the leech: the art of the pre-sell
Author: glend
PART 2 - THE PROJECT X METHODS
Now that we have covered the basics, let’s move onto the “meat and potatoes”
of the Project X manual – the actual techniques themselves.
I am not going to waffle on – I will save that for the other “filler” books on the
market. Once more, let’s dive right into the first method – and one of my
favourites…
METHOD # 1: THE “LEECH”: THE ART OF THE PRE-SELL
One very effective way to generate great income as an affiliate is to pre-sell a
product and then send the visitor to the merchant’s site feeling that they are
ready to buy. Of course, as with anything, there is a right way to pre-sell and a
wrong way.
It should come as no surprise to you that 99% of affiliates get it wrong. And
you should also expect that I am about to tell you how to do it right.
The method:
1) Find a popular information product on Click bank
2) Can you create a bonus that adds value to the product? Real value? If so
create it using one of my 80/20 methods.
3) Write a pre-sell – the right way (see below) – push the product and
your bonus
4) Buy Adwords clicks on the product’s brand name – only.
5) Get paid in large denominations.
But, before I explain the art of the pre-sell, my way, let’s start with the basics.
“What is a pre-sell?”
A pre-sell is an article that warms the visitor up to the product you are
recommending. The idea is not to hard sell the product, but rather to come
across as a satisfied customer who is writing a genuine, positive review. Presells
range from 100-2000 words in length; very generally, the longer the
better. We are going to try and write a 500-1000 word pre-sell.
“Great, but it’s always better to explain with examples, so…”
If you really have no idea what a pre-sell looks like, my advice is to sign up to a
dozen newsletters from the most popular “gurus” out there, and see what they
are promoting and how.
A good starting point is the ClickBank marketplace I mentioned earlier – head
over there and sort the products by popularity. Sign up to the newsletters of
each of the top 20 products (most will have a newsletter of some kind). They
will soon start to send you offers and recommendations (as sure as I know
Internet marketing), and you can then sign up to the newsletters of the
products they are recommending. Within a week or two you will have more
pre-sells than you will ever need (and by sheer osmosis you will know all of
the tricks inside out).
If you want to see what the “big boys” are promoting, then go to
http://www.gurudaq.com – the site is a little odd, but very useful.
Basically, it attaches a value to each guru’s name like the stock markets, with
Alexa rank (site popularity) determining the share price of a particular guru.
You can sell Perry Marshall at $5 and get half a Mike Filsaime – or something.
The spin-off of this quirky idea is that all of the big names are collected in one
place, allowing us to click on their names, visit their links and sign up to their
newsletters without having to trawl the web.
Generally one newsletter sign-up per guru will get you “in the loop”. Now, we
repeat the process and, coupled with the newsletters we are on from the CB
marketplace, we have an in-box full of pre-sells. Our ears are well and truly to
the ground. All we have to do is wait.
Whenever a product recommendation comes your way, print it off and read it.
Make note of what the recommendation is for and watch for several names
promoting the same product.
Pay particular attention to the writing style – the way the offer is presented.
You can even create a “cheat sheet” for certain lines, headlines and ideas that
you like. I suggest you set-up a hotmail account for this purpose and sign up to
10-20 newsletters – check it for half an hour every few days. Expect to receive
lots of offers very quickly. One thing about us internet marketers is, we love to
sell.
“Ah-ha, so, a pre-sell is like a review, right?”
Kind of. The difference between a pre-sell and a review is that review pages
generally include several products in some kind of head-to-head. A pre-sell is
one page explaining what you think about this one product – whether it
works, who it is going to be best for, and pros/cons. Also, I will not use the
word review here because… well, we are trying to make money, not provide
some kind of socialistic review service, so let’s accept our role as capitalists –
and call it a pre-sell. Bear that distinction in mind when you get to work. I
suggest you only promote products that you genuinely like – this will make the
pre-sell come out far better anyway; and, as I say, we are writing a pre-sell and
at some point you will need to use a bit of hard sell (most gurus suggest you
avoid this, but you will see why it is necessary later).
“Can I see the perfect example of a pre-sell that you have done – a
live example that is making you money now?”
Yes – this is a very successful example that I am going to break down for you
into minute pieces that you can rearrange and use to create your own. Head to
http://www.killyourjob.com to see a promotion that I did for Keyword Elite –
this particular pre-sell generated about $5000 in net earnings from an ad
spend of about $300 in the month of August 2006, all from Adwords traffic.
This is a perfect example of what you need to do to make this work. I generally
get about 100 clicks per week from Adwords for this one, which is more than
enough to generate this kind of income: quality over quantity is a very
important point, and one which I will be returning to later.
Take note of exactly what I have done – absorb my writing style, and notice
how my bonus does actually add real value to the KE program. Now let’s stop
for a second: $5000 in profit from a single web page isn’t bad – imagining
multiplying that by 5 or 6 and you will see why I like this method.
You can also see an example of a pre-sell for my Adwords Miracle product that
I love - and this also did extremely well - at
http://www.andrechaperon.com/adwords-miracle-review/ : this was written
by a “guru” who I do actually like (I gave his list an Adwords Miracle exclusive,
I like him that much).
Apart from being likeable, Andre has also written a pre-sell that does
everything it needs to do in the right order. After letting him know that he was
mentioned in Project X, Andre told me he was already working on a guide for
writing pre-sells, which did not surprise me one bit. I promptly told him he
had his first customer.
Choosing a product
Let’s head over to our new homepage, the ClickBank marketplace –
http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.html. I very rarely encourage
affiliates to promote the most popular products on the market – too much
competition, too tough to make it work. But guess what, for this method, the
more popular the product the better! We are going to get our traffic from
laser-targeted terms (we are only going to bid on the brand name of the
product for traffic, so clicks are going to be in low supply, but I have a solution
for that too).
In this case, we want a product with a gravity of at least 60, preferably higher.
This method will often work with slightly less popular products – even
products with a gravity as low as 15 can receive as many as 150 brand name
searches per week – which will make the method profitable, but, by on large, it
is better to stick to the more popular products.
The second thing that you need to consider when choosing a product is, are
you going to be able to add value to the product in the form of a bonus? That
last point is vital to our success (especially if you are promoting an internet
marketing product). Don’t feel intimidated when I say “add a bonus”; it isn’t
as tough as you think (and with the v2 Affiliate Project X update I have made
it even easier for you). But, that being said, you will need to add a bonus of
some kind to add value and get them to want to buy via your link.
I will return to that point later in some depth.
Writing the pre-sell itself
Now that we have our product in mind, and we know what we are going to for
our bonus, lets get started on the pre-sell itself.
In many ways, a pre-sell is very similar to a good sales letter; it uses the same
language, has a headline, a call to action… in fact, in many ways you are going
to write a good sales letter. In many ways, the quality of your pre-sell is going
to determine whether you make $1500/month from your little web page, or
you crash and burn. An intimidating thought, but don’t worry…
And don’t go to pieces on me. You can do this and you will – I know you can
because I am about to break the entire process down forensically.
You may want to open my earlier Keyword Elite promotion up in your web
browser as we run through the components one-by-one.
Firstly, you need to write an eye-catching headline – one that is going to pull
people in and get them reading your pre-sell further. A quick point about the
people who are going to be visiting your site – remember, they have already
searched for the product on Adwords – they are already pre-sold to a certain
extent and are thinking of buying. These are not the kind of clicks you get on
general search terms. So, don’t try and hard sell them on the product straight
away in your headline. This will put a lot of them off, as they want some gentle
prodding and a little more information before buying.
Instead we are going to try and make a subtle dig at the product, raise
questions about its performance, something like this:
“Affiliate Project X – the true affiliate saviour… or a complete waste of your
time? The shocking truth finally revealed. And it is not what you think…”
or
“The truth about Project X – its flaws, its failings… and whether it really can
catapult you to financial freedom. Warning: read before you waste your
money…”
The point here is that, your headline needs to raise some genuine doubt in
their head about the product in question. If they search for Project X, thinking
of buying and you appear to be launching a mild attack on it, do you think
they will read everything you have to say? Damn straight they will. And the
more they read of our pre-sell the better for us.
So, start your product with a headline that implies that there may be possible
failings in the product – and they have to read on to find out exactly what
these fatal failings are. If you think that attacking the product head-on, or
even in an implied way, is a little too hardcore for you, then fine: just attack
the genre (“Is Project X another over-hyped, flaky affiliate guide – like all the
others…”).
Now, the first thing to remember about your pre-sell is that its largely about
your experiences, with a product that you purchased – so get conceited and
write a story about how you ended up buying the product.
Go back and read my KE pre-sell and notice how I start by implying problems
with keyword research tools in general, and then begin explaining how I
ended up with the product. People enjoy stories and very often the logical part
of the brain disconnects when you launch into a story, making them
susceptible to all kinds of sales techniques – so it’s “advantage, us” from the
get-go. Nonetheless, let’s try and make it interesting – throw a few twists and
turns in there, don’t just say “I got the product, and …err used it”.
To make it as simple as possible, you should answer these questions in order:
- Who are you (as relates to the product, try and make yourself sound an
authority – how long you have been marketing for, mention any
successes you have had, your areas of expertise, just build some
authority so they take what you say seriously.)
- What convinced you to buy? What held you back (make a note of
anything that stopped you from buying and try and convince them of
why you decided that wasn’t a reason in the end… but don’t launch into
a hard sell just yet)
- What happened when you bought? First impressions – what was it like
(NOTE: at this point you should slowly start to sing the product’s
praises: before this point you should have been mildly negative about
it, you were a cynic but the product is now to starting to work its magic
on you – but again, don’t go hardcore, you were turned slowly)
- Results – if you have good results, then say so! Explain in detail how
the results came, and which features of the product you used (without
giving too much away). Gradually become more and more excited
about the product – and explain in detail why it is so great.
- Raise a seed of doubt – yes, the product is great; yes, you made a
million from it, bedded Jessica Alba, whatever… but there was
something missing, something that wasn’t quite there (hint at this a
paragraph or two back to ensure they are still reading by the time they
get to your bonus)
- Introduce your bonus and spend a paragraph hard-selling your bonus
for anyone who buys via your link – your bonus solves whatever failing
you introduced in the product a step back. Important
- Use a call to action and provide your cloaked link (see section 3 for
cloaking your affiliate links) – explain that they need to buy via your
link to get this bonus. Hard sell the bonus and explain that they really
need the product and the bonus for 2 or 3 reasons / benefits.
Now, take your pre-sell and compare it to my own Keyword Elite pre-sell, andideally
– the pre-sells the gurus sent you that you should now have sitting in
your Hotmail account. How does it stack up? Break the above sections down
with a sub-headline and provide some images (of the product, of your
ClickBank screen shot, etc). Spend a bit of time on presentation. You can save
and edit my own layout if you like – just be a bit creative and don’t copy it
wholesale. Not because I will turn my lawyers on you, but because it won’t
work.
You may also want to spend some time looking through the most popular
products on ClickBank –and see how they are marketing their site. Spend
some time reading the sales letters, and taking notes. These guys are “hardselling”
their products, whereas you want to “soft sell” the product you are
promoting and “hard sell” your bonus. Note the distinction. Even with this
difference, there is still a lot you can learn from them. These guys are at the
top of the pile for a good reason – they know how to write copy (or the guy
they hired does).
As I say, it’s important that you stick to the above guidelines and read through
plenty of pre-sells for this technique to be successful.
Create a bonus
You now need to create a bonus for the product in question – an e-product of
some kind, either a training video, e-book or short guide. The default option
is an “advanced owners manual” for the product you are pre-selling. Try and
fill in the blanks with the product in question. One obvious idea is a support
system for the product (yes, the buyer provides support, but you have bought
it and can point them in the direction of what works and what doesn’t).
Your product must add value to the product in question – and information
products are the easiest to create, but other than that you should just
brainstorm until something hits. The product needs to be a natural extension
of the product, and fill a genuine need for whoever is going to buy the product.
You want to return to the “thumbscrew” section that is coming up when
creating your bonus. Always have the market in mind.
Several successful marketers have 2 or 3 bonuses that they give away for many
of the products that they promote – so an alternative is to write a “one size fits
all” bonus for ClickBank products, one for dating products, one for betting
products, one for affiliate marketing products. This might sound terrifying,
but remember that you probably own several information products: take what
you learned, add your own spin, and voila, you have your bonus. Several
successful marketers actually just copy and paste a single technique they now
and send it out as their bonus as part of their e-mail.
If you want to create a short guide or e-book, then do it in Word and use
PrimoPDF (a free PDF converter) to make an Adobe Acrobat file out of it:
www.primopdf.com. If you think a training video would help (a great bonus
for anything complicated, such as software or any kind of server code,
basically anything technical), then you can get a free 30-day trial of Camtasia
Studio at www.techsmith.com. Camtasia allows you to record your pc screen
and do voiceovers for training videos. My advice is to take what you already
know from the e-books you have, personalize it, and come up with your own
product. Brand it and try and explain in your pre-sell how it adds value to the
product in question. If in doubt, an “advanced training guide” for the product
you are selling is a good fallback option.
There are going to be parts of the product that are not explained well,
techniques that s/he doesn’t give examples for. Filling in the blanks and
putting together an “extension” pack for the product in question will work
wonders with the right pre-sell.
Tip: you can also use your bonus for other promotions you do for your
products, using ezines, articles, your list – and the other techniques I will
cover in depth later on.
You will want to make it clear on your page that
they will have to e-mail you at the address you mention to get the bonus. In
theory you may think that this will turn some people off. In practice, it
qualifies the buyer even further and makes your bonus and offer seem that
much more valuable (ask them to forward their receipt your way). You may
also want to ask them to check to see if your affiliate id shows up at the bottom
of the payment page on ClickBank (once again a pain for them, but this
qualifies the prospect yet again).
Buying another product for the buyer
This is a method that I rarely use myself, but I have seen several affiliates use
it for extended periods of time (and as such you would assume that it is
successful, if fraught with dangers and temptations). Please be aware of
something, though: while ClickBank are generally fine with you giving away
bonuses, they are a little but more opposed to you buying products for those
who buy via your link.
None the less, you know I always do the “full disclosure” thing – and I just had
to let you in on the technique, along with the dangers: then you can make your
own mind up.
The way this one works is simple: the buyer purchases the product via your
link and in return you go ahead and purchase a second product for them; for
example you are promoting a web hosting package and offer to buy a $97 ebook
for anyone who signs up via your link. You buy the e-book yourself (via
your own link), so it only really costs you half the actual price of the product.
This technique works best on those who are not aware of the fact that you can
buy via their own link (if they are, they do the math, and of course makes the
deal instantly less attractive); and as such it works with products that target
beginners.
Also, be very careful when using this technique: the obvious issue is that it can
be very tempting to not purchase the product and just send the buyer a pirated
copy. Then, the buyer goes for tech support off the vendor, the vendor can’t
find the buyer’s receipt (there isn’t one), digs deeper… and your affiliate career
comes to an end pronto (if you can’t fill in the blanks, ClickBank security will
be more than happy to do so).
This is a hypothetical scenario, but you should always be aware of objections
that the buyer, the product vendor and the affiliate network may have (or
probably do). It’s a very tough technique to make work (while dodging several
bullets), but I had to let you know what the situation was and tell you about
the technique.
Note: I have only used this on a few occasions and it brought up various issues
(along with many temptations that I did not give into, see above); I expect it
might do the same for yourself. Be prepared…
Leech #2: Using Screen-capture video to super charge conversions
By now, you will know how powerful the techniques inside Project X can be. A
few small changes can literally double your earnings from a campaign.
One method that I have used fairly regularly is the Camtasia screen recording
software that I discuss elsewhere in APX. The reason this is so powerful is a
combination of things: firstly, you can say a lot more by talking than you can
by typing. I am not just talking about the words, but rather the tone, accent
and style of your speech. This is a powerful comfort-building tool that makes
people far more inclined to listen to you (and they feel like they really know
you).
If you don’t believe me, pick up on any book on “non-verbal” communication
and learn how powerful it is – it works on your emotions. Not your logic (the
tone of your voice is confusingly classed as “non-verbal” communication, only
the words themselves are “verbal”).
A quick story: the internet marketer who built the best relationship with me
via his newsletters was Jim Edwards. I probably have all of his products. It
seems he is now focused on his membership site which launched earlier this
year, and he rarely sends out messages to his mailing list.
In truth, and looking back, Jim’s messages had no “dirty secrets”. There were
no “back-door” tricks that he gave out, but just hearing the tone and pitch of
Jim’s voice every week was enough to build a relationship irrespective of the
content he provided (which to be fair, was still very solid). If Jim is still
leveraging the use of audio and video with his membership site, I expect that
he retains almost all of his members. And my guess is, that is ironically
enough the reason he doesn’t have the inclination to send out his screen cap
messages to his old list. His paid members stay loyal because they feel
emotionally connected to him, and he probably prefers to focus on those
relationships to grow his business.
I hope that really drives home the power of screen cap presentations to build
relationships with members and visitors. Remember, quality versus quantity
is a major theme, and it explains why some marketers can make a living from
a 1,000 list while others with a list ten times that size stay broke. It’s all about
relationships – and the audio / video angle really helps you out there.
Secondly, the screen capture aspect (with both audio and video happening at
once) makes for a more entertaining video, which increases the chance that all
of your message will get through. Finally, the medium allows you to say more;
you can talk faster than you can type, and it’s easier to demonstrate something
on your screen than try and explain it in writing.
All in all, this means video can be a very powerful medium to use to get any
message across. One area where I have been using video is with my lists
(which I will come onto with a later method), and another area is with presells,
such as the leech.
This brings me onto my latest incarnation of the leech… presenting…
The leech in Screen cap: Stepping stones – this is a powerful technique.
Effectively, what we do is link directly from our Adwords ad to a very short
pre-sell for a video review we are going to do, explaining why we put the thing
together and what you say inside the video: and that they must click on the
video to hear your review. Only a paragraph of copy will do, and then you
introduce the video link in flash format (so that they can be watched in the
web browser, and probably also with a Windows Media Player mirror).
You can basically “speak” your leech pre-sell out onto the video, and you can
tempt the viewer by showing them the product sitting on your desktop next to
the bonuses. Finally, you can mention the video in your Adwords ad,
increasing your CTR, for example:
I hate Project X.
Learn why and get a Free
Live video tour of it. Now.
www.site.com/freeAPXtour
Or
Project X is for losers.
watch me give the Secrets
away in a Free Video review.
www.website.com/freeAPX
The video tour is a very powerful angle (after all, they are searching for more
information on the product, what better way to offer them what they want
than a free video review of the product?)
Of course, as with the pre-sell, you start off attacking the product, and then
gradually lead into hard-selling your bonus. The video medium takes far less
time, and you can potentially get a good video pre-sell done in an hour.
Once the video has completed, you will want to direct users to a short copy
“call to action” page, which is basically a compressed version of the leech presell
and a call to action (click here to buy via my link, and then e-mail me here
as seen above).
Also, you will probably want to either have a link under the video which says
“I have seen enough, show me what you are offering” (which leads directly to
our short copy pre-sell page as above), and a link which says “Problems
watching the video? Click here”.
The “problems link” should take the user to the short copy page with a link to
mirror files of the video (windows media player, an .avi file, two mirror files
should suffice).
You can see a working example of the new version leech at
http://www.leavethedayjob.com/clickbank
The page has only been live for two days at the time of writing, but it has
already pulled in $160 off an ad spend of less than $10. I don’t expect the
1,600% return to continue once the sample size becomes large enough. But
you see how powerful the leech method can be when combined with the
screen cap format. I will be leveraging this format more in the future, and you
should look to do the same.
Get Adwords traffic – leech off the brand name
With this particular method, we are only going to buy very targeted traffic –
we are only going to bid on the brand name of the product in question, no
other keywords and leech off the pre-sold searches that the product merchant
is generating. In other words, if you did it for Project X, you would bid on
project x
affiliate project x
[project x]
[affiliate project x]
“project x”
“affiliate project x”
And no other keywords. That’s it, at least for this method.
Note: I call this method the “leech” because, in truth, our pre-sell is about
convincing them to buy via our link as much as it is about getting them to buy
the product in general (that’s why we hard-sell our bonus). Many of the guys
hitting your page off these search terms are going to buy; the question is will
they buy via your link?
Generally, you will get very few clicks for these keywords – typically between
5-40 per day even if the product is very popular. Also, the clicks are going to
be expensive - $0.50-$.80 per click. However, these clicks are super-targeted,
and that more than justifies the price. Think of it as buying a $1 million
mansion for $200,000. A lot better than buying a $50,000 flat for $70,000, I
think you will agree. At the start of the guide, I mentioned that there are
plenty of variables separating the broke affiliates from the wealthy ones: being
prepared to pay top dollar for the right keywords and being weary of “dirt
cheap” keywords is one of them.
Remember, if someone is searching for a product, they will already have been
pre-sold on it by someone else – many of them will have their credit cards in
hand, And it’s clean credit. All this means that you will generate great returns if you bid on these
keywords only – don’t be tricked by the low volume and high costs. Keywords
are not created equally and this is as good as it gets.
When writing your ad, there are two important techniques that you will want
to use to ensure you get as many clicks as possible (remember, these clicks are
super qualified, so we really want as many as we can get our greedy mitts onto
– with the Adwords system, lots of clicks also means a lower cost per click).
First method: attack the product head-on in the headline, for example:
“I hate Project X”
“Project X is for losers”
“Project X? For fools”
“Project X scammed me”
“Project X? Sucker.”
Remember that anyone searching for a product by name is very close to
buying, and if they think that you are going to tell them that the product is a
scam etc, then they will click on your ad (and remember, we are even going to
start by attacking the product / genre in our sales letter, so they will click and
stay there as we continue our onslaught before we switch the game up and
start our plug).
Secondly, use the word “free” in the ad – this is the perfect time to pre-sell
our bonus. For example, let’s say we our promoting Project X, and offering an
e-book you have written. Here’s a guaranteed high click ad:
“Project X? Are you a sucker?
Find out why you might be.
And get a Free report on PX”
Note the fact that I have put “Free” in capitals – it really is a word that is going
to pull a lot of people in, and given how laser targeted our keywords are, we
want all the clicks we can get. Adwords 101 says that you should never have
the word “free” in your ads, but these super targeted keywords are an
exception to that rule. We want all the clicks we can get.
More clicks means more sales, and, with the Adwords relevancy and CTR
system, a lower cost per click. Using these techniques, some of my keywords
generate 20% CTR which means I get a lot of clicks and a lot of sales – all from
my one little web page and one simple ad.
Tip: If you start off by setting up your review page on an old site of yours such
as www.daverecommends.com and start to see good returns, you should
invest in a domain specifically for the product in question.
Ideally we want to make our domain sound as if it is the official site - for
example www.projectxguide.com - the more the domain looks like that of the
merchant (remember they are searching for the actual product itself, some are
searching because they don’t know the official domain name), the higher the
chance of someone clicking on our ad. And, remember, these keywords are
super-high-converting so we want all the clicks we can get.
If you find a product early (and suspect it is going to blow up soon), you may
want to register a domain that is very similar to the official one and put a
cloaked link up there – see section 3 – you will very often get a few sales per
week passively from people who type the URL incorrectly, e.g.
www.adwordsmiracles.com instead of www.adwordsmiracle.com - I learnt
that one the hard way).
Tip: you may want to use my “workhorse” method to promote your pre-sell via
organic traffic (i.e. put the pre-sell on an article site and try and get it ranked
for the name of the product in question). I will return to this method later.
Summary: this method is one of my favourites, and generates returns of
between 200-700% for the promotions I run. I have seen conversions as high
as 20% in some cases. Remember, this really comes down to your pre-sell and
your bonus. So, spend some time reading mail-outs and crafting your letter.
The process is: pick a high volume product, write your pre-sell, create a bonus
that adds real value, and set-up your Adwords campaign.
And now you have two proven variations to work with. I expect we will see a
lot more audio-video information being used by marketers in the next few
years. I suggest you get ahead of the curve.
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September 24th, 2008 at 1:46 am
[...] 2 – THE PROJECT X METHODS Method 1: the leech: the art of the pre-sell Method 2: the affiliate diary Method 3: the workhorse method Method 4: thief in the night: stealing [...]