Question of the week:
Also: do you have any ideas about how you could add unique value to the people in your niche?
Let me know your thoughts and comments!
Please leave a comment below.
Note that I don’t reply to all comments, but I do read them all. If I don’t reply to your comment, it most likely means that I agree with what you say and don’t have anything meaningful to add, myself. I appreciate and read all comments and your comments play an important part in what I write about, so keep them coming.
Spammy comments are always filtered or removed. No surprise there.
I like the idea of creating content of value for people as an affiliate. I think you will have greater weight with the visitors.
I noticed our 20 page local fence website for my father in law, that is filled with tons of informative content does alot to build trust with the potential customers.
I certainly agree with you that particularly with IM sites, if you really want to make a difference with conversions, then adding value via a proper review (not one of those fluff piece reviews) or via tutorials, makes quite a difference.
A good example for me is my comparisons of on-page SEO plugins. It was something I was geniunely interested in, so I went out and bought all the available products so I could do a proper comparison of them all.
I’ve gotten some good feedback and although I may not have made many affiliate sales via the review, I feel that it helps gain some trust and credibility, which I think it critical if you are in IM for the long term.
Cheers
Peter
Question of the week:
Have you done any affiliate promotions as part of a product, tutorial or similar?
No not yet. I have started the groundwork for this type of promotion in your course, Product Bootcamp. I am not certain what the end result will look like; but, it will have a positive effect on the target market.
Regards
Stanley
Cool, looking forward to what you come up with! :)
No. Sigh. Though I probably have several unique time tested takes on things. Site creation with FrontPage, for example. It has gotten to the point that there are lots of folks out there who know only WordPress and struggle with aspects of site creation (page structure, graphics, etc.) that come very easily to FrontPage….Which, btw, just happens to be a SEO monster in the right hands.
I could do a pdf tutorial with ease. My concern is that nobody would want the dratted thing.
Putting IM aside, take a coupon page. What can you offer for free on there? I’m flummoxed.
I always figgered you had to offer free software or something. Hey, I’ll try just about anything that is legal and in at least semi-good taste. I’m Mr. Experiment.
So, you know my situation. Would something like this fly?
As Always, Thankees
Norm
Frontpage: could have a hard time against WP, simply because it’s not free…
There might be a market there, but I’m really not sure.
I don’t have any experience with coupon sites myself. Are you getting the visitors on a newsletter at all? The coupons are kind of a value-add in themselves, so maybe people would sign up just to get news about new coupons. Free software is a very nice signup-incentive, if it fits the market. Software always has a higher percieved value than information.
Shane-
As always-a ‘breath of fresh air’. I recently subscribed to an offer for which I’ve now registered a domain to do an ‘honest’ review site; you’ve been my primary inspiration in this area.
Now the ‘added value’content or download giveaway must be included. I am curious(maybe you know) where these Ebook templates come from…you know large type, lots of space at the bottom of pages, effective graphic elements…good presentation helps.
In any case, thanks for what seems now to be an essential element in order to create the desired effect from a review site.
Hi Steve,
Thanks! Real, honest reviews can be a nice value-add in themselves.
I don’t know of any ebook templates. I personally just use Word and just fiddle with the fonts a little, plus insert images where necessary.
I agree shane, adding value can really boast up your sales.
If I look at a recent launch in the IM space that did a few million. The top affiliate gave stupid amount of value It was a high end lauch. Gave things revelant to the launch but REAL products (cameras etc..) The bonus was amazing and added great value.
The affiliates check pre refunds etc.. was over $1 million for the launch supposedly.
On smaller scales adding value of even an HONEST review is helpful. But real value of xyz does help tremendously.
Good example! I’ve also seen the occasional launch-affiliate giving away iPads and other physical bonuses, which I think is a pretty clever strategy, for high-ticket items.
Hi Shane – I love your message but hate the medium. I have a low bandwidth internet connection. If I listen to your videos I get a second or two of speech followed by 8 to 10 seconds of silence while the download catches up. No problem, I usually just mute the speaker while it downloads, then come back later and replay the whole thing. But for some reason this does not work with your videos. I always end up starting from scratch again, and whatever I had already succeeded in downloading gets lost. Have tried two different browsers.
Hope you understand what I am saying here, and can tweak your video player to be friendly towards low bandwidth students!
Noted, thanks for the input.
I’ll try a different player and/or add download links.
Hi Shane & thanks for the video, all good stuff as usual,
In answer to your question, Yes – I did create a product – a series of 25 video’s(these were outdoor video shoots) that took approx. 9 months to film, edit & upload. Although I feel that I may have put the cart before the horse – so to speak; deciding on a product I thought was good – rather than doing some proper research first.
The site http://autobuyersecrets.com is designed to help used car buyers avoid the pitfalls of buying a used car. Since launching last month I have been thoroughly dissapointed with the results. Im so dissapointed that I plan to throw in the towel. 9 months, many many long days & nights to recieve $0 is tough to take.
I had high hopes, gave the project 110% of my energy(full time for 9 months) & 95% of my savings but in the end the bills need paid & I’ll be forced to return to work in the next 2 weeks before I go into debt.
This post wasnt meant to be a tearful account of a failure – but thats how its happened. Perhaps if theres a lesson for anyone in it, it is to check the market properly before investing large amounts of time & money at it.
Thanks again for your sincere advice Shane, unfortunately for me it came 9 months too late!
Dan
Hi Dan,
Wow, I’m sorry to hear about that.
If it’s any consolation, I’ve had failures of similar proportions myself. Several times. I have 100x more failed projects under my belt than successful ones.
Scoping out a market before investing a lot of time, energy and money is a lesson I had to learn the hard way as well.
Here’s the good news: you’ve shown that you have a massive amount of drive and can follow through with a big project. Those are traits that will lead you to success, almost inevitably.
I’ll send you an email, as I’d like to have a chat with you.
Hi Shane,
Yes I am currentley finding ‘simple’ review or information sites that are ‘properly’ google optimised, using as exact a match domain as possible doing really quite well using the CTR theme.
My personal opinion is that creating many, many ‘simple’ sites that have between 3 and 9 articles on is the best way to get started for anyone new, as they are quick to produce, require limited link building (if the KW’s are choosen correctly) and make small amounts of monthly sales, the key is to create enough sites + when done well do give good content for the end user.
Would I spend alot of time creating fantastic user content for an affilate site, NO WAY, if I am that passionate and that knowledgeable about a niche then I always go down the road of creating my own product, why would I want to spend time and therefore money on something that will only give me a commission? (admittedly the IM teaching niche is very different and if I was in that niche, I would take the time to create user content, but only so that my ‘name’ becomes synonymous with trust and integrity, something seriously lacking with most IM teaching niche marketers).
No I think the real question (IM training niche aside) is do you set up multiple simple review/information type sites and sit back and worry just about click through rates etc or do you spend the time to create your own end product, which at the end of the day is not hard and can be outsourced, givs yu more ROI, but gives the extra headache of customer service etc.
Personally I do both and it works well for me :)
Chris.
Hey Chris,
Those are some very good observations!
It’s true that at some point, instead of creating huge value to promote someone else’s thing, it starts to make more sense to just create your own product. At least for info-products, that’s a very important factor to keep in mind. With software, it’s a bit of a different story, perhaps.
Yeah for sure software doesnt really give you that flexibility, so maybe a better way off promoting software would be to use screencast to record a simple review video posted on you tube and embedded on your aff site, but to add unique value add another vid of how best to use the software etc, so you effectivley get a presales review vid (which would be somewhat unique) with the second video acting as an extra pre-sale vid but it would also break down a barrier of ‘I want it but how can it benefit me / how can i best use it’. This second video would in most cases be totally unique and would add extra value / social proof to hopefully increase the CTR. + it would give a potential of ranking in the google serps because you have a information type video for that particular KW.
LOL dont know…it makes sense to me, but it is 2:40 in the morning !!
P.S. can you set a video up so that it re-directs a viewer from your page to the actual product sales page after it finishes, whilst retaining your aff link / cookie ?? that would be cool
Hello Shane,
My suggestion about a FrontPage tutorial was simply a stretch for an idea. I’m always doing things the hard way. But Dan above definitely has me beat. Not one for being short on ideas, coming up with giveaways that are meaningful enough to make sense has been an area I’m proficiently deficient. Hmmn. Now coming up with a BBP type program to develop good freebie enticements might be a good project for you. I don’t believe anyone has ever done that.
Isn’t it amazing how much time we put into coming up with fantastic and award winning schemes to sell other folks stuff, and they never even write to say thanks? Sometimes, when I let myself think about it, it does get tiring being nothing more than a blip on a spreadsheet to the people I work so hard for.
Norm
I’m glad that you said that niche sites work. I think it is what I want to do, because it sounds easy enough and I don’t want to fail. I feel quite stupid that I haven’t done any niche site yet. I think that is because I’m afraid of spending money, even though it doesn’t cost a lot to buy a domain and hosting. Maybe I’m just afraid of failure. I think I will have to start building those sites soon. Maybe I will start tomorrow( sure I will -_- ).
Thanks for another great video.
Bartek
Good to hear you give some thoughts on making money as an affiliate.
My take on building the niche sites is that you learn a ton of stuff in the process, valuable skills that you can apply to promoting your own products further down the line. Your own story really illustrates this learning process I believe. You did create niche sites, reviews sites, for a while but now you have moved on from that…. and I would guess you are now applying a ton of lessons learned during that phase of your internet career to now creating and promoting your own products.
Look forward to next weeks update. :)
Graham
I have not created a tutorial or a video as part of a promotion, however it’s a proven promotions strategy to give something away for free and people are more likely to feel that they have nothing to lose because you’ve already built value in the customer relationship.