Finch Sells | Affiliate Marketing Blog

How to Sell Well: No Cleavage Necessary

Jun 25 2012

The most powerful sales copy in the world is often the most simple.

It creates the least friction. It shapes existing beliefs in to motivation for taking action.

Something I try to get across in every landing page I build is that the user is always right. That doesn’t equate to being smart, and it certainly doesn’t mean rational. It means the user’s beliefs and motivations are worth infinitely more than any of the bullet points on my page.

When we start replacing product benefits with nods to the user’s belief systems, we erase all friction and speak directly to the identity of that user. This is powerful because a customer will only buy what he believes in.

Look around you.

Your possessions are a testament to who you are and what you believe in. Everything from the pile of books, to the brand of laptop, to the type of drink you’re swigging is a mark of who you think you are.

So, if a swaggering arsehole were to fall from the ceiling, slap you in the face and pitch you something that didn’t match your predisposition or beliefs… you wouldn’t buy it.

And yet many affiliate marketers will try this technique regardless.

To give you an example of a particularly embarrassing howler I made in the past, I once tried to sell the angle of ‘dating at Christmas‘ to a target demo of 250,000 Jewish women – who weren’t necessarily even single.

Doesn’t sound like a profitable campaign, does it? No shit.

While my clanger is an extreme case, the mistake I was committing is the same that many marketers are committing every day. They try to sell a story, a concept, an idea, that simply isn’t relevant, wanted or desired.

When it fails, what do we blame? Probably a bad offer that didn’t convert, or a banner that didn’t draw enough clicks. Rarely do we criticize the story being told. We’re reluctant to question the authenticity of our sales message, and how it might be received by the people with the pleasure of experiencing our ads. Why are we so deluded? Because that shit takes skill! It’s no lazy man’s cup of tea to connect with real people.

We too often take it for granted that our target markets are packed to the ceiling with numb nuts who need only see a “Click to Order Now” to part with their cash.

There’s a real lack of authentic storytelling.

What happened to that priceless ability to sell not by preaching what the user doesn’t give a shit about, but by tapping in to their beliefs and convincing them that Product X is who they are?

The best sellers in the business rarely sell. They reassure. They mould their products in to extensions of the customer’s belief systems. Sometimes those beliefs are deluded, stupid or wrong; but the customer never is. Selling requires that you embrace that insanity and shine a light on it.

How effectively are your landing pages selling the story behind your product?

Yesterday I found myself scanning through the holy motherload of landing page collections.

It’s probably not the most glamorous way to spend a weekend – peering shamelessly at the work of other affiliate marketers – but it’s an excellent source of inspiration, and a reminder of the thousand scandalous ways to skin a cat.

What struck me is that while our industry never tires of finding new and inventive ways to build trust – usually through association and brand misdirection – there are very few affiliate marketers who truly ‘get’ the art of selling.

You sense that affiliates are making money in spite of their copy and headlines, rather than because of them. That’s a testament to some of the sick creative minds out there, and their ability to find the perfect amount of cleavage that steers clear of the Facebook Banhammer while still popping a monster CTR.

I do have to wonder though, from a career advancement perspective, what is going to take you further? A library of 56,000 high-CTR 110x80s… or the ability to use words that spark conversions through the power of classic story-telling?

The next time you launch a campaign that bombs in the first hour, resist the urge to throw new offers, images and landing pages at the wall. Ask, instead, if your message is consistent. Is the total sum of your product benefits a person that the target user would want to be?

If the answer is no, you’ve sold the wrong story.

Recommended This Week

Make sure you grab your copy of the newly released Premium Posts Volume 5. It’s the perfect tonic for anybody wanting to crack Internet Marketing on a shoestring budget.
Also be sure to check out Adsimilis, the official sponsor of Premium Posts Volume 5. Adsimilis is one of the most effective networks in the world for a CPA marketer to sink his teeth in to. They are particularly dominant in the dating vertical, with industry leading payouts. If you are a dating affiliate, you need to be on Adsimilis. Simples.

Take Amazing Courses for Free with Leading Universities

Jun 19 2012

What price do you put on your education? I’m not talking about the remnants of factoids you may – or may not – stumble across on this blog. I’m talking about real education, the kind handed out by meticulous professors with sagging beards and white coats.

Thanks to the Internet, learning new skills and advancing your expertise has never been easier. It’s as simple as point, Google, click and digest.

How I Became an Internet Scumbag

Before I evolved in to an affiliate marketer, I was a sloth-like web developer.

Admission: I say evolved, in reality it was more like a Big Bang. A collision between entrepreneurial dreams and the revelation that money truly did grow on trees. Google Money Trees, to be precise.

Before I was a web developer, I was a high school drop-out with too much time on my hands.

I wouldn’t exactly say that I’ve trailblazed my way in to self-employment. A better description would be that I’ve fumbled through the darkness, made a shit ton of mistakes, but ultimately managed to teach myself just enough to make a good living online.

One of the websites that made it all possible was VTC. Now, when you look at VTC today, it may seem a little outdated and slightly tattered around the edges. But back in 2005, VTC was my primary source of education for a career in web development.

As a drop out with a handful of GCSEs and no further education, I relied solely on VTC to teach me the basics of coding; from PHP to JavaScript and basic HTML. I used the site to get an understanding of tools like Photoshop. And it was through that limited binge of squirreled self-teaching that I managed to land a job as a web developer.

I watched video after video after video for a period of at least six months. It was the ‘almost-free’ alternative to a fortune spent attending physical classes.

Looking back, the site has probably shaped why I’m so dismissive of the academic route in to any career that involves a computer. You can find the information online for a lot cheaper than what it costs to attend University.

Sites like VTC and Lynda gave me the platform and the vital skill-set to move seamlessly in to affiliate marketing. I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. The industry was booming, and I merely had to hold on to the gravy train to steal my first break.

The point I’m rather ambiguously trying to make here is that education is always on your doorstep, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. While I used sites like VTC and Lynda to inadvertently guide my career towards Internet Marketing, there are now even greater courses available. And those courses are the reason for this post. They are too fucking awesome to miss out on, so you need to hear about them.

The Rise of Open Courses

A few weeks ago on StackThatMoney, my attention was drawn to a selection of online modules that mark the next great advance in distance learning. These are high quality courses, taught by world-class professors with full integration of the modern digital web.

Take Coursera for example. Coursera offers free courses from some of America’s most renowned Universities. You could learn computer science from Stanford, or model thinking from the University of Michigan, or how about an introduction to genome science from Penn? That’s genome science for Christ’s sake! You’re not supposed to try that shit at home. But now you can.

It’s clear that high quality distance learning now extends far beyond the grainy PHP tutorials I used to watch. You can get an introduction to just about anything if you shop around.

Even Harvard is getting in on the act. The closest I ever thought I’d get to a Harvard brainfart was in those two hours I spent living vicariously through Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.

Another site that offers a great interactive learning experience is Udacity. While Coursera takes the traditional route of heavy lecturing, Udacity places the priority on getting you to build workable solutions.

One course walks you through the building of a search engine from scratch, while another covers the complete development of a web browser. Udacity is rightly praised for turning the learning experience in to a practical examination of your skills. It forces you to build and develop. So if you can’t handle endless theory and lecture, it may be worth a look.

Apple Smells the Opportunity

If you needed any further evidence that distance learning is about to evolve spectacularly, look no further than Apple’s showcasing of iTunes U.

Having such a wealth of information on a phone or tablet in your pocket should be great reason for excitement. It certainly is for me, and I don’t even have an iPhone (although this is the sort of technology that could make me sell out).

The age old excuse of “I don’t have the skills to move my career forward” is finally being tarred as the bullshit it always was. There’s truly no excuse for accepting defeat and spending a lifetime in a career that you’re unhappy with.

Admittedly, there are some career choices that are always going to require the traditional road through Academia. A surgeon should never qualify to tamper with somebody’s guts by virtue of watching a few video streams. Even if they’re in HD.

But for most people reading this blog, all the information you could ever need to increase your expertise and broaden your prospects is sitting in the cloud, waiting to be tapped. What are you waiting for?

Recommended This Week

Make sure you grab your copy of the newly released Premium Posts Volume 5. It’s the perfect tonic for anybody wanting to crack Internet Marketing on a shoestring budget.
Also be sure to check out Adsimilis, the official sponsor of Premium Posts Volume 5. Adsimilis is one of the most effective networks in the world for a CPA marketer to sink his teeth in to. They are particularly dominant in the dating vertical, with industry leading payouts. If you are a dating affiliate you need to be on Adsimilis. Simples.

Angle Creation: How to Juice Your Campaigns

Jun 13 2012

Affiliate marketing is all about creating angles. It’s about playing cupid between merchant and customer, finding the common ground where the two parties can be brought together in profitable matrimony.

Creating angles is the part of affiliate marketing that I enjoy the most. It’s the brainsplurging stage where I sit down with a blank whiteboard, scribble the offer in the center, and then force myself to concoct dozens of incentives and selling points for that offer.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons for offer burnout is plain uninspired thinking. If 1000 affiliates choose an offer and run with the first angle they think off, there’s likely to be a bottleneck where most people lose.

If, however, you take the time to venture beyond the tried and tested angles, you can come up with some creative takes that will prolong the lifetime of your campaigns – and therefore your sanity.

What Makes a Good Angle?

Not all angles are created equal. Some have better hooks by nature when it comes to producing a desired action.

If you’ve ever read Ca$hvertising, you’ll be aware of the Life Force 8.

The Life Force 8 consists of eight very basic human needs that are hard-wired in to each and every one of us. They don’t need to be sold to us. They exist by default.

Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension.
Enjoyment of food and beverages.
Freedom from fear, pain, and danger.
Sexual companionship.
Comfortable living conditions.
To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses.
Care and protection of loved ones.
Social approval.

A campaign angle can consist of just about any hook you can imagine. But to really get under the skin of your target market, the angle should embrace one or more of the Life Force 8 factors.

These aren’t wants. They are needs.

Let’s use my favourite example, RichMen.com, to show how angles can be constructed out of thin air.

Now, I’ve trolled the RichMen dating offer. I’ve spied thousands of ads, read hundreds of different ad copies. Through it all, I’ve been pretty vocal about the fact that I think most affiliates ‘phone in’ these ads. They rarely get their creativity out of second gear.

The default angle used by most affiliates is broody gold-digger seeks wealthy fancypants. While that may be a perfectly viable take on the offer, it’s also a bottleneck waiting to happen.

I’d say 80% of affiliates scramble to make coin from the same 20% of ideas.

They enter new verticals and go for the lowest hanging fruit, not appreciating that there’s a crush in the market because every other beginner is working on the same Plan A.

When you brainstorm your angles, it’s often a good idea to discard the first 2 or 3 ideas that come to mind for popular offers. Why? Because your first 2 or 3 ideas are going to lead you in to that bottleneck, in to the crush.

How to Easily Source New Angles

So, going back to RichMen.com, assuming we avoid the original gold-digger angle, how can we come up with new and exciting angles that other affiliates haven’t already beaten to death?

An easy method is to take your offer and stack it up against the Life Force 8.

Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension.

“Joining Rich Men… gives you the chance to meet a man who will get you out of the rat race, let you retire early, let you enjoy the peace and freedom you’ve earned for yourself.”

Enjoyment of food and beverages.

“Joining Rich Men… is your ticket to be wined and dined. No more scoffing takeaway with a derelict Stella swigger who answers you only in grunts. Drink the finest sparkling champagne in the city with a mouthwatering date!“

Freedom from fear, pain, and danger.

“Joining Rich Men… removes your fear of living from pay check to pay check, of wondering who is going to pay your 13 year old daughter’s University bill. Rest easy with a man who can take care of you!”

Sexual companionship.

“Joining Rich Men… will put the spark back in your bedroom. These men are confident passionate winners and the only thing bigger than their wallets is, well…”

Comfortable living conditions.

“Joining Rich Men… is a commitment to the life you’ve always wanted and deserved. Does this mansion look big enough for you? Can you imagine the walk-in closet space? Find a man who has room for your shoes.”

To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses.

“Joining Rich Men… is a statement that you only settle for the best. Imagine the look on your colleagues’ faces when you introduce them to Mr. Right. That’s your Mr. Right.”

Care and protection of loved ones.

“Joining Rich Men… will give your child the best possible upbringing, and the best chances in life. It’s tough out there. Meet a man who’s already made it. You only deserve the best.”

Social approval.

“Joining Rich Men… will finally put an end to the smug gloating of your married friends. Bag a Prince Charming, fall in love, and watch how green it turns them! These guys are IMPOSSIBLE to find elsewhere.”

Now, some of these examples are a little crude, offensive, sexist, whatever. But my point is that by keeping the Life Force 8 in mind, you can easily brainstorm and stretch an offer in to multiple different forms.

Once you’ve chosen an angle that you’re happy with, you can then worry about getting the pitch of the copy right, not offending anybody, and adjusting your voice to the style of the market. That’s the difficult part, but it’s usually the step that comes before success.

Plug in Your Eyes and Ears

I often say that the many niches of affiliate marketing are trapped in the vision of a male twenty-something scumbag. That’s the typecast demographic of the average affiliate marketer, and we tend to see the world through our own eyes – for better or worse.

Most landing pages look and read as if they’ve been written by… well, the kind of person we’d expect to have written them. For dating offers aimed at 25 year old horny men, that can be a good thing. For parental offers aimed at 40 year old single mums, it’s definitely a bad thing.

So, this is an important point:

Angles exist outside your own mind.

Yes, they do. Some of the greatest selling angles known to man (or woman) are foreign to us because we are in radically different life situations.

For example, an affiliate marketer who has been sitting on his arse for 4 years, never having to commute, never having to engage in office politics… is going to slowly disconnect from the professional lifestyle. He’ll forget what it felt like to be struggling in that day job. It’s one of the reasons, in my opinion, why so many affiliate marketers start in the bizopp niche and then move in to new verticals over time.

How many blogs have you seen from ‘Warriors’ looking to make money by posting about their journey to make money? Some of them are relatively successful, because if a Warrior knows anything, it’s how to struggle for a living online. And that struggle sells. It’s not the shit they post about that drives the comments and sales, it’s the shared struggle of we’re in this together.

It’s easy for me to sit here and judge. But the reality is that just because a Warrior Forum moneymaking angle is alien to me, that doesn’t mean it’s any less valuable. Okay, it probably is less valuable. But the insight in to people is not.

It’s the same for all the Work at Home Mom blogs. I find them to be pretty weak imitations of the better marketing blogs out there. But then I have to bring myself back down to reality and remember that it’s not the marketing advice that’s being sold. It’s the lifestyle. It’s a shared sentiment that has no relevance to me, but is powerful nonetheless.

The WAHM gimmick is an angle that exists outside the scope of my own mind, until I wake up enough to focus on it, to view the market conditions from outside my own life situation.

You can’t afford to trap the world in your own eyes. Your eyeballs need to be hanging vacantly in the middle of the street, soaking up conversation and watching the shit out of people. You need to be listening to their needs, acting on their desires, and transmuting that information in to a body of work that smells less like the aforementioned twenty-something scumbag in disguise.

Good angle creation is rarely about agreeing with something, or holding any kind of positive or negative sentiment towards it.

It’s about spotting the way people see themselves and living vicariously through them for a few sweet seconds. If you can translate their least public thoughts in to ad copy and images on a page, you stand a good chance of controlling the next move.

Recommended This Week

Make sure you grab your copy of the newly released Premium Posts Volume 5. It’s the perfect tonic for anybody wanting to crack this industry on a shoestring budget.
Also be sure to check out Adsimilis, the official sponsor of Premium Posts Volume 5. Adsimilis is one of the most effective networks in the world for a CPA marketer to sink his teeth in to. They are particularly dominant in the dating vertical, with industry leading payouts. If you are a dating affiliate you need to be on Adsimilis. Simples.