There is another dimension to this

You send leads that didn’t convert

The product owner on the next affiliate launch they promote offers your leads that very same product for free, if they buy the other product.

You as an affiliate earn nothing from that, yet did a share of the work in establishing value for what ended up being offered as a bonus.

It is quite possible that those same leads might have purchased at a later date, after an extended sales period, maybe a slightly different offer.

I decided a long time ago that I am not going to waste material that could contribute significantly to the value of products I might launch in the future, just for a product launch bonus.

I also refuse to promote people now who offer the products I promoted as an affiliate a few days/​weeks later as a bonus to another promotion.

I went into a little bit more depth on it here, and am going to link through as you covered some points I didn’t, as I don’t deal with many of the large CPA networks.
andybeard.eu/1578/affiliate-product-launches-i-refuse-to-pro...

Real food for thought Justin especially given the fact that most of the gurus will tell you that if you want to make sales, you must either partner with someone or gather an army of affiliates.

Talk about “stressing out” your list when you keep promoting one offer after another to them. I personally delete those affiliate marketers who never give me any information but send me the next best thing every other day.

Whilst I agree with you that product owners are lazy, I also think many affiliates are too. They sell based on how much commission they can make rather than how good the product is. This is where I give StomperNet their due … on two occasions, they sent samples of their product — as for the Formula 5, I was just so busy at the time that I didn’t get to promote it but having read just the first portion and putting it into action myself, I would have had something tangible to give my list and, a good reason to buy. Most affilaites don’t have this which is a real shame.

Trish

Justin,

You bring some interesting insights with this article…when I read it, I started thinking to myself (as an affiliate) “Yeah, this hits home”.

The affiliate game is “professionalizing” itself online (and offline too).
(I know “professionalizing” isn’t a word, just a description )

In the beginning, affiliate links were all affiliates needed to succeed…then more and more was needed to help the affiliates promote…then “help” changed to “support” the affiliates…and now I wouldn’t be surprised to see affiliates being more selective who they partner with. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see affiliate networks and product owners being more selective which affiliates they allow to promote their products.

The whole game (business) online is evolving.

Thanks for the insights Justin. Good stuff as usual.

Joseph Ratliff

Hey Justin, I had just read your interview in this month’s DotCom Secret Journal, and is really inspiring.

Anyway, is hard to be an affiliate now, since is so competitive, and I mean extremely competitive, I still think creating a unique protect of your own and creating service for others is the best choice.

As you say in how to make your affiliate happier, is still come down, how much affiliate value you can give them to promote your product, “unique” is the word I can use for the bottom line of all.

Interesting… More work for Less pay.… that wasn’t the original reason I got into IM. LoL

I agree though…

I actually got a skype message today that was from someone trying to tell me to promote their product, I never talked to them in my life and they just wanted me to promote their products for the money that i could potentially make.… I was turned off b/​c i don’t know the quality of the product b/​c i haven’t seen it and this person has never talked to me before.… Whatever happend to build a relationship then work together? ohh well… I won’t be promoting for him anyway!

I think that a big part of future Jv’s will depend on the relationship between the creator and affiliate and if the product is actually quality content and worth the price.

Crappy marketers with crappy products will be gone like the wind… they will continue to lose business to the people who deliver higher quality products and have the quality relationships and don’t push their product on all the affiliate partners.

The web is definitely changing! Gotta change with it or you’ll be left behind!

Interesting article, Justin. I didn’t know that affiliates were offering incentives. When I take the time to develop my own product, I sell it, or try to.

I agree that a good product owner provides lots of resources and tools. But if they provided extra bonuses for affiliates to offer, it seems like it’s self defeating. All the affiliates will be offering the same bonus. On the other hand, if you only make sales to your list when you offer a bonus, then I guess the product owner should supply it.

Thanks

Great article Justin and I couldn’t agree more.

“The Great Affiliate Marketing Sham” is coming to an end as more and more affiliate’s wise up and realize they can use these launches as a means of leverage to build their own business, and not someone else’s.

Affiliates (willing to do a little work) have a lot of power in the equation. And the balance of power has already started to shift.

Hi Justin,

I totally agree, but this is just another sign of how such a ferocious industry is having to evolve due to competition and consumer choice.

The best affiliates will always be the ones you know by name, and approach personally with a proposal, or JVs who have a vested interest in promoting your products.

Mass affiliate “fishing” may bring on board more affiliates, but at what cost? In reality, attracting mass affiliates and hoping/​trying to get 20 + of them to perform well for you is optimistic, especially considering their standardized expectations to have everything done for them short of getting traffic.

It seems to me that in the more cut throat environments such as the adult and IM markets, the key is to provide a product that is truly unique and pays a hefty commission…

…otherwise all you are doing is farming traffic brokers, who call themselves affiliates. And when it reaches that point, those people sending you traffic are only concerned with how the numbers stack up.

And that means you’re losing loyalty easily…because these folks have no personal interest in promoting for you.

In short, a clear way to combat this entire issue is:

1. Hand pick your partners and work closely with them, providing unique solutions that meet their specific requirements

2. Develop your relationships with your affiliates

3. Create a product that affiliates drool over to promote

And one final point is this:

If you can’t create and run a business that isn’t easily copied or dropped by affiliates, then how strong, useful, unique, valuable and worthwhile is your business or your products in the first place?

Food for thought indeed.

I agree that for launches involving a launch sequence, mailouts and so on, this is true.

For evergreen products, what it comes down to is visitor value for the affiliate, which is dependant on:

1. Conversion

2. Average Customer Value (backend offers, high-​​ticket, etc. so you can afford to have the front end offers self-​​liquidate for affiliates or ad spend)

3. Actual Product Value (quality)

If you can consistently provide the best possible conversion, the highest overall client value (some of which is largely commissionable to the affs) and the highest quality in your market — it will simply be a matter of time until you have the controlling affiliate market share in your industry.

This assuming that you are actively recruiting and reaching affiliates (even though the heavy hitters will usually find you themselves).

Obviously the more resources you provide, the better — but it’s all for nothing unless those three variables are firmly established to begin with.

As an active affiliate a decent number markets, I’ve found that sometimes the aff programs with “tons” of resources just don’t convert. While other products, with very little in the way of resources, convert like crazy.

Now that’s the exception and NOT the rule — but from the affiliate’s perspective, it always comes down to the money. Yes, content and resources are great — but if their visitors are worth more by promoting something else (even if the other guy offers ZERO resources), they will go to where the money is.

In other words, before you build an elaborate “chariot” of affiliate resources — make sure you’ve got a horse that can run it all

Cheers

–Chris

@Andy Beard — one thing I’m doing with a few of my products (and will do with more when I get around to it) is tracking the ID of the affiliate who sent them to me in my autoresponder. Then I insert their ID in any links I email to those prospects later so that the original affiliate will get credit for future sales. This solves the problem you mention and also the problem of customres deleting an affiliate’s cookie before it was set to expire.

I’m too new in Affiliate Marketing to even realize some of the above mentioned things are happening, but as a perplexed customer, I have lots of thoughts.….

WHY am I being bombarded w/​ a gazillion bonuses for each product? Isn’t the product itself “Good Enough” for me to fork over my $47-$1997?

I’m so far behind in reading/​watching/​implementing the Original Content from the Product Owner, that I have no clue when I’ll get around to digesting the Bonus Content.

And PUH-​​LEEZE! Stop w/​ the One-​​Time-​​Offers! I KNOW they’re an industry standard, I know McDonald’s does it w/​ their fries, and Walmart does it w/​ their checkout aisles filled w/​ more stuff for me to remember to buy, but so far, not too many mass merchants try to stop me AFTER I’VE PAID to try to sell me ONE MORE THING, BETTER THAN WHAT’s Already in my Cart!

DANG!!!! If it’s THAT good, why wasn’t it offered to me in the beginning? If it’s a Must Have, why am I just now hearing about it?

I may well have to eat my words in the future if I ever become a Product Owner & want to get that extra 20–40% more sales. lol! I just hope that by then, I could create a buying opportunity for the customer UP FRONT, to tell them, “I’ve created 2–3-4 Excellent Courses. Each one Builds on The Next. Each is Also Informative Enough to Be Used By Itself. You will definitetly succeed if you Choose Just One Product, and IMPLEMENT it’s information. But to get the best overall education, you should get all the products. At the end of this page, You can choose from 4 Buying Options. This is your ONLY chance to get these items, there will be NO OTO later on”.….…

Or, as a person would do in a real store “Take a look at my product descriptions below, choose the one or several you like, and I’ll be happy to meet you at the checkout counter.”

Neither Wal-​​Mart or Neiman’s Sales Clerks chase me out of the store, saying, “But Wait, Buy One More Thing!”, AFTER I’ve already made my purchase! “You bought that ice-​​chest/​mink coat, but wait, there’s a new and improved one we just found!” Puh-​​Leeze!

Back to Bonuses.… Do you Product Owners/​Super Affiliates have any idea how intimidating those are to the beginner? Maybe it’s the name of the competitive game, but at the moment, I have just about NOTHING to offer my yet-​​to-​​be-​​created-​​list as an incentive to buy from me. Perhaps those “bonuses” will appear “by magic”/be created by me/​ will be a worked out deal w/​ a future JV, but at the moment, they don’t exist in my beginner’s arsenal.

After this rant, I’d be leery of offering them! lol!

As a beginner, I AM appreciative of the extra efforts I’ve discovered a few Product Owners now make, re the better/​individualized landing pages, the better options for sales copy, etc. But as a future Product Owner (if I become one), that stuff also scares me! Having to create it! Maybe by that time I’ll be successful enough to hire it done, which I guess is how those extra landing pages are done.

Nothing ever stays the same, does it?

Thanks for the informative article.

Susi.

@Antone Roundy —

Not really.… at least not with many marketers

Whilst they might claim that they mail using your affiliate link, that doesn’t help if they give the products away as bonuses for something else.

A $5000 bonus in pretty real value (as in products people really were buying for that recently) for a $2000 sale seems to be becoming common.

There are very few marketers who can put together a $5000 bonus package without including some, or all of their premium products.

Any that are not tempted but sign up anyway to another list a few months later will be offered that 2nd product as a bonus for the original product… as long as they clear cookies.

The person who originally provided the lead, and even presold the first product in many cases doesn’t matter.

I have other pet gripes… 10+ affiliate links in the free material leading up to a launch, horrible viral inviters asking for passwords, retweet scripts that are a “leak” etc

Justin — Michael — Silvie ~

Yet another hard-​​hitting, poignant success sculpting Exposé.

I believe getting to the point where I should schedule a phone call and a personal thank you.

Your post was both very timely, and of the perfect focus for precisely what one needs to take place before during and after any product launch.

Great job team…

- Glen

Glen B. Stewart
Zero Gravity 4 You LLC

Another factor that established vendors, especially at Clickbank, overlook is that savvy affiliates are wary of promoting a product via a sales page where, immediately, a drop-​​down ‘sign up for a free course’ or similar pop-​​up appears!

Am I alone in suspecting that many of any future sales generated via the follow-​​up auto-​​responder campaign will not be credited to me? ( @Antone Roundy who commented above — you are obviously an exception and more power to you!)

Why not offer affilates a page without the ‘pop-​​up’? Or convince me that my ‘cookie’ is still enabled once the auto-​​responder sequence kicks in. Better still let me have the auto-​​responder sequence to promote via MY Aweber account.

I’m more likely to promote you that’s for sure.

I’m walking away from marketers who simply scrape your list or even worse… they promise to hard code the affiliate id during prelaunch but then somehow “forget” to include our affiliate id during their emails back out to the list — a list built by affiliates.

Bonuses make sense if it’s something that truly complements the offer and you’ve reviewed the product to know what a good bonus would be.

Cheers.

As usual, the pornlords get there first.

Justin — Your everywhere dude!!! What a great post. Your information is always great.

Thanks

Jason Berkes

Over the last year I have left a couple of comments around wondering if affiliate program and big launches were heading for a crash.

1. How do you feel about paying good money for a program and have it given away as a bonus for the next big launch?
2. It encourages bonus shopping.
3. Helps build someone else’s list.
4. In some cases the bonus looks to be a better value then the program being sold.
5. Each big launch seem to require bigger and bigger bosuses.

Not sure where it is all heading.

John Deck

Good point Justin. Affiliates have many options today and not in the mercy of product owners.

Affiliates can increase control dramatically by creating unique bonuses.

Concept 1: Offer a bonus for buyers. This way you capture all the buyers details in a qualified list. You can market to that list for the next launch.

Concept 2: Have your bonus included inside the launch members area for the ‘shock and awe’ part of the launch. I recently did this for a big launch and built a huge list of qualified targeted buyers.

My big idea is this:

… affiliates should be product owners if they want to control the game

Regards

James

Okay, well — Lets say Joe, Bob and Pete Offer me Product X.

I ignore Joe’s and Bob’s emails. But when I see Pete promoting it, I get interested. Why? Because I have followed Pete’s blog, read some of Pete’s free eBooks, and Pete even helped me once on a forum. Pete gave me useful information and seems like a level-​​headed guy so I trust him.

So I look into Product X and I decide to buy it.

Then I remember that Joe and Bob wrote about it. I check their emails to see what they have to say.

Joe, who I never heard of till last week, is offering a big bonus that I can’t resist. I was going to buy it one day for $200 but now I can get it for free. So, I end up buying through Joe’s link. Even though I wanted to buy it through Pete.

Truthfully, Pete earned the sale. In my opinion.

So, maybe affiliates shouldn’t be allowed by product owners to offer bonuses?

Although personally I can attest that there have been times I would never have bought something or tried it, if it weren’t for the bonus. And I wound up keeping it.

Which makes me wonder if affiliates should all have their own bonuses … making them a combination of affiliate and product owner.

Then you run into a scenario where a person doesn’t buy a person’s product because they are wondering if it might be offered up for free one day as a bonus.

Food for thought is right.

Nice post. Got me thinking

The line between ‘joint ventures’ and ‘affiliates’ has been blurred in the Internet marketing niche for a long time now.

What many call ‘JV’ deals are often little more than affiliate joint promotions.

Which, in context of what you’ve just highlighted (and most product owners have known intuitively for many years now), makes me wonder: why not merge the two concepts into something more valuable, intimate and hands-​​on?

In other words, as a product owner, work with ONLY a close ‘inner circle’ of affiliates/​JV partners.

Keep your product promos exclusive to this small group. Give them extra perks and special, customized promo tools to use, like interviews/​webinars with them, co-​​authored special reports, virtual workshops done together. Maybe even ‘reciprocal promotions’ to your own database.

The bit that often gets overlooked by many product owners is that, in the headlong rush for ‘quick’ profits, they ignore the real goldmine of a satisfied, even delighted, loyal client base. With one of those, you don’t need too many ‘new’ clients to keep the profit pump primed.

Years ago, I scaled down on ‘external’ or ‘outbound’ marketing, and in the process, cut down on my own affiliate recruiting efforts BEFORE the ‘bonus war’ reality hit the marketplace. In this way, I have been insulated against the madness and mayhem, while my business chugs along — maybe not expanding massively, but definitely thriving.

Periodic inflows of new clients come from joint venture co-​​promotions — and with a good system of delivering value to clients, you don’t need too many of these deals to keep things going well.

But what’s a beginner to do?

Use this reality of ‘affiliate bonus wars’ to deliver a killer FRONT-​​END product — and forego all profits, over-​​deliver to affiliates, and build intimate relationships with the best performing partners.

All of this would be done with a view to developing and growing a client-​​base that will be delighted with the quality of your product or service to the point they’ll be repeat buyers… and at the same time nurturing relationships based on real benefits and value-​​delivery with your affiliates (who will later morph into that exclusive group of ‘JV partners’).

Done right, this strategy will simply bypass the need to ‘go back to the well’ too often, and lets you siphon off a segment from your broader marketplace to focus on, deliver value to, and mine for continuing value for years to come — maybe forever!

In a nutshell, for a product owner, a strategy build entirely on getting more affiliates to sell more products for you is one that condemns you to either working harder than ever, and/​or accepting diminishing returns for this effort.

Build a team that works together. Create a client base that you can help by providing value. And use affiliates ethically to reach that point — by over-​​delivering to them, too.

Just my 2 cents!

All success
Dr.Mani

@Anna —

The market decides!!! Why couldnt Pete make a bonus anyway?

Maybe I thought of this idea because I’m right in the middle of promoting my first print book!

All success
Dr.Mani
Author: ‘Think, Write and Retire’
http://www.ThinkWriteRetire.com

@James — I think you’re right. Pete really should make a bonus if everyone else is … but then that takes us back around to the “why not just sell the bonus” question.

Maybe a different bonus with every launch, which was never sold formerly, but never repeated again for free? Of course that’s a lot of work so the person would have to have a big following to make it worthwhile. But at least that would avoid some of the other potential problems which are mentioned in this post and comments.

Affiliates wouldn’t be promoting a paid product, only to have it be given away later as a bonus. And people wouldn’t avoid buying something “in case in becomes a bonus later” if it were offered free only once and after that it were for sale.

Just means people will have to come up with a lot of great ideas for products, which gets tricky when so many people are in info-​​overload as it is. Get’s interesting at least!

WOW, touchy subject

Just my two cents…

Are your products really worth much if you give them away on every launch?

This is a terrible cycle because product owners have to charge more to get the affiliates to offer sweet bonuses. Don’t believe for a second that you aren’t somehow paying for that bonus.

I buy your product this lauch then next launch you give your product away as a bonus! Why did I even pay?

I agree with Trish, Stomper does it right “most of the time”

One of the biggest and most insidious problems is thier hurting (and targeting) mostly newbies

There is affiliate incest going on too (remember the big guru video explaining how to clear your cookies in great detail) why should I even bother trying to promote you with that kind of #$%& going on

Lastly but not leastly, (made that last word up), YOU DON“T NEED HALF THIS CRAP!

P.S. What ever happened to building “quality websites?”

Excuse me?

People become affiliate marketers because they don’t want to spend the time to research and develop a product, or handle delivery, customer service, refunds and such. And on top of that — products owners are supposed to provide a website that converts, and any and all promotional tools, articles, ebooks, videos, so all they have to do is send an email and split the money? Oh no, even that’s not good enough — they should get 75% or more? Only in IM…

Does anyone else see a problem with this?

Excuse me?

People become affiliate marketers because they don’t want to spend the time to research and develop a product, or handle delivery, customer service, refunds and such. And on top of that — products owners are supposed to provide a website that converts, and any and all promotional tools, articles, ebooks, videos, so all they have to do is send an email and split the money? Oh no, even that’s not good enough — they should get 75% or more? Only in IM…

Does anyone else see a problem with this?