“The Affiliate Marketing Detox Letters”|”The 7 Great Lies of Affiliate Marketing”

This is the first letter in the series “Affiliate Marketing Detox”.

WARNING! If you are an affiliate marketer, and you are making a real living income off of affiliate marketing, then God Bless You! It is not my intent here to suggest that no one ever makes money as an affiliate marketer. However, many affiliate marketers are not making minimum wage at what they do.

Rather than suggest that they try harder, I am trying to get all affiliates to consider making money as an internet marketer, who sells their own product.

If you are an affiliate marketer and you like what you do, make money at what you do, or are merely convinced that affiliate marketing is THE horn of plenty, then go to a different post..

But if you think your income could be better, or are wondering if there are any non affiliate streams of income to drink from, read on!

In this first letter, we will be talking about the internal challenges affiliate marketers face in taking the risk of trying to sell their own product, rather than promoting someone else’s product.

Issue number one:Trouble Bonding with Products

Affiliate Marketers have bonding issues. They have trouble committing to one product, and instead, are like a serial dater who has many different relationships….with other people’s products. Just like playas hop around from person to person, affiliates jump from product to product.  Some may call it diversifying. Marketers who actually sell something, call this behavior a lack of focus. This fear of marketing attachment stems from a faulty belief system.

Belief: you don’t think you can sell

Why don’t you think you can sell?

Why do you think that only the people you are promoting can sell a product? You doubt yourself, affiliate. But affiliate, here’s the real truth…you CAN sell!
Have you ever sold a candy bar for your school or charity? Did you ever sell anything over the phone? Did you ever have to sell, convince or persuade someone on making a decision in your favor? That in itself displays selling skills. Affiliate, every time you write a “buy this product” page or “review”, you are demonstrating the art of persuasive selling! The truth is, most affiliates ARE salesmen…by far!

Lie number 2–You don’t think you will make any money selling your own product or service

Well, affiliate, are you making money? We all hear of door-to-door salesmen who sell someone else’s product, but we never hear of them being wildly successful. That’s because, selling for others is hard! Read this excerpt: https://howtosellanythingonline.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/affiliate-can-we-talk/

Issue number 3-You’ve bought the lie that it takes a lot of “over”head to sell your product

But the truth is, it takes investment to promote other people’s product, if you need to:

1. Pay a fee for the “privilege” of promoting them
2. Be a member/customer before promoting their product
3. Buy Google ads to promote them
4. Buy back links
5. Build a mega site in hopes of dominating the search engines

you think that being an affiliate is easier than selling your own product

Oh, you think so? Really? Have you forgotten the hours spent promoting the best products out there…that only, oh, 1 million others were promoting?

you don’t have a product to sell

This is the biggest lie of all. Affiliate, don’t tell me that you aren’t capable of producing your own product, or selling your services. In this over saturated world of affiliate marketing, if you’ve made a dime, you are capable. Only you and other affiliates know the time and effort you’ve put into selling other people’s stuff. It’s time to sell your own.

you don’t think that your product is capable of pulling in sales.

The second biggest lie of all. Affiliate, chances are, you have exactly what it takes to STOMP the competition. It will take time. But affiliate right now, there is a product you can sell that will make you money right off the bat. Niche marketing shouldn’t mean “AFFILIATE SLAVE”. Find your OWN niche, and rake it in.

you’ve already invested so much money in affiliate marketing programs, you feel the need to “make” it work

Forget it, affiliate. Consider it the cost of an education. Most marketers have been burnt. Move on and sell your own stuff!

Advertisement

Why affiliate “reviews” make me nervous.

Do you remember when “consumer magazine” first came out? I don’t either. But unless you live as a hermit, then you are probably familiar with it.

Consumer Magazines USP is, “We write reviews that are not incentive based”

Affiliate, everytime you write a “review” and don’t make it VERY clear that you are getting paid, you lose your credibility.

And even when you make it clear that you are getting paid, okay, at least you were honest enough to tell your reader that you have an incentive for recommending the product.

So, now you are honest. But are you unbiased? See, how can you win, affiliate? How can your customer give value to your review, knowing that you just said, you get a commission for your opinion?

But that’s not all…the buzz around the internet is that you are legally required to disclose your earnings. As in, you need to make it clear to your reader that you are getting paid for recommending a product.

I suppose there is a clever way to word that reality that makes you look like a super star.

Really though, if I was an affiliate marketer, I know I’d be down at some legal analysts office, getting the wording cleared before I posted my disclaimer.

You don’t want to get into legal trouble.

Now, I am trying really hard to keep an open mind here.

If you just have to do affiliate marketing, you could only endorse products that you use, or that you at least know are decent.

And, you could keep some credibility by mentioning some of the features that aren’t so good with some of the products you recommend.

And I’ll bet, you could even get affiliate clicks on bad products that you staunchly discourage.

Still though, at the end of the day, you just might consider doing what I’ve been suggesting all along.

Sell your own stuff.

Post script. All right affiliate, you are in a class of your own. You fascinate me, you infuriate me, you puzzle me, and you….seem to be a majority when it comes to who visits me. Affiliate, I hate the tension. I feel like I’m lecturing you all. I hate it. Can’t we be friends? Couldn’t we get some good healthy dialogue going? Tell me where I’m missing it and why I should try to market like you do. It’s lonely on the other side of the computer screen…

Only a genius could survive in affiliate marketing

You’ve got to be an A+ marketer to stay alive in affiliate marketing.

You’ve got to constantly be promoting the latest things, leaving “likes” all over so people click back to you, leaving posts on forums, building SEO mini-sites, testing squeeze pages, burning through Adwords  fees,  “friending” a million people on facebook, promoting product that is junk, (and then writing a “don’t buy that crud product, buy this crud product” article when you are done with that outdated version.)

And here’s the hook…you DO make some money sometimes. But you are always dumping one pile of goodies, (like maybe every day?) to run to a bigger pile of goodies.

You’re a nomad, affiliate.  Just as soon as the water runs dry in one place, you run to the next.

I suppose that’s okay, affiliate.  But how about this. How about sticking your roots down in one market that you know won’t run dry….other than the market of affiliate marketing?

Affiliate, I know you. You have trouble bonding….with products. “Why should I waste my time on a product that will take me 10 years to promote online, when I can scatter this seed to all of the other affiliates who will gobble it up?”

The answer, affiliate, is because you are better than that.  You are higher than that. You’re an eagle, not a ground pecking fowl.

And you absolutely have what it takes to be at the top of the heap selling one product, off one website, number one on Google.

Yes! That’s the kind of success you need to be after.

Apply for membership

finish reading the “Dear Affiliate” letters

The Gap Theory.

I have a theory.

I have concluded that most internet marketers have huge gaps in their marketing education.

If they are a new marketer or an affiliate marketer, they lack focus.

If they are very new at blogging, they may lack knowledge on basic blogging skills on  things like making sure that their “about” page doesn’t read “this is an about page” .

If they’ve been blogging awhile, they may not post every day. Or they may not know all of the features that allow them to network with other blogs for traffic.

If they sell their own product on their own website, they may have absolutely horrible graphics with poor lighting and low quality. Or no contact information. And maybe, unbelievable, even no way to be reached at all.

I have concluded that having gaps is the most universal problem that almost every marketer has.

If you know in  your heart that there are some gaping or midsize holes in your marketing plan,  then you owe it to yourself to nail down the basics of internet marketing.

 

Affiliate, I misjudged you.

You actually do have a niche of your own… you sell TO your own!

yes, it’s true, you all have a sub-culture of marketing madness that you all are a part of. You all buy one another’s stuff, try one another’s stuff and promote one another’s stuff.

Heck, you probably even make money doing this.

There’s only one problem I foresee….don’t you think this bubble of mutual promotion and over hype is going to burst someday?

Don’t you think that someday people are going to wake up and get tired of the hype?

Yes! They are. But by the time they wake up, they will have bought at least 52 products that aren’t enough to teach them how to be a sustainable business.

They will be hooked by you,  on buying more affiliate stuff to sell to more people who sell to more people…

…bUT  thiNK, think, affiliate…didn’t you buy your first affiliate product to show you how to build a sustainable business?

Or were you just jumping on any wheel out there that would make you money?

Continue on with  the “Dear Affiliate” letters