Should I Put Affiliate Links In My Free Report?

[Gios]

Hi there everyone, I am fairly new to this biz and have gone about creating a "Free Report" to give away in order to get some subscribers. I was wondering if by putting affiliate links in my free report I will immediately put off my subscrbers or whether it is a good idea to get commisions straight away? Any ideas?

Thanks a lot

Gio

[tommen]

I recommend you put affiliate links in your free report.There is no point in writing a report if you are not getting anything out of it.If you are recommending products in your report, you may as well get the commissions from it.

[brent258]

Hi Gios, I'm generally of the opinion that you should put affiliate links in your report along with any other subsequent messages you send - just make sure the information in between the links is useful enough to forgive the odd product recommendation as you would with anything else you send. Besides, if your subscribers are going to be put off by you recommending stuff later on they will unsubscribe from your newsletter anyway. At least this way they have something on their hard drive that they can go back to or send to other people.

[getsmartt]

It depends...

Who is your report written for, since you are new to the biz (unless you are bringing some previous experience with you) you are most likely writing a report that would be useful to other newbies.

Think about this of all the free reoprts you have downloaded, which did you find most useful and least "spammy"?

Which reports made you trust the author and want to buy their stuff?

Most likely it was the report that was not jammed full of aff links.

Make your report useful. Write about something you know, don't try to write an IM report without IM experience.

What do you know? What did(do) you do for employment?

Take your knowledge and write your free report, give it away, gain admiration of your fans

[Gios]

Thanks everyone. Just to answer getsmartt, it is not a free report on IM as I am new and do not know enough yet to do that.

It is in a niche I know something about sort of in the self help category.

I was not sure whether to include affiliate links as i wanted to gain the trust and as you say " admiration of my fans". I like it.

Cheers!

[um1001]

I'm torn on this one. If the links are to your own products, I say go for it and make it rebrandable, so that your affiliates may use their links and get credit (encourage affiliates to distribute it).

If you're just linking off to some other product as an affiliate, it may be easier to point back to a presell on your web site first.

[getsmartt]

Originally Posted by Gios

Thanks everyone. Just to answer getsmartt, it is not a free report on IM as I am new and do not know enough yet to do that.

It is in a niche I know something about sort of in the self help category.

I was not sure whether to include affiliate links as i wanted to gain the trust and as you say " admiration of my fans". I like it.

Cheers!

Fantastic, way too many newbies try and recycle worn out IM information full of worthless links.

Since you are writing about something you know, I would include one or two links towards the end of the report, nothing too spammy, just a couple of links for their convenience

[Lance K]

Originally Posted by Gios

Thanks everyone. Just to answer getsmartt, it is not a free report on IM as I am new and do not know enough yet to do that.

It is in a niche I know something about sort of in the self help category.

I was not sure whether to include affiliate links as i wanted to gain the trust and as you say " admiration of my fans". I like it.

Cheers!

Use pages on your own domain that redirect to your affiliate program of choice. That way if your affiliate program of choice ever changes, all you have to do is redirect that page to the new product. Otherwise, you're stuck with the old affiliate program or broken links.

For example, if you're promoting a self help DVD set you would put something like www[dot]yoursite[dot]com/dvds. You can either redirect that page to the affiliate program, or use it to pre sell your recommended DVD set and then link to it. Rather than just putting www[dot]youraffiliatelink[dot]com directly in your free report.

[CBSnooper]

Originally Posted by Lance K

Use pages on your own domain that redirect to your affiliate program of choice. That way if your affiliate program of choice ever changes, all you have to do is redirect that page to the new product. Otherwise, you're stuck with the old affiliate program or broken links.

Just what I was about to suggest. I'd have reviews of the products mentioned in the ebook, with an affiliate link at the end of the review. That way it gives the reader to make his own mind up about the product before clicking through to that products website.

[milan]

If your goal is to help people, and you genuinely recommend something related: there is no reason a normal person would object if the link is an affiliate link.
Just do it, but do it genuinely.

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Gios

Thanks everyone. Just to answer getsmartt, it is not a free report on IM as I am new and do not know enough yet to do that.

It is in a niche I know something about sort of in the self help category.

I was not sure whether to include affiliate links as i wanted to gain the trust and as you say " admiration of my fans". I like it.

Cheers!

Are you linking to the product because it will help the reader achieve what you promised when you persuaded them to opt in? Or are you linking to a product because you want to get paid?

If you said 'yes' to the first question, include the link; if to the second, leave it out.

Other than the location they found your opt-in, this is their first exposure to you. You want to deliver value, and leave them looking forward to hearing from you again. On the other hand, you do want to make an offer of some kind, even if it's a throwaway "here's something I thought was cool" link. You want to condition your list to expect offers from you, particularly offers that add value to the reader.

If you watch the forum for awhile, you'll see threads from people who offer a lot of free content, sometimes for weeks, before presenting a commercial offer. They're confused about why their list ignores their offer, or they have a lot of unsubscribes, or they get a nasty note from someone. It's because they've conditioned their readers to expect nothing but free, valuable content - a social interaction. Suddenly, you want them to give you money - a market interaction. There's a jarring disconnect there.