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Product Creators vs Affiliate Promotion Only Earning Potential

by ZenDude
10 replies
I SHOULD HAVE named this thread "Affiliate Promotion Only Earning Potential" since nobody is actually reading the original post.

I'm not looking to make 7 figures (although it would be nice, no doubt). I'd like to at least make the upper end of 5 figures, though..

I keep reading that you can't make money if you don't sell your own products, and I'd like to hear from people who are doing straight affiliate sales and making good money, and by good money I mean high 5-figure or into the 6-figure incomes yearly.

Some questions:

1) How long did it take you to get into high 5-figures and how many hours a week did you have to work to get there? I don't mind putting in the time up front but I do have to earn a living in the meantime, so I only have maybe 20 hours a week to put in. I'll devote more time as my affiliate income replaces my writing income.

2) Do you do better with digital or real products? I've tended to sell real products on my blogs, because I do reviews of how I use them, so that works best. I do want to add digital products too, though.

3) What is the best way to introduce digital products? Let's take for example that I am selling coconut oil on my blog, because I've used it and can give real feedback. Obviously, I'm going to be selling it through affiliate ads, but there are also some good digital products out there on using coconut oil. I'm not seeing the benefit in promoting those products, because there is also so much free info out there on coconut oil. I can think of ways to promote it as a handy reference so you won't have to spend hours searching online for the info, though.

O.K. that's all for now. All help is appreciated.
#affiliate #creators #earning #potential #product #promotion
  • Profile picture of the author Luke Dennison
    3). I would find a digital product that revolves around home made skin care products. If people are willing to spend money on coconut oil, then they may be willing to spend $37 on an eBook telling them how to make there own.

    You could still review the eBook, and presell it in a way that gets people curious and onto the sales page.
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    • Profile picture of the author ZenDude
      Originally Posted by Luke Dennison View Post

      3). I would find a digital product that revolves around home made skin care products. If people are willing to spend money on coconut oil, then they may be willing to spend $37 on an eBook telling them how to make there own.

      You could still review the eBook, and presell it in a way that gets people curious and onto the sales page.
      I was actually thinking about DIY ebooks. If I ever create a product, that's what it will be, or one that outlines my own experience in a nutshell.

      Thanks for the suggestion. I was actually promoting and using coconut oil more for medicinal and health purposes. Not much into beauty products, but that is a good niche, so I'll look into it.
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    • Profile picture of the author chinemerem
      i ve done a little of affiliate but no product creation yet BUT i would think the latter is really where the money is. it just makes massive sense to go that route.
      create something of value in your niche,and sell it! but dont be fooled,product creators dont really sell products to make the money(otherwise how would you explain vendors spending time and money to create a product and then turn around to give thier affiliates 100% commissions??) but to build their lists with the best type of traffic(affiliate traffic).
      but if you wanted to sell your own products,you would definitely make more money than the affiliate route.
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      • Profile picture of the author ZenDude
        Originally Posted by chinemerem View Post

        i ve done a little of affiliate but no product creation yet BUT i would think the latter is really where the money is. it just makes massive sense to go that route.
        create something of value in your niche,and sell it! but dont be fooled,product creators dont really sell products to make the money(otherwise how would you explain vendors spending time and money to create a product and then turn around to give thier affiliates 100% commissions??) but to build their lists with the best type of traffic(affiliate traffic).
        but if you wanted to sell your own products,you would definitely make more money than the affiliate route.
        I'm already giving away free information on my blogs and online. I'm not really interested in doing email marketing, although I know that is a logical step. Mostly, I'm avoiding it because I hate email spammers, and know that most people who have any sense (myself included) have tossaway emails that they use to sign up for freebies so they don't have to deal with the spam that follows. Just as an example, I attended a free webinar sponsored by Clickbank and had no choice but to use my Clickbank email. I got spammed every single day and had to literally block these people from sending me anymore crap. One day they might have sent me something valuable, but I'll never know now, because they chose to flood me with the same offer every day for weeks.
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        • Profile picture of the author chinemerem
          Originally Posted by ZenDude View Post

          I'm already giving away free information on my blogs and online. I'm not really interested in doing email marketing, although I know that is a logical step. Mostly, I'm avoiding it because I hate email spammers, and know that most people who have any sense (myself included) have tossaway emails that they use to sign up for freebies so they don't have to deal with the spam that follows. Just as an example, I attended a free webinar sponsored by Clickbank and had no choice but to use my Clickbank email. I got spammed every single day and had to literally block these people from sending me anymore crap. One day they might have sent me something valuable, but I'll never know now, because they chose to flood me with the same offer every day for weeks.
          i understand it can be quite annoying BUT you wont be going the "freebie way".
          you create a product,sell it on jvzoo,any one who buys gets automatically added to your email list.youll be building a super targeted list of buyers WHO ARE UNLIKELY TO UNSUBSCRIBE because they are interested in what youve got to offer(heck,they bought from you).
          affiliates who make good money selling other peoples products many times have their own lists no matter how small but thats not to say you cant make money doing one off sales.....cheers.
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          • Profile picture of the author ZenDude
            Originally Posted by chinemerem View Post

            i understand it can be quite annoying BUT you wont be going the "freebie way".
            you create a product,sell it on jvzoo,any one who buys gets automatically added to your email list.youll be building a super targeted list of buyers WHO ARE UNLIKELY TO UNSUBSCRIBE because they are interested in what youve got to offer(heck,they bought from you).
            affiliates who make good money selling other peoples products many times have their own lists no matter how small but thats not to say you cant make money doing one off sales.....cheers.
            I think I'd much rather go toward the newsletter model. I will subscribe to a newsletter on a topic I'm interested in, and as long as it is 90% info and 10% ads, I won't unsubscribe. However, if I get the newsletter and it's 90% ads and 10% info, I'll unsubscribe.

            I realize I can make more money being grey or black hat and not caring if people love or hate me, but I've spent years building goodwill online, so I'm not going to destroy it by being a spammer.

            Look at what happened to Dr. Mercola. He didn't sell one thing on his site for 3 years, and when he did, they were well accepted and he made money. But he got greedy and got in league with nutjobs and ruiined his reputation. He probably still makes lots of money, but his site is considered a scam site now.

            My reputation is more important to me than money. That's just who I am.
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  • Profile picture of the author DIABL0
    I have been promoting CPA / Affiliate offers for 15 years using email.

    Your mindset regarding email is surprising to me. Email is one of the best tools an online marketer has available to them. There is statistical proof that the majority of people that visit a site do not buy. Collecting visitors email and following up with them is probably the cheapest and most effective way to drive traffic to an offer.

    Just because you have a negative perception of receiving email from marketers, doesn't mean that is how everyone see's it. I think not using it, is a major mistake.

    You would just totally hate me. I take email marketing to the extreme. I do targeted data acquisition deals / generate co-reg and then monetize it with PPL offers. All I do is send offers and zero content. Believe it or not, a huge percentage don't unsubscribe and stick around for years. About 8-10% unsubscribe with in 30 days or so, but after that it completely drops off.

    Anyway, I would seriously reconsider email marketing.
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    • Profile picture of the author ZenDude
      Originally Posted by DIABL0 View Post

      I have been promoting CPA / Affiliate offers for 15 years using email.

      Your mindset regarding email is surprising to me. Email is one of the best tools an online marketer has available to them. There is statistical proof that the majority of people that visit a site do not buy. Collecting visitors email and following up with them is probably the cheapest and most effective way to drive traffic to an offer.

      Just because you have a negative perception of receiving email from marketers, doesn't mean that is how everyone see's it. I think not using it, is a major mistake.

      You would just totally hate me. I take email marketing to the extreme. I do targeted data acquisition deals / generate co-reg and then monetize it with PPL offers. All I do is send offers and zero content. Believe it or not, a huge percentage don't unsubscribe and stick around for years. About 8-10% unsubscribe with in 30 days or so, but after that it completely drops off.

      Anyway, I would seriously reconsider email marketing.
      I wonder how many just block you or have your emails coming to a trash box? What percent of the 90% that don't unsubscribe actually convert? I block more than I unsubscribe, because I found that unsubscribing just ends up getting me unsolicited offers from some other marketing campaign where the original person sold my email. I use a lot of trash emails to sign up for things too. I sort through and forward the ones I like to my real email. I'm not the only person smart enough to do this, you know. All this bragging about "90% of my people don't unsubscribe" is not impressive to me. It just means you are deluding yourself about how many people take your freebies and never see your name again.

      Like I said, I'm building relationships, not mailing lists, and I AM going to be using email lists...to send my newsletters. That's a form of email marketing, right? It's amazing how many of you think that if you aren't going commando on people, you aren't marketing. I'm not surprised, because that's what most of the so-called "gurus" tell you to do, but it still makes me SMH in wonder at how little you care about what the majority of people think of you all.
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      • Profile picture of the author 24INVEST
        Originally Posted by ZenDude View Post

        I wonder how many just block you or have your emails coming to a trash box? What percent of the 90% that don't unsubscribe actually convert? I block more than I unsubscribe, because I found that unsubscribing just ends up getting me unsolicited offers from some other marketing campaign where the original person sold my email. I use a lot of trash emails to sign up for things too. I sort through and forward the ones I like to my real email. I'm not the only person smart enough to do this, you know. All this bragging about "90% of my people don't unsubscribe" is not impressive to me. It just means you are deluding yourself about how many people take your freebies and never see your name again.

        Like I said, I'm building relationships, not mailing lists, and I AM going to be using email lists...to send my newsletters. That's a form of email marketing, right? It's amazing how many of you think that if you aren't going commando on people, you aren't marketing. I'm not surprised, because that's what most of the so-called "gurus" tell you to do, but it still makes me SMH in wonder at how little you care about what the majority of people think of you all.
        I heard a guy on the forum a while ago who was saying he wanted to build relations by starting facebook groups where people could not start discussion but he could. I was thinking that's like starting democracy with only one leader and no elections hahaha, crazy right?

        If you create real value and your email list wants to open everything you send to them (this could be offers, interesting blog posts, free stuff that everybody likes etc), why would people even think about unsubscribing or seeing it as spam.
        ok , i agree, the word "list" can sound like your bulk email list. But it's about EMAIL MARKETING. but bulk mailing is NOT marketing at all. When marketers talk about an email list, we think about a list of people who care about what you have to say. Just like a facebook page with followers. But with email, you can sure to have an 95%-100% receive rate. Where your facebook page is only a maximum of 17% also known as edge rank.

        This may sound like im attacking you on this, but I recommend you to really "reconsider email marketing"...
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  • Profile picture of the author SherimanAF
    It's not true that you can't make real money unless you sell your own products. There are pros and cons of selling own products, the cons obviously providing after sales service or support. Most of the times, being an affiliate could be more lucrative. It's how you sell that count.

    Imagine this, what if you sell affiliate stuffs using the product launch formula. You prepare 2 reports, one is your lead magnet, you know - the thing your prospect will get when they opt-in your squeeze page. The 2nd report is what you sell at a low price immediately after they opt-in. This will cover your advertising costs.

    Then you sell your affiliate stuffs in the paid report (2nd one) and in your email series. 21 email series or more work best.

    When you do this, you have now your own tribe or fans - a list of people interested in your niche. And your tribe now can be divided into 2 group. 1) Generally interested 2) Highly interested and is taking action (your buyers list).

    It is best that you prepare a different email series specifically catering to these 2 different groups. One set of emails send periodically to the general interest group, and another set of email series to your buyers list. It is important that you segmentize your list since you want to filter out the freebie seekers and the action takers.

    Do not neglect to build your tribe. This is a huge mistake. It's part of a proven business model where you have:

    1) Your website
    2) Lead-Gen
    3) Audience
    4) The Launch
    5) The backend

    Your email list is your Audience (no.3). If you don't build your list of fans, tribe, audience, then it's like you're someone who are inexperience, who keep on selling to only new people all the time. You don't build credibility and trust. It's immensely tiring and you will fail in the end.

    All the best and take care.
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