Clickbank - Is it ethical to use the text from a original Sales Page as an affiliate?

The best thing to do is to simply ask the vendor for permission.

It's fast (just takes a moment to write an email) and it keeps you out of legal hot water. Simple.

cheers,
Becky

It depends on what you're planning to do.

For example, I have affiliates who do this with my products. They take a video, sales copy, or graphics I created, put it on their site, and put a "buy now" button under it.

Are they using my material without permission? Yes.
Does it create confusion for potential customers? Yes.
Do they add any value for the potential clients or the product? No.

When I see this, I usually contact the affiliate and tell them to take it down, and teach them how to be a better, more profitable affiliate.

On the other hand, if they "quote" some small parts of the benefits from the sales copy, ADD VALUE, and it is perfectly clear that this is a third-party site that is either reviewing or augmenting what we have, then it's fine and I applaud them. I might even send traffic their way.

What I recommend doing is creating material that improves the product you're promoting, like training material, show how to use it with other popular products and techniques. Make a site that is valuable to the product owner and to their customers. Become a hub of useful, value-adding information, and when people search for the product, your site might eventually come up first. Disclose your relationship as an affiliate and create incentive for them to purchase through your affiliate link.

And yes, it's more work.

John.

Never rely on someone else opinions what you want is to get the real facts... contact the owner and ask him/her if what you plan to do is ok with them they'll tell you.

If you get knock down ask another vendors in your niche until you got a yes!

Hope this help

J

Always contact the vendor and see how they feel.

I will admit the best product I ever sold as an affiliate was one that the owner allowed me to use a lot of his graphics and videos. I do recommend giving the text a "twist" to add value to the customers. Some buyers will be annoyed if (assuming they have to) they leave your page only to land on the vendors identical sales page.

As a vendor, Im pleased to see you at least asked before proceeding.

Its not something Id like to see happen to my sales page, and I agree with whats been said above, this would surely just confuse the end user?

It doesn't matter.

Not because what's "ethical" is unimportant (it's hugely important), but because this is a bad idea anyway.

In my opinion, the single commonest mistake ClickBank affiliates make is "selling" - or trying to - (rather than "pre-selling") on their own sites.

It does. But that's why the majority of people setting out as ClickBank affiliates don't ever manage to earn a living from it: they go with what's easy, rather than understanding the fundamentals.

Using the vendor's sales page is OK if (with his permission) the affiliate's page links directly to the Order Form. Otherwise it is totally counter-productive as well as being unethical.

I hope you (and anyone reading this thread) totally understood Alexa's reply, above.

Regardless of what you may have been told...
"easier" is NOT the goal. Your goal is more sales!

I often shudder when reading the sales pages for a lot of IM products. So many of them are intended to be sold to affiliates, and the bulk of that market is "newbie" affiliates.

To stand out above the others, the merchant finds himself scrounging around for benefits to list in his/her sales copy, and invariably lands on "easy", time-saving, and/or quicker ROI, start making money in 30 minutes, etc.

There is so much of it, that many newer affiliates come to think that whatever they do, it should be easy. Why else would "easy" be so important, that it becomes a "benefit" on so many of those sales pages, right?

If I'm not careful, I'll wind up on a soapbox here, so let me just reiterate.

"Easy" is NOT your primary goal!

Sorry, what were we talking about again?

Or you can use the content they provide for you on the affiliate tools page...

Best bet as an affiliate is to go with the more personal approach. Sell them on the product. Teach them about it first.

This goes back to pre-civil wars days in my case, but when I was very young I remember we had these little wind-up toy cars. You would hold them down on the floor, hold down and push them backwards which would wind a spring inside. When you let them go they would shoot across the floor.

Pre-selling is a lot like winding up those toy cars. You rev up your visitors and get their "spring wound" to get them in a fever to buy. Then you let them go and hopefully, if you've wound them up properly they shoot off to the sales page and reach for their credit cards.

--Mike

this information is very useful for me, thank u.