Imagine that as soon as you walked into an electrical store, the salesperson came up to you and screamed “Buy the Sony 42 inch Plasma TV!“. Would you buy it? Probably not. Add in to the scenario the salesperson wearing a badge that read “I receive 20% of sales” and you’d probably find yourself walking out the door.

The scenario may sound a little ridiculous, but the exact same situation is played out everyday in the world of online marketing. Many marketers are making the mistake of hitting you right away with a hyped up article about the latest product and immediately giving you an affiliate link so that they can earn their commission.

Does it work? Sometimes. It’s a numbers game and if just 0.01% of people make the purchase, they’ll make a little cash if they can put their product in front of a million faces. It sounds enticing as 0.01% of one million is still 100 people purchasing the product! The problem lies in the difficulties associated with actually reaching one million people. The internet is huge, but there’s also a lot of competition for screen time!

The result of this is that online marketers will do whatever they can to get their product “in your face” and this is why a lot of online marketing comes down to “list building” and creating a downline.

However, as those that are actually making a decent living online will tell you - it’s all about the presell of the product! Banners and landing pages are nowhere near as effective as building a loyal readership and creating a group of people who trust you enough to part with their hard earned cash.

The salesperson at the start of this post may sell one TV a month, but the salesperson who builds a rapport with his customers and earns their trust through giving them his own personal experiences will sell hundreds!

Perdro Sardinha is an online marketer who wants to sell in hundreds too so he ordered a review of his online marketing blog to get some tips and exposure. He needs a lot of work on the presell so let’s get ready to pimp out Pedro’s page and pump a little more power into his sales pitches!

Marketing starts at the About page

The most popular page on almost any blog is the About page. Why? Because that’s where all your new visitors will go to find out what your site is about and judge whether they are interested or not. Here’s Pedro’s:

It’s quite obvious that this page is lacking in a number of areas. It does nothing to tell a visitor anything about the site or the author and doesn’t even explain what the purpose of the site is. Without an explanation of this nature, it is difficult for a reader to quickly judge the theme of the site and decide whether they are interested or not.

What it does have is a link to subscribe to the site. However, how can people be expected to subscribe to a site when they don’t know what it is about? It’s quite a good idea to have the subscription link in the About page, but it should only be done after you have explained the site and given visitors enough information to conclude whether they are interested or not.

Not only would that increase subscribers to the site, it would also help build the “trust factor” of the site as visitors would not feel that they are being hit with a pushy salesperson.

In online marketing, you need to think of your About page as a sales page for your blog. How many readers you have will be determined by how well the About page converts. As your primary sales page, you need to put a lot of time into getting it just right and working towards achieving the goals of your blog.

The About page is where the marketing relationship starts.

How to build trust with your readership

One thing that stood out straight away to me on Pedro’s site was that nearly every post contained an affiliate link to an MLM program or Clickbank product. This gave the overall feeling of the front page as incredibly spammy and made the posts seem like the sort of messages that I try to filter out of my inbox.

As you search through the site, you’ll notice that a lot of Pedro’s posts contain lottery results with an encouragement to play. Seems innocent? Well, it costs about $10 per week to play and if you use his affiliate link Pedro will receive 20% of that. That’s a pretty good deal for him as it means he only has to refer five people and any extra referrals become pure passive income.

However, having lottery posts on an online marketing blog is obviously out of place and stands out easily as containing affiliate links and being a sales post. The funny thing is that the lottery program is actually quite a good deal and Pedro could probably get more referrals by explaining the affiliate program honestly and encouraging others to join as affiliates.

The onslaught of affiliate links in the posts takes a lot of the “trust” away from the site and makes it quite impersonal.

To build trust on the site, Pedro should mix up the marketing posts with informative lessons and personal insights in order to build a relationship with his readers and gain their trust. As the site is now, we know very little about Pedro and his marketing knowledge so it becomes quite a leap of faith to try any products that he recommends.

As an illustration, consider why dot com mogul John Chow writes about his dining experiences on his blog. Is it just filler to pad out the sponsored posts? Not at all. Having personal posts builds trust and accountability with his audience so that conversions are better when he recommends a program with his affiliate links.

In Pedro’s case, he could build trust by sometimes writing about which programs don’t work and that he doesn’t recommend. This would make what he does recommend have a lot more credibility.

Here’s an example of one of Pedro’s posts:

This post is great example of where trust can be built. Instead of just saying “No, it is not!“, Pedro could have gone into detail explaining why it isn’t a fraud and how he has found success through his personal experiences with the program. This provides a lot more value to the reader and increases their interest in the program.

It shouldn’t always be about affiliate links all the time. If you take some time out to talk to your potential customers, they will value the relationship and provide you with a valuable business!

If there are too many choices, it is difficult to make one!

Do you know why most sales pages are long slabs of text filled with relevant images and no sidebars or menus? Because it keeps the reader focused tight on the sales pitch and doesn’t provide any distractions for them!

As an online marketing blog, Pedro wants to make a lot of sales. The problem is that there are so many choices in his sidebar with regard to what sales page to go to that I found it difficult to choose a page in the first place!

Do I want “Autopilot Profits” or the “Internet Marketing Toolkit“. Should I purchase “Traffic For Success” or “Success University“? With so many choices and distractions, the visitors focus strays away from making a purchase and moves to searching for a page with value.

With most web users only having a very short attention span, you need to put the value in an obvious and easily accessible place.

The multitude of choices isn’t helped by the use of SnapShots and Kontera on the site either. It results in every link on the site giving an annoying pop-up and also lets the reader know that they’ll be going to a landing page before they’ve landed on it.

Finally, there’s the “Sign up for our newsletter” floater on the left of the page. Not only is it distracting, but it has to be one of the most annoying web elements that I’ve ever seen! Sure, it keeps the sign-up form constantly on the screen, but if the reader is annoyed there is less incentive for them to sign up! Sign up rates could be improved by providing a link to a page that explains the benefits and value of signing up before it is done. As it is now, a visitor knows nothing about what the newsletter provides and have no incentive to sign up.

It’s all about focus - if you’re shown two TVs, it is easy to compare which is better and find which one you want to buy. If you’re shown 50 TVs, the decision becomes a lot more difficult and an easier decision can be to leave the store!

Pedro will give you $2 to download his e-book

In amongst all the affiliate links and advertising, Pedro has one post that stands out as a great piece of marketing and provides value that 99% of e-book authors fail to provide.

Write a post about his e-book on your blog and he will pay you $2

That’s a great piece of marketing as it provides value to the reader and gives them an incentive to help him promote the e-book.

I’m sure he probably makes the money back through the affiliate links in the book, but it’s still a great piece of marketing that should be promoted more.

If I was Pedro, I’d make a banner for this promotion and put it right at the top of the front page on the site. Any site that will pay everyone $2 to just to write about definitely deserves the attention that it will get from the promotion!

The book takes you through some various programs that will help you build a mailing list and it’s 100% free to download so it is worth a look if you’re interested in building a list.

But remember how I previously discussed personal insights and building a relationship with the reader? Well that’s not Pedro on the cover of the book:

Obviously the snazzy looking guy in the suit is a bit of marketing hype and it works quite well. However, including a picture of the real Pedro creates uncertainty as to who the voice of the e-book is and I started to look around to see if the e-book was just a rebranded version of another one. While I couldn’t find anything, it took my attention away from the book and sent me away from the site!

Personally though, it doesn’t matter to me who wrote the book. If someone wants to pay me $2 to write about it - consider it written!

Closing the deal

Pedro has another site at topblogbox that he wants you to check it out but it’s basically another blog directory similar to Blogtopsites and there isn’t any information on the site to explain why it is useful.

Perdro’s blog is worth a visit if you want to get that free $2 but apart from that, it only really provides value if you like being hit with hype and affiliate links.

There is a strong lesson to be learned from the site - online marketing is not just giving affiliate links…it’s the presell, promotions and personality that lead to the purchase!

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