Affiliate marketing is getting harder and harder, due to the low level of entry (anyone can become your new competitor overnight). So it's important to convert as many of your precious visitors into paying customers.

Whilst you may be tempted to link all of your ads and articles to an affiliate offer (if you're lucky and this gets overlooked), the truth is that almost all of us affiliates need to send our hard earned traffic to a webpage that pre-sells that visitor on a particular product.

The traditional way to do this was to create a page that sung the praises of a certain affiliated product, which kind of worked but not amazingly. Why? Because it soon became obvious to the wise consumers that your gamelan was to straight up and sell them something.

Now, nobody likes being sold to. But people love to make up their own mind about their buying decisions. So were introduced methods of "totally unbiased" pre-selling, one of the most powerful being the review page.

The reason a review page works so well is because it doesn't just hard sell you on a specific product but instead gives you a choice, based on actual reasons why or why not a product is worth the money/time/effort and whether or not it is any good.

So if you're thinking of making more money as an affiliate marketer online, then I suggest you not only incorporate review pages into your sales process, but make sure you do it right using the following blueprint:

Step 1. The Headline

The headline will draw people in and create excitement and desire to continue reading. The headline must include a clear benefit and address the reader as personally as possible. Always state what they will be gaining from reading on, based on the specific problem that they are experiencing.

Step 2. The Body

The entire body is elaborating on the headline and getting the reader involved. This might include telling a short story (only needs to be a paragraph here), in order to connect with the reader, and give a clear reason why you've bothered to do a review of these particular products.

Step 3. The products

Many people still do a review on one product and leave nothing to compare it against. I think this is a big mistake, because a comparison of similar products will help prevent the reader from leaving your page to compare the product you've reviewed with similar products elsewhere. In other words, why not get them to do their entire research on your page instead?

Step 4. Believability

If you make out as if the winning product is perfect in every sense, then you'll lose sales. Why? Because people will believe a balanced review over a blatant sales pitch any day of the week. Pick out a few minor bad points and contrast them with the good points so as not to kill the sale.

Step 5. Call to action

Once you've written your reviews of each product, make the winning product the most prominent on the page, at the top before the fold. This will prevent visitors clicking away and will be able to clearly see which product is worth looking into. Make all of your links stand out, even on the losing products and be sure to use phrases that ask the visitor to take action, such as "click here to get rid of x..".

If you apply these techniques to your review pages, you can expect to increase your conversions significantly. What you really need to consider is that more people are doing review type pre-selling every day, so in order for you to stand out; I would highly recommend you do a proper review and not just a "fake" review where you are talking out of your behind! So, you would do well to actually buy the products you are reviewing and make balanced points good AND bad and simply let the visitor make the decision, not you.

If you follow this advice, I can assure you that you'll always be ahead of the competition by giving your visitors valuable help in buying through affiliate links. Trust me, your visitors will actually appreciate this more than you'd think, and you're still going to be picking up the affiliate pay checks at the end of the month too.

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