Alright guys, this is going to (possibly) be another short post. It’s going to pack a lot of punch though, because it’s a simple, easy solution to a big affiliate marketing problem that will increase your conversions, make you more money and make people like you more without you having to do anything.
This is without a doubt the easiest thing you can do to make your affiliate marketing business work better.
If that doesn’t get you licking your lips, then you should probably stop reading now.
What’s The Big Problem With Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing has a bad reputation.
We all picture long-form sales letters with ugly red letters or those sidebar adverts that have freakishly huge-breasted women wanting to date in your area.
We think about that time when we got duped into buying a $17 advert masquerading as a book about online business.
Affiliate marketing has a bad reputation for a simple reason; for every person with a legitimate business or products, there are hundreds of people that add absolutely no value to the world or the end customer.
This means that as an affiliate marketer or even product developer, you’re facing an uphill struggle to get people to click your link and not the millions of others.
Those quick-buck seekers are willing to throw traffic at their landing pages and burn out entire niches for a few dollars in profit.
You can’t get lost in that crowd, so you have to offer something more.
How Do Most Guys Solve This Problem? (WRONG!)
This problem leads to weird things. Notably, people throw tons of stuff in the hypothetical basket (that’s of dubious value) and then try to sell every product as a bundle.
This article might have been influenced by the fact I saw an e-book for sale with 27 other e-books thrown in for free.
This is a stupid and wrong thing to do. Nobody believes that your 27 ebooks on “Amazon cash empire” or whatever are worth $37 each. If they were, you wouldn’t be bundling them all together and selling them for the low, low price or $9 total.
They’re all PLR material and some of them are probably copyright lawsuits waiting to happen.
Even if they’re legitimate, nobody believes the above offer. It’s too good to be true.
(It almost always is as well – when someone offers “free books” they tend to be of the 6-page long variety.)
Stacking bonuses – whilst it sounds good in theory – is not as effective as what I’m going to describe below.
What’s The Easiest Way To Add Value As An Affiliate?
Think about what a customer is looking for when they buy any product.
Any product.
They are looking for a solution to their problem.
It doesn’t matter what their problem is, they are seeking out something to solve a problem. Even luxury items which don’t serve any function solve a problem.
It might be a status symbol to show off to the neighbours in the case of the bored housewife.
Or, it could be some means to alleviate the existential boredom that a billionaire feels in the case of those weird high-art pieces that peons like us don’t understand.
Whatever it is, people want their problem solved.
The easiest way to add value to any offering is to (and this is a shock) actually solve the problem.
What I mean by this is offer to solve the problem literally.
Say somebody is buying a piece of software. Literally just write at the end of your sales letter, “P.S. I will personally help you with any problems you have with this software.”
If you are reasonably good at soft selling (which you should be) and you come across as honest and earnest, that will convert people.
People with a particular problem want to feel that someone is on their side, and buying technical stuff is daunting because the customer is worried about whether it’ll actually solve their problem. When you say, “I will specifically help you use this product to solve your problem” you’re taking that away.
This is not the same as a refund.
In most cases, you’ll never have to actually do anything… your guarantee is just something that’s there that helps people make the purchase.
…But What If Someone Actually Needs Your Help?
If someone sends you an email saying, “Hey, I bought this product and you said you’d help me,” then you need to help them.
This is where you turn affiliate marketing from scam-based quick-money to a value add that’s good for you, the merchant you’re affiliated with and the customer you sell to.
Most questions are going to be easy to solve. Hopefully, you’ve gone through the steps yourself, or know the answers based on your research.
You’ve hopefully installed the software yourself, so you can talk a person through installing it.
Or, you know that the rug you’ve sold is dry clean only, so you save the person from throwing it in their washing machine.
Those are the sorts of questions you’ll get asked for the most part.
The second category will be how the customer can use it to solve their problem – again, if you’re doing your copywriting research correctly, you already know this; it’s in the copy you’ve written!
Finally, there’ll be stuff that you can’t do. In these instances, be the intermediary; send the customer an email saying, “Please contact the merchant’s customer support. I’ll also contact them to make sure you get the help you need.”
Then actually do it.
Even if no-one can solve the problem, you’ve spent ten minutes on a couple of emails, your customer trusts you and the merchant (who might be irritated) will value you as a decent affiliate who cares about the end result as opposed to an evil scammer.
That’s all there is to it.
Final Thoughts
It’s pretty easy to over-complicate affiliate marketing.
Ironically, the places where people most over-complicate business are where they’re trying to find the easiest shortcuts.
You don’t need to offer fifty different extras to sell a product. You need to simply offer to help your customer solve the problem.
That’s a lot more valuable than any bonus, because it directly connects to the end goal of any product sale.