7 Ways to Make Your Site Less Like a Salesman
When you create a site online ~ any site, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a lens, a niche site or an authority site you are much more likely to make sales if you don’t come off like a salesman. Most people have been in the situation where they wanted something and had someone try to SELL it to them. That’s not a great feeling. SELLING can truly lead to diminished sales. People want to make their own decisions, they want to feel like they made the choice to buy something. They don’t want to feel like you pushed them, bullied them or guilted them into buying something (even if they wanted it). Being able to reach this fine balance is really important when it comes to your niche blog. Here are some things you can do to make your site sell without being a smarmy salesman.
Tone:
The tone you take comes from a lot of things. Your theme, your content, the amount of banners/stuff on your page. I try to be a “trusted friend” when I’m making a website. Someone who the reader can trust to receive quality information from, and will buy from because they trust me. Yes, this is what I try to do on any and every piece of content I put online.
Quick story:
A couple years ago my mom needed a new car. She wanted a Prius. She was ready to BUY the Prius, she just wanted to drive it and ask a couple questions. (This is where many buyers are. They just want to assuade their fears, and make themselves feel good that they are making a good purchasing decision). So we all jumped in the truck and headed to the Prius dealer. (I was thinking about getting a Prius too, so I wanted to go along).
We get there and the sales guy brings the Prius around (we pack the car seat in lol) and start rolling. The guy is really overbearing, interrupting, condescending and generally not very pleasant to be around. My mom asked her few questions and made some statements which the guy quickly rolled his eyes and then told her she was wrong. YIKES. Not a smart move with my mom.
I can see my mom up there getting really pissed. Her fists are clenched, she’s holding her breath, and the guy just keeps going on and on, not letting her get a word in edgewise. He’s SELLING her the car. Problem is she was already SOLD on the car and now he’s just UNSOLD her, with his bad attitude.
She gets back to the dealership and gets out of this Prius she’s been waiting so long to buy. Walks to the Nissan dealership and without even driving it buys a new Nissan.
That guy MESSED up. YOUR tone makes all the difference in the world. Watch how you are talking to people on your website. Every element of your website. Are you being a trusted friend/advisor or are you being the Prius dealer?
About page:
This goes along with being a trusted friend/advisor. People like to see that there is a real person behind a website. Put up an about page. Give people a way to contact you. If you don’t know much about the topic you’re writing about keep it simple, we’re here to give you the best information and resources on ____ fill in the blank. If you’re familiar with your topic ~ tell your story. The more you can be a real person on this site the better. Let people know you, and you will go farther.
Affiliate links:
Now this one’s more for google than your readers, but it’s still important. Yes, of course you’re going to link to affiliate products ~ that’s the benefit for you of making this site ~ making money. However, Google does not fall in love with affiliate sites easily. You want to make it easier for Google to fall in love with your site too. You can do this by cloaking your affiliate links. (This also makes it harder for people to steal your commissions). You’ve already installed the simple link cloaker plugin. This is a very simple plugin to use. You go get your affiliate link. (make sure it’s JUST the link ~ not any html with it. So it will be http://youraffilaitelink.com/?2944 (or whatever). Go to your dashboard and then to settings you’ll see simple link cloaker there. Click it.
From here you can create a link that will look like part of your site but will point to your affiliate product. You can create whatever name you want for the link. In the first box you create your link. Mine might look like this:
/buy/giantmountainbike
then in the second box I put my affiliate link ~ just paste it right in there.
Hit ok, and now whenever you want to link to that affiliate product you just put /buy/giantmountainbike in the pop up box that comes up when you click the anchor text icon. Your link when someone hovers over it will be:
www.mountainbikeforsale/buy/giantmountainbike
This will not look like an affiliate link to either your readers or google. Very nice little plugin. You also won’t have to keep track of all your affiliate links ~ they’ll be right there when you need them.
Linking out:
Have you ever seen a non affiliate site that DOESN’T link to other good stuff? This is the biggest giveaway to google that you are an affiliate site. This may sound counterintuitive, but I’m telling you to do it anyway.
Go to google. Put in your topic keyword. Look at the top sites in the results. Now go to your blogroll area and link to them. Don’t use YOUR main keyword but use something related, or the name of the product/service. When you’ve got 10 or 15 of these in your blogroll add your blogroll to your sidebar.
I know, I know, you’re yelling Jackie have you lost your mind??? I can’t link to the competition. I’ll lose my traffic! What about link leakage?
Google will love you for this ~ with no affiliate links, and links to other quality relevant sites google is going to be impressed with you, and will reward you with better rankings. Your site will be seen as a “real” quality site and not just a thinly veiled attempt to make sales. So yes, I definitely say do it!
Make it so your links out are at the bottom of your sidebar, so people won’t see them as easily. It wll be ok. Promise. The little traffic you may lose will be compensated by the better rankings and the more traffic you get from that.
Video:
Adding video can be a fun and easy way to provide more information to your readers and more content while looking even LESS like an affiliate site! How many affiliate sites do you know that add videos to their posts? It’s a great idea. I encourage you to look around youtube for some videos that will match your topics. If you have a good working knowledge of your topic you can even make your own video. This is a great way to build authority in your niche. When you’re grabbing the embed code from youtube, just tick the box that says something like turn off related videos. That way you won’t have links to other videos (off your page) at the end of the video.
Disclosure/Privacy Policy
If you’re going to be using adsense on your site you must have a privacy policy in place. You can create one here. Once it’s created just copy the code they give you. Go to your dashboard, click “add new” under the PAGE area (not the post area) and then click the html tab and paste the content in there. click save and you’re done.
Disclosure. With the new FTC regulations it’s important to have a disclosure policy as well. A disclosure policy simply tells people that you will make a commission if they purchase through your links. You can create one here. You may want to add your own verbage in addition to this outline, but this will get you started.
The disclosure policy is still so new I’m not sure what level of disclosure is truly necessary. Make sure at minimum you’ve got a sitewide disclosure policy on your site. You can put it on the same page as your privacy policy if you want.
Content:
This kind of goes along with tone, but it’s really the most important thing. Not only for getting rankings but for getting sales. If you can stop thinking about “making the sale” while you write your content and focus more on “solving a problem” for your reader your content is going to be a million times better. Stop thinking “how do I write copy that sells” and just start writing good stuff that helps people out. (while doing as much on page optimization as you can). There are no magic words you can say that will sell stuff to a reader ~ it comes from being believable, being trustworthy, being a REAL. Remember, no matter what your niche you’re targeting people. People who need something or have a problem are looking for some help. Cater to that need OVER your need to make a sale and you’ll be halfway there.
Stop thinking so much, stop worrying so much.
Start being yourself. Start being real. Start writing like you are answering your best friend’s question and you’ll be fine.
I’ve covered a lot in this post. Feel free to ask questions below and if we need more room for discussion we can always take it over to the fanpage.
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Jackie, because I sell physical products I have never bothered with the link cloaker but I can see that perhaps I should be. I know that CJ has a link cloaker of sorts, I’ve never actually used that option when getting links but I shall take a look at it next time I’m link-gathering.
I note that some people have much “prettier” selling links than I do!
You’re right about the Disclosure policy being so new no one really has a handle on it yet. The advise I’m getting from SBI who are usually really good on making sure you know what you need to know is – ensure you have a link on each page that goes to your Disclosure Policy. That should fulfill the requirement of making it “visible” – I can’t remember what Google’s exact words were.
On wordpress this will work by doing a page as I mentioned ~ your page will show up in the navigation tab at the top of the page giving a link on each page. (you can see mine at the top of this site as well). If your theme doesn’t put pages across the top (and some don’t) you can use a widget and put the pages in your sidebar ~ which will also give a link on each page.
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Hi Jackie,
Thanks for the info. If it’s a blogger.com blog, is there a free link cloaker you recommend?
I wish you and yours the best for 2010.
I used url freeze a year or so ago ~ it’s a nice alternative.
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As far as cloaking, I’ve been taking PPG’s advice and buying a url that I set to redirect to my affiliate link – mostly because this way I can use it on eZine in my resource box. That way I’m getting double duty from my articles – a back link to my lens/blog and also a direct affiliate link.
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Hi Jackie,
Now that’s the kind of detailed information I want to learn that most people don’t teach. Thank you for sharing that. Your the best!
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I like what you said about creating a nice about page and showing that there’s a real person behind the site. I must admit this is something I was lazy with, but now I think about it I can see what a difference it could make.
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Kelly,
You certainly can buy domains for your products ~ I don’t do that because I don’t want to pay for it ~ and I usually direct people to my blog from my articles. I also end up with tons of different products I’m promoting on my blogs (different mountain bikes etc) so it would not be financially reasonable to buy a domain for all of them. If you’re site is going to focus on one product that’s a great idea though.
Bernita ~ glad I could help
Ruth ~ it’s really something pretty simple (it doesn’t have to be a novel) you can do that makes a big difference. Make sure you add some way for them to contact you as well ~ get an email address for the niche ~ free gmail works or you can set up emails from your cpanel that match your url.
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Thanks for the privacy and disclosure resources – so easy!
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I agree with you about linking out to other sites. We learned this in Commission Ritual and it really does work! Sure you might lose a few visitors BUT google loves it and sees you more as an authority site. It makes it much easier to get on Page 1.
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Wow. This reminds of a story I read from the World’s Greatest Car Salesman. Joe Girarde or something like that I think.
Joe told the story of a fellow going in to buy a Cadillac. The guy had a son on the football team and was telling Joe about his son. Joe kept trying to sell him a car. After a bit the fellow left and told Joe he would let him know.
A few days later Joe saw him driving a new Cadillac. Joe calls him asked he did not buy from him. The fellow says to Joe, “I wanted to tell you about my son and you wanted to sell me a car. So I bought a car from a guy that cared about me and not about selling me a car.”
Joe said he never forgot that and became the best friend of every customer after that. What ever they talked about he talked about.
Great advice. Thank you for the reminder.
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Jackie:
It is so true that one can learn something new every day in Internet Marketing! Some true gems you have offered up here.
One thing I try to address in all my ’sales’ pages is to think like my reader and address any objections they may have in their minds well before they reach the ‘call to action.” (Trust and integrity come with the turf of course.)
I was involved in direct sales for several years with different products. I was always taught to do more listening than talking. Hard to apply online, but, if one spends more time in their prospects shoes, it will usually translate well.
Thank you for all you do.
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Hey Al ~ just remember these blog posts aren’t “sales pages”. There is a huge difference between the two. I agree it’s good to spend time in your reader’s shoes and think about what they are concerned about or thinking about. This can be a good way to help them feel comfortable about their buying decision.
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Hi Jackie!
Another great post!
I have a question that’s a little off topic. I’ve been waiting almost a month to get manual approval for an advertiser at Commission Junction. It’s an advertiser whose products I’d like to promote on the blog we’re creating. I’ve had this happen before. Is there any way to speed up this process?
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I realized I forgot to ask about the link cloaker, is there a way to add more than the 3 links showing?
Thanks
Chad
you can add as many as you want. The three there will always be blank when you come to it. If you have more than three to do at once just save the first three then you’ll get another set of three blanks.
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I’m a little surprised content is last; that’s the best way to appease Google, especially on affiliate sites.
Dennis ~ they were in no particular order. They are all important. It might be important to appease google, but if you piss off your readers they aren’t going to buy anything ~ so everything has its place and I can’t put everything first on the page
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Quite true, but piss off Google and you might not have customers to piss off lol; depending on how much you depend on SE traffic.
Hi Jackie
A very good post again. I am wondering… how many affiliate links should you really have in a post? I visited a site earlier today in the same niche as mine and although this person has very good, informative content, sometimes every third, fourth word is an affiliate link.
It seems she is also an affiliate for a lot of product supply sites in this niche if I look to all the banners in the sidebar.
In nearly every post she also links back to her hubpages where there are just as many affiliate product links. If I look at all the comments she receives, I can see who is making money and it is definitely not me!
How does one decide how many links are “tasteful” and will not scare your visitors away and also not get you into trouble with Google?
If you only have one affiliate link in a post, won’t it affect your sales efforts when older posts are continuously replaced by new posts and when you do not submit every post to bookmarking sites?
And is it really so bad to have a few product related affiliate banners in the sidebar of your blog?
Elsie
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Jackie, I’m a little confused about the blogroll and link to other sights. Am I keeping the links invisible until I have gotten 10-15 of them? Does it still count to google if there invisible?
Thanks
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Elsie,
How did you feel when you went to the site that had so many links? Every site and every niche is going to be different how many links is appropriate. That’s something you’re going to have to test as time goes on. It will take some testing to determine what’s right for your specific site.
As your site grows authority your pages will rank without as much effort. The overall site authority will help them. Here’s an example: I wrote a post on how to write reviews ~ the same day, only a few hours later that post was ranking on page 1 (or page 2 depending on who you are lol) without me doing anything. It got a few retweets, but not that many ~ and of course I have the RSS feed for this site submitted so it gets a few links there, but I didn’t do anymore work.
Now if this is going to be a niche site you will be working on linking for each post so that each post will rank, so it will not matter if it is no longer on the front page, the links in google will go directly to that specific page.
@Bernita ~ You want to post them in the sidebar. No it won’t count if they are invisible. I guess I assumed people would just go find the links all at once.
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@Elsie – were these true affiliate ;inks, like she inserted them herself? Or were they the ultra annoying “in-context” links delivered by companies like Kontera and Infolinks?
Jackie – Although I personally did not like the amount of links in every post, I found that if a person is really looking for specific products in this niche and want to buy everything online, there would be no need to search further than this site. Everything is right there in front of you in every post.
@Dennis – She uses “real” affiliate links… products on Ebay, Amazon as well as various other sites that sells products related to her niche.
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Elsie – does she actually promote herself as a product supplier for the niche? If not, and without even seeing the blog I think I can say, that’s waaay too many links.
Jackie,
I’d like to add a video from youtube to my site but how do you do that? I see where there is an insert video but it doesn’t seem to accept the embedded link from youtube. What am I doing wrong?
Michele
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I forgot to say that I’m trying to add the video to my wordpress site.
Thanks,
Michele
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Find the video you want at youtube ~ on the right side you’ll see “embed code” copy that. Then go back to your site ~ click the “html” tab at the top and then paste the code in where you want the video to show up.
Click back to the compose tab and it will show the outline where the video will be. It won’t show the actual there ~ but if you click the preview button you’ll be able to see it.
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Sorry for all the questions I found a plugin for wordpress that makes it easy to add youtube and other videos it is Viper’s Video Quicktags.
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yeah I have that installed on this blog but still never use it lol.
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@Michele – thanks for the plugin info.
Jackie,
I’m not sure where to post this question but here goes. I created a Wordpress niche site based on your guidelines and I used the cloaking facility as suggested (I’m not entirely comfortable with this as the Amazon URL seems to drop my ID tag along the way although it appears in the cloaking definition). My question is: having cloaked my Amazon URLs, how would an Amazon widget affect the thinking of the search engines?
Interesting: I’ve not promoted the site at all and yet I notice that Google has been all over it.
Thanks a million for all the info – I’m starting to develop a guilt complex!
You know I’ve thought about that as well ~ and I’m not sure how that’s going to affect things. Thus far I haven’t seen any problems with it. It’s just one more thing that can give you a little boost ~ if you’re not comfortable with the cloaker then don’t use it.
It’s not going to kill your site ~ I only recently started using a cloaker on my sites and have done fine up until now. 
If the site you’re talking about is the one you’ve linked to in your comment you ARE promoting it ~ you just didn’t think of it that way.
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Jackie-
First I wanna say Thank you! I love your blog. I get behind and have been catching up but I learn so much from you.
Some questions:
-I have (as you can see) a blog on Blogger. I added the Disclosure you have the link to by adding a new page. But when I go to my blog I don’t see where it is?
-Also, the link cloaking. I don’t quite understand how that works. Can I just use a link cloaking site like this- http://www.addme.com/linkcloaker.htm? Then how would I use that on Blogger?
-And if you’re using html to cover up the fact that it’s a link why do you need to cloak it?
Thanks for all the great info. I do appreciate it.
Laura
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I’m not sure how you add pages at blogger and make them show up. To tell you the truth I’ve never done it.
I’ll look around and see what I can figure out.
I’m not sure how that addme site really cloaks your links ~ it looks to me like it just creates html so I don’t know about that. ~ sorry. You can use a site like urlfreeze.com to cloak your links ~ it just helps you not get commissions stolen. Well, about your last question, when people get to the sales page they can see it’s an affiliate link and can swap out your aff id for their own thereby robbing you of your commission and saving themselves some money.
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