Winning Affiliate Sales Contests
If you want to win an affiliate contest, it’s important to start preparing before the product goes live. You need to jump in before most other people in order to prepare your audience. The pre-launch phase is a critical time, because it gets the hype going and gets people excited even before the price is revealed.
This is important, because many people will usually scroll past the sales page to find out the price of a product. If they think it’s too expensive, they won’t even bother reading the sales page.
When you start promoting a product before it’s officially released, it gets people excited about the product before knowing the price. Not only that, you’ll have your list prepared for the release—watching for it—before promotions officially begin.
So what are some methods of promoting a product before the product is live?
Let’s take a look at a few ideas.
Webinars
Webinars are considered one of the most powerful selling methods. This is because you have the opportunity to give people a taste of what the product is all about, without them having to pay for it.
Think of a webinar not as a selling tool, but as a free sample. Don’t just hold a webinar to sell your product. People will quickly leave that type of webinar, and you’ll have no chance at the sale.
Instead, try to offer quality information during your webinars. You won’t want to give away everything, obviously, but you can give people enough to make them think along the lines of, “Wow, if the webinar was this good, the product must be amazing!”
The most effective type of webinar is one that involves the product creator/owner. You and the owner can create the webinar together, or you can create it and have the owner approve it – although this may not be as effective without the person there.
People want to hear directly from the product owner, because they are the one with the information they’re trying to sell. If you tried to hold one on your own, people aren’t as likely to show up, as they will believe it’s nothing but a sales pitch.
Reviews
Yes, it is definitely possible to put up a product review before a product is released. If you have a decent source of traffic, most product owners will be happy to give you a review copy of their product so you can get a review up before the official launch.
The best way to get a review copy is to contact the product owner and let them know what you plan to do. Tell them how much traffic you have, or how many list subscribers. Tell them you want to do a review of the product before the launch as part of your pre-selling strategy.
Some product owners won’t do this if they don’t know you, but many will. If you can get a review copy before product launch, your review will be a great way to drum up hype before the launch.
Not only that, this gets you search engine traffic to your review if you post it on your blog. As soon as people start hearing about the product and search for information, you have an opportunity to get them onto your list.
Hype Emails
It’s important to start developing hype for the product before launch, and the best way to do this is to start mailing your list about it. If you don’t already have one, building it while promoting a launch is perfect. You can create a short report or video that goes along with the product and give that away free to start building your list. Once users are on your list, you can start promoting the launch by building hype.
A good way to build hype before launch is to start posting teasers about the product. (You’ll want to get the product owner’s permission to do this, of course. He or she may want to see what you post before you post it.) Teasers are either excerpts from the actual content, or previews about the type of content included.
They don’t always have to include actual content. Sometimes just telling people some of the things they will learn, or perhaps some of the results of beta testers, is enough.
Let’s say the internet marketing product you want to promote had 50 beta testers, and 13 out of the 50 made over $50,000, and 45 out of the 50 made at least $5000. Those are great results! This is the kind of information people want to hear—actual results.
Sometimes there won’t be beta testers, and there won’t be any kind of proof from users before launch. In that case, you can publish (with permission) actual excerpts from the product, or the reason that lead the product creator to develop the product.
The more you build hype before launch, the more sales you’re like to get once the product officially goes on sale.
