The biggest mistake that most people make when attempting to make money from a website is not using pre-sell or dedicated selling pages for the affiliate programs that they promote.

Dosh Dosh has a excellent case study of an effective pre-sell page and why you should be using them to promote affiliate programs.

It is nice to think that dropping an affiliate link or banner in a blog’s sidebar is going to make you some big cash, but it doesn’t work that way. Affiliate marketing is a lot like love, you just can’t lean in for a big wet kiss 5 minutes after you meet someone; your conversion rate is going to suck, and you’re likely to end up needing medical attention.

Same goes for affiliate selling, the pre-sell page is a way for the interested party to get to know you. Why are you recommending this stuff and why they should trust you? Do you sound credible or like a huckster?

An Example of an Effective Pre-Sell Page

I know that this is a pre-sell page that works because it makes me money almost every day.

Get a Real Blog – Instructional Videos Review

It is from ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse and really is a perfect example. Study it.

Here are the Doshie tips for pre-sell pages:

1. Do not oversell. Try to provide a balanced perspective on the product.
2. No redundant hyperlinks. Don’t link to other articles on your website or other external websites.
3. Use multiple affiliate links. Try to use the same affiliate link multiple times within the pre-sell page.
4. Try cloaking affiliate links. Cloaking your affiliate link is likely to improve your click through rate.
5. Keep it short. A pitch page should not be too long.
6. Focus on Usability. Write for scanability.
7. Offer Benefits. It’s very important to make sure that the visitor understands how the affiliate program benefits him or her.

Here are my additional pre-sell page tips:

• Say things that you don’t like as well as the good things. No product is perfect, people will not be put off by the imperfections, they will actually trust you more by informing them in advance.
• Use the product. I remember, from spying on my server logs, being amazed that Darren actually spent a few hours watching the videos before he wrote up the review.
• Call it a “review.” People often search for reviews of a product when they are ready to buy and Google seems to favor reviews with better rankings.

Keys to Profit

These pages are the profit centers of your website. Write them for every product or service that you use or you can, in good conscience, endorse.

Some time soon we’ll go into advanced techniques and cover how to place these pages and how to build internal linking structures around them so that you drive you sites visitors to these pages and they rank well in search engines.