Frustrated Affiliate....Need Advice

The only thing about that is that I have a lot of personal experience in my niche, that is why I have been somewhat successful in it. I think the whole point of me writing something would be because I have a lot to offer on the topic. Am I looking at this the wrong way?

Less of a concern, arguably, I suppose.

I still wouldn't like it very much, myself.

The thing is: if she's changed it, she must surely still have a copy of the original, and on request from an existing, successful affiliate, it surely takes her almost no time/effort to put that back as an alternative sales page, like so many other vendors do? The "burden" is really on her, here, I think, because she's failing to do something that other vendors do?

No, not in my opinion.

What makes her think she's entitled to build her list from your subscribers, and not even give you a choice about whether that's acceptable to you, when you're already making sales of her product and want to continue to promote it?!

To be blunt, I think her position is pretty close to "indefensible", here. :p

It's not as if you're asking her anything unreasonable, after all.

Send her a link to this thread and invite her to contribute.

Clearly.

And you're in one of the most classic "desperate buyers only" niches of all time.

And the fact that this sales page business has been such a problem for you perhaps illustrates that there's soom for another in the market? (There probably is anyway, regardless of that?).

Well, the theory is that you outsource the skills you can't bring to your own table. You do need a professional sales page written by a professional copywriter, though, I think. And it is a commitment of time and some money, it's true.

It depends whether you want to become a vendor, really.

I think you'd probably do very well, myself.

No, but I might, one day. To be honest, I typically get a couple of p.m.'s per day asking me to publish a WSO or something. My problem is that the sort of niche in which I could most easily produce a product ("internet marketing"/"affiliate marketing"/"article marketing") isn't a "niche" I like, in those terms. I have no problem discussing it with people in a forum context, but that's another story altogether from producing an authoritative product about it.

I like the flexibility of being an affiliate.

As affiliates, we can build up a real, asset-based (sites and lists) business without being dependent on the continued survival, acceptability, and so on, of any specific individual product at all. Quite apart from not having to produce one, not having the technical problems, not needing to do much "customer service", not having the legal issues, and all the other headaches and risks that vendors have. In any of my 8 niches, if a product "goes wrong" on me, it's comparatively easy to replace it with another (I have, admittedly, to some extent chosen my niches to make sure that's so).

However, I have to admit that most people will tell you (in thread after thread after thread, here, in which it's regularly discussed) that you can do much better from being a vendor than you can from being an affiliate. I don't enjoy those discussions, myself, for two main reasons: first, it strikes me that many of the arguments commonly adduced in favor of being a vendor actually apply equally to affiliates; and secondly, I sometimes wonder, when people recount how little money they made as an affiliate and how much better they're doing as a vendor, just how good they were at being an affiliate in the first place.

Sorry, a lot of rambling here, and not much constructive help.

But I'd genuinely be interested to know what your vendor would say to an honest and direct ultimatum along the lines of "Give me back a copy of the former sales page, or I drop your product tomorrow." She hasn't really got a leg to stand on, has she?

Sometimes you have to play hardball, a bit, with these people who need you more than you need them. Otherwise they'll just get some people from your list onto their list, sometimes without you earning anything from them, and sometimes they'll sell them all sorts of other things, into the bargain - and these are your subscribers we're talking about, built up and nurtured and pre-sold by your skills, your energy, your time, your effort, your expenses and all the rest of it ... ok, if they buy the product through your affiliate marketing, and you get paid first, and then the vendor gets them on their list, that's entirely legitimate, of course, because anyone can opt in their own customers and contact them. Nothing wrong in that case, at all. But she has quite some cheek trying to do that before you've been paid anything and then telling you that "if you're doing a good job pre-selling, then it shouldn't matter that she has opt-ins on those other pages of the site"!!