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Intercepting sales, or creating new Leads?

by Thorick
13 replies
Hey guys, this is a pretty good question- I think anyways.

A lot of people have been hyping over this method of generating affiliate sales by finding the people who are about to buy anyways, and they just stick their link infront of them via their website. Now this makes a lot of sense, but remember that without the product, there would be no affiliates for it right.

So really the consumer had to find out about this product from somebody, or some ad or something. The method of finding the already eager buyers for the particlular product can work, but there is only so much momentum behind this right. If you are getting your commissions from people who had found out from some other source, that means there is a limited source of people who know of the product. Meaning that you can only generate so much income from this method, unless of course nobody else is following the method as well.

Now of course if you own the product your doing a lot better cause you get all the sales, vs. the affiliate who only gets a percentage of the sales he makes, but lets not go there, I'm talking affiliates here.

If you were to generate leads from the general public who was interested in the niche of the product, and you sent them to the product- in other words, you where the first source the consumer learned about the product from- couldn't you generate a helluva lot more money. Rather then just generating sales from a few people who are looking to buy the product already, if you just sent people who are still looking for a product like the one your promoting, you would probably make a lot more sales, because there are a lot more of these people to start with, then just the ones who already are looking to buy.

I don't know if I'm making any sense here. If I'm not please let me know and I'll try to rewrite it again. But If I am please let me know what you think. Cause I'm thinking I could make a lot more money if this concept is true.
#creating #intercepting #leads #sales
  • Profile picture of the author artwebster
    Hi, Thorick,
    You are making a lot of sense.
    It will obviously be much better for your sales figures if, as an affiliate, you could target those people who had already shown an interest in the product
    I suppose it is possible to have a programme that can sneek onto remote computers and identify cookies from other affiliates and replace them with your own - indeed, I am certain such a programme exists and is in regular use - and it will be as moral as editing affiliate links.
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  • Profile picture of the author Thorick
    I think you have me backwards. I was meaning targeting the people who are interested in the niche and introducing them to the product. I'm thinking that the people who know about the product already are limited in supply, while those that have not seen the product are way more plenty. I mean you want to target people you think will be interested, you don't want unrelevent traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author artwebster
    Point taken - I see your post can be interpretted that way too.

    Here's a little story that is repeated every day, millions of times.

    I visited a large discount store and had a good look round. I bought some cavity fixings and a torch, not because I was interested but because the way they were presented made me interested. Since I was in a wheelchair at the time and not controlling it myself, the presentation was effective enough to make me instruct my 'driver' to back up.
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    Build it, make money, then build some more
    Some old school smarts would help - and here's to Rob Toth for his help. Bloody good stuff, even the freebies!

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    • Profile picture of the author Kevin AKA Hubcap
      Originally Posted by artwebster View Post

      Point taken - I see your post can be interpretted that way too.

      Here's a little story that is repeated every day, millions of times.

      I visited a large discount store and had a good look round. I bought some cavity fixings and a torch, not because I was interested but because the way they were presented made me interested. Since I was in a wheelchair at the time and not controlling it myself, the presentation was effective enough to make me instruct my 'driver' to back up.
      All marketers take heed of this statement.

      The way you package, market, and promote your product are very important.

      You can have a great product that will help everybody it touches but if it doesn't appeal to its target market it won't make you a red cent.

      Conversely, you can have an ok (or worse) product that appeals to your target audience and make a mint.

      Kevin
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  • Profile picture of the author hotlinkz
    Originally Posted by Thorick View Post

    Hey guys, this is a pretty good question- I think anyways.

    A lot of people have been hyping over this method of generating affiliate sales by finding the people who are about to buy anyways, and they just stick their link infront of them via their website. Now this makes a lot of sense, but remember that without the product, there would be no affiliates for it right.
    It's more like they find you based on "ready-to-buy keywords". These are keywords that people tend to use right before they make a purchase (i.e. "product" reviews, "product" comparison, "product" coupon code, etc.). Where "product" represents whatever product or service they are seeking. The examples are very basic and most "ready-to-buy keywords" are long-tailed keywords.
    So really the consumer had to find out about this product from somebody, or some ad or something. The method of finding the already eager buyers for the particlular product can work, but there is only so much momentum behind this right. If you are getting your commissions from people who had found out from some other source, that means there is a limited source of people who know of the product. Meaning that you can only generate so much income from this method, unless of course nobody else is following the method as well.
    Again, the eager buyers are really finding you. Also, the only way you will get a commission is if the searcher visits the page from which you offer the affiliate product. If your offer page appeals to them more than another affiliate's offer page - you get the sale.

    You can sweeten your offer with better product reviews, added bonuses, better copy, etc. And or course you must have the proper keywords and links in place to get those visitors to your affiliate offer in the first place.

    Now of course if you own the product your doing a lot better cause you get all the sales, vs. the affiliate who only gets a percentage of the sales he makes, but lets not go there, I'm talking affiliates here.
    Sometimes you can do better with a well-known affiliate product than you can with a product you just created. Due to the fact that the well-known product's name is being searched.

    If you were to generate leads from the general public who was interested in the niche of the product, and you sent them to the product- in other words, you where the first source the consumer learned about the product from- couldn't you generate a helluva lot more money. Rather then just generating sales from a few people who are looking to buy the product already, if you just sent people who are still looking for a product like the one your promoting, you would probably make a lot more sales, because there are a lot more of these people to start with, then just the ones who already are looking to buy.
    Not necessarily. You are thinking about "persistent cookies". VERY few affiliate programs are set up this way.

    With regards to cookies, either the individuals running the affiliate program don't understand cookies, or they are purposely leaving the info out in an effor to mislead.

    Affiliate commissioning usually goes something like this...

    When a visitor gets to your "Acme" affiliate link for the first time, a cookie is created and your affiliate data is stored.

    Now when that same visitor get to another affiliate's "Acme" link, the cookie is read and updated. Now this new affiliate will get the commission and so on. A persistent cookie in the same situation would retain your data and not get updated. So you get commission regardless of how many other "Acme" links the visitor clicks.

    Hope that helps clear things up for you.

    Calvin
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  • Profile picture of the author Thorick
    Yes, that helps a lot. Thanks guys. I have another question though: Before the consumer learned about the product which drove them to search for the reviews and get in the buying mood, how did they learn about it. I mean, the product seller will obviously put out an effort to get traffic to his site, the few people there that buy, might tell others about it, but how does all this momentum get built up enough so that this seller has a killer product that gets lots of sales and has lots of people looking at it and wanting to buy it.

    Some say that's why its good to have the affiliats because they help with getting people to the site. But if your targeting the buyer long tail keywords your obviously targeting people who already heard about it. Who did they hear about it from other then the few things I mentioned. I mean there are so many ways, but does the seller do all his work himself, and the affiliates are used just to convince the prospects to buy, or are there affiliates out there who find people and convince them to buy, then send them to the sellers site. Like, these people had to find out about it somewhere.

    Do the smart sellers do all this work themselves, or do they have affiliates out there who get the people interested, rather then intercepting the sale.

    I'm hoping I didn't repeat my first post question, lol, but maybe this will get a few different view points as well.

    Thanks again artwebster and hotlinkz for your posts. Reps to you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    The best business is to have a product and let the affiliates go out and bring people to you. Then at your site you attempt to sell your product and if they buy then you have a buying customer that goes on your list for your backend offers.

    If they don't buy then you try to catch them before leaving to get their email list so that you have another chance at turning them into buying customers.

    You focus on building your lists and can use the lists to J.V. with other marketers that have lists of buyers that you can use in huge product launches.

    From those big launches you get big buyers and you can now recruit your big buyers into loyal affiliates to send you more traffic using great testimonials.

    Matt
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    • Profile picture of the author Thorick
      Originally Posted by Matthew Maiden View Post

      The best business is to have a product and let the affiliates go out and bring people to you. Then at your site you attempt to sell your product and if they buy then you have a buying customer that goes on your list for your backend offers.

      If they don't buy then you try to catch them before leaving to get their email list so that you have another chance at turning them into buying customers.

      You focus on building your lists and can use the lists to J.V. with other marketers that have lists of buyers that you can use in huge product launches.

      From those big launches you get big buyers and you can now recruit your big buyers into loyal affiliates to send you more traffic using great testimonials.

      Matt

      Thanks, so what your saying is there are affiliates that introduces the consumer to the product, rather then just convincing already introduced consumers to buy. Do these affiliates make a lot of money as well? Is it harder to do this then the affiliates that just intercept sales?

      I mean you also said other stuff, but this is what I'm trying to find out the most. Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    Thorick,

    Ideally, you would want to be able to intercept them as they are heading off to buy.

    You could have a website that the customer sees and looks at to decide which product to buy but you still have to get them to your site.

    I was saying that if you pay a commission to someone to bring the buyers, (traffic) to you then you don't have to work as hard to get the traffic.

    You would spend your time on the sales letter on your page and make it as good as you could at convincing people to buy.

    You should go to the top of the forum and look through the links up therein the stickies posts and you will find the many different ways to get traffic or affiliates to sell for you.

    Matt
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonl70
    Thorick, that's how I do it.

    My most profitable niches are the ones where I actively build a list of prospects interested in that niche via a squeeze page - not intercepting and redirecting those people searching for product names within the niche. Once they are on my list, I introduce them to some products via the autoreponder.

    For me, this has worked much better - plus I end up with a list that I can use again in the future

    Now that I think about it some, it would probably be a good idea to do both.. I've always done one or the other, but never both in the same niche. I might be able to pick up some extra sales
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  • Profile picture of the author Thorick
    Thanks guys, this is a great help. Reps to you both.
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  • Profile picture of the author Loren Woirhaye
    You open up a complicated can of worms here. If you can "crack"
    the formula you could earn a lot of cash with what you are thinking
    of however.

    I have recently become interested in desktop audio recording. Not
    wanting to buy all kinds of software and equipment I don't really
    need, and not wanting to get crappy stuff I'd have to replace
    either, I was forced to start researching the vast marketplace
    of this sort of thing with a limited VOCABULARY to search with.

    Along the way I ran into a handful of credible sources which helped
    me better my vocabulary and sharpen my understanding as a
    consumer. Those sources would be well-positioned to make
    a sale from me if they had their ducks all in a row... not only
    informative, but balanced, respecting my limited vocabulary,
    competitive on price, and so forth.

    It does get complicated. But consider how vast the market
    for desktop recording gear is... and when you dig into the
    morass of information as a marketer you become acutely
    aware of the weaknesses of many of the vendors.

    The issue is really that the equipment is introduced and
    upgrading at such a staggeringly fast rate that no website
    could hope to have a good enough staff of reviewers to
    accurately inform customers at all levels of vocabulary
    (experience), so most vendors either simply present the
    specs of the product and carry them all or they try to
    specialize.

    There is no perfect solution here. There is a lot of
    opportunity though. If you find something a small
    yet passionate group off buyers is hungry for credible
    information about you can dominate by just being good
    at sharing the information they need.
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    • Profile picture of the author myob
      Make it simple. Just use PPC ads. I get tons of affiliate sales from people who have already been sold on the products and are ready to buy.
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