Promoting Affiliate Products To compete effectively in large markets for affiliate products, you need to focus, focus, focus.

For this column, I am addressing a question that Izak, one of my readers, recently sent me. His question reflects a common problem people have when they're first starting out. Here's what he's currently wrestling with:

"I have designed a website for the sole purpose of advertising affiliate products. I have six affiliate products on different pages on the same website that are in the same category like wellness, health and beauty. However my problem is how to write the sales copy or introduction page with the correct wording to attract visitors and buyers."

First, I'd like to point out that "wellness, health and beauty" are huge markets. After plugging each of those terms into Google, I received the following results:

• Health: 1.76 billion results
• Wellness: 173 million results
• Beauty: 1.06 billion results

You'll never achieve success if you set up a general website promoting products that treat a variety of health, wellness and beauty problems. You're going up against far too many competing sites.

And you'll never be able to write the kind of highly targeted sales copy you need to attract qualified visitors to your site. For example, someone who's looking for organic wrinkle cream isn't in the same market as someone looking for a naturopathic treatment for Crohn's disease--and you can't build a website that effectively sells to both of those people.

So if you want a chance at competing in these incredibly large markets, you need to do three things: focus, focus and focus.

1. Focus on your individual product pages, not on your main homepage.
2. Focus on one specific problem that each of those individual products solves.
3. Focus your pay-per-click and search marketing efforts so that every ad and article you write addresses that one specific problem and takes visitors straight to the landing page for the product that solves that problem.

In other words, you need to divide and conquer. The best way to guarantee your online success is to make sure each of your affiliate product pages appeals to a highly targeted group of people. The more targeted your affiliate product pages, the more easily you'll be able to:

• Speak directly to your target market;
• Rank in the search engines for your keywords;
• Dominate a corner of your market; and
• Establish yourself as an expert in your field.

So start off by looking at one product at a time. Look at the different health or beauty problems it claims to solve. Then determine which of these problems a significant number of people are actively trying to solve.

Keep in mind that when people search for solutions online, they enter keywords into the search engines. You can find out exactly what words people are searching with--and how often--using online keyword research tools such as Wordtracker.com and KeywordDiscovery.com.

What problems are people searching for information about? And what specific keyword phrases are they using? Look for problem statement keywords that include query words like "how" or "tips." Keep your eyes open for keyword phrases that are getting a lot of searches, but don't have a lot of strong competition for them.

Follow up on your keyword research by visiting health and beauty-related blogs, forums and groups to see if people are talking about these problems and what they're saying about them. What problems are they having a hard time solving? What do they like about the solutions that are currently available and what do they wish they could find?

Question-and-answer sites like Yahoo! Answers can also provide a goldmine of information. Not only can you find out the specific questions that are being asked, but you can also find out how well those questions are being answered.

Once you have identified a problem that a lot of people are trying to find solutions for, but without any luck, then you'll know the problem that should be the focus of your sales copy and marketing efforts for that particular product.

Once your targeted marketing efforts are generating a steady stream of qualified traffic to that particular product page, it's time to move on to your next affiliate product page and focus it on one specific problem.

I know it's tempting to want to describe your health products as the ultimate cure-all for everything from skin problems to obesity, but people who are searching for skin care products aren't searching for obesity products--and you simply can't create an effective page that appeals to both.

Once again, online success is all about focus. I can't emphasize this enough. You'll make far more money trying to sell to a small but highly targeted group of people than you can ever possibly hope to make selling to everyone.

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