The #1 Affiliate Marketing Mistake You Are Making

single opt-in......Michele are you using single opt-in or are you single...ha,ha....

Yeah, see - we agree - going for the product first is the "lazy" way to do it. Yeah, it COULD work, but the thing is, you need to have a hot product that people want to search for by name.

Have you really TRIED that tactic, or have you just read in a couple of places that it works, and it SOUNDS good, so you repeat it?

You specifically named Clickbank, and I want to put out a few arguments AGAINST steering marketers in that direction. Primarily, there's nowhere to grow from there.

In my experience, not very many people are aware of any but the best selling Clickbank products. They just aren't household names. The strategy you're talking about will NOT work with 99% of the products out there. And for the products it WILL really kill for, there's already people employing a strategy for it. By the time a consumer knows the name of a product that they're interested in buying, they've ALREADY done the research and decided to buy THAT item over another. That being said, what they are going to search for is a vendor with a low price/good deal. Most of the time, that cuts affiliate marketers out of the picture (we have no control over vendor pricing).

Now, that's the case in the non-IM, physical products affiliate world. See who bids on product names in that game - the vendors are savvy, the manufacturers have huge budgets, and so do the huge internet providers. Any mass market product name you search for will probably be dominated by the maker, the seller, and the price comparer.

But you're talking about Clickbank. And the only "name brand" products on Clickbank are usually in the IM field because of the hype engine prelaunch buzz. So all the teeny tiny affiliate wannabees jump in and fight for their sliver with all the other people in their category. But guess what? Guess who always wins the affiliate contest? The big name guys with the lists. Guess why that happens? Because they have "juice" in the market. They have a list of people in the market with a broader interest that goes beyond just the single product.

On top of that, Clickbank's gravity stat can be (and is) manipulated by savvy product creators. So it's not really TRUE market research. Besides, even if that stat could be trusted, it only indicates how well someone is marketing that particular product, and not how broad, how deep, how many are in the marketplace.

Another downside (at least the way most people market) is if you find a stinker of a product (and you will), all your work is wasted. Also, you're going to be competing with all the other people marketing that product - you're not going out and finding the market - you're just trading on keywords and waiting for the market to get educated and find you.

I'm saying that's a waste. If you get into the MARKETS and find them where they are, YOU are the one educating the markets about the products in the first place. Why are they going to go off and google search if someone they trust from their community/niche/tribe is already giving them quality recommendations.

Dig?

If you do it my way, you'll eat the lunch of everyone doing your way before they even get sniffers looking around.

Now, yet ANOTHER way to look at it is YES, say you try your way and it works and you have a winner.

Most people would say okay, rinse and repeat (another "lazy" tactic), find another product and start over.

That's dumb. Find ANOTHER product that will appeal to the same kind of buyer, promote it to the people in your existing funnel, AND start a campaign on that product externally to pull people in to your same, more generalized information "channel". All the new people coming on off product 2, guess what? Set an autoresponder to send them a promo for product 1.

We're not arguing about doing product specific marketing, we're just arguing over where and when you should be doing it.

I prefer to build big generalized pools of subscribers, and a wide, community spanning sphere of influence for a site/persona. Then, when I want to do some product specific marketing and trade on a name my market recognizes, I have DOUBLE the impact any other affiliate might have because I have the product recognition paired with the "brand" I've bothered to build.

So, compare:

Build a campaign around the product with no equity in the marketplace...

OR

Build some equity in the marketplace FIRST, and THEN market every product you can find from a position of authority and power.

See, people searching for stuff are going to want to filter the noise, and focus on the quality signal. So if you spend your time on developing a strong signal that people want to tune in to (Again, not even HARD to do in most info-starved niches) then people will ignore the other guys.

P.S. I LOVE Chris Surfrider and John Reese's stuff BUT - think about how the strategies THEY teach will inevitably help THEM. Do those guys have products with strong brands that people are searching for? You bet. So by teaching affiliate marketers to set up traps for that traffic and send it back to them - big payday. Sure, the affiliate makes a little money too, but you gotta fight fight fight and always know what the new hot product is.

Operating at my level, I don't have to fight with anyone over the people in the market who know the name of "Product X" - most of the time, I'm the first one to even TELL them Product X exists, and they are grateful I informed them, and they trust my recommendation. They bypass your system entirely.

Think about that.

Thanks for the comment though!