What is it that separates you from success? It's not for a lack of trying, that's for sure.

Like many, you've probably been beating your head against a wall for quite some time now. You've got dark circles under your eyes from lack of sleep and like a drug addict, you can't wait until your next fix. You live from sale to sale and that's why you'll never get ahead.

If there's one message I've been preaching since I started ATB, it's that you should use your traffic to its fullest extent.

That doesn't mean terrorizing each user you get with an insane display of crack-pot ads and pop-unders for them to see later. It definitely doesn't mean pop-up messages when they leave your site. What it means is this: if you pay a search engine to send a click your way, you should find multiple ways of using that single click not just to push sales but to create potential sales.

Potential sales are sales that haven't happened yet. They're sales that neither you, nor your customer know will happen. But given the right opportunity, they're almost guaranteed to happen.

Here's why.

A few years ago, I had a job as a store salesman. To train us for the position, our instructors told us that there is no such thing as "I'm just browsing." They drilled that into our heads because they wanted us to believe that no matter what, a sale had to happen. If a customer walked into our isle with that curious look but says "I'm just browsing," that's when we started really "helping" them because to us, "I'm just browsing" means "I want to buy but something is standing in the way." Usually, that something was either that they had no idea what they needed or .. their wife.

The funny part is, whether browsing in a store or browsing the web, you're usually facing the same obstacles. That's why it's important to keep the same determination in mind when selling to eyes on a web page.

Of course, you're no dummy. You are fully aware that some people are literally just curious to see what's on your site. Your competitors will look, they might even have a mean streak and click on your expensive ads. It just comes with the territory. In fact, it's all the more reason to work on your squeeze.

There are several mainstream ways to go about squeezing sales out of your customers after that initial click:

• Collecting Emails - I won't go into it again but suffice it to say, it's absolutely necessary. If you aren't doing this, you aren't serious about making money.
• Offering Similar Products - If you've ever spent ten minutes browsing through Amazon.com, you'll notice they'll always tell you what else customers bought when they purchased the particular item you're looking at. That's because they know it increases the likelihood that you'll buy it on impulse. Think about it.
• Building Your Organic Rank - That's right. Keep your customers coming back to a site they can actually use and link to. You give your customers something to talk about and suddenly, you won't have to pay so much for people to click your ads because they'll be coming on their own and bringing their friends.
• Offering Free Things - As long as the free things you're offering are of some use, people will typically come back. They'll say "where did I find that one thing? Oh yeah!" and suddenly, your customer has returned. And that means a chance for more money.
• Updated Content - Regarding 'free things', if that same customer comes back and sees updated content they're more likely to see what else is happening on the site just because they're curious. If you get people to subscribe to an RSS feed that's attached to the blog that's attached to your landing page, then you'll have a full list of people that you can actually give information to. Just make sure it's decent information and hopefully information they can't get elsewhere.

I could think of more, but I just wanted to get you thinking about what else you should be thinking about when you're building your landing pages. This sort of determined frame of mind will lead to more sales and less sales withdrawals (those periods of depression and insecurity you feel between sales).

So take a step back, take a good look at your sites and think: am I doing all I can do to squeeze my customers?

Just don't squeeze too hard.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Strategy, Good Reads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.