Once you have picked a niche, product, keywords and planned how you will begin blogging for affiliate profits, you’ll need to get on and do things.

But wait - it is not yet time to start blogging. There’s a little more preparation to be done first.

Three POWER Principles of Affiliate Blogging

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Here are a few core principles to becoming massively successful with blogging as an affiliate marketer.

• Your goal is NOT to close the sale. It is to prepare a prospect to be sold.

• Your goal is NOT to write a sales letter. It is to create a fair review.

• Your goal is NOT a one-shot promotion. It is to woo a prospect until s/he buys.

So the 3 things a good affiliate marketer will always do is:

- Review the product or service carefully
- PRE-sell prospects
- Follow up, and keep doing it

Review Before Selling

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Blogging for affiliate profits should not make you a hypey, salesy, pushy hustler trying to fob off as many products as possible onto unwitting prospects.

No, that isn’t the highest, most ethical and also most profitable form of affiliate marketing. You can take it to a whole different dimension.

Don’t just sell. Give them a reason to buy.

It’s NOT about you and me – it’s about THEM!

Carry out thorough reviews - and write fair, genuine analyses.

A review or testimonial does not have to include words like ‘amazing’ or ‘incredible’ or ‘great’. It goes further – and deeper.

Here is a set of questions to get you thinking:

1. What will the person reading your review learn about the product or service that is NOT in the sales letter or material?

2. Why did YOU personally like (or dislike) the product?

3. How would you rate the product or service (use descriptions, or a scale, or score)?

4. Which features were most important, in your opinion?

5. If you had to save up your money to buy this product or service, WHY would you do it?

6. What benefits do you think the product or service will offer your prospects?

Taking Reviews Further

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Here are a few more advanced concepts you may use for even bigger impact:

• Compare the product against something popular or widely used, and say how this is better or worse

• Focus on the person(s) behind the product, esp. if they are already established as offering high quality material

• Talk about ‘reasons why’ the product or service was created e.g. to solve a specific problem, or to meet a particular need, or as a fundraiser for charity e.g. funding a child’s heart surgery

How long should your review be?

It depends.

A couple of sentences might do, if you are good at expressing yourself.

A short paragraph or two is often best.

A longer review, or even a special report may be needed sometimes.

Bottom Line: Your review must be long enough, compelling enough, informative enough, reliable enough, credible enough to convince a prospect who is holding on tight to his/her credit card, with this question in mind:

“Why should I buy this product? What makes it better than anything else available?”

Always remember… it is NOT about you or the affiliate vendor. It’s about THEM. Your audience. Your market. Your prospects.

You are not writing to place your name in the limelight (though that’s a fringe benefit you get when a popular product website has your testimonial on their sales page)

You are not writing to curry favor with product creators, or to thank them for giving you a review copy (though if you do it honestly and ethically, be prepared for a flood of similar review copies from them later on)

You are writing to help your audience decide whether or not to buy the product or service you are reviewing - and to give them good reasons for or against the choice.

That’s it.

Your Affiliate Review Checklist

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Once you’ve finished drafting out your review, ask yourself these questions:

• Did I fairly, honestly, ethically describe what the product meant to me?

• Did I project clearly what the content could do for my prospects?

• Did I use specific examples or components or chapters which meant something special to me - and will to my audience too?

• Did I avoid using hype and present facts in a non-hard-sell style? (People do NOT like to be ’sold’ - they love to be ‘educated’)

• Did I answer all questions I myself would have asked if I had been planning to buy this product or service?

• Did I give them a good reason to buy the product or service?

• Did I give them a good reason to buy the product or service NOW? This is very different from the previous point. Urgency, an immediate call to action, is vital in the online marketplace.

• Did I set myself apart, make my offer or review unique, different, not the runof-the-mill review everyone else is doing?

Take a quick look through this checklist, and then revise your review if necessary.

This is NOT a time-wasting tactic. It will explode the effectiveness of your affiliate marketing.

Use these tips and watch your affiliate sales soar.

Don’t Sell - Just PRE-Sell

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While blogging for affiliate profits, your goals are to:

• Get them into the right frame of mind.

• Design your process so it makes the biggest impact.

• Build your list as you pre-sell.

A critical element in successful affiliate marketing is the way you drive visitors to the sales page of your affiliate product. Maria Veloso, one of the best Web copywriters, calls it “Frame of Mind Marketing”.

A prospect arriving at a sales page eager and ready to buy is more likely to complete the purchase than a mildly curious (or even disinterested) one. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to get them into the ‘ready to buy’ frame of mind.

Elements of a Pre-Selling Page

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Keep your goal in mind. It is NOT to sell to your prospect. So don’t make your site a sales letter. That’s the job of your affiliate product sales page.

Your purpose is to create the mindset in your prospect that is most conducive to closing the sale on the affiliate product site.

Your purpose is also to attract the most number of visitors to your site, and guide them towards the affiliate product sales process.

Your purpose is, in addition, to collect contact details of your prospect so that even if they don’t order the product or service you’re promoting, you will still have a way to keep in touch with them – and maybe get another chance to sell to them!

So you need 3 things:

• Powerful copy and a catchy headline promoting the product or service

• Relevant content about the product or service you are promoting, and that will get you high ranking on search engines

• A list building module inviting visitors to submit at least their name and email

Writing Your Copy and Headline

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You’ll be surprised to hear this is the EASIEST part to get done.

Why?

Because you’ve already done the hard work! Yes, use your review (or testimonial) that you wrote in the previous step!

It will become your ‘pre-selling’ copy. And because it is a powerful, emotional, personal and evidence-backed piece of writing, it has the highest chance of convincing a hesitant prospect to buy the product or service you are recommending.

Headlines can be hard to create. But you don’t have to.

Most affiliate marketers ’swipe’ the headlines from the sales page, or modify them slightly, or use headlines provided by the merchants as part of the affiliate resource section.

At the very minimum, here’s what you have to do. ??

• Put up the most powerful headline you can find.

• Copy your testimonial/review below it.

• Place your affiliate link to the sales page.

• Include more content resources (that’s what your blog will become)

Your List Building Module

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Including a way to build your list from prospects arriving at your affiliate marketing website is a power-secret known only to the top 5% of affiliate marketers – and used effectively by even fewer.

Look, would you like to work on a project, reap profits, go back and do the same work on another project, and be forced to repeat it each time to continue to profit… or, would you like to create a process, one you can set up once and profit from for a long time with very little extra effort?

And since one of the most critical elements of such an ongoing revenue model is the people who will buy from you, having your list building as a priority can help simplify and maximize your every effort.

Set up a web form to capture at least name and email address (and if you like, other details like address, phone number etc.) – and to make it irresistible, offer something special in exchange (a gift, a report, a course, anything).

Once you have people opting-in and giving your their contact details, you have a list of targeted prospects - folks who have raised their hands and told you they are interested in this topic.

This means you can now keep in touch with them, give them relevant information and advice, and even sell them other products or services targeted to their interests and desires. And that is valuable to an affiliate marketer.

Let’s Take Stock…

At the end of this phase, you should have an affiliate marketing process which includes a pre-selling page geared to convince a visitor to order your affiliate product or service, and a list building module designed to capture the visitor’s contact details before forwarding them along to the affiliate site – through your affiliate link!

In the next part, we’ll talk about the technical process of setting up your blogging for affiliate profits.

Before that, please share your thoughts and comments. If you have any questions and want specific parts of this material expanded and explained, please let me know. Just leave a comment here and I’ll respond.