Selling Affiliate eProducts. The Problem

selling affiliate eproducts

Selling affiliate eproducts is hard, always has been. That is nothing new. At its basic level it is a 6 step process. First:

  • you have to get someone to your website/ social media post/ buy a link. 
  • you have to convince them to read what you have written
  • they have to enact what is written (click on a link)
  • then they have to read the sales copy, if any
  • finally they have to go through the checkout process
  • buy

Then we have refunds.

But when people get it right, it can work. But have you noticed that it works better for some than others. Now we are not talking about the websites that promote products to make money which state you make money by creating products to teach making money. Internet marketing websites are full of these and they are of no help. So, to get their information out of the way, here is the formula:

  • create content, buy links to a...
  • optin page or somewhere where you can grow an audience- like a social media page etc
  • grow trust
  • send them a recommendation of a product which you have used
  • maybe throw in a few bonuses

Thats it. Forget most of the make money marketing websites, the above 5 points are what most state- just different versions.

But why do some companies make it with affiliate marketing and others, don't?

Now you might think- create more content, throw more money into Ads. Sure, they will work. But should you be throwing more resources into something that could be broken?

Even if you covered the 4 stage affiliate systems (in depth article here) you still might not be getting the sales that you deserve.

It all depends upon one factor that is rarely talked about. Why?

Because at the end of the day it means a loss in money.

Online was meant to be easy. But online also gives everyone a level playing field. A one person company can look like a very large company very easily. Anyone, if they want to, can do selling and marketing. This then allowed companies to grow. Amazon grew, in part, due to the creation of Amazon Associates. Most of the "marketers" online grew because of the tactics they used in affiliate marketing.

But. When other people tried it (and not their friends) then the amount of money generated was much smaller, like significantly.

One day it hit me why this is so. I was talking to a sales manager of a printer company who had...a territory.

And it is with this one word why affiliate marketing online has a problem.

Territories?

selling affiliate eproducts 2

If you go to a car dealership, a McDonalds/ Wendys etc. you will find that business is in a certain area and no other McDonalds will be able to build close by. This is also the same with Walmart and good franchises. Now, you can have multiple same companies in the same town. In one town there are 7 Tim Hortons- but that town is large enough to handle them. In larger ticket items you will find that the amount of franchisees are small. In a large town close to us there is only 1 Honda dealership. To find another, you have to travel to another larger town.

That is the ultimate problem with many affiliate creators.

Yep, it is actually the creators issue, not the sellers. The sellers are doing what they are trying to do- sell.

They give out plenty of "helpful" advice, such as:

  • keywords for PPC
  • email templates
  • articles
  • banners

You have probably seen them. Check out the article about affiliate click through rates for a more indepth coverage.

But with these points there are negatives that go with them:

  • price for keywords increase with more demand- you need to sell/ convert more to make it worth it
  • emails are good for a certain audience, is it good for yours. Also, did they receive an email from someone else that looks exactly the same?
  • you can get penalised by search with the same articles
  • banners are useful but maybe figure out the baseline for what that banner converts on your site then try to tweak it

And all these (non exhaustive) issues are based upon this:

Are you first or last?

Regardless of what you are promoting, you will find that if you are first- or within the top few websites that have joined for a specific topic, you won't be able to get their levels of sales.

But they show you charts and leader boards of people who are selling thousands of dollars worth of product- so it must work!

It does, but there is small print.

If your audience is about FBA selling and you:

  • are roughly the most known website about this topic. 
  • you will probably have most of the specific and responsive audience

Do you think that you will dominate within the charts of any affiliate selling promotion? Highly likely.

Now, lets flip this.

If you are a website that is dabbling in FBA, Youtube videos etc and then promote the same affiliate product. Do you think you will have the same response?

Possibly not.

Now how about if there was 100 other websites that are also trying to get into FBA and are trying to sell the same product. Will they have the same response? No. What will happen to your response? Probably lessen. What will happen to the main website? Maybe a little less as well, but not too much.

When faced with a mountain of choice, people revert to the most known. Everytime. Thus, it is highly probable that the main websites get lifted through the pre-selling advertisement methods of other smaller websites.

This is the fundamental issue with affiliate marketing and why it is difficult to sell something through that channel.

There is just no cut off amount of people that can enter. The idea of spread far and wide actually has an eventual limiting effect on those that are small but has a lifting effect on those that are the larger players. Eventually there becomes a very minor monopoly. Because. At the end of the day, who do you want selling your items? Many people with customer service issues, random quality...or someone who you can trust to sell your product?

Everyone makes such a deal out of one seller who made a fortune through selling ebooks on Clickbank. It is this that has driven a large demand for ebook selling. The main advertisement method was through PPC and was done with one person who sold the vast majority of the ebook- not a whole army of sellers.

The only way for affiliate creating companies to be successful is to minimise the amount of people selling their product. This also helps the seller to focus resources.

Streamline selling affiliate eproducts

selling affiliate eproducts 3

This sounds very doom and gloom right? But there is a chance, and I think we have known it all along.

First off, the idea of affiliate creators limiting the amount of sellers is going to be slim. It would be a cool idea for us all, but I don't think it will happen for a while.

What we can do though is the idea of side niching.

This is niche down but not away from the core audience.

So if you want to sell an Amazon FBA affiliate product, you don't go and sell one. The idea is to side step the niche and to still use FBA but in another capacity. So, lets drill down and see what we can find.

Who uses FBA?

  • small businesses trying to reduce overhead
  • people who want the service to be set up for them
  • specific products- health, gardening etc
  • new to FBA in the above businesses
  • different countries
  • people who are using FBA but are not doing as well as they should

Now with this small "off the top of my head" list, we can see opportunities that can be fulfilled. So most people will pick new FBA users. But that has been done to death and the amount of people doing that is very high and thus too competitive.

But if you wanted to help someone start up their FBA business then why can't you help them? So now you would be a consultant. You would use all your information on setting up FBA and help people to do the same. And this is not sell them a book, this is actually setting everything up for them. Once you have done that, who do you think you would recommend further information to? Maybe an affiliate product? Yep, your new audience who already knows that you have done good for them.

This audience can also be placed in:

  • a mastermind group- private Facebook group just for the people you have helped
  • you could have different packages- one for larger businesses around your town who you charge a flat fee, percentage of sales or an hourly rate
  • email one on one for a fee
  • day learning seminars

So, just by tweaking a general idea you can create a much larger side niche that targets exactly the same group of people but just are different. It also positions you in a way that you are more credible.

But, how about if you don't want to be face to face or have that responsibility?

Going into selling affiliate eproducts then needs to be tweaked as well.

You are going to go in with the idea that you can sell a product that everyone else is selling and come out on top. The only way to do this is to tweak the results themselves.

There are various techniques for this:

  • asking the seller if you can have a separate landing page that is designed just for you
  • asking the vendor if they can lower the cost of your product compared to everyone else- you would ultimately ask for a lower commission so the seller isnt out of pocket
  • a well known technique is to offer a product that is related to the affiliate product for free. One leads into the other
  • offering bonuses that are highly targeted to go with the product. They will work better if they are your own making or if you have stuck deals with vendors for free products for exposure to their sign up newsletters etc

Again in these brief examples you can see how you are side stepping the main product- which everyone is trying to sell, and adding something of relevance and authority. This is seen in the car industry where they add products onto the car in upgrades/ upsells. It works really well because adding $300 more to a $20,000 purchase is nothing. What you are doing is adding something for free.

The side benefit to all of this?

Creator trust.

You see, there is not much trust out there to affiliates. To find an affiliate that actually sells something well, with integrity is not that common. When you build up rapport with your eproduct seller then you can start to generate:

  1. better commission structures
  2. first seller service

Google even does this with their Adsense network. If you are generating a large amount of money through Adsense then Google creates an account manager for you which helps generate more income through those ads.

For more on selling affiliate eproducts check out the main article page here

For more info on updates, check out the Jasonera blog here.

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