Stupid Question #2 for me this week. Why do you do Affiliate marketing, CPA, and Adsense?

In a nutshell...because it's easier to promote other ppl's stuff than creating your own. And it's feels safer to promote other ppl's stuff than it is to risk a bombshell with your own product.

You can outsource traffic generation and any other aspect of site building real cheaply right now. That makes for the perfect recipe for the lazy people.

Now ...that I just read what I wrote...I think I'll join the bandwagon too. Well, maybe just get the ole toes a little wet anyway.

It's a different skill entirely. The same reason that Microsoft don't make curtains - I wouldn't know where to start. And looking at the Clickbank gravity figures for 99% of products there's a TINY change of success. As an affiliate marketer you can pick products that have a good chance of converting. And if they don't, no matter, move into the next product. In the time it takes to create a product you can set up a number of affiliate marketing websites that bring in predictable and regular income.

There's nothing that I could wrote an ebook on that you can't buy from Amazon (and a much better version than I could ever come up with). Begs the question why so many people buy ebooks - something which I never understood with the exception of the IM niche.

Andy

Some people like to be salespeople others like to be business owners. (Nothing wrong with either of these.)

-John

Ok,

Fair enough and I do see the points.

One thing though. There are some very nice MRR products with killer sales pages. Act like an affiliate for them and keep all the money.

Not trying to argue just trying to see which I'm going to jump in 2010.

George Wright

I create my own products because I love what I do and I'm confident in my ability to teach others what I know how to do: and that's making money.

It wasn't always like that, because there's still the fear of failure when I could just as easily promoted oher peoples products.

My solution is simple.

I do both. Create and market free and paid products I create and prmote affiliate products.

I agree, I like seeing the instant cash in my paypal account from one of my own creations, it's more than just the money...it's the fact that what I created has made me money from my own experinece and creativity. It's fun. I'ts challenging, and I embrace it.

Most people just aren't comfortable in teaching others what they already know how to do so well. And I'll be the first to admit, it's damn challenging teaching people what comes second nature to you. Because what you miss on purpose, maybe what that person needed to move on to the next step.

Still, despite my fears, I guess I just do it anyways.

Personally, I prefer to be a product creator.. but yeah being an affiliate is how we all start out right? I believe for all afilliates there will eventually be a point in time where they'll consider creating their own product.. it's the next natural step. You gotta take a shot sometime right? haha..

Awesome question, George!

It's very interesting to see the different answers coming in.

As for Clickbank; Simon shares my views exactly.

But since no one touched on CPA i'll take a stab at it.

With Clickbank you can, putting it simply, slap up a sales page write an e-book and your done.

It may not get many affiliates that way; but you still did it.

With CPA it's much different, and much more difficult.

There are two main models for CPA. Re-bill and opt-in.

It should be clear that re-bill's are the free trial's, witch are not all scams FYI. And opt-in is where the consumer puts in his name or e-mail for a free gift.

There are different models but we won't get into that right now...

First is the re-bill offer.

Here is the process; in a nutshell.

1) Contact a supplier of the product you will be selling.

2) Contact a telemarketing firm to get your "support". (Yes, these are US based.)

3) Pay both upfront to start producing and setting up.

4) Make your sales process in which you will need to try and sell the original consumer on a variety of related products through upsells, down sells, cross sells, and value trojans. (And each product will be physical so you gotta get those made too. Most likely they'll be made to order though.)

5) Get your sales page designed. Oh it may seem simple having almost a full site above the fold. But these guys pay copywriters sometimes tens of thousands just for the little text snippets on the website.

6) Get the sales page and back end pages set up by a graphics designer.

7) Get your payment processor set up.

Now you should be done the upfront work. (The work that doesn't make you the monies.)

Now it's time for promotion where you either sink or swim.

8) Now you need to contact affiliate networks and try and get them to accept your product. (Some networks deny almost 90% of offers.)

9) Now that your approved in some netoworks you need to be competitive by offering a 32-36 dollar payout, up front. You don't know if any 32 dollar customer will be worth more than that, it's simply a gamble. (Unless you bill them the next day for $96, which is not cool.)

10) Just because your offer is there, just like Clickbank, doesn't mean people will promote it. Now you need to start to get some super affiliates, people who make up 20-80% of your sales, on your side.

11) Now let's say you get all the affiliates in the world, cool. Now for the next few months you may be able to make above 100,000 a day. But it won't last long so save some of that!

12) Now you just made 100,000 a day for a month, awesome. But now you gotta pay out your peeps. So first is your affiliate network, all of a sudden one third to half of your money dissapears.

Than you gotta pay the rest of your supplies, shippers, and support.

And deal with any charge backs and legal issues.

At the end of the day one successful offer will make you a ton of money, don't get me wrong.

But it will take hard work, dedication, and constant failure to finally see the light and make it all work.

Total upfront cost can be anywhere from 5-100 thousand. And there is no guarantee that everyone will want to promote your offer; maybe only 1 in 5 will be winners.

Boy this post is long...

Now onto Opt-in offers.

We've all seen these "win a free Ipod offers" around, right?

But how do they make money and how can they afford to pay you a buck a lead.

It isn't easy.

There are less than 5 major players in the opt-in CPA offer field, surprising isn't it?

(By players I mean only 5 major companies make the opt-in CPA offers; everyone else who tries fails and runs out of money. Or they simply can't get any affiliates.)

All these 'players' make between 25-40 million a year.

I won't go into great detail but when someone submits their e-mail they go through a long process of surveys they need to fill out etc

Than when their done they have a 1 in who knows chance of winning an ipod, laptop, whatever.

It's complicated and i'm not going to pretend to know the ins and outs of that business model.

But making these things convert isn't an easy task either.

These guys split test to death and spend atleast 20k just testing and driving traffic to the offer themselves.

And as with re-bills you need support, the product your giving away, and money upfront without any guarentee of success.

In short; Clickbank is a simple process. Sure their are tricks and techniques to making it work that decide who succeeds and who fails.

But all in all we can all basically see how they work and we can all do it if we wanted to.

CPA offers aren't so easy, but that's why they make so much more money.

Zach

P.S- I don't do Adsense so I can't make an equally long post about that, hehe.

George, in my field, gem hunting, I'd need a terra operation backing up my online to not have affiliate products. You can't download a rock pick or dredge - uh...trust me on that one. For the informational side of the business, you have to be real careful about affiliate products. I'd never
put up a link for an info product for field use unless I can verify that the writer was writing from
firsthand experience and not just copycatting. These people are sharp and can spot a fake the first trip out - and word spreads fast in this crowd. When it comes to field info, I would rather
write my own than affiliate.


I don't see any sense in ad sense. The ads take people off your site, for the first thing - for a few pennies. My traffic is worth more than 2 cents. How do you connect with your crowd if every time they land on your site they are pulled off into cyberspace somewhere? If they get sucked onto another site - I want it to be an affiliated site.

I spent 10 years dealing with my father's business..

Product related support ruined my life... affiliate marketing is easy in comparison.

I later moved onto my own products and software... but still,to this day.. Affiliate marketing and adsense/advertising income makes up over 70% of my business.. Product creation is not something I would ever do full time.

I can sell monstrous amounts of most good products, but creation just gets me all cranky...lol

Peace

Jay

It could be a JV and other than the commission that both will enjoy, the list will grow pretty fast and easy.

There are subjects that it's easier to let other do the writing.

They can promote anything and on any subject they might not want to build long business upon.

They can use other peoples' products (effort) to test a new market / niche they intend to venture instead of doing it with all risk on themselves.

They don't need to worry about customer support.

Because Adsense will blend relevant ads without interference. It's literally hands free once it's set up.

Because there are niches that they don't have any products created.

Because it feels good to know that they earned everytime people clicked no matter how much the amount could be.

Because that was an auto blog from their hundreds of auto blogs.

every income stream counts. it all ads up at the end of the day.

Like I said, every one has their own preference and skill sets. Some prefer Affiliate marketing while others prefer E-books. It just so happens you have chosen to make large affiliate websites and you have found success with it. But some may not have experienced the success you have, most possibly due to, what I was saying, Fear. When it comes down to it, Fear is what rules most people's decisions. You cannot say Fear is not a factor in a person's thought process when it comes to making a crucial decision like this one.

For one thing when you promote a Niche like 'learn spanish' you really dont want to even attempt to try to create a product when you are competing against the likes of native spanish speakers who already have created products like 'Rocket Spanish' .


BTW, also just ask Allen Says and his Affiliate Marketing Sites that are set up like Adsense Sites and promote Clickbank products . He will be more than happy to explain why you dont need to create your own products to make sick,sick money