Selling Without A Website
You Can And Here's How...
Again, back to Google Adwords. When you sign up for Adwords you do not have to have a site. When you sign a with most affiliate merchants, they give you a link tied to your affiliate ID. When you give this link out, say on a Google Adwords ad, it sends your prospect to a landing salespage provided by your merchant. Simple.
A word of caution, there are hacks and cheats in any business, and there are some in this one. You need to "mask" your affiliate link. "Masking" is the act of encrypting your link so that traffic cannot be redirected. It will also protect you from people that recognize that it is an affiliate link and go the main page of the merchant, without your affiliate ID attached to the link. It stinks but is does happen. You need to protect your hard work and advertising investment.
I like Dave Orme's "Instant Affiliate Link Masker" software. Take a quick look...it stops the problem cold!
As we talked about in previous lessons, these affiliate links can be place in emails, ezine ads, special reports you may right on the subject of the product and so on. So what are you missing out on when you do not have a site?
The Advantages To Having A Website
There are many, in fact, but let's focus on the big one.
First, let's walk through the buying process step by step:
- You prospect initiates a search on the Internet. He sees the product offer through your various forms of advertising. He is interested, he clicks through...
- He has now landed on your salespage provided by your affiliate merchant. It is well formatted, persuasive and he clicks again...to buy.
- He then goes through your merchant's checkout system and makes his purchase. He is happy and loves his new product.
- After he is done checking out the Merchant(not you) sends him a glowing thank you page with more offers including an offer to sign up for the merchant's newsletter. He is in the "yes" mode and clicks again to sign up.
- You get paid from the merchant, you are excited it's working, and you have made a profit. You do this over and over again as your affiliate business builds and you make more sales. Life is good.
That business model does work, but you are missing the most important principles in online sales.
IT'S ALL IN THE LIST!
Huh?! I just got paid, why are you talking about lists? Think about it, who captured the cutomer's email address? Who added to his customer database list? Who makes the sales, month after month, year after year, from this buying, targeted customer. YOUR MERCHANT.
Who paid for the advertising? You did. Who took the time to research and test advertising campaigns that work? You did.
Am I knocking the merchant here? No, he is building his customer database and reaping the future benefits.
Why am I so passionate about this? Because my first six months I made this classic blunder and lost thousands of potential dollars and repeat customers.
The solution is have your own site, create a quick landing page that will offer your newsletter sign up. Some webmasters take it one step further and require the prospect to give their email address in order to see the product offer.
This sounds aggressive and yes, you may lose a few people on this step, but if you can gain three repeat customers and lose one, that is still smart business. There are many ways to be bold without being overbearing and still make the sale with the real prize, the email address.
Getting A Website
You have several options in getting started with your own website. We'll look at a few here:
Free Site
You can get your own website and have it hosted free of charge. The free webhosts usually offer some kind of template to start with.
Though "free" may sound good - there are some drawbacks to free sites. For one, the hosts will limit the amount of pages and page size you host with them.
You may also be limited to the templates they offer and not allowed to create your own look and feel.
In many cases, a free website hosts do not allow you to have your own domain name. So, instead of a URL like http://www.yourdomain.com, you'll end up with a URL like http://www.tripod.com/members/~yourdomain
Plus, you won't have an email address that matches your unique name or desired domain - which is important for branding. For starters, this is okay - but if you want visitors to take you seriously, getting your own domain name is a MUST.
You may already have a free website available to you. Many ISP's offer free websites with the purchase of an email account. Check with your ISP to see if this is something that you have and where to find instructions on using it. If you don't already have a free site, you can find a listing of free web hosts by going to Yahoo.com
Paid Webhosting
Your other option is to pay for your own domain name and pay to have it hosted. Though it doesn't have the "Free" appeal, it does offer you the highest level of control and gives your visitors the impression that you care enough about the products you are promoting to actually pay for a website.
You can either start by finding a webhost or start by picking a domain. Since choosing a domain is kind of fun, try starting there.
You can purchase the rights to the domain name you find - or wait and have your webhost do it for you. I would suggest letting the webhost do it for you but BE SURE that you maintain ownership of the domain name. If you don't, you'll be stuck with a domain name that you've marketed and someone else owns.
When you are ready, Louish.net is the best!
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