Does an article marketer has to walk the walk?

I know this is an old thread, but I still have a few questions:

These examples make perfect sense, but what if you're in a niche where your advice is expected to come first hand experience, such as running for example?

I assume there are plenty of resources for running advice, but people do presume you must be a runner, so how can you bypass that expectation without losing credibility? The same thing in the fishing niche, or any other outdoor activity - how can you go around the fact that you're not doing it?

Such a notion of "owning products" before selling them seems to be rather unique to this forum, and perhaps only in the IM niche, but is of little practical requirement anywhere else. Demonstrating your knowledge of product application (ie features, benefits, adaptability, etc) is generally quite adequate.

Besides high end consumer sales, multi-million dollar business deals are consummated without the sales person having ever seen the physical product, as is often the case for example in corporate sales of industrial machinery and capital equipment.

Using established marketing practices, Amazon affiliates can do just as well by selling high end products sight unseen; on the weight of their "recommendations" built upon knowledge, credibility and reputation within their niches.

There's no problem with saying "There's this great book on XYZ that everybody just loves. Check out what these people say" as long as you don't say that you yourself have used the product when you haven't.

I usually only promote things that I've actually used (which is why I do so little affiliate marketing these days) but if I do promote something like a dog book and I know people who have dogs, I'll use them as a reference if they've used the book themselves.

But there's no question, the more credibility you have, the more likely you are to make sales.

If my best friend comes up to me and says, "This is a great CD, you HAVE to get it" I'm going to believe him sooner than I'll believe a total stranger, even if he DID listen to the CD.

What chance does that total stranger have if in addition to BEING a total stranger, he didn't even listen to the damn CD?

Get what I'm saying?

You can get credibility through second hand sources, though they're not as good, but you need some kind of credibility or why would anybody take your word for it?

Do what you want. But don't expect lousy results when you don't REALLY give people a compelling reason to by product XYZ from you.

Now, you can offer incentives such as giving them a personal bonus if they buy from you. I will sometimes do that even if I HAVE used the product. That's what separates the successful affiliates from the VERY successful affiliates.

Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide to do.

I get what you're saying, but that's not the best example. The dealer still gets to drive the car, which is exactly my point.

As long as you don´t claim to be making $500 million per year, as one article marketer claimed in another thread, you should be just fine.

Cheers

Whaaat, Half Billion Dollars per year doing what? That's just ludicrous...