How to pre-sell web hosting in 30 minutes or less

By Hamlet Batista

You want to get great affiliate commissions pre-selling 1&1 web hosting products. So you follow the conventional wisdom and copy the attractive banners, place them on your blog or site and hope for someone to click and buy 1&1's products so that you make a nice commission. That's what everybody is doing, so it's got to work, right? Not always!

Reality check…

Without a little thinking, many affiliates in the world won't make enough money even to cover their own hosting costs. Don't worry, it can be done, however, the conventional wisdom is that if you want to promote web-hosting products, you need to look for people searching specifically for web hosting on popular search engines like Google. The problem with this approach is that 1) everybody is doing the same thing and the level of competition is now massive; and 2) most affiliates cannot afford to compete for such keywords using pay-per-click or SEO. It would take too much money and time to make the money back when you only get a piece of the action. If this is what everybody is doing, there has to be a better way… and there is!

Change your selling mindset

Legendary copywriter Gary Halbert popularized the idea that the best potential customer you can target is one starving for your product or service - someone who has an immediate need that the product solves and, given the right offer, won't hesitate to take action. The more critical the problem, the faster this guy is going to buy. Instead of focusing purely on selling, what you need to do is solve critical problems. Why? When you honestly help visitors to your site solve their problems, they are more than happy to reward you with their most valuable asset. No, their most valuable asset is not money - it's their trust. Trust is a prerequisite to any online transaction that involves the exchange of money, and it is the hardest thing to get from an Internet visitor.

Picture this scenario: you're at home chatting on the phone and someone starts ringing your door very insistently. You catch a glance at him and you see that he is carrying a suitcase; he's probably going to try to sell you something. He keeps ringing the bell incessantly … Finally, you walk over to the door, ready to tell this guy off. His first words are to tell you that your garage is on fire. Quickly, you work together to put out the fire, and when it's all over, you invite him in for a drink. That annoying guy is now your best friend because he helped you save your home. This is exactly what you need to achieve in order to get people to trust you online, believe your recommendations and follow your affiliate links with the right frame of mind. Let's apply these concepts to promoting web-hosting products. We're going to look for starving people, visitors with really critical problems where web hosting is the desirable solution or - and this is important - web hosting is part of the desirable solution.

The Lady in Distress

Here is a practical example you can start using right away. Suppose you scan some online forums and find this complaint: "Sigh … my website keeps going down every other time I check it!" This is a crucial problem for your target customer because she is not able to make sales while her site is down. If you can present her with an honest and convincing solution to her problem, she will reward you with her trust. If you refer a great web-hosting service, she's going to click on that link and you're going to earn your commission. Start by writing an article that explains the primary causes of website downtime. For instance, talk about figuring out first where the system failure is occurring: 1) the web server application might have gone down; 2) the DNS system might go down, 3) basic connectivity problems, etc. Next, introduce and explain uptime monitoring tools and recommend a couple of free and paid services (with your affiliate link of course). At the end of your article, conclude with your most important recommendation: a reliable web host such as 1&1. This is where you take the opportunity to recommend 1&1 web hosting or domains and give 1&1 a very positive and personal endorsement.

You can proactively make that sale, too. Contact that poster from the forum, and refer her to your article that solves her problem. You can be very sure that she is going to follow your affiliate links because you've helped "put out the fire." You are solving her immediate needs and presenting her with a trustworthy, long-term solution. It doesn't even have to look like you are trying to sell something; you are just trying to help.

In this example I used a single lady in distress for illustrative purposes, but the idea is to write articles to common problems that can help a wide variety of people on the Internet. You can hardly make a living helping one person at a time. Leverage search engines to drive people looking to solve web-hosting related problems to your articles. Create solutions to common problems so that you can refer more people and make more commissions. You can even create an e-book and give it away for free in exchange for contact information. This lets you establish a relationship with potential customers and keep solving problems and pre-selling more products to your growing user base.

Here's another example so that you can see just how easy and powerful this concept is: "My site got defaced yesterday and the web host says I'm on my own… Help!" Yet another critical problem that can't wait. The web host is not providing good support. It's a golden opportunity to turn their loss into a win for you. Just as in the previous example, you'll want to write an article that explains 1) how to recover from a security breach, and 2) how to prevent getting hacked at all. Part of the recommendation is to host your site on a secure/responsible web host that regularly updates the system software to avoid things like this from happening in the first place. I could list hundreds of different scenarios, but the basic principle is the same. You've got to change your mindset and give up on the hard sell that just plain doesn't work. Join that 10% of us who are successful affiliates using a more effective, straightforward and common sense plan.

Saving the best for last

The best part of this strategy is that it saves you money. I might type in "web host" when I am shopping around, but when I really need something urgently, my keyword search is much more likely to be about my current problems. The keywords people type into search engines when they have specific problems (e.g.: "my site got hacked") have a lot less competition than the generic ones that describe basic needs like "web hosting." Not only are these keywords less competitive, but they also have higher conversion rates because the visitor is closer to making a decision than when typing in generic terms with no real urgency. This is the classic "long tail" you might have heard about from those who use SEO or SEM to drive affilate sales. 

It's also important to remember that most people express the symptoms of their problems (e.g. "web site going down," "can't log in," etc.) because they don't always know the solutions yet. Any potential problem can have many, many symptoms. If you target as many symptoms as possible with your keywords, you will be competing with a lot less people and, more importantly, you will targeting customers who are ready to buy. Solve people's problems and get the credibility you need for them to turn your recommendations into sales.

Neat, isn't it?

Am I crazy? Why I am sharing all this information? I know that a lot of "gurus" out there would be charging for information as powerful as this, but I like to practice what I preach and I believe that if I overwhelm my audience with value for free, they will be coming back to me for more. Let's be honest, there will always be more problems to solve. Life would be very boring without a few bumps in the road now and then - and it is better with people willing to help solve them! So don't wait, take 30 minutes per week and begin creating 'problem solving content' today. You will find that it will help your traffic and your affiliate earnings.

About the Author:
Hamlet Batista is a 1&1 affiliate, an entrepreneur, search marketing expert and the creator of RankSense - a powerful but easy-to-use search engine optimization suite for affiliate marketers and small businesses.

His website is: http://www.ranksense.com