If you?re like me?into IM and kicking yourself for the fact that you STILL don?t have your own product, fret not, my fellow newsletter readers, for the cure is here and I am about to spell it out for you in this one short blog ?blurb? that will show you that you don?t have to be an ?expert? to be an ?expert?.
For starters, I would like to point out that having your own product is a great way to protect yourself from lost affiliate marketing revenue.
Why would I say that? I say that because there is a rather large swath of techniques specially designed for the sole purpose of using affiliates as a lead generation tool and then surgically removing them from the commission process.
What?!? Stolen Commissions?!? No Way!!!
What does this mean? It essentially means that you can spend tons of time, effort and energy performing keyword and market research, building and coding websites, creating content for those websites, optimizing that content for search engines using both onsite and offsite techniques, using that content and subsequent SERP rankings to build lists of leads?all to drive traffic to an affiliate offer?only to have the product owner cut you out of the deal at the last second using one of a large library of commission concealing or removal techniques.
Don?t believe me? Ask yourself this question: ?When is the last time I have seen an opt-in pop up appear on a landing page for a product that I am promoting through its affiliate program??
Odds are, you have seen many of them. As much as I would like to pretend like we all live in the ?land of make-believe? and that product owners are ?honest?, the truth is many are not and can and will steal your commissions and have no problem sleeping at night thereafter.
So how can you protect yourself? Three words: YOUR OWN PRODUCT.
Own Your Own Product
So let me guess?you don?t have your own product.
Can you make one and sell it using your own landing page? What?s that? You say you do not have the necessary skills to create your own product?
Well, I?m here to tell you, its probably time that you tried.
Here is a small super-simple blueprint that will help you get started on the road to creating your own product in just about any niche you are bold enough to tackle. Many of the steps will sound very familiar and all of this will be painfully obvious, but just keep reading and go with it.
But before you do this, you are going to have to understand a simple concept and that is this?affiliate marketing and internet marketing are NOT the same thing. Affiliate marketing is the selling of other peoples products and then hoping that they pay you. Internet marketing is the selling of a product YOU own and then paying affiliates when they refer leads to you.
But I?m An Affiliate Marketer?!?
Although these two worlds use many of the same tools and appear to be similar on the surface?THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. Internet marketing is FAR SUPERIOR to affiliate marketing in almost every way.
Internet marketers LEVERAGE affiliates. Affiliates GET LEVERAGED by internet marketers.
So now that we have that out of the way, lets get down to business step-by-step.
Product Creation Fundamentals
Step One ? Pick a niche. Obviously, if you are going to create a product your going to have to pick a niche that has a problem that you can create a solution to. In this particular step, I want you to not worry about whether or not the niche is saturated or competitive, but I do want you to look at the problems in this niche and ask yourself if there is something you could contribute to it. If you can, DO IT USING THE FOLLOWING SIMPLE STEPS.
Side Note: Try to pick a niche other than Internet Marketing or Making Money Online. Both of these are over-run with redundant products that have high return and refund rates and a pre-existing ANGRY CUSTOMER BASE. Just FYI. The more refined the niche, the better. The more technical the niche, the better.
Step Two ? Look at your competition. Take a look at the businesses and individuals that have products in your niche. Do they solve the problem or problems that you have identified in that niche? If they do so successfully, then proceed to the next step.
Step Three ? Purchase their products and analyze them in every detail and then REVERSE ENGINEER them. Reverse engineering happens and is a fundamental part of each and every single niche in humanity. Reverse engineering happens all of the time in automation, pharmaceutics, military applications, electronics, entertainment and even internet marketing.
Step Four ? Use other products as a BLUEPRINT for your own.
DISCLAIMER: This article is not recommending the stealing of other peoples copyrighted work. It is referencing the common practice of ?reverse engineering? which is the analysis of an existing product or technology and using that information as a catalyst in the development of your own UNIQUE product. Never, under any circumstances copy or duplicate other persons or entities copyrighted material in any form.
Once you understand your competitions product/solution, you now know what is required in terms of PRODUCT DESIGN AND SUBSTANCE. So DO IT.
Step Five ? Improve on your competitions concepts. Ask yourself these questions: Can I make a better product? Can I make a complimentary product and then parallel or supplement their market? This is actually very important because many affiliates build lists to pitch to and then only realize AFTER THE FACT that they don?t have any products to pitch other than that one. In this regard, complimentary and supplemental products are great because you can form JVs or Joint Ventures which is the contacting of list owners and asking them to be an affiliate for your product and that?s pretty much it.
Remember, this is a SUPER SIMPLE outline that explains how people really make money online. All of those big CLICKBANK snap shots are not of affiliates accounts, they (at least the ones that are real ? most are not ? most are completely fake) are of product owner accounts, product owners that have put their products on CLICKBANK and that have affiliates selling them or at least sending them leads.
Super Tip: Once you have your own product and it is and quality product and you know that it is a quality product, then the rest is easy. Just start a blog and start writing well-researched and informative articles about problems in that niche that pitch your product and that make the pitch targeting long-tail keywords. This way you can start grabbing a slice of the marketing using search engines and search engine marketing techniques regardless of the level and/or strength of competition. Just a tip?this is not an SEM post.
Final Word
Final word. This article is not meant to disprove the fact that you can make money as an affiliate marketer. You absolutely can. Additionally, there are people who have gotten rich as affiliate marketers. But know this. Affiliate marketing can actually be viewed as a form of slavery or servitude. And as with any form of slavery or servitude, the best way to keep the ?masses in check? and to keep ?riots from spawning? is to create a ?privileged class? that they can look up to and which keeps them distracted. Just keep that thought in the back of your mind.
Related posts:
- What To Look For When Promoting A Clickbank Product
If you?re like me?into IM and kicking yourself for the fact that you STILL don?t have your own product, fret not, my fellow newsletter readers, for the cure is here and I am about to spell it out for you in this one short blog ?blurb? that will show you that you don?t have to be an ?expert? to be an ?expert?.
For starters, I would like to point out that having your own product is a great way to protect yourself from lost affiliate marketing revenue.
Why would I say that? I say that because there is a rather large swath of techniques specially designed for the sole purpose of using affiliates as a lead generation tool and then surgically removing them from the commission process.
What?!? Stolen Commissions?!? No Way!!!
What does this mean? It essentially means that you can spend tons of time, effort and energy performing keyword and market research, building and coding websites, creating content for those websites, optimizing that content for search engines using both onsite and offsite techniques, using that content and subsequent SERP rankings to build lists of leads?all to drive traffic to an affiliate offer?only to have the product owner cut you out of the deal at the last second using one of a large library of commission concealing or removal techniques.
Don?t believe me? Ask yourself this question: ?When is the last time I have seen an opt-in pop up appear on a landing page for a product that I am promoting through its affiliate program??
Odds are, you have seen many of them. As much as I would like to pretend like we all live in the ?land of make-believe? and that product owners are ?honest?, the truth is many are not and can and will steal your commissions and have no problem sleeping at night thereafter.
So how can you protect yourself? Three words: YOUR OWN PRODUCT.
Own Your Own Product
So let me guess?you don?t have your own product.
Can you make one and sell it using your own landing page? What?s that? You say you do not have the necessary skills to create your own product?
Well, I?m here to tell you, its probably time that you tried.
Here is a small super-simple blueprint that will help you get started on the road to creating your own product in just about any niche you are bold enough to tackle. Many of the steps will sound very familiar and all of this will be painfully obvious, but just keep reading and go with it.
But before you do this, you are going to have to understand a simple concept and that is this?affiliate marketing and internet marketing are NOT the same thing. Affiliate marketing is the selling of other peoples products and then hoping that they pay you. Internet marketing is the selling of a product YOU own and then paying affiliates when they refer leads to you.
But I?m An Affiliate Marketer?!?
Although these two worlds use many of the same tools and appear to be similar on the surface?THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. Internet marketing is FAR SUPERIOR to affiliate marketing in almost every way.
Internet marketers LEVERAGE affiliates. Affiliates GET LEVERAGED by internet marketers.
So now that we have that out of the way, lets get down to business step-by-step.
Product Creation Fundamentals
Step One ? Pick a niche. Obviously, if you are going to create a product your going to have to pick a niche that has a problem that you can create a solution to. In this particular step, I want you to not worry about whether or not the niche is saturated or competitive, but I do want you to look at the problems in this niche and ask yourself if there is something you could contribute to it. If you can, DO IT USING THE FOLLOWING SIMPLE STEPS.
Side Note: Try to pick a niche other than Internet Marketing or Making Money Online. Both of these are over-run with redundant products that have high return and refund rates and a pre-existing ANGRY CUSTOMER BASE. Just FYI. The more refined the niche, the better. The more technical the niche, the better.
Step Two ? Look at your competition. Take a look at the businesses and individuals that have products in your niche. Do they solve the problem or problems that you have identified in that niche? If they do so successfully, then proceed to the next step.
Step Three ? Purchase their products and analyze them in every detail and then REVERSE ENGINEER them. Reverse engineering happens and is a fundamental part of each and every single niche in humanity. Reverse engineering happens all of the time in automation, pharmaceutics, military applications, electronics, entertainment and even internet marketing.
Step Four ? Use other products as a BLUEPRINT for your own.
DISCLAIMER: This article is not recommending the stealing of other peoples copyrighted work. It is referencing the common practice of ?reverse engineering? which is the analysis of an existing product or technology and using that information as a catalyst in the development of your own UNIQUE product. Never, under any circumstances copy or duplicate other persons or entities copyrighted material in any form.
Once you understand your competitions product/solution, you now know what is required in terms of PRODUCT DESIGN AND SUBSTANCE. So DO IT.
Step Five ? Improve on your competitions concepts. Ask yourself these questions: Can I make a better product? Can I make a complimentary product and then parallel or supplement their market? This is actually very important because many affiliates build lists to pitch to and then only realize AFTER THE FACT that they don?t have any products to pitch other than that one. In this regard, complimentary and supplemental products are great because you can form JVs or Joint Ventures which is the contacting of list owners and asking them to be an affiliate for your product and that?s pretty much it.
Remember, this is a SUPER SIMPLE outline that explains how people really make money online. All of those big CLICKBANK snap shots are not of affiliates accounts, they (at least the ones that are real ? most are not ? most are completely fake) are of product owner accounts, product owners that have put their products on CLICKBANK and that have affiliates selling them or at least sending them leads.
Super Tip: Once you have your own product and it is and quality product and you know that it is a quality product, then the rest is easy. Just start a blog and start writing well-researched and informative articles about problems in that niche that pitch your product and that make the pitch targeting long-tail keywords. This way you can start grabbing a slice of the marketing using search engines and search engine marketing techniques regardless of the level and/or strength of competition. Just a tip?this is not an SEM post.
Final Word
Final word. This article is not meant to disprove the fact that you can make money as an affiliate marketer. You absolutely can. Additionally, there are people who have gotten rich as affiliate marketers. But know this. Affiliate marketing can actually be viewed as a form of slavery or servitude. And as with any form of slavery or servitude, the best way to keep the ?masses in check? and to keep ?riots from spawning? is to create a ?privileged class? that they can look up to and which keeps them distracted. Just keep that thought in the back of your mind.
Related posts:
- What To Look For When Promoting A Clickbank Product
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