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How do you avoid promoting "JUNK" Affiliate Products?

by The 13th Warrior
5 replies
How do you, personally, if you do affiliate marketing, avoid promoting "JUNK" Affiliate products to keep people on your list?

What tools or resources do you use, besides outright buying the product and reviewing it yourself, which is not always practical if its a 3-figured or more item.

Especially products "out" of the moneymaking arena.

I was subscribed to peoples list that, at first, had a good product I bought, then, they started promoting junk products.

One or two stinkers are not bad, but after 3 or 4 in a row, I unsubscribe because usually, they send useless content , mostly a hypey sales letter, and hock more crap at me so fast that I feel as though I am just a name and another piece of meat.

The worse are the ones that slam out 3 or 4 emails a week each with different products.

Even if I was going to buy, I haven't had time to make up my mind if I wanted the first offer, let alone the others.

Result: Click "UNSUBSCRIBE"...., and fast.

A lesson I learned of what NOT to do.

Appreciate any feedback.

The 13th Warrior
#affiliate #avoid #junk #products #promoting
  • Profile picture of the author Rezbi
    I very rarely promote affiliate products now because of that reason.

    I they agree to send me a copy to check out first, and if I like it, I'll promote it. Otherwise I won't touch it.
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    • Profile picture of the author ksburgess
      I do promote affiliate products on my largest site, and I always try and get the product to review it, if possible. My business is fairly profitable, and digital items in that niche rarely go above $200. So I'm not making huge commissions on every one sale but multiples rack up, and I generally do buy the product to review it.

      I have one $300 product for another site that the creator gave me a review copy upon my request.

      I'm not in IM though, so maybe it's different not being in that niche.
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    • Profile picture of the author sylviad
      There are a few ways you can check the quality of a product without buying it or getting a free copy.

      1) Search for the product title to see if any forums pop up. Go in and read what people are saying about the product.

      2) Ask the product owner if he can connect you to some of the people in the testimonials. Prepare a few questions that will help you to determine whether they are just "being kind" to help a friend or really are pleased with their purchase.

      3) Check CBEngine.com to see the refund rate for that product. If it's a ClickBank product, you should be able to get several numbers, including when the product was launched, how much the person is spending to promote it. This ad spend can be a big clue. If he's getting a lot of returns or few sales, he won't be able to afford to spend a lot on AdWords for long.

      Sometimes, product owners put together a shortened version of the main product for people (affiliate marketers and magazine/site editors) to write reviews. It's to their benefit to make such a "sample" available.

      Lastly, if you are an affiliate and you buy the product, you'll get the commission and will not be paying full price. And if you make a few sales, you can easily make back what you paid for it.

      Sylvia
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      • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
        Look at this logically. If you don't personally purchase the product, what
        other avenues do you have to see if it's any good?

        Reviews?

        How many of them that you find, if any at all, are truly unbiased?

        Meaning...no affiliate link under them?

        Unless you can somehow get a hold of existing customers (good luck going
        that route) what else is there?

        You can't even go by how well a product is selling (Clickbank gravity)
        because you don't know what the refund rate is. And no, you can't really
        compute it based on the $ per sale because you don't know if the product
        always sold at the current price OR if the merchant has other products
        selling under that same account. Also, what if the commission rate
        changed over time?

        There is no substitute for a personal review.

        Now, if you can't afford to buy it, you can always contact the merchant
        and ask for a review copy. Naturally, if you have a good rep as an
        affiliate marketer already, you have a better chance of getting one. I
        can get just about any review copy I want. In fact, I get more requests
        to review products than I can possibly do.

        In short...there is no shortcut to this process if you want to absolutely
        make sure that the product you are promoting is any good.
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  • Profile picture of the author basefunding
    Nice question!

    I only promote what I know. If I get my hands on something I think is worthwhile I promote it to my related lists otherwise I stay away. I value my subscribers too much to hit them up with promo after promo blindly. I'm always amazed when someone is doing a big launch and the hype promos start flying while no one has seen the product yet!

    Disclosure- I do not typically promote IM stuff although I usually buy the well received (not well promoted!) stuff.
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