Rune Ellingsen

Internet Marketing - With Rune Ellingsen

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Affiliate Sales Increased with Reciprocity

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Reciprocity and the Law and Science of Persuasion in Affiliate Marketing.

Reciprocity is a concept that you should be familiar with as an affiliate marketer if you want to increase your affiliate sales.

Simply because if you learn the science behind the reciprocity concept you will understand how sales are made and how the art of human psychology can help you make more money.

better roi

In general all the average affiliate marketer does is try to present his pitch to the readers and hoping that some of them will end up buying the product he is promoting.

While this works perfectly most of the times, it won’t yield a high conversion rates all the time.
This is simply because the fact that…

People don’t always use all the information available to them in order to make a decision, that’s the harsh reality.

Instead people depend on certain rules and shortcuts that guides them into taking any decision.

One of these shortcuts and rules is Reciprocity.
Reciprocity is one of the basic concepts in the science of persuasion, which basically helps you as an affiliate marketer understand how to make people take a certain decisions, like buying your affiliate offer.

I am going to explain the Reciprocity concept and how to implement it in your affiliate marketing efforts to increase your sales and make more money.
The science of persuasion tells us that reciprocity is the obligation to give when you receive first.

So a real life example will be, when a friend invites you to his birthday party (you receive) then you feel obligated to invite him back to your birthday party (give).
If someone did you a favor then you feel the need to return the favor to him/her.

This all leads us to the rule that people are more likely to say “Yes! To you when you give them something first.

Science of Persuasion; Reciprocity can Boost your Affiliate Sales - idea

Of course people will not say yes to anything just because you gave them something first, you must ask them or expect from them something reasonable.

Also it might not be as easy as:

“I give someone something then he will be obligated to agree to do something for me”.

You have to consider how you are giving something to that person.

For example, when a waiter brings you your bill in most cases you will pay the bill and pay him a reasonable tip.
But if that waiter gave you a mint with your bill then you probably going to increase his tip, and if he said to you “this mint is for you my best customer” then you will give him even more tip.

This shows us that the way you give something is very crucial even more than what you are giving itself.

So for reciprocity to work:
• You need to be the first to give
• Give something personalized
• Give something unexpected

How to Implement Reciprocity in your Affiliate Marketing Plan

Using what we know about the reciprocity concept, I am going to explain some strategies that you can implement on your affiliate page to boost conversion rates and sales.

 

  • Strategy #1

Select a profitable niche that you want to sell affiliate products in, and then build a blog filled with content and perhaps free training course.
Try and promote this blog to get as much readers as you can. Over time you will see that all your blog posts got tons of likes and retweets which gives you more social media exposure.

And after sometime put an ad for the products you want to sell as an affiliate.
Because at this point many of your users will be regular visitors to your blog, and when they finally see a product that you recommend they will feel the need to buy it because you were so generous to them across the time they have been visiting and reading your blog.

 

  • Strategy #2

In your affiliate product review page tell your visitors to download something that goes well with the product you are trying to sell.
For example:

If I am selling (as an affiliate) a wordpress plugin related to SEO then I will offer them a 15 pages pdf guide on SEO as a bonus.

But his bonus will be given to them before they buy the actual product.
Here I was the first to give, and I did something unexpected because I gave them a generous bonus before they even buy, and it was personalized because it helps solve their problem and it goes well with the product they are considering buying.

 

  • Strategy #3

You know how nowadays every ebook, guide, software out there can only be downloaded if you opt-in or provide your email address, as much as that work it is still annoying to have to be the one to give first in order to take.

Try offering your PDF guide without an opt-in and tell your visitors that download doesn’t require them to give their email.
When you do that, at this point people feel how generous you are and how unexpected this is which is very important factor in persuading them to buy your affiliate product.
So what you do is at the end of your PDF guide, you mention the affiliate product that you want them to buy and introduce it in 1 paragraph.

People will feel the need to return you the favor of giving them something for free first.

 

  • Strategy #4

If you are promoting a software product or service, then try to contact the product owner and convince them to give you a version of the product that you can give to your visitors.

Except this version should allow a trial usage for free.
It has been known that when people are given the product for free for a period of time, they end up buying it at the end. They feel how generous you are and they may end up falling in love with your affiliate product, and that is more persuasive then any word you can type.

 

  • Strategy #5

In your blog, try to organize a monthly events and training sessions for your readers.
You can see Google hangouts or Skype group video chat for that or even any online webinar service that will help you host such events.

These events are amazing for selling affiliate products, because you get very personal with your audience via video or audio and you spend like 1 hour giving them advice and tips and tricks and at the end you sell them your affiliate product.

 

  • Using any of these strategies or even developing your own strategies that implement the reciprocity concept can really add a huge improvement to the way you do affiliate marketing.

These changes are cheap and not time consuming yet they can bring you more money.
As an affiliate marketer I think you should always try to find ways to convince people to buy from you as it mounts to higher conversion rates.

Also there are many other affiliate marketing techniques you can learn from this one. Combine them with what you have learned here so far and you can see sales increase.

This has been a guest blog post from Ibrahim Dahy of:

affset.com

A product first released on clickbank.com

This post dove into the Law of Persuasion and the Law of Reciprocity.

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Awesome List Building

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Why you need to focus on some Awesome List Building!

 

  • Building your list is what EVERY successful marketer teach! And, with good reason.

The higher percentage of your income as an internet marketer will come from just that, your list.

So how and why is this so vital?

First the HOW:

  • For one thing, this is ONE of the very easiest ways to make bank as fast as possible without a lot of learning curves WHICH is a real drag, and sadly common in the internet marketing genre.

Then the WHY:

  • The easiest reason to why is the amount of time you save by focusing on ONE area in your business and then after a while, (actually really fast if you can leverage other people’s list, more on that later…) you will see some amazing results because of this ONE area of focus.

So while others usually spend years before they come to this conclusion that they should focus on one thing, I can tell you right away that THIS is the ONE THING that should be your main focus right from the “get go”. And ONLY this.

So if you feel like you could need some resources, let me hand them over:

  • We need a site of some sort and while you can use even a free site like from WordPress.com or a Squidoo lens or maybe even Blogger.com…  You should think of branding your business and that is where the paid options come in. You can start free if you want.

This site is hosted on WordPress and is not very customizable but enough to make a landing page.

All you need REALLY is a simple blank page (any theme should do) where you put an image, some text and an opt in form.

The first thing to do is to choose a domain name for your list building efforts.

Relate this to either your name… (For branding purposes, will earn you credit in the long run) OR find a name for your business site.

Preferably something easy to remember as you are going to include links to the site all over the internet.

You can use Godaddy.com Name.com or namecheap.com or any other registrar for the registration of the domain name.

Then I suggest Hostgator.com or Siteground (better) and the “Baby plan” if you are new and just starting out. For more advanced users I would suggest Amazon AWS for better bandwidth but only if you are having trouble with your server. Also for advanced users, I use Cloudways for managed hosting.

This rarely happens but when you are getting heaps and heaps of traffic then Hostgator baby plan is not the best option as they handle a lot of traffic. At least that goes for launches and serious hoards of traffic. Just keep an eye out for your site health when you drive traffic and you’ll be fine.

So after this, you need to setup your WordPress site by using the Fantastico option in Hostgator. Lot’s of training manuals on this i.e. Youtube.com

What I normally do is to setup a simple squeeze page consisting of a blank page at first. The way I do this is to delete EVERYTHING out of the ordinary for a squeeze page. What I mean is this:

  • Delete links to the theme. Usually in the bottom.
  • Depending on the theme you may need to go over a couple things to get Widgets out of the way. Usually on the right. You can choose a free theme as long as you do these steps as they will increase your visitor count staying on your site.
  • Deleting any links (as mentioned) that are present, and any text on the page.

You can see another example HERE. The copy is the one key takeaway to learn for making landing pages. – By the way, you don’t need to opt-in but you may want to see what kind of copy is being used and also color choices on the pages.

So, let’s assume your site is white and blank without anything on it.

What you now need is a free product to give away. I suggest you find a HIGH-QUALITY PLR product with giveaway rights to get things going fast.

The first thing to include on a squeeze page is a BIG BOLD RED Headline. Proven to work font is Arial. Georgia. Tahoma. + more… But please stick with easy at first.

In that headline, we need to use a couple of copyrighting elements that will ‘hook’ in the visitor’s interest.

We need these things to increase conversions to get a head start.

  •  Use scarcity as in, “will only be available for a limited time”.

( Just be honest and really mean it. Take the offer away after a while or change around on it so it really is limited. If not, don’t say it)

  • And underline a HUGE benefit with a yellow background.  (Color choices is another thing I will mention later in another post more extensively.)

Can use just plain color text here also. You have seen them all over the place, but if you analyze them you have a killer chance of achieving top results for your first squeeze page.

There is no one size fits all for landing pages. But they follow a pattern without necessarily using the same colors for every page.

  • BUT, a fair warning here.

Don’t overdo the analyzing just yet. Just follow my lead as this is supposed to be an easy start. You just have to get it going. I PROMISE!

So with a headline all you need know is a picture of your freebie. May it be a PDF or a video. Video convert very well also.

Fiverr.com is a good place to outsource work you haven’t mastered yet yourself.

AND of course an opt-in box on the left or below the freebie. You need a first name and an email by the way.

For getting that in place we need an account on Aweber.com. Free 1 dollar trial for 30 days.

So when have registered an account you create a welcome email where you do a quick introduction and deliver the freebie.

Also, we need a second webpage where you welcome your prospects and give away your freebie. This URL is needed for your Aweber account when you are asked for it.

And that pretty much sums it up. It’s a small funnel. You can get better results with more advanced funnels where you provide even more value. More on this later.

What you got as a result, however, was a Squeeze page to send traffic to. People opt in to get the freebie. You collect the email. They get redirected to the freebie… AND you have a list of people to market to.

Can you say Ka-Ching?

Obviously, there is a little more finesse in getting people to buy from what you send them as a service.

 

Ever heard of Pareto’s Principle?

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.[1][2]

Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.[2]

It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients”. Mathematically, where something is shared among a sufficiently large set of participants, there must be a number k between 50 and 100 such that “k% is taken by (100 − k)% of the participants”. The number k may vary from 50 (in the case of equal distribution, i.e. 100% of the population have equal shares) to nearly 100 (when a tiny number of participants account for almost all of the resource). There is nothing special about the number 80% mathematically, but many real systems have k somewhere around this region of intermediate imbalance in distribution.

Source: Wikipedia.com

 

Basically what this means is that if you give content 80% you will reap rewards 20%. At least that is what my English grammar can explain for you  😉     Note: I am Norwegian after all… 😉

So to finish things off, there is your basic list builder. Turning it into an income machine will require content and promos related to your niche.

Follow up is the next step. You can read more about it in another post, coming soon.

 

There are tons of providers out there and you certainly won’t have to take my word for it if I say it’s good. I use what I found to be a good solution a while back after spending much time on it.

(see the whole hosting provider post I did here: this site’s hosting.)

And if you want to Google like I did… Then you’re in for a possible long research project. But if you want to use the insights gathered in this post then feel free.

 

Thanks for stopping by 😉