It's been a few days since my last blog because I caught a (common) cold on Tuesday and I am finally through it enough that my brain wants to cooperate with me again.

I want to go over some thoughts on a paragraph that I came across several days ago that listed the 5 steps that a customer goes during an affiliate offer and how we walk the customer through these steps to guide them to their eventual purchase of our offer. I will go through them one by one.

Step 1: Awareness

• The customer gets to this stage by seeing our offer. This usually happens through some form of advertising process. What the customer sees at this stage should be informative and relevant, but not overly descriptive. Never lie and don't fluff expectations. Keep it simple and to the point of what the offer fulfills. People are always interested in something that appears to fulfill some want or need they have. With the right wording, you should hopefully lead the customer to the second stage.

Step 2: Interest

• Interest is what brings a customer to fill in our little form and request more information. At this stage, we should introduce ourselves properly and thank them for their interest in what it is we have to offer. We will NOT actually make the offer at this point. We will propose some details for consideration that we will answer or expand upon in the next stage of autoresponder emails. This first autoresponder is about the get to know and build trust phase. This should be the first email structure of our autoresponder for all of our offers.

Stage 3: Consideration

• Now that our customer is curious about and trying to look at the pros and cons of what it is we are offering. Those details we gave your customer time to think about should be answered or expanded upon in the next 1-3 daily autoresponder mails, applying them, in some way, to the customer as a generality to help the customer visualize the personal use of the product or offer. With any luck, we will walk our customer through any doubts they have and get them to the next stage. We can begin leaving a link to our offer at the end of mails from this point forward.

Stage 4: Intent

• This is the make or break point and it's a delicate thing. Too pushy and they will go defensive. Too light handed and they will revisit those doubts they had in the consideration stage. It's best to indicate that now would be the best time to act because we will likely be ending your communications soon and it will be a while before we can get back around to them to make this offer again. Now the customer should be full on into the final stage.

Stage 5: Evaluation

• Now they are seriously asking themselves if this is something they want or need. Remember, any offer we make is about fulfilling a want or need. At this stage, perhaps share a point about some little known benefit that wouldn't be known without having accepted the offer and a point about some disadvantage experienced because a customer turned the offer down.

With the right steps and finding a customer has the want or need that you are trying to fill, you will lead the customer to a sale and pocket some commissions. Never expect to make any given number of sales. Expect nothing and take what you get with gratitude. Revist the process and see if it needs a tweak here and there. Invite friends and people you trust to give your starting ad a look over and fill out your form and go through your responder set and give you feedback. Now, get out there, find a group of people that have a want or need and find a fullfillment offer you can commission off of.