a big mistake no one talks about...

Come on, Jason, you've completely ignored everything else I've said.

If you have a thousand guys who have no idea, and a few - Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, Ebe Pagan and a few others - you know, guys who know what they're doing?

And have big lists?

Who do you think would get you more sales?

What he meant is the sales numbers.

What good is a fantastic relationship if no one buys the product?

It's fine if all you're looking for is friends. But, if you're in business, sales is what matters.

Of course, you have to treat your customers well. But until they buy something from you, they're not your customers: They're just people who happen to read your stuff.

Look at Jason's posts: even he refers to the numbers of sales. Not how many friends he made.

I agree with Rezbi.

In fact, this is the number 1, most basic rule of marketing: You ALWAYS target the buyer.

It doesn't matter how many people promote the product or service, in the end, "the buyer" is the one who will make the purchase.

For example: the fitness program P90X isn't just promoted by millions of people because the sales and promos targeted the affiliates. No, it's promoted because millions of buyers have placed reviews on the effectiveness of it and the benefits of using it. This lets the affiliate know that it's worth promoting.

The best thing to do is yes, create a great product or service that actually delivers on the promises made, develop a great message to build trust with the targeted audience, gain a solid reputation...and once affiliates sign up, they know from the start that they are promoting something that the market not only likes, but also wants.

Always look at the big picture: Study what the most successful brands in the world do and market your business the same way.

Good points about developing and building relationships with your JVs/affiliates.

But one of the quickest ways I've seen to burn bridges with JVs/affiliates is to ask them to send traffic to your offer that doesn't convert.

Here's the cliff-notes version of the pre-launch approach I like to use:

1. Do an internal launch to get conversion rate metrics on my salesletter. If the internal launch does poorly, then I don't bother going onto step 2 until I've tested and tweaked the copy until it does convert.

2. Write a salesletter aimed at closing JVs & affiliates to promote. I include the internal launch metrics... that way, people who want to know conversion rates and EPCs will know so before making a decision to promote or not.

A JV or affiliate is going to have different hot buttons than the buyer of the product I'm asking them to promote.

Say it's a weight loss product for women. The affiliates will care about looking good by recommending the product (product quality)... they'll care about conversion rates and EPCs... they'll care about prizes (if applicable) and even reciprocal mailings.

The buyer of the product doesn't care about any of those things... they care that the product delivers what it was promised in the copy.

3. Start with affiliates/JVs that either I already know or my client knows. Get as many of them on board as we can.

4. Expand the scope to contacting even more potential affiliates and JVs.

As for 1000 affiliates vs 10 affiliates argument... I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week. It's been my experience that most of those 1000 affiliates will either fail to mail or they'll drive little or no traffic to our offer.

I'd rather have 10 affiliates that I know will promote and will drive traffic because they want to help make the launch a big success.

They also know that after our launch, we'll be stronger positioned to help promote their next big launch too.

Then there's the available pool of JVs and affiliates in a given niche. In a niche like IM, you may be able to recruit a 1000 affiliates... in many non-IM niches, it's going to be A LOT harder to recruit 100 or more affiliates for a launch.

My 3 cents,

Mike

So, what have I been saying?