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Advice needed

by djn001
12 replies
Hi,

I am newbie still pondering on the best way to get started in IM. I know that some experienced members do get fed up with newbies asking such questions and I can understand that. However, I am just after a bit of current feedback from anyone who is willing to offer advice.

I have read a lot of previous posts, looked at a lot of WSO's etc. and have generally researched IM for the past 8 - 9 months, but I'm having trouble doing the most important thing - getting started!

I get the impression that the favoured method for starting out is promoting affilaite products through blogging and generating traffic through article writing, social bookmarking etc.

I recently purchased a product that recommended creating a review site for a Clickbank product, and then driving traffic this way. The reasons why I have stalled in getting stared on this are:

It recommends that I buy the product in order to give an honest review. Whilst this is obviously good advice, because it is the only way you can give an honest review, I'm wondering what happens if you purchase the product and it isn't very good. You have to go through the process of getting a refund. This may happen more than once, until you get a product that you are happy with.

Also, my main stumbling block is choosing a product to promote. I feel that you need to be actively involved in the niche that you are promoting to enable you to write sufficient interesting content. The product that I bought actually tells you to create an online diary describing your usage of the product to add content to the blog after the initial first few posts. My problem is that I lead quite a boring life and struggle to find something that I could write passionately about.

My other concern with the blogging, article marketting method in general is that I get the impression that it can be a whole lot of work for relatively little reward - particularly in the early stages. Not that I am afraid of hard work by the way, I'm willing to commit a lot of time on something as long as I know it is worth my while. My goal is not just to make a bit of money on the side to help with the bills, but to make a life - changing amount.

So if anyone wants to put me straight on my concerns or offer me advice on what worked best for them when they started out, then I would be very grateful.

ps. I'm going to bed now because I have to be up early, so I won't be able to respond to any replies until tomorrow.

Thanks
#advice #needed
  • Profile picture of the author mikemcmillan
    I'll tell you a dirty little secret: An awfully large percentage of bloggers out there never buy the products they promote. It gets too expensive. Here's my honest take. If you run across a product you really would like to have, and you might consider promoting it--then go for it and buy the thing.

    But remember, affiliate marketing is a numbers game. The more products you promote, the better your chances of finding a few that work well for you. Most of the info you need to write a review can be found on the sales page for the product. Now, a lot of people will say that you should never set up a review page for a product you haven't actually bought and tried, but I disagree.

    There are two reasons people go to review sites. One is that they honestly want an objective review of the product. However, anyone who has been prowling around online for any time knows that there is no such thing as an honest and objective review site. All affiliates want to make sales.

    The other reason, and in my opinion the most important reason people go to review sites, is to see what kind of bonuses they can get. You must offer some kind of bonus to get visitors to buy at your site. If you can create a killer bonus to give away to encourage people to buy through your site, you can make some money.

    Here's what probably the majority of affiliates do though. They get some PLR stuff and offer ten bonus products if someone buys through their site. Now, people aren't stupid. Usually these affiliates will say that these bonuses are worth a total of $1,995 or some equally outrageous figure. Like I said, people aren't stupid. If those bonuses were worth $1,995--people would be selling them for that.

    I would highly suggest creating some kind of 4-6 page bonus specific for each product you promote. If you can't think of anything to write, just contact the publisher and ask them to do an audio or written interview you could offer as a bonus. That works well. In my opinion, the bonus you offer is the most important part of a review page!
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    • Profile picture of the author djn001
      Thanks for the advice mike

      You are right about most "review sites" not being totally honest and objective. Your main objective as an affiliate is to make sales, so you are mainly focusing on the positive benefits of the product. You'd be a fool if you were too negative about the product that you had put a lot of work into trying to promote.

      I do like the idea of offering bonuses with the product. That is something that I never considered when using this method. I've got to make my offer more appealing than my competitors, but make sure that my bonus / bonuses are relevant to the original product.

      As for my other concern regarding the ratio of the amount of work to the income achieved for blogging,article writing etc., is this the prefered method for a total beginner to get started in IM?, or would anybody advice any other method that would give faster results and generate more income?
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  • Profile picture of the author activetrader
    The best paying product gets the best review

    PS: I personaly don't buy review products, it's dumb. Ask for a review copy
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  • Profile picture of the author djn001
    Hi activetrader,

    How do you identify the best paying product? Do you mean one's with higher gravity meaning more affiliates are promoting that product, therefore it must be selling very well, or a product that gives more $ per sale? If you go with the former, doesn't this mean you will have more competition also?

    As for the review copy, are you saying that you ask for a free copy of the product in order to do your review? If this is the case, do you find that most product creators are willing to do this?
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    • Profile picture of the author DeadGuy
      Picking up on your comment that choosing a product to promote is your main stumbling block, I'd suggest that you follow the age old marketing adage. "Find a need and fill it." This is the best advice anyone could ever give you for starting out in either online or offline marketing, simply because it works.

      If you haven't already found out, competition will be an even larger stumbling block than product selection. Unless your copywriting and marketing skills are absolutely first rate, you will find it quite difficult to compete by simply selecting a product with high gravity and a big commission. You'd be better served by isolating a niche that has a reasonable amount of buzz going and selecting a product to match it. Don't worry about things like gravity, refd% and stuff like that for the moment. The goal is to offer people (your potential customers) a viable solution (your product) to their problem or an answer to desire.

      There's a companion point to competition. Check out what your competition is doing, after you've identified a couple of products you'd like to promote. Find out who the heavy hitters are for these products. Evaluate their sales or presales pages to see how they are constructed, the "buttons" they are pushing, calls to action, the psychology behind the format and everything else on their pages. This is the best totally free training you will ever find.

      If you are just starting out, it's best to first identify a reasonably hot "need". But, be sure you have an interest or some expertise in it before you decide to jump on it. You'll be spending a lot of time with it and writing about it so make sure it truly is of interest to you. When you've made some money and your marketing skills increase, you can always expand into other areas where you have less interest... and you can pay others to do the writing for you.

      Last advice I can give. Don't beat a dead horse. If you've done your product selection and competition analysis correctly, poured you heart and soul into promoting the product and it doesn't perform for you, just drop it an move on to another product. Even the hottest of products have a shelf life, in most cases. I've seen far too many people fall in love with the products they are promoting and consequently waste far too much time trying to fix campaigns that simply will never have a chance to succeed.

      Do your homework correctly and you will succeed.
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      You are making this work at home stuff way harder than it is. Ready for some sanity? Clear your head and start over.

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    • Profile picture of the author activetrader
      Originally Posted by djn001 View Post

      Hi activetrader,

      How do you identify the best paying product? Do you mean one's with higher gravity meaning more affiliates are promoting that product, therefore it must be selling very well, or a product that gives more $ per sale? If you go with the former, doesn't this mean you will have more competition also?

      As for the review copy, are you saying that you ask for a free copy of the product in order to do your review? If this is the case, do you find that most product creators are willing to do this?
      Commission % v. $ amount. For instance, two products; each sells at $40; one pays 50%, the other pays 75%. The 75% product gets better higher ranking reviews from what I see everywhere.

      RE: Review copy - when I started out and didn't have an existing infrastracture I used to buy a product I wanted to review. Now I just ask for a review copy. I have proven myself as a good affiliate for a long time and merchants do not hesitate to give me review copies because they've seen consistent long-term sales record. I recently got two new products for a review on CD's shipped to my home for the total cost over $300 and the affiliate manager did not hesitate to mail me the review copies because I have proven myself as a high producing affiliate for them for over a year.
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      • Profile picture of the author dotslash
        I think you should remember the advice you got about being interested in a subject to write interesting reviews. The net is swamped with 1000s of inane copied review sites on every clickbank product going. I bet the vast majority of them make nothing.

        It requires a lot of work initially to promote any product like this - so you have to either be a talented writer who can produce believable and compelling content or have a genuine belief or interest in a product imho..

        I have pretty much stopped promoting clickbank products because I just found most of the stuff wasn't worth the money and couldn't promote it properly.

        Remember there is a world outside clickbank - there's an affiliate scheme for just about everything (well that's what it seems like). Think about interests, hobbies, day to day stuff - what could you write about, what do you have an opinion about - it doesn't need to be exciting there just needs to be a market for the product.

        Some examples

        There's a market for everything - find something you know about - I bought a great lawnmower last year - so I put up a review - linked it to an Amazon product page and promoted it a little so it got some relevant traffic. I haven't touched it since and I average about $20 dollars a week from one page - from that one lawnmower.

        I have a couple of pages up for a company who refill toner cartridges - they were really helpful and good value (and they had an affiliate scheme) I make $20-$40 dollars a month for commission for the last year for about an hours work and I've never touched it since.

        I like casinos - so I found my favourite online one and set up a web page to promote that (just a page not a site) - I make about 500 Eur a month from it.

        BUT to contrast I gave up smoking four years ago and tried to promote give up smoking products - I got nowhere - lots of traffic, loads of clicks but not a single sale in 12 months. I learnt a lot and it wasn't hard to promote as it was a subject that interested me - but success nope - it would have been extremely depressing if I'd put the same resources into some money making scam product!!

        It's not life changing money of course but the concept behind it certainly is..........

        Neil
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  • Profile picture of the author djn001
    Thanks for some good advice DeadGuy.

    One of my concerns in selecting a product was the age of the product. I would imagine that newer products sell better than ones that have been around for a while. Is there any way of identifying the age of a product on ClickBank?
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  • Profile picture of the author lantil5
    Banned
    Thanks Dead Guy your suggestion and Advice is more Clear and Sincere . I believe the Same . Choosing the right product is very Important and doing the initial chalkout about the promotion.
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  • Profile picture of the author reynald2790
    Mike is right. Some people don't buy products to promote. Some people use others product to promote to earn money. And it is very expensive to buy and try others product to give its review.
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  • Profile picture of the author Pat Spence
    Wow, Mike, you just switched the light on in my head with the bonus offer suggestion. Thank You!!!!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author mogili
    Lot of interesting stuff. But, one important point to be noted is that you should be genuinely interested to write effectively on any subject. In addition, there are several sides to internet marketing. When all the strategies click, you'll emerge successful in internet marketing. Till then, keep researching. Unfortunately, there is no short cut to success.
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    Mogili
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    http://moneytipz.blogspot.com

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