The Danger Of Promoting Internet Marketing Products

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

You're telling me!

It's really dismaying, hearing about the huge numbers of people who as their introduction to IM have gone into the "make money online" niche, and set about promoting products on Clickbank for which 95%+ of the potential customers are already affiliates, and are then wondering why they can't earn a commission on them.

Only a couple of weeks ago, in another forum, I saw a thread started by someone with a new Clickbank product like this, openly seeking affiliates for it. I can't remember the title or anything (which is probably just as well), but could hardly believe my eyes. (Of course, many of that forum's newbies will be interested and will sign up as affiliates and promote the thing). I posted very, very briefly, simply asking if the product was itself aimed at Clickbank affiliates, i.e. if that's who the potential customers were, and got a reply post saying "Yes, people buying this product will be Clickbank affiliates" (that's almost verbatim).

Obviously, that terminated my own "interest" in becoming an affiliate - I never really had one actually, I just wanted the newbies to realise what was going on (I say "obviously" but to many there it clearly isn't obvious!). How on Earth does anyone expect to earn many affiliate commissions promoting that when all the customers can buy it using their own affiliate-link?!

I do believe the vendor was not trying to "pull a fast one" but was probably genuinely so naive that he/she simply hadn't thought it through at all and realised that you can't possibly attract and keep good affiliates by selling such a product on Clickbank itself. It's just bizarre.