to affiliate links.  They know when they see the URL that it is a sales link and are less likely to click on it.

You can download this free cloak tool or you can copy the code below to create your PHP redirect file.

1. Open Notepad or your favorite code editor.

2. Type in the following code as you see it below, replacing the red text with your affiliate link.

3. Save the file as keywordxyz.php (you come up with a file name that makes sense).

4. Upload the new php file to your web server (Need help with FTP? Check out this FTP Tutorial)

5. When linking to your affiliate link, you can now use:

This concludes lesson 4 of this mini-course.  Only one more to go until you have a real money making business online.