A few months ago the very first person approached me wanting to advertise a certain affiliate program on my blog.I didn’t realize it at the time,but the program in question would go on to become probably the most advertised program I have ever seen in the make money online niche,the banners for it are EVERYWHERE.
I’m not going to mention the specific program in this post,but as I write this there are at least three advertisers promoting the program on my blog so you should be able to figure out it.I personally have not investigated the program so I’m hardly in a position to offer an informed opinion about it,but that’s not the topic of this article anyway.
In the past two months I’ve had at least 20 people contact me to promote this particular program on my two blogs and I’ve turned most of them back.I’ve had to refund at least $1500 because many people sent me money without realizing there are already several people already promoting the program on my blogs.It’s come to the point now where I’ve had to put a notice on my advertise page explaining I will no longer take on any advertisements for this program.
I’m not looking to judge the quality of the program,but I do want to point out the psychology that it is creating.Like many affiliate programs,this system is multi-tiered and I expect the pyramid like growth you can experience if you get out there and recruit as fast as you can is one of the biggest selling points.It’s worked so well,people are throwing money at promoting it without understanding anything about online advertising.
Promote Fast or You May Miss Out!
Many of the people who sent me money to buy a text link,followed up with a query that goes “so what do I do next” or sent through long lines of capitalized letters screaming “GET RICH QUICK SCHEME”.I’m all for people experimenting with different advertisements to see how things work,but when you don’t know what a text link is,there are hundreds of other people promoting the same program and you are advertising how to make “thousands weekly” when you don’t make that money yourself or the only way to generate revenue is to sell more people into the same program,then something is wrong.
Programs like this appeal to the newbie Internet marketer and it’s almost like a right of passage to go through an experience like this so you can learn how foolish it is to expect to make money promoting programs about how to make money when you don’t make any money yourself.It’s like MLM in the offline business world - so many people try it,learn that is just doesn’t work for them,then move forward with a new found sense of maturity and a more realistic approach to business (well,hopefully anyway!).
My advice to anyone considering promoting a program online - and that’s any affiliate opportunity - learn how to effectively market online before spending money.
If you can’t answer these questions before you spend money on a promotion,don’t do it -
Do you understand how the advertisement works?Is it pay per click or pay per impression or pay per month?
Are you focusing on the best methods for the type of product you are promoting?
How about the target audience - are you sure it’s the right market for what you offer?
How is the traffic acquired?
Can you and are you tracking your results?
What is your break even point for acquiring a new lead (this tells you how much you can spend on traffic)?
How about conversion rates?
Given a type of media (text,banners,audio,video) do you know how to construct an ad that sells?
Have you researched anything or are you just throwing money at something hoping it will work?
There’s a big difference between conducting careful controlled market research to see what advertising works versus blindly spending money as fast as you can because you are feeling the rush of greed.If anything doesn’t feel right or you can’t put all the pieces together in your head to understand how the big picture works,then chances are you won’t make any money.
Know what you are doing before you spend money and if you don’t know,spend money or time or both finding out.That’s a much smarter investment in the long term.
Yaro Starak
Patient Marketer