This is the second of the “Emotions that Drive Affiliate Marketing Sales” three part series. If you missed it, you can read part one here.

We all like to believe that when we decide to buy something, we’re making a conscious, calculated, and rational decision. A decision based solely on the merits of the product.
But we don’t … you don’t ….. and neither do your customers.

The decision to purchase or not to purchase is really based upon emotion … a little feeling, gut instinct or voice inside us.

In the first part of our “Emotions that Drive Affiliate Marketing Sales” series, you learned what you can do to relieve your customer’s anxiety. But that’s not the only customer emotion that you need to understand and address.

The second customer emotion you need to how to relieve is …

Customer Confusion

When customers are confused, they are NOT going to buy. Humans don’t like to feel as though they aren’t in control.

According to Princeton’s online dictionary Word Net, the word “confused” is defined as “lacking orderly continuity,” “a confused set of instructions,” “a confused dream about the end of the world,” “disconnected fragments of a story,” or “scattered thoughts.”

Does this describe your pitch to your potential buyers?

Sometimes it seems that Internet marketers go to great lengths to make their websites as confusing as possible. When a potential buyer looks at one of these “confusing-to-the-max” website, she thinks:

• Is this just a picture or is it a button that I can click?

• If I click this “Buy It Now” button does that mean that I’ve bought the product and that I’ll be charged for it now?

• Where am I on this website?

• How do I get back to the home page?

• Which one of these 20 links should I click to find the information I want?

• This page isn’t about what I’m looking for. Where do I find that information?

Your Solution – Apply the KISS Principle!

This is the first of the “Emotions that Drive Affiliate Sales” three part series.

You like to think that you are making a conscious, calculated and rational decision when you buy things … whether the purchase is large or small. You like to feel as though you are in control. That’s simple human nature.

Your customers feel the same way!

Call it what you will; “a feeling,” “woman’s intuition,” or a “gut instinct.” Regardless of what you call it, it’s the customer’s emotions that close the deal.

A buyer’s rational mind has little to do with the decision to make a purchase. The customer may not even realize that his emotions are what’s driving the “buy or not to buy” train. But it IS the customer’s emotions that determine whether a sale is made or lost.

The first customer emotional problem that your landing page needs to address is:

Customer Anxiety

Marketing — and maybe especially affiliate marketing — relies on the emotions of customers to buy merchandise.

Humans talk a lot about the abstract notion of rationality. However, they seldom allow rationality to have anything to do with their decision to make a purchase. Almost all of us rely on our emotions or “gut feelings” (which is just a guy’s term for “feelings”) when we choose to buy…or not to buy.

Your potential customers also rely on their feelings. They may not even realize that they are making a decision to buy or not to buy based on their feelings. But they are and you’d better be if you want to convert visitors into paying customers.

As an affiliate marketer, you need to know what emotions drive customers to stay and to buy and what emotions can send a customer scurrying away to another website without making a purchase. And then you need to address your customer’s emotions on your landing pages.

In this short three part series we’ll explore the three major customer emotions that you need to be aware of and to deal with when you are designing and writing copy for your landing pages:

• Customer Anxiety
• Customer Confusion
• Customer Alienation

Tomorrow in part 1 of the “Emotions that Drive Affiliate Sales” 3 part series find out what your customers are worrying about and what elements you can include on your landing pages to relieve their anxiety, make them comfortable buying from you and close the sale.

This is the fifth and last of our five-part “The Part Time Affiliate Marketer’s Steps to Success” series. If you missed any of the earlier parts, you can read part one here, read part two here, read part three here, and read part four here.

In the first four parts of “The Part Time Affiliate Marketer’s Steps to Success” five part series, you learned how to get a domain name, find hosting, how to build a website, and how to select products to sell.

If you’ve followed each step, and if you haven’t quit your day job, you are now a part-time affiliate marketer! Congratulations! You now have a hosted website with a great name and you have a product to sell so the only thing left is to start making an income.

You Need to Sell Products!

In order to sell products from your website, you must have visitors to your website…..what’s called “traffic”. And in order to get traffic, you’ve got to let the world know that your website exists and how to find it.

There are basically two ways to get traffic.