Shooting down affiliate big launches with opposing email "elephant in the room" tips

3 replies
Hi -

I've been online fulltime since the 90s, building my business with zero affiliates, and just a couple jv partners. One thing I like to do, to help educate customers is to shoot down affiliate launches for overpriced bs in my industry (trading).

In terms of dialogue with my lists, it's 70%+ solid no-cost content to build credibility, 20% promotion/sales messages, and 10% anti-competitor "point out their flaws", so the balance and focus is always mostly on overdelivering solid content, with all the rest of it as other info.

As a customer advocate and widely published industry expert in my niche, I think it's the right thing to do, to tell traders to not waste money on $2000+ type affiliate marketed launches, and they appreciate it (judging from all the positive responses I get in my webinars, which have over 1,400 registered for my weekly events).

For credibility, and to actually help customers, I do point out the 'elephants in the room', such as why are they charging so much for their stuff, and why don't they have any proof elements, etc.

I started my business as an "anti-vendor" one, from one authentic guy in my niche who was tired of overpriced bs in my industry, from people with no proof they did what they claimed, and built from there.

Question: what do you think about that, as a strategy? It's done very well for me, though of course I'm Not on the Christmas card list of the overpriced bs affiliate marketeers in my niche, lol. Fortunately my list is huge, crediblity and positioning and sales are very strong, all with zero affiliates, though it's taken me over a decade of very hard work (16 hr days) to get there.

Any ideas on how to communicate that message in a way that continues to build credibility and get my customers/leads to continue to effectively make sure they're only buying actually useful resources in their niche? This approach may be beneficial across multiple niches, eg "don't waste money on overpriced hyped $2,000 products from people that can't prove it even works", or is that not a smart idea?

Pros: gain appreciation from customers about "ok he's not one of those cross promotion hypesters where he's one of the 'usual suspects' always endlessly cross pitching overpriced bs like his competitors

Con: likely makes it hard to recruit affiliates with big lists, the launch marketers in my niche. (I don't need them as sales are solid and growing w/o affiliates).

Would appreciate any candid comments, thx all.

-k
#affiliate #big #elephant in the room #email #launches #opposing #shooting #tips
  • Profile picture of the author jasonl70
    so, it seems you're issue here is with any competitors who don't market and price their products in a manner like you? I didn't really see much where you talked about the value of the products,etc..

    Leveraging affiliates does not make the product bad. heck - you said you use jv's. well, jv's are really affiliates.. so the other guys are scammers because they use more affiliates then you? Amazon has TON of affiliates - are they peddling junk?

    Selling high price point products also wouldn't seem to have any inherint "scam" to it. To be honest, I would expect to pay premium prices for premium info / products.

    As someone who's traded for 15 or so years, including developing fully automated trading algorithms, I know that your niche is full of BS products. But I just don't agree at all with how you have decided to filter them.

    By all means, educate your people about track records, curve fitting, back test results vs real world, etc.. but afililiates? price points? seriously??
    Signature

    -Jason

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7664602].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author kencalhn
    Hi - I understand your point, it's not just that high price points are bad, it's that most of the systems affiliate-marketed w/product launches are specifically created by low-credibility marketers who do not have good content.

    If there were famous/credible industry pros affiliate-marketing at high price points, that's fine of course. What I'm talking about is junk like red-arrow/green-arrow poorly made overpriced software type products, that are affiliate/launch marketed. There's a world of difference... if you know the trading industry, you know what I mean.

    And affiliate marketing is certainly not bad in and of itself. I'm talking about Crap trading products/services that are high priced and affiliate-marketed that's bad quality and overpriced, specifically. That's the "worst of all things", is affiliate/hyped up overpriced crap systems that don't work.

    Reasonably-priced affiliate marketed solid professional resources by credible experts with some track record or proof elements, that would be fine.

    Agree w/you, good points about educating customers about what to look for. It just seems in my industry, in the trading niche, it's "taboo" to point out the elephant in the room, eg that most of it, like a lot of IM stuff, is overpriced rehash of basics, doesn't work well ,etc etc, in the real world. That's what I'm getting at.


    -k
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7664643].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author thedanbrown
    There's a lot of stuff you are leaving out here, like what is the value of the products that you're selling?

    You say everything is overpriced but the truth is that the people selling high volumes of information have obviously priced their products at equal or greater value to the price they're charging, or else they would lose all their customers...

    It's possible that you are leaving a lot of money on the table by undercutting the market like you are; however, with that said I think your marketing angle is smart because people don't want to buy from someone who they think might be scamming them or have over-priced products, so by using that information in your marketing you are differentiating yourself.

    I think you should re-evaluate the price points for your different products in relation to the market and see if you would have more results if you raised your prices but continued to use the same marketing strategy.. who knows your products might be worth way more to people than you are charging so if that's the case you're missing out!
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7664659].message }}

Trending Topics