One problem many niche marketers often face when starting to promote affiliate programs is the seemingly overwhelming competition – especially on good-paying products. The good news is, you shouldn’t have to feel like you’re stuck “scraping by” on the bottom of the affiliate product ladder.
This is where your new-found niche marketing skills – like site design and writing sales copy – will come in handy. But there also an often-overlooked piece of the affiliate marketing puzzle — using video to boost sales. Let’s take a step back. When you bought your first product online (particularly a digital product like an ebook or a piece of software – say XSitePro for your website design), what sort of questions went through your mind?
• What happens after I order?
• What should I do if I have questions?
• Should I be giving this site my credit card number?
• What if I’m not happy with the product?
• How do I get this program onto my computer?
These are all questions, that no matter how thoroughly they’re answered on the actual program seller’s website, people still ask themselves and it could be enough of a problem to where they don’t go through with the purchase!
Walking Them through the Process
Don’t you wish when you first started, that you actually had someone to walk you through that first purchase from start to finish? Well, you can be that person – and boost your affiliate commissions in the process! Here’s how.
1. You’ll need a microphone and “screen recording software” – this is software that records your movements on your computer, including links you click, web addresses you type in, and so on. The industry leading software for this type of work is Camtasia. They offer a 30 day free trial of their software that you can download here.
2. You’ll need to actually go through the purchase as if you were a first-time customer, so have some extra cash on hand. It’s a good idea to actually buy the product you’re promoting anyway so you can see if it really lives up to its claims. There’s nothing that can damage your online marketing reputation worse than promoting an awful product!
3. Try out Camtasia by recording your screen a few times and speaking into the microphone as if you were leading people through the purchase. Once you feel comfortable enough, start recording. It’s best to start people out on your website, click your link, and go through the order process just like they would. Narrate what will happen after they pay and how to download the software or ebook to their computer. You could optionally show how it’s installed or opened. Speak clearly and slower than your normal pace.
4. Stop recording once you’ve completed those steps. Camtasia will prompt you to save your project (called a .camrec file). Once you do, it will ask you how you’d like to proceed. From here, you’ll want to choose “Produce My Video in a Shareable Format”. Choose the “Web” Production Preset and Camtasia will convert your video into a presentation that works on any browser.
Camtasia prompts you to save your recording as a .camrec file
Choose 'Produce My Video in a Shareable Format'
5. The next step is for Camtasia to save and convert your file. Choose a place on your hard drive where you can easily find the newly-created file (by default, it goes into your My Documents folder into a sub-folder called Windows Media.
6. Your screen may look a little different from mine below but it should have four files in it. You’ll want to open the file ending in “.htm”.
There should be 4 files in your video folder
You should see your presentation on a black background. The final step is to grab the source code from the presentation and put it in your web page. This is easily done by going to View > Source from your browser’s menu bar, and then highlighting the piece below the section that reads “Users looking for simple object/embed tags…” like so:
Select the source code to put the new video on your page
7. Now, just copy and paste that content into your website code section and you’ll have your new purchase walkthrough video ready to go! If you need help during any step of the process, you can hire me and I’ll take care of it for you. Still, it’s good to go through the process yourself at least once to see what’s involved.
Try it and see for yourself just how much video can boost your affiliate marketing conversions!
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Informative stuff; in regards to niches to pick what would be the ideal number of searches a month?
Hi Lizz,
It really depends on the niche you’re targeting, but in the examples I use throughout my book, one has about 1,000 searches a month and another has between 700-800. Some people do extremely well in niches that get as few as a couple hundred searches a month.
Yes – I use aWeber. I’d be glad to write up a post on it. I also talk about it and other aWeber alternatives in a later chapter of Get Niche Quick.
Affiliates have to stick together – promoting various (at times very similar) products to all kinds of people, hopefully ensuring happiness all round!
Great tips, I think video is a great tool that people just look over when it comes to affiliate marketing.
This a very helpful information.. I’ve never think about using video before to boost my affiliate sales.. because I’m not sure how. But this is surely helping me out
You are right. Showing the procedure in vivid detail will definitely help prospective customers to get out of any apprehensions about purchasing the product.
wow this guide is really very informative! the technique you shared can be used in a lot of different ways… thanks a lot…
This a very helpful information, the technique you shared can be used in a lot of different ways
Hi Sherice,
That’s a really good idea that you suggest – actually walking people through their purchase using Camtasia. I was one of those -Duh moments – for me … meaning I can’t believe that I didn’t think of that myself. Oh well, live and learn.
By the way, I browsed around your site quite a bit and was impresssed, I might just come back and take you up on your offer for hire .. for some of your consulting services. It looks to me like you would do a top-notch job.
Kind regards,
Will
Dominating Niches Review
I’ve got to say that video is the future of the internet. (not the full stop!) It doesn’t matter whether it’s affiliate, cpa, ecommerce, info or anything else. Ten years from now the web will be a giant tv station. Good article though.
Very detailed step-by-step tutorial. Video is hot. It’s the best way to separate yourself from competition and to add that always necessary human component. Besides that, it is incredibly viral if done right. Kudos!