So let’s talk about other ways that you can get more traffic and hopefully more sales. One way that you can probably easily get more organic search engine traffic very quickly is to write on a trending topic. Pick a topic that is in the news right now and related to your subject matter somehow.

Write a blog post or a website on this topic and get some visitors to it – either by sending out a mailing to your list or utilizing some sort of a mastermind group to get people to come and check out your post. There are a lot of these on Facebook – you just need to find one that you fit in with.  Search for mastermind group or check out the Empowered Tribe (search in Facebook for empowered tribe).  Once some people go to your new page and maybe leave a comment or share it on Facebook Google will take notice and come over to see it and see if they want to index it.

Write on a truly trending topic – Google probably will not have a lot of pages in the index about this subject already and therefore it will send traffic to just about anyone who puts a page up.  If you pick a good topic then it may have a lot of searches for it already and Google could feasibly start sending you hundreds of visits a day within a few hours.

Another way to get more traffic is to do some article marketing. A great way to use article marketing is to write a fantastic resource on a subject that is related to your website, put it up on your website, and then put it up on ease ezinearticles and any other article directories that you like to use. When people choose your article and put it on their website then you automatically get easy links and possibly traffic via your resource box.

This becomes even more powerful if you can find online magazines that need a lot of content and have a lot of readers. Find them and contact them directly and tell them you have articles for syndication. They just need to keep your resource box intact. Once you have a list of online magazines or online content creators who are willing to publish your articles and who have traffic to send you then you have a source of traffic that can become even more powerful than Google.

Continue to look for new people to publish your syndicated content and continue to send your list out new content that they can use. People who publish syndicated content really like it to be long and excellent. Long means between 1000 and 1500 words.  If you are having a hard time finding people to publish your content, maybe ask some people exactly what they’re looking for and tweak your content accordingly.

Use these two methods to get more traffic to your website soon and do more of what works. More traffic doesn’t always mean more sales, but it frequently does. And sales are what we are looking for.

Pre-selling, if done correctly can increase conversions astronomically.

Consider these three scenarios:

1) If you were on my list and I were to send you an e-mail saying “check this out” and giving you a link. How likely do you think you would be to check it out? Not very likely probably. I know that I’m busy and if I had no reason to click on a link in my e-mail I am just going to delete the e-mail instead.

2) if I were to send you an e-mail about a product that you had no interest in or desire to buy and I were to give you a hard sell on it.  I told you all the great things about this product and why you should buy it NOW NOW NOW!  Like an infomercial.  Ha.  Again, I would probably just delete the e-mail if it were me. How about you?

3) if I were to send you an e-mail and you already knew me and trusted me and thought that I had your best interests at heart – and if I said in this e-mail “wow, I have been using this new product and it has been so great. This is what it has done for me and these are the reasons that I love it and I think maybe it can help you to. Check it out here. And then I put a link in there.

Would you click on that link? Yeah, you might.

Scenario number one is not anything. It’s spam. Scenario number two is selling – that’s not your job. Scenario number three is pre-selling and when it’s done right it works wonderfully. Not everyone is going to buy because not everybody is going to be interested – but the people who are interested will be more likely to click on your links if you use scenario number three and getting them to click on the link with a positive opinion of the product already in their head is 95% of the battle.

Pre-selling always involves getting the person who is reading the information to think about how this product will benefit them. Pre-selling also involves a friendly and conversational tone, like you were talking to a friend.

Even if you are creating a page to promote a physical product like gardening gloves or a swimsuit, you want to pre-sell – not sell. You want to talk about how wonderful this swimsuit is and how beautiful it looks on women. You want to be open and engaging and have a bit of a conversation in your page content.

Let’s look at this page
http://www.squidoo.com/bubble-chair-circle-and-ball-chairs-buy-stylish-round-furniture-online

That is a squidoo page where the sole purpose is to recommend bubble chairs in the hopes that someone will buy one.  See how light and friendly the words are?  This is pre-selling.

So always remember, it is your job as an affiliate to pre-sell – not to sell.  Give information – give lots of pictures – be friendly – and include lots of links so that your visitors can get over to the site and start buying whenever they want to.

Some companies will run their own affiliate programs so your checks will come directly from the company and all of your reporting will also be seen at the company website.

Other companies will run their affiliate programs through an affiliate network, which means that you will go to the affiliate network to get your links and to check your stats. Some companies will do both – they will have an in house program and the program through an affiliate network.

Probably the most famous in-house affiliate network is the Amazon Associates program. Amazon does all their own reporting and linking so if you want to be an Amazon affiliate you’ll have to go to Amazon.com and sign up to be an associate.

Now I will list the top five affiliate marketing networks – you may want to go to them and look around and see if they have any programs that you are interested in promoting.

Commission Junction http://www.cj.com/
Commission Junction is a very large affiliate network that has been around forever.

Linkshare http://www.linkshare.com/
Linkshare has also been around for a long time. The Walmart.com affiliate program and the iTunes affiliate program are some notable programs at linkshare.

Google Afiliate Network http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads/affiliatenetwork/
The Google affiliate network is actually relatively new to the affiliate scene.  But that doesn’t mean that they don’t know what they’re doing.

ShareaSale http://www.shareasale.com/
Shareasale specializes in small and medium-size businesses and places a special emphasis on fair business practices.

Clickbank  http://www.clickbank.com/index.html
Clickbanks sole purpose is not to provide a medium to bring companies and affiliates together like the other networks, but clickbank deserves a special mention here because of the large amount of digital items that are easily promoted by any affiliate.

So once you have found a product or two to promote on one or more of these affiliate networks that question now becomes how to effectively promote the product in a way that will ensure that you get the commission that you deserve.

Each of these affiliate networks will give you a specific link to put on your website or wherever you’re putting your links. You want to copy these links and paste them directly into your website exactly how they were given to you.

The links will normally include a one by one pixel image that will tell the network how many times your link has been viewed. The link will also include special code that will tell the network this is your link.

Especially as a beginner, you do not want to mess around with these links at all.  Copy and paste these links exactly so you can be sure that you are getting credit for any and all sales you send to the company.

One more thing, what if you can’t find the company that you want to promote at any of the top affiliate networks? This is when you go to Google and you type “company name or product name affiliate” without the quotes.  You also can go to the company’s website and look for a link called affiliates. Not everyone has an affiliate program but if this particular company does these two strategies should help you find it.