This is THE action you want your visitors to take…to click through to see what this book (or product) is all about.

That means you need a sales page!

You’ve got extremely targeted traffic coming into the sales page.  That’s because you’ve put in the time and thought to be able to attract that targeted traffic.

Now, all you have to do is make it pay off!

It’s ALWAYS best to write your own sales page for the product you’ve chosen to sell…whether it’s an affiliate product or your own product!

YOU’VE attracted the visitor…YOU’VE given them some great information…YOU’VE given them a great newsletter…YOU’VE given them a forum to join a community…YOU’VE done all the work and they are getting to know YOU!

If you’re selling an affiliate product, it just doesn’t make sense to abruptly send them to another page with another personality.  That’s just too much disconnect for the average visitor and you’ll end up losing that possible sale.

Instead…do this.

WRITE YOUR OWN SALES PAGE!

Write a review of the product (if you haven’t already), if you’ve made a video about the product, embed it in the page…don’t link out to it. (you want to keep your visitors on your sales page)

Stress the BENEFITS TO THE VISITOR of owning the product.  Give them good solid bullet points about what THEY get out of owning the book. Tell them how many pages the book contains and, if available, show them the Table Of Contents.

Tell them what other buyers of the product have had to say about it…use some of the testimonials the vendor has on their site.

Use a picture of the product you’re selling. Copy a good one from the vendor’s page and insert it in yours.  DON’T just link to his/her image! You will also want to make sure that you get permission from the site owner before you just go and copy one of the images from his/her site and use it on yours.

Tell your visitors about any guarantee the vendor offers.

Finally, give them a call to action.  Something like…”This book WILL give you a way to treat your acne that’s worked for many, many other people.  Don’t you think it’s time to grab your own copy? Grab it by CLICKING HERE.”

Then insert a link that looks like this http://YourSiteName.com/recommends/ProductName or this http://YourSiteName.com/recommends/ProductName.php.

This type of link is called a redirect and is typically used when sending your visitor to an affiliate product. It consists of creating a folder on your site and calling this folder ‘recommends’ or ‘likes’ or anything that you like that makes sense to you and your visitors.

Inside of the this you can do one of 2 things. You can create a second folder using the name of the product as the folder name and inside of that folder put an index.php file or you can create a PHP file with the name of the product you are recommending (I.E. ProductName.php) and put that in this folder. This is entirely your choice and you may want to test both to see which works best for you and your visitors.

If you do use the second example from above you must make sure that there is also an index.htm or index.php file in the recommends directory. This will prevent someone from typing in the path without a file name and being able to look at all the files/folders in that directory.

Inside of the php file you will add this:

<?php
header( ‘Location: http://YourAffiliateLinkGoesHere‘ ) ;
?>

If you are recommending a product that is sold on ClickBank then your affiliate link will look like this http://YourCBid.VendorID.hop.clickbank.net  That link takes the visitor directly to the sales page. You merely have to insert your ClickBank affiliate name and the vendor name and away you go!

If you want to send your visitor straight to the ClickBank products payment page you will use this link: http://Product#.YourCBid_VendorID.pay.clickbank.net. You can find the product# by going to the sales page for the product and hovering over the payment link. Also, make sure that you now use an underscore between YourCBid and the VendorID and that it now has ‘pay’ instead of ‘hop’.

NOW you have a sales page that will work for you!

If you’re lazy, which probably isn’t true since you’re reading this book, you can just send your visitors to the product sales page provided by the vendor…AFTER you’ve pre-sold the visitors a bit by giving your review of the product and, if you’ve made a video, letting them watch it (again, embed, don’t link!) on YOUR sales page first.

Then, use a final sentence before they go away to the vendor’s site.  Something like, “The author of the book says it a WHOLE lot better than I do…that makes sense, he wrote it!  Click this link and let him tell you all about it.  I HIGHLY recommend this book, so grab it if you can!” Just throw your normal ClickBank link in there and you’re done!

That way, the disconnect is lessened a bit anyway.  That method probably won’t convert as well for you as doing it yourself.  But, depending on the strength of the vendor’s sales page, you’ll still make a few sales.

The process is exactly the same if you are selling your own product (whether it’s something you created or a PLR product that you modified) …EXCEPT for the payment page.  That will go to YOUR PayPal account!

HERE ARE THE SECRETS TO CREATING A GOOD SALES PAGE…

1. Make sure that when your visitors come to your sales page, they have only ONE link to click…the order link! Don’t let them get distracted! That’s not to say you can’t have that link in more than one place, just make sure that they only have two options here. Click the link to buy or leave the page.

2. Make sure you get to the benefits that THEY’LL get from the product…not features…benefits…immediately!

3. Usually, in a typical sales page, you’d need a REALLY attention-getting headline.  You don’t need one here!  These visitors are REALLY warmed up…they’re extremely targeted by this point…and are ready to buy!  IF you give them a reason to buy!

4. DON’T make your sales page a long, eye-glazing mess of text.  Get to the point!  These visitors are like shoppers in Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving!  “Just show me the thing you had in your newspaper ad and get out of my way…I WANT TO BUY IT!”  Don’t give them a tour of the whole store…just show them the product, talk about a few benefits…and get out of the way!

When you do your work UPFRONT you don’t have to work as hard on your sales page!

Don’t take that as saying, “You don’t have to work at all.”  You still have to clearly give the benefits in good bullet points…you still have to show them a picture of the product…you still have to talk to them about the guarantee…you still have to tell them the price…and you still have to urge them to take action by clicking the order link. BUT, THAT’S ALL! Don’t complicate things here.

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling your own product or someone else’s… these principles are the same.  THAT’S why we recommend writing your own sales page for affiliate products and sending the people that want to buy directly to the payment page.

YOU control the process that way. If you send them to the vendor’s sales page after you’ve got them all “hot and bothered” to buy it, that’s like that Wal-Mart shopper on “Black Friday” having to listen to a complete product discussion BEFORE they can pick up what they want to buy and put it in their shopping cart!  That’s a VERY good way to lose sales.

SO…by now you’ve learned a reliable and solid way to get targeted traffic to your website by using Google in a way they LIKE to be used.  You’ve learned how to give your visitors a reason to stay on your site as well as a way to be interactive with you.  You’ve learned how to find products that they’ll buy.  AND…you’ve learned how to get them to buy those products from you.

This is starting to shape up as a REAL business! That’s the whole idea behind THIS METHOD…but more about that later!

There are just TWO other things you need to do before you unleash your site on the world.  We’ll move on to them in the next posts.