Are Personal Journey's in IM becoming popular

Originally Posted by Colin Theriot

Outside of just reviewing and reporting, I think an effective long-term affiliate needs to take on a more "meta" role as well. You need to have a persona, and that persona kind of defines your approach as a figure in the market.

I initially come up with this analogy.

I used to think of it as the prospects being sheep, and the affiliate who becomes a "guru" figure in the niche as being either a wolf or a shepherd.

The wolf is about getting the most money now, and really doesn't care what happens to the sheep in the process.

The shepherd instead feeds and takes care of the sheep, and they let him make a living off wool and lanolin or whatever.

The wolf's always gotta chase new sheep. The shepherd can make the same living off a small and more stable flock.

In IM, the "white hat" guys tend to be shepherds, while the "black hat" guys tend to be wolves. The wolves need the fast, massive, easy route because they have to stay fed.

The shepherds can take the long view, because that's the whole reason they're in the game. Now, I USED to only see those two roles, but I think there is a third that's been neglected.

I say neglected because there are people who are naturally a wolf or a shepherd, but there are also people SMART enough to know that each personality actually APPEALS to a different kind of audience.

Believe it or not, there are SOME sheep that WANT to be eaten. But I digress - I was saying there are some marketers smart enough to fulfill BOTH roles to get as much from as many different kinds of sheep there are.

So people actively play those roles on purpose. However, I've never seen this THIRD role done on purpose.

There's a kind of sheep called the Bellwether. That's because he's a wether (a castrated male sheep) that's wearing a bell. You ever notice in a flock of sheep, there's only one wearing a bell?

That's because that sheep is the "leader" of the sheep. The reason you need to keep a bell on him is because the SHEEP follow him as the leader, but he doesn't know he's the leader. He's not out in front of the flock. In fact, he's often in the middle.

See, the sheep all default to wanting to do what the sheep next to it is doing until it gets bored and does something on its own. The "bellwether" is essentially the sheep that gets bored the FASTEST, so it moves.

Then the sheep next to it want to move too, so they move. And then the sheep next to them move, and so on. It seems like the flock moves in a freaky, unpredictable way until you mark the Bellwether, and then you can just listen for the bell.

The bell is ringing where the flock is GOING to move. But it's not because he leads them there, and they don't follow - it's just a domino effect. He does his own thing, and they all seemingly spontaneously decide to ALSO do the same thing. Not because he is doing it. But because the sheep beside them is doing it.

Now, this particular role, the Bellwether - is being played right now NATURALLY by some super affiliates. I don't even think they realize it - hence probably WHY they work as a bellwether. Some of them aren't even paid affiliates, but they CREATE and DICTATE the success of launches just by being visible online about what THEY do.

It triggers a chain reaction, and people follow them, then people follow them, then a trend explodes. PPC is the hot new thing. No, list building is. No, it's offline gold. (Those are just illustrative examples of how trends change, not specific Bellwether examples.)

As far as I know, no one has tried to become a Bellwether ON PURPOSE, because it SEEMS like you have to be a natural - it SEEMS like you have to be lucky to fall into the role.

But I don't think that's true. I think you CAN SECRETLY be a Bellwether in a niche ON PURPOSE, and set yourself up to be a trendsetter who profits not by promotion, but simply by taking a visible action, which when your followers imitate it, you profit.

As an affiliate, this seems very easy to me, because you "promote" by BUYING the stuff you sell and using it. You sell courses by TAKING THEM and PARTICIPATING in them with your "customers". It's not "you should buy this thing to be successful like me" it's - hey, let's buy this thing and do it together, so we can be successful like them.

Anyways, that's the Bellwether model, it's kinda something I'm working on - I call copyright dibs and all that. But I hope it's useful so far as giving you 3 affiliate roles I know of and that 2 of which I've used to sell honking buttloads of stuff.

I'm working on the 3rd. It's tricky, but I bet it's doable.