- Give your affiliates and Joint Venture partners great tools to pre-sell customers. This can include articles, pre-written sales letters, free ebooks, free demo versions, and any other materials that will both educate prospects and inspire them to visit the site to learn more. The key is to encourage affiliates and partners to get potential customers excited before sending them to the site. On the flip side, make sure your affiliates aren't hurting your site's image by being unprofessional in their communications with prospects.



- Offer a monthly payment plan for expensive items. If your products and services are priced above $100 consider allowing customers to break their payment down into several instalments. For example, on a $147 item allow for three monthly payments of only $49. This will be attractive for customers who are unwilling or unable to part with large sums of money all at once.

- Keep all of your product offers relevant. No matter how tempted you may be to promote an unrelated product or service because it pays a high commission, DON'T! There is an old saying that you should keep in mind at all times, "stick to your knitting". In other words, stick with what you've been doing. Otherwise you'll confuse your customers about what they can count on you for.

- Spell out the specific benefits of buying. Always remember, prospective customers are only interested in one thing - "what's in it for me". Tell them EXACTLY what they will gain by buying what you're selling and you'll greatly increase your conversion rate. Remember, people don't buy a product - they buy a solution. For example, they don't buy a drill with a "two position gear box, quick connect bit change system" they buy a hole!

- Hold a sale. People don't like missing out on a good deal so encourage them to buy with a time-limited sale. For example you could offer "50% off this week only", "buy one get one free for the next 100 customers" or "buy this month and get an extra bonus". As with scarcity though you have to stop the sale at the specified time or you risk losing credibility.

If you're not already doing these things, now is the time to start. Although it takes work initially, the benefits far outweigh the amount of effort that will be required.