“Foul” The Cry Went Up!

Sunday, July 4th, 2010 at 10:15 am

“Foul” She cried.

I might be shooting myself in the foot by writing this but I just felt as though I had to say something.

A couple of weeks ago I bought and promoted a new product which teaches how to target high end tangible products as an affiliate.

While I found the product to be an excellent alternative to promoting “e” products… during the product launch, the creators sent out a leader board progress email to affiliates, as many product creators do… followed by a final score and notification of bonus winners etc.

See the email content here

Now I’m not bias in any way toward people making a killing by promoting a product online , but it sickens me somewhat to see the same names coming up time and time again.

This last last one was particularly nauseating because the overall winner (being the one who sold more copies of the product than anyone else) was none other than a person who is well known as one the worlds top affiliate marketers and a multimillionaire in his own right.

See the post here

He also produces and promotes his own affiliate products and affiliate marketing courses to other affiliates and wanna be’s and owns and operates one of the top ten fastest growing companies in New Zealand!

He has mailing lists of several hundred thousand subscribers and a permanent staff of between 30 and 50 people researching and promoting other affiliate products in his name as well as outsourcing much of his work in other countries including Australia, England and the USA.

So……. Not only will he receive the affiliate commissions on the sales he made but will also receive the bonus prizes which include a 50% bonus modifier….an IPAD ….and $9000 in cash.

One of the other major prize winners is also extremely well known within the affiliate marketing world and made zillions a couple of years ago with his product, “The Day Job Killer”. He goes by the name of Chris X but most who have been around the affiliate marketing niche know him by his real name.

Of the 10 major winners announced, at least 6 of them are among the most recognized top affiliate marketers world wide!

I know this post might sound like like sour grapes but it’s not intended as such. As a matter of fact I actually promote some of these people’s products which are of exceptional value but I just feel that there should be some sort of governor or handicap in place to stop this sort of thing happening time and time again and give the smaller people a fair go.

While I realize that any form of marketing can be a cut throat game, many of the people mentioned above preach integrity within the ranks but when it comes to integrating their own yard stick…..fall far short of their own Mark.

See the Post

Some of their products:

Affilojetpack

AffiloBlueprint.

Consumer Wealth System

The Day Job Killer

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The Death Of Niche Marketing

Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 3:48 pm

Comments (3)

Does this link hail The Death of Niche Marketing?

Over the past year or so since I started to take the idea of Internet Marketing more seriously, I always leaned toward the idea of promoting digital products as opposed to physical products. The reasoning behind that is simply because that’s where I’d been led.

However I always liked the the idea of promoting tangible products because I thought that I would feel better in myself if my customers had something they could touch or use physically. It probably stems from my up bringing when we were taught that if you can’t use it and then sell it, it wasn’t worth having in the first place.

Outside looking in

I’ve since changed my way of thinking somewhat in that there is really no monetary value which can be placed on knowledge and information can be priceless to those seeking it in order to solve a problem if indeed the problem is solved.

Still, my upbringing holds in good stead but until recently I hadn’t realized just how profitable promoting physical products can be. I always thought that because most tangible products have a low commission rate, that it wasn’t worth while pursuing. Amazon for example only have a commission of around 3-4% which when selling a second hand book for example could be as little as a single dollar or even less on a shipped item.

However, I had an email from an associate a couple of weeks ago which had me taking another look at the idea of promoting physical products as well as digital and what I found was quite startling.

What about Clickbank?

For one thing, the system he told me about doesn’t actively promote clickbank products because they are all digital products and as I mentioned, this system is all about promoting tangible products. But… it’s worthwhile noting that the same system can be used to promote any product at all including digital products.

Digital Products Have More Competition!

For example, if you sell a digital product you might make up to 75% commission on the sale which apart from some exceptions will rake you in anything from around $5 to $20 per sale or more but, taking into consideration the number of affiliates promoting the higher ranking products and the number of similar products available, it can be hard work to compete and to win a sale.

Whereas, physical products have a lot less people promoting them and if you think in dollar value a single set golf clubs for example sold for $1000 dollars with a commission of 5% will bring you in $50 for the same amount of effort on your part with a lot fewer affiliates to compete with.

A couple of fellow Aussies have come up with a system for selling physical products which I actually bought a few days ago and I’m so impressed with it already I thought I’d share it on here.

Daniel Turner and Marc Lindsay have put together a simple system which will make you in excess of $18,000 per month.

Check out the full details here.

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Fishing for Guest Blog Posts

Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 10:35 am

Comments (2)

A few days ago I received an offer from a list owner to write a guest blog post on my blog.

While guest blog posts are hardly a new idea for getting traffic to your site, it was the first time someone had actually suggested it to me so it sparked my interest.

Granted that the invitation came from a list I’d previously signed up to, I did have some faith in the sender because he had shown remarkable results from his twitter account and was also a member of a private forum of which I’m also a member.

In the guest blog post invitation, he’s taken steps to make it easy for anyone to contact him if they indeed wanted him to submit a guest post so I did!

He’s made a point of explaining the benefits of guest blog posts to both the blog owner and himself and also requested an outline of which topic the blog owner would like him to write a guest post on. He also mentioned that the email was being sent to 10,000 subscribers so I’d need to be fast!

Seeing this as a good opportunity to have a well known “twitterer” guest post on my blog, I wrote a detailed email back to him providing all the information he said he required to write the guest blog post and the following is some of what I wrote:

“I’ve been on your list for only a couple of months and joined because I was impressed with some of your posts in the marketing with Alex forum of which I’m also a member.
If you look at my blog you’ll see that I’m a baby boomer hopefully targeting other boomers with the intention of inspiring them to jump on the internet marketing wagon to ensure a regular income for their retirement.
I think the vast majority of people in their 60’s don’t have the skills to operate a computer to the degree where they can set up an internet business, and it’s those skills or the lack of them, I would like your guest blog post to target, in creating an interest in learning them.
The other thing which comes to mind is Australia’s notorious reputation for slow internet connections and how to develop an internet marketing business with that restriction”.

The following day I received the following email from him and my reply:
Hi Sean,

Thanks for the email, but… can you tell me what you want a guest blog post on?

David
“Hi David.

Sorry you didn’t get the gist of what I wanted. I thought I’d mapped it out within the 2 sentences below this message. (now above) If you could write a post on baby boomers entering the Internet marketing field………..with the usual complications and restrictions of not having previously had any formal computer training at school etc.

I realise it’s a broad field to write about but if you can write anything at all which is relevant to the topics it will have the effect you want in providing exposure to yourself and also provide me with a guest blog post etc.”

His reply indicated to me that the whole exercise was a waste of time in that it seemed that he wasn’t interested in carrying out any research on any other topic other than the ones he was familiar with in order to write a guest blog post for anyone.
What he wrote back to me was the following:
Hi Sean,

Seeing as I am not a baby boomer myself, you would be far more qualified to write a post on that topic than me……

Do you have another suggestion for me?

David
I did have another suggestion for him but I think would be inappropriate to include it here.
Now I may be wrong but I think I made the topic of the guest blog post I wanted fairly clear in my first email to him and that realistically, even if only 10% of the people he sent the original email out to wanted him to write a guest post he would be writing 1000 guest blog posts which would keep him busy for quite a long time.
So….I guess it just reinforces what I’ve come to firmly believe and advise. Pay particular attention to whose lists you sign up to and restrict them to only those you completely trust.

I’m now off his list!

Comments Please

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Older than Dirt.

Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 6:07 am

Comments (11)

Someone sent this to me today in an email.

Considering the topic of my blog I thought I’d include it here as part of a post for those old enough to remember:

“Someone asked the other day, ‘What was your favorite ‘fast food’ when you were growing up?’
‘We didn’t have fast food when I was growing up,’ I informed him.
‘All the food was slow.’

‘C’mon, seriously. Where did you eat?’
‘It was a place called ‘home,” I explained !

‘Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn’t like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.’ Read the rest of this entry