So you’ve found the perfect online business opportunity. It doesn’t cost much, and you only need to recruit two or three other people before your membership is free and clear. It’s got great incentives to join. You practically drooled to get involved, so you just know that other Internet marketers will jump at the chance.
Having just read my post, FFA Pages Work, But For Whom?, you sign up for Link Scout or Traffic Wave and get your very own FFA page.
Within minutes you’re getting people adding links to your FFA page, and each and every one of them is receiving your carefully crafted sales letter in return. You wait for the signups to start.
And you wait…and wait…and wait.
The problem is that every person who leaves a link on an FFA page is involved in a program they believe in as much as you believe in yours. They don’t want to hear about your program, they want to sell their program. While they’re highly qualified leads, in the sense that they have proven they’re willing to invest time, energy, and money into an online business opportunity, they’re also already taken. It’s a bit like saying a married man is the best candidate for marriage, because he’s already proven he’s willing to commit.
You simply cannot sell to those people. So how do you use FFA pages to your advantage?
You build relationships with the people who add links to your FFA page. Your goal is not to get a quick sale, but to build relationships and generate a level of respect for your opinions. You want to help these people succeed at their opportunity. That will make them much more likely to signup for your opportunity.
Even if they don’t signup, you’ve built goodwill that can only benefit you in the future. I’ve had people give me free advertising space on their website in exchange for help I’ve provided.
When using FFA pages, your biggest hurdle is catching the attention of the person adding a link. They’re obligated to receive your email, but they’re not obligated to pay any attention to it. The better FFA pages will require they click a link in the email to add their listing, so at the very least they’re seeing the email.
A good approach is to keep the email short, and offer them something free. Free tips to help them market their business opportunity, for example. Free tips to drive 10,000 hits to their website. Free tips to advertise for free (you know they’re interested in free advertising because they’re using an FFA page).
Offer them something that would truly be useful to them, and you may get their attention. Once they sign up for the free tips (or ebook or whatever), your autoresponder kicks in, sending them regular emails with the information you promised. In these emails, link back to your main web site. For example, if one of your emails is about getting free web hosting, link back to a blog post you wrote about getting free web hosting. This puts them onto your site, where they’ll also see posts about the opportunity you’re marketing. As they return to your site through the course of multiple emails, you’re building their trust in you.
Help them succeed in their biz op, and they’ll be far more likely to join you in yours.