Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

I’ve yet to see somebody really tackle this issue in regard to affiliate marketing. Truth is, this is a serious problem. What am I talking about? I’m referring to the affiliate and merchant wars. Oh, you haven’t heard? Well, sit back, relax, grab a cup of whatever and read this. I promise you that it will be most enlightening.

Where do I even begin to try to explain what has been a problem ever since the first product got promoted through an opt in page? Yes, an opt in page. You know the one I’m talking about. That’s where the prospect gets directed, not to a sales page…to an opt in page. There, the prospect gives his name and email and gets some kind of free report or whatever, all while being added to the merchant’s list.

And therein lies where the war begins. See, the affiliate, thinking that he’s doing all this work to drive traffic to the merchant’s opt in page, feels that HE should be the one getting the opt in…not the merchant. As a result, many affiliates will no longer promote a product that doesn’t go directly to a sales page. And in a way, you can’t blame them.

But let’s look at it from the perspective of the merchant. See, their bottom line is simple…make as many sales as possible. What do you think is going to make them more sales, building a list or NOT building a list? Well, without testing and without looking at each specific niche, it’s impossible to say. I can say, however, from my own experience, that building a list as a product creator has been the best thing I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t make nearly as much without one.

Okay, but why the war? Why won’t an affiliate promote a product through an opt in page and why won’t the merchants give in and send prospects directly to a sales page? Well, this is where the element of trust comes in.

See, the affiliate thinks, aside from the belief that they should get the opt in, that if they send a prospect to an opt in page, they won’t get credit for the sale afterwards. And in some cases, this is true. There are some shady merchants out there who send their list to a different sales page that doesn’t track affiliate clicks. Not cool, but it happens.

On the other side of the coin, let’s be honest here. An affiliate can build a list for the affiliate product and then, if they choose, promote different products to that list. So the merchant has less of a chance of making a sale from that affiliate. Also, an affiliate can drop a product at the drop of a hat. There is very little loyalty to merchants with so many products to choose from. And why should there be?

So as you see, because of the self serving interests of both parties, it is almost impossible to get any affiliate OR merchant loyalty. Each side is simply looking out for their own interests…as it should be. This, however, gives us the wars we have now.

And I don’t see them ending anytime soon unless affiliates and merchants learn to trust each other.

To YOUR Success

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

This question comes up all the time from new affiliate marketers. “How can I tell if a product sells?” They’re looking for some inside stat that might give them a clue as to whether or not the product they want to promote is going to actually sell. Well, this article is going to answer that question. And here’s the answer, though you’re not going to like it.

Promote it and find out.

I told you, you weren’t going to like it. Okay, before you proceed to rip my head off, you might want to read the rest of this article to understand why this is the ONLY way to tell if a product is going to sell for you.

Many affiliates believe that they can look at the ClickBank marketplace stats and tell, from those stats, if a product is a greater seller or not. The stat they look at most is gravity. They see some super high gravity like 400 or 500 or whatever and think, “Wow, look how many affiliates are raking it in with this product.” Well, there’s something you need to know about this very deceptive stat.

For starters, it can be seriously manipulated. One way to do this is with an email to a very large and very responsive list. What the product creator will do is inform his list that this new product is available, give them the link to promote it as an affiliate, telling them to simply replace certain letters with their ClickBank ID and we’re off to the races. Problem is, and the product creator knows this, many of these people will buy the product themselves using their OWN ID. So what happens is this. For every sale made in this manner, the gravity goes up.

Ultimately, what happens is that you have a product with a super high gravity ONLY because a bunch of people bought it with their own link. Then, when other affiliates now see it high at the marketplace, they think the product is a great seller and start promoting it themselves, not realizing that this product may very well have never made ONE sale through a true affiliate promotion. And this is just one way to artificially inflate the gravity of a product. There are others…and they are all used.

Point is, you can’t tell from looking at any one stat if a product is going to sell for you or not. The only way to tell is to promote it and find out. What you may want to do, in order to save yourself a lot of time is the following:

First, check the sales page of the product to see if it’s well written and looks good. If it doesn’t, there is little chance that it is going to sell well at all.

Next, you want to run a small AdWords campaign just to get an idea of the conversion rate of the sales page. If you see it’s converting in the 1% to 2% range, minimum, you might then want to run a full promotional campaign and throw some big money at it PROVIDED the CPC does not exceed your income.

For example, if you’re paying 10 cents per click and after 100 clicks you’ve made 1 sale of a $10 commission product and have spent $10 in AdWords costs, all you’ve done is broken even. Unless you can increase your conversion rate or decrease your CPC, there is no point in promoting the product.

How I wish I had a crystal ball to look at a product and tell if it was going to sell. Sadly, one does not exist. So for now, the above methods will have to suffice.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

No doubt this article is going to tick off a lot of people. Well, I’m at that stage of my IM career where I don’t give a rat’s behind. Somebody has to explain why affiliate marketing is getting such a bad rap these days. Oh there are reasons all right. This article is going to go over just a few of the many. But these are at the very top of my list.

Let’s start off with the affiliate marketing mentality, which is essentially this. Throw as much crap at the wall as you can and hope something sticks. What exactly do I mean by this?

For starters, affiliate marketers have absolutely no loyalty to any product. The product is just a means to an end. So in most cases, the marketer doesn’t even check out the product to see if it’s any good. He looks at one thing… how much he’s going to get paid per sale and that’s it. The product could be the worst piece of garbage in the world. Doesn’t matter as long as it sells and brings in the cash.

Secondly, affiliate marketers will promote a ton of different products hoping that at least one of them will stick. The problem with this mentality is that when you split up your efforts in this manner, you can’t possibly do justice to any one promotion. But there is a bigger problem than that. When people see you promoting everything from acne cream to computer doctor kits, they begin to wonder if you’re really recommending products that are good or just out for a buck. After all, how can one person be so knowledgeable about all these products?

Aside from the mentality aspect, there is the promotional aspect itself. Many affiliate marketers use promotional tactics that would make a sailor blush. I won’t go into any of the specifics because I don’t want to give anybody ANY ideas, but some of the stuff these people are pulling is outright illegal if not unethical. And then the complaints come in and the FTC has to step in and clean up the mess. It’s not a pretty picture.

Anyway, there you have it. The reason affiliate marketing gets such a bad rap. Are you part of the problem or the solution?

I’ll let you answer that question for yourself.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

Every affiliate marketer is looking for the perfect affiliate program. Are you one of them? Well, if you are, you can stop looking because it doesn’t exist. This article is going to explain why.

Probably the biggest complaint that affiliate marketers have is that the affiliate program they are promoting keeps losing sales for them. In other words, they are not tracking properly. This is an especially common complaint among people who use ClickBank, whether it’s accurate or not. However, if you think that ClickBank is the only program that loses sales, think again.

Just recently I did an affiliate promotion for somebody who uses Amember as an affiliate tracking script. Guess what? I lost 25% of the sales that I made due to tracking errors. I don’t know about you, but 25% is a big number for me. And we’re not talking ClickBank here either. Point is, no affiliate tracking program is perfect. Because of the problems with cookies (some people block them from being written to their PC) and the imperfection of IP tracking, you’re going to lose sales. It’s inevitable. How many depends on how unlucky you happen to be.

Another complaint about affiliate programs is that they have crappy products. Well, I have a news flash for you. The value of a product is in the eye of the beholder. I have yet to see one product where everybody 100% agrees that it’s a great product. You’re not going to please everybody. Why do you think people get excited about a 5% conversion rate? Think about it. With a 5% conversion rate, 95% of the people who saw the sales page and the offer didn’t think it was good enough to purchase. Okay, stop looking for the perfect product. Pick something YOU think is good and promote it. The affiliate program itself will have little effect on this. Why? Product creators are human and THEY determine the quality of the product…NOT the affiliate program.

Finally, people are looking for an affiliate program that pays quickly. Well, that depends on your definition of quickly. If you promote a product that somebody is selling through Clickbank, you get paid every two weeks. Of course, you have to meet certain criteria to even get a check. If you don’t, you may never get paid. With PayPal, you probably have to wait a minimum of 60 days to get your payment. Unless you are promoting a product that uses a script like RAP, you’re going to wait. There is very little difference in the amount of time between each program.

So stop looking for the perfect affiliate program. It doesn’t exist. Instead, find a product that you believe in, one that you think will sell, and sell it.

Trust me…you’ll save yourself a lot of grief in the process.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

There are a lot of advantages to affiliate marketing over creating and selling your own product aside from the fact that you don’t have to be hassled with creating that product in the first place. However, over the years that I have been doing affiliate marketing myself, I have discovered that there are three main pitfalls that affiliate marketers run into that makes this a less than profitable business model. In this article, I am going to briefly go over these pitfalls and offer some advice for dealing with them.

At the top of the list has to be the actual choice of the product itself. Probably the biggest reason why this is such a problem is because of the vast number of products out there. Which one do you choose? How can you tell which products are actually selling and which ones are certain failures? This isn’t as easy as it seems. Not even the ClickBank marketplace is a fool proof solution as the “popular” products are sometimes artificially pumped. But that’s a topic for another place and time.

So, this is what I have come up with as far as a solution to this problem. And I don’t know why more people don’t do this. Contact the product creator and ask to see documented proof of sales and conversion rates. The honest ones will have no problem showing you these stats and from them you can then decide if the product is worth promoting. End of problem.

Another pitfall that affiliate marketers run into is deciding on the best way to promote that product. There are a lot of promotional methods available to marketers today including pay per click, article marketing, ad buys, social networking and so on. Which one is best? Which one is going to bring you the best results? Here’s the honest answer. There is no way of knowing. So this is what you do and it’s simple. Use as many avenues as you can. Test and track each ones. The ones that don’t perform, kick to the curb. The ones that do, ramp up. End of problem.

Finally, there is the problem of handling support. A lot of affiliate marketers feel that they shouldn’t have to answer questions about a product that isn’t their own. However, like it or not, if you’re properly promoting an affiliate product, YOU are going to be the one who gets questions and YOU are going to have to answer them IF you want to make the sale. After all, what’s going to separate you from other affiliates? It’s things like customer support that does that.

There you have it. Those are the three biggest pitfalls that affiliate marketers face and the solutions to each one. You may not like them, but failure to do them can lead to a disastrous affiliate marketing campaign.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

I get a lot of questions on a daily basis. This particular question was asked at the Warrior Forum today. It’s also one I get asked a lot. The question is this. Is it unethical to sell products that you’ve never tried yourself? For some reasons, marketers seem to have a problem with this. Well, this article is going to answer the question as honestly as possible.

Probably the best way to actually answer the question is with a few examples. You go to a local Best Buy to get yourself a high definition TV. There are salesmen there to help you. One of the salesmen comes over to you and asks you if they can help you. You tell the salesman that you’re interested in an HD TV and want to know which one he recommends. He then takes you over to a TV and says that this is the one he recommends.

Here’s another one. You go to a local Computer City. You are looking to buy a new PC. Again, there are several salesmen in the store. You walk over to one of them and tell them that you’re looking for a new PC and ask the salesman to recommend a good one. The salesman takes you over to one and says that this is the one he recommends.

One last one. You go to a book store and tell the person there that you are looking for a book on how to repair roofs. You ask the store owner to recommend you a good book. The owner walks you over to the section with books on roof repair and says that this is the one he recommends.

Let me ask you a question. In all three of those scenarios, do you REALLY think the salesperson has actually tried that particular item? In the case of the book store owner, do you REALLY think he’s read every single book in the store? I highly doubt that he’s read ANY of them.

My point is this. As long as you don’t lie about your recommendation (saying that you tried the product when you actually haven’t) there is nothing wrong with selling it. There is nothing wrong with using, as a recommendation, the following tactic…telling what OTHER people have said about the product and based upon their raves, recommending it yourself.

If everybody who sold a product online as an affiliate had to try the product, nobody would ever sell anything. I mean think about it, a guy who sells a book on treating breast cancer…has HE had to use it himself?

Use your common sense. The whole world sells products they don’t personally use and there is nothing wrong with doing so as long as you do it honestly.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

Have you seen ClickBank’s new order page? If you’re not a product creator, maybe not. But even if you’re an affiliate marketer promoting ClickBank products, this order page does affect you as well. This article is going to fill you in on what ClickBank has done and offer an opinion on the whole thing. I think you will find this interesting reading that will hopefully put your mind to rest.

In a nutshell, what ClickBank has done is put a nice little seal on the right hand side of the order page saying that anybody should just ask for a refund if they’re not happy with their purchase. It’s as clear as day. While their refund policy is clearly stated on each sales page, this new order page really brings it to the forefront.

Okay, so why are marketers all in a tizzy about this? Quite simply, they’re afraid that anybody who makes a purchase of a ClickBank product is going to immediately see this and ask for a refund regardless of whether or not they are satisfied with the product.

This is absolute nonsense.

First of all, the ClickBank serial refunders (you people know who you are) already know about ClickBank’s liberal refund policy and don’t need to be reminded of it. They’ve been buying products and asking for refunds give minutes later since the beginning of time. This order page change is not going to matter to them one bit. And the legitimate buyers…they’re really not going to notice it or for that matter…care.

Okay, but why is ClickBank doing this? Well, answering that question is speculation at best, but I’m going to take a crack at it. See, refunds for ClickBank are no problem. They’ll issue them gladly especially since the money comes out of the product creator’s or affiliate’s account anyway. So they really lose very little. However, where ClickBank gets hit hard is with chargebacks from the customer’s bank. These chargebacks cost ClickBank money…lots of it.

My guess is, in order to cut down on the number of chargebacks, ClickBank has made the change to their order page to make it crystal clear that all a person has to do, if they are not satisfied with their purchase, is to ask for a refund. Personally, I don’t know if this is going to cut down on chargebacks or not, but I am pretty sure that it’s not going to increase the refund rate. In either case, I guess only time will tell.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

If you’ve read my other articles on affiliate marketing, you know I’ve gone over quite a few things in regard to picking and promoting a product. They key phrase there being “a product.” I have never really gotten into strategies for promoting multiple products. They’re a little different from promoting a single product so I want to cover them in this article. I hope you find this informative.

There are many differences between promoting a single product and promoting multiple products. But probably the biggest difference is in the resources you have available and how you allocate them. Each of us only has so much time and money. If you’re going to split that time and money between products, something has to suffer. Either you have to settle for less traffic for each product OR you have to spend more money on promotion. This assumes time is a fixed asset and you have no more to give.

What that means is this, in a nutshell. If you promote one product and use article marketing to promote that product, and you can write four articles per day, if you decide to promote a second product and can’t write more articles, then you’re now writing two articles for each product per day, assuming you want to keep your promotions equal. This means you’re going to get half the traffic and half the sales…at least in theory. Naturally, other variables can come into play that may alter these figures.

Your only option, if you want to generate the same traffic for two products as you would for one, is to then increase the amount of money you spend on each. In this case, I am assuming cash ISN’T a fixed asset, though for some people…it is. If this isn’t an option, then your only alternative is to accept that you’re going to make fewer sales for each product. There is an old saying. You can’t get ten pounds of ham out of a five pound bag.

Now, having said that, there is something you might want to consider when promoting multiple products. If you promote multiple products in the same niche, especially if they are all related, you have a better chance of making a sale as opposed to putting all your eggs in one basket. The downside of this is that you may be giving prospects too many choices and end up confusing them…ending up in no sale being made.

There is no question that selling multiple products isn’t as easy as selling a single product. However, there are advantages. It all comes down to what YOU’RE more comfortable with.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

Have you ever heard of an ethical bribe? In most cases, bribery will land you in jail or at least land you with a pretty hefty fine to pay. But when it comes to affiliate marketing, bribery is not only ethical, it’s essential to survival…especially today. If you’re wondering why, keep reading this article and you’ll find out.

Okay, so why is bribery so important today as an affiliate marketer? Well, in case you’ve been living under a rock, the FTC has recently made some guidelines that say that you MUST disclose that you are receiving a commission from the sale of a product as an affiliate. This usually comes into play when a marketer puts up a review of a product and then under the review, gives the prospect his affiliate link. In the old days, this was fine. Today, you MUST disclose that if the person buys from THAT link, YOU get a commission.

So why does this make bribery so important? Well, many people, after reading your review, if they see that you are in fact getting a commission from the sale of the product, they might not take your review as seriously and as a result, this might cut down on the number of sales you make. This is a perfectly logical concern of affiliates, as it should be. So how do we combat this?

That’s where the bribe comes in, and it’s perfectly ethical and legal. Yes, it’s going to take a little work on YOUR part, but if you want to survive in the new affiliate marketing climate, you’re going to have to learn to adapt. Okay, so let’s get to this bribe and just how we pull it off.

Assuming you have read the product and understand what it’s about, you know what it contains and what it doesn’t contain. No product is perfect…not even mine. So what you will want to do is this. You’ll want to write down all the things you wish the product had and then create a companion product that contains those things. Then, what you want to do (here comes the bribe) is offer that product as a bonus to anybody who buys the main product from you.

This way, you can be TOTALLY up front about the fact that you’re getting paid for the sale. In fact, I even tell people that they have to make sure that my affiliate ID appears at the bottom of the payment page or they won’t get their bonus. Full disclosure and I STILL make a boat load of sales. The key is having a bonus that is REALLY worth something.

Don’t have a product? No problem. Offer your time. Offer to help them with the product if they need it. If you go beyond what most affiliates are willing to do, you WILL make more than your share of sales.

There you have it..an ethical bribe that makes the customer happy, the FTC happy and you VERY happy.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

I honestly don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner. I guess it’s because it took the FTC making affiliate marketers’ lives miserable to finally come up with some brutally clever ideas. This one involves the problem with affiliates having to disclose that they are getting compensated IF the prospect buys the product from THEIR site. Well, here’s how to get around this problem in spades AND help other affiliates, as well as your own pocketbook, in the process.

If you’re not familiar with the new regulations, let me just give them to you in a nutshell. From now on, every affiliate marketer has to disclose, in some way, that they are getting compensated for any sales that they make from their site. A lot of affiliate marketers are getting upset over this, saying that it’s going to lower sales. This couldn’t be farther from the truth IF you know how to deal with it. Below, you will find a fool proof way of still making sales no matter what the FTC says you have to do.

Very simply…offer a bonus to the prospect for purchasing the product from you. What kind of bonus? This is easy to come up with. Get a copy of the product itself, easy to do if it’s a digital one. See what’s in it. Make a list of everything. Then make a list of the things in the product that AREN’T covered that should have been. Then, take this list and create a companion product for the main product. Give it away to anybody who purchases the main product through you.

This way, you can be right up front about the fact that you’re being compensated for the sale. If the bonus is too good to pass up, the prospect would be foolish to not buy from you.

But…this gets even better.

See, if you want, you can create these companion products and sell them to other affiliate marketers. Tell them how this will give them an advantage in selling whatever it is they’re selling. This way, other affiliates can also make some extra sales and you get compensated for the companion products that you sell to them. It’s a win-win for everybody concerned.

Sure, this is going to take some work, but the affiliate marketers who got he extra mile are the ones who make more money…just like with everything else in life.

Give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.