Do you believe in the products you promote? Zig Ziglar said it well: “If you truly believe in what you are selling why would you not want everyone to buy?”

But today there is a challenge that Zig did not face.

The distracted website visitor.

See if this sounds familiar.

You go to a website after finding them on Google or receiving an email.

You look at a sales letter that’s going to clearly take the rest of the day to read, and quickly decide that you just don’t have time for this.

Before you leave, you scroll to the bottom of the page to see what it costs, just in case.

You leave without buying.

Time spent on the site … 8.5 seconds.

Sound familiar?

It should, because it’s happening while you read this.

• It’s happening while you sleep.

• It’s happening millions of times a day.

• And it’s happening on the sites you promote too.

The good news is that there are five ways to make more sales, even in this age of distraction.

Let me share them with you now.

1. Offer visitors your competitor’s product as they are leaving.

Sounds radical, doesn’t it?

But the fact is that people will buy from your competitors, so why shouldn’t you make a profit?

If they have already decided to leave your page without buying your product, there’s no reason not to make a profit when they check out your competitor.

Simply place a popup box on your site that is triggered only when someone leaves without clicking an order link. In this box put some compelling teaser copy and your affiliate link.

This works best with sales letters, not blogs.

2. Offer visitors something free just for visiting.

Sales professionals will rightly tell you that most sales are lost because the prospective customer does not have enough information, or the right information.

Offering visitors a gift gives you the opportunity to follow up with them and make your case for why they should buy from you.

When a visitor becomes a part of your mailing list and gets a free gift for their kids, they have established the beginnings of a trust relationship with you.

That not only opens the door in a practical sense (because you now have their email address), but it opens the door for them to get to know, like and trust you.

It’s important to note that this method only works well when the free gift you offer is a quality gift, meaning that it’s interesting or useful to your prospective customer, and isn’t something so cheap it feels like junk.

If you give away a junky free gift, it will have the opposite of the intended impact.

3. Offer customers who buy from you a product that compliments what they bought from you.

Just consider the possibilities!

• People who buy a skirt might need a blouse.

• People who lose weight will need new clothes, or celebratory jewelry.

• People who take vitamins are often also interested in easy ways to exercise.

How many of these very logical complimentary sales are you missing right now?

In my years online I have almost never encountered someone who did not understand this concept.

But I have encountered very few who are doing it.

Action Step: Think about your visitor.

• Who exactly are they?

• What do they need or want?

• What else are they going to need that you can offer?

• What would you want if you just bought your product?

Try to imagine an individual who represents what your average customer is like, and ask yourself what this person’s life entails. Then fill up those needs with products that help them.

4. Offer customers who buy an upsell or a chance to reorder.

I want to be clear. I’m not talking about the endless “one time offers” we have all suffered through.

Nor am I talking about manipulating your offer so that only those who buy the upsell get real value.

To my way of thinking those are less-than-excellent ways to do business.

But there is a time and place for an honest to goodness upsell. And if you overlook finding it for your offer you are leaving money on the table.

How about reorders?

A recent, non-scientific survey I conducted showed that many people who sell a product that is consumed (like vitamins or makeup) do not have an automated way for customers to be reminded of re-ordering.

Don’t fall into the same trap when autoresponders make it so easy to follow up.

5. Offer people who don’t buy a chance to tell you why.

This is a vital step that almost no one uses.

Getting visitors to your site is hard, and expensive. That’s why you must take advantage of every second you have while they are there.

To do this, use a popup window that only appears when someone leaves your site without clicking the order link.

But instead of the “wait, let me tell you more” approach so commonly used, try including an anonymous survey instead.

Make it a two-question survey inside the window, or just give them a text box and let them type in their answer.

To add more power to the idea, don’t ask them for their name or email address.

When they know their answer is anonymous, they get very honest very quickly; and you learn what you need to know.

Take a little time today to implement the five suggestions above and very soon you should see your income increase without spending a single penny.

And that is a beautiful thing indeed!