Pay Per Sale Advertising: The Basics

Pay per sale is one of the widely known ways of getting paid in affiliate marketing simply because not too many get a decent living off of pay per click alone. This article is continuation of our series on "Ways to get paid in Affiliate Marketing"

If this is your first article you read by us about the "ways to get paid", don't worry there wont be a test on this stuff.

We basically want you to walk away with three things: 1)Know what is Pay Per Sale 2)Some pros and cons for these type of affiliate programs 3)Some keys to success.

If you are brand new to affiliate programs and how they work, we suggest you our article on how they work! Click here to learn about Affiliate Programs! So with all of that out of the way, lets get started!

What is Pay Per Sale?

While it may seem like a silly question, its the basics and its something we will go over, no matter how simple it may appear to be.

Everyone has experienced this in some form or another if you have bought anything before. Grocery stores, electric and gas companies and possibly even your own job carries this type of payment.

With pay per sale affiliate programs, you can make commissions that vary from 5%-80% depending on the products or services you're promoting. And there are tons of ways to get customers to buy!

What Should I Promote or Advertise?

This is the problem most of the new affiliate marketers run into when they want to get started. They have a strategy and a game plan and just needs the "right program" to get started with. So we suggest for pay per sale programs, that you start with one or a combination of these ideas:

Something you own- Starting an affiliate program off of something you have, will keep you passionate about it and when you tell your story,you wont sound like the average sales pitch you hear all the time about a product or service!You'll be able to speak from experience.

Something you have knowledge about- Maybe you don't own this, but you know everything about it! Well maybe not everything, but you know a ton. (And even if you don't know everything, there's a ton of references on the web to further your expertise) This will allow you to share your knowledge with the world and earn some income from the best income generating tool in the world....your mind.

Now most new affiliate marketers will try to go for the programs that give the biggest payout. Regardless of what it is, thats what they want. Its a interesting strategy, but please make sure the service or product is real and provides great customer satisfaction.

Many affiliate programs will offer a better payout in order to get more affiliates advertising their stuff, when they have competition thats better for a cheaper price. Better payout isn't always the better program.

Grabbing the program that everyone is making money on isn't always the best idea either. If everyone has already jumped on it and are making money, how are you suppose to beat the competition?

While there always is a way, we recommend that you start small first and build your skills first, then when the next big thing comes out, you can run with the pack instead of trying to catch up.

Pros and Cons of Pay Per Sale

And now this leads us into the Pros and Cons of Pay Per Sale. Its payout is better than pay per click, however it takes more of a need or want of the product or service to make your commissions. Lets look at the pros:

The Pros

Great way to make money from others products or services- As stated earlier, this payout is much bigger than the few cents you get with pay per click. With customer satisfaction also gives you some ability to have a long term customer who will continue to buy products through you.

This is why we want to pick programs that are real and bring great customer satisfaction. Without this, you will lose that opportunity and even worse than that is you lose potential sales because that one bad customer will spread the word about what you represent.

Could possibly bring residual income- If you choose the right programs, you can easily start earning residual income. Residual income is where you are getting recurring payments. Most services has customers pay monthly to keep the service active. Stack sales on these types of programs to quit your day job and focus on doing what you love the most!

Great way to learn how to market and advertise- Even though this seems like its a bad thing from the start, once you learn how to do this, you can do it with almost anything you're selling forever!

Getting with the program managers, you can utilize the tools they provide you to your advantage. E-books about the many ways of marketing will allow you to try, test, improve and gain new insight on ways to build your cashflow.

Fellow affiliate marketers will also be able to tell you through forums what they use to become successful. Mix and match these methods to create what works for you.

The Cons

This is not for the lazy- What this means is you may have to actually write some articles and answer some questions about the product or service your promoting before someone will buy. This may be something you'll have to do upfront if the website doesn't carry the answers in the beginning.

Once again in the beginning it may seem difficult, but as you hone your marketing and advertising skills, the sales will start to roll in. Just don't expect it to happen overnight.

You will have to keep getting new customers- Unless its a monthly service you're providing, this may pose as a problem. Most affiliate programs allow you to make sales from that customer for a certain time period. But once they click through your link to buy something, if they like the actual website, they can add it to their favorites and completely bypass you. This will put you back at square one since they wont use your link to get what the company is offering.

Not everyone online is looking to buy a product- Studies have shown, that when people use the search engines to query or search for something, that:

10 percent are transactional.

10 percent are navigational and transactional purposes.

80 percent of queries are informational.

What this means is that the majority of people when they do a search are looking for information. With that being said, you must provide not only the service or product they need, but you have to have the answer that the customer is looking for. If not, then you'll just look like another store.

Even though these may seem like huge mountains to overcome, we have a few tips that will have you looking like Mario jumping on some goombas in no time!

Keys to Success

Join affiliate networks that carry what you love!- Joining an affiliate network like Click2Sell or Clickbank should help you on your journey in pay per sale. These guys carry programs that have been around for a while and will give you some insight based on their ratings as to which programs to follow and which to keep away from.

With that being said you also get to see the pay per sale programs that have been over-exposed. You don't want to get involved with those programs as it will be much tougher to obtain fresh new customers.

Fully research your product/service and write effective sales material.- Make sure when you find that program you like that you understand the product or service that it carries. Learn about the benefits of it and why your potential customer will need it. This is what they are really searching for, and what you should be writing about.

If you focus on the features there will be a gap in the customers mind as to how this thing your offering will help them. Learn the benefits and create that bridge for consumers to cross over on.

You also want to try to do this through text links as opposed to banners and eye stabbing ads. This will end up looking salesy (if thats even a real word) and potential customers may run away. In addition to this, people naturally click text links more that banner ads.

Create a squeeze page where people can subscribe to emails advertising more of your products- If you are building a website, this is a great way to create a mailing list so you can keep them consumers within your reach and recommend your latest products and services.

If you need a squeeze page generator, this link will take you to a site that does that for free!

This concludes our article on pay per sale basics. If there's any questions or comments about this article, please use the Contact Us tab on the left and submit them to us so we can provide all of the answers you need in one spot!

For those of you looking to see which type(s) of programs is right for you, if this is you last article on this subject, please read our article on Affiliate Marketing Scams to get an great tips on what programs to stay away from.

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