Archive | January, 2022

Bad information keeps many people from making money online.

People give a half-hearted effort to one form of marketing, get disappointed that it didn’t work, and then cry out to the world that it no longer works…

How many times have you seen one of these headlines:

“Email Marketing Is Dead!”

“SEO No Longer Works Thanks to Google…”

“Content Marketing Has Lost Its Luster…”

Or the big one:

“Affiliate Marketing Is for Scammers!”

When something is proclaimed dead or not working any longer, it’s probably because someone was gaming the system and the system owners plugged the hole.

Ethical marketing always works in the long run.

That’s why Affiliate Marketing has worked for decades and will continue to work for the non-scammers of the world.

But the headlines persist, and the myths and misconceptions flourish.

Let’s talk about the top 5 myths about affiliate marketing today…

1) Affiliate Marketing is easy…

There’s a misconception out there that the newbie online marketer can grab an affiliate link, put it on their Facebook page, and the money will start rolling in.

Not so fast…

Affiliate marketing like any other business model IS a business.

And it should be treated like a business.

While affiliate marketing may be the exact business model you need as a new entrepreneur, it’s important to understand and accept that it is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme.

As with any business, your primary job is to present a solution to a market with a desperate problem. The problem must be so severe that they are willing to pay for that solution quickly.

Is this beginning to sound like work yet? It should.

Affiliate marketing can be VERY rewarding, but it is not easy, especially if you have no business experience. But affiliate marketing can be the best way to learn how to build a business with very low-risk.

Your investment as an affiliate marketer is low because you don’t have any product or delivery costs. Your focus must be on building a market, knowing that market inside out, and learning how to sell.

These are essential skills for any business owner to master.

Driving traffic and measuring conversions to build your marketing list is the primary tool of every affiliate marketer.

2) Affiliate marketing doesn’t work any more…

The days of throwing a link up on the social marketing sites and making a million dollars overnight are gone…if they ever existed.

Social media has heightened the importance of building relationships with your target market, and that can be a slow process.

Your followers and email subscribers must feel a connection with you. If they don’t, they find someone else where that connection is real.

Affiliate marketing not only works with an audience that knows, likes and trusts you, but they will ask for your affiliate link for new products. Sometimes, they feel such a close relationship that they’ll pass around your affiliate link for you.

Affiliate marketing without real relationships (even if they’re automated) is hard, but can be done with a lot of effort.

But affiliate marketing with real connections with an audience that has been nurtured and embraced works like a charm because you’re genuinely looking out for their interests.

3) The competition is too steep in affiliate marketing…

First, let’s agree competition is good.

That means there’s a market for the product. If not, no one else would be trying to sell that product.

Competitors can also become your best traffic source. Using the right tools like iSpionage.com, you can target your competitors, and step in front of their traffic with better offers, Facebook ads, or other techniques.

Sound a little cutthroat?

Nope, it’s just business. Once you become the Big Dog, everyone will target you too.

Your job is to offer better bonuses, better services, better support, and better experience to that market. And by doing that, you’re building a better relationship.

Find out how your competitors are building their audience (keyword research) and jump in there to grab that audience yourself.

Business is about competition, so if that bothers you, you probably need to get a job.

4) The more I promote my affiliate links the more money I’ll make…

Listen, this one is tricky.

In theory, this is true. But there are other considerations like…

Does your message match the right audience? This is where you’ve got to get good at knowing your market including their hopes, dreams and issues.

In the consulting world, they call these the FUDs – Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts.

What is your audience trying to do? And how can the solution you put in front of them solve that issue?

Promote to the right audience and you don’t have to “sell them” often because you become part of their go-to-problem-solver while you’re building a relationship.

Spamming your links to an audience never works.

But offering a solution to a problem always works.

5) Affiliate marketing is high risk and low ROI…

Ok. There is risk in any business endeavor. In affiliate marketing, you could make a lot of sales for a product only to have the product owner go out of business.

That’s always a risk.

And the return on investment could be very low, but only because you’re not making sales.

That usually means you don’t have the right message for the right target market. Conversions are much easier and ROI much higher when you convert prospects to customers.

Opponents of affiliate marketing will jump in here and declare you’d be better off building your own products, selling them online and keeping ALL the money.

Here’s the truth about that:

If you can’t sell someone else’s product and get a good ROI, what makes you think that you could invest a lot of money on your own product and sell THAT to the same target market.

Affiliate marketing is attractive because the risk is extremely low. You don’t have to create a massive infrastructure to support your products. You’re letting someone else take that risk on.

And the low ROI? Wrong.

The potential in affiliate marketing for those people who learn how to build an audience and convert that audience to paying customers is HUGE because it’s a pay-for-performance model!

The more you convert, the more you make and the higher your return.

Of course, like everything else, affiliate marketing only works if you know how to do it correctly.

If you have the right mindset, then everything else will work itself out. But if you have the wrong mindset, nothing else will work.

Here’s how to get your head on straight:

1: Trust your own ideas and strengths.

Stop comparing yourself, stop second guessing yourself and stand behind your own ideas and decisions.

2: Know your worth. Charge accordingly.

Dan Kennedy suggests that every business owner immediately raise their rates or prices.

You’ll get better customers and clients who appreciate you, fewer headaches and more revenue. So go ahead and give yourself a raise.

3: Realize you can’t do it alone.

Whatever ‘it’ is, you need help. Focus on the ideas, make the decisions, do the parts you’re good at and outsource everything else. You’ll stay sane and your business will prosper. Remember, teamwork makes the dream work. Start building your team today.

In my never ending search for ways to better appeal to my audience, I sometimes venture into the dark recesses of the human psyche so that I might better understand my customers and even myself.

I’m not picking on psychopaths here. Nor am I villainizing them. As I understand it, psychopaths are born the way they are – it’s not a choice.

A psychopath is generally someone who feels little or no real emotion, and instead has to fake it. They might lie a great deal. They have an inflated sense of self-worth. They use superficial charm and glibness to manipulate and con others. They lack remorse, guilt or empathy. And they constantly are in need of new stimulation.

About 1 out of 100 people are psychopaths. Odds are you know at least one, yet you might not realize it. Remember, most of them are not killers as the media might portray them.

But they can be incredibly charming and persuasive. Some psychopaths can find a person’s weak spot in minutes, manipulate that person using that knowledge, and actually make their target very happy and thankful to have been manipulated.

I’ve seen psychopaths at work. They fake emotions and use the techniques I’m about to cover to make people like them almost instantly.

Have you ever met someone and almost instantly thought you had a lot in common with them? Maybe you did – or maybe they were a psychopath adept at making you feel that way.

Now then, for those with active imaginations, I’m not recommending you turn into a psychopath when it comes to your marketing endeavors. And I’m certainly not suggesting you manipulate your prospects into becoming customers, either.

What I am suggesting is two-fold:

First, we can learn about influence from those who are skilled at it – and psychopaths tend to be especially adept at influencing others.

Second, forewarned is forearmed, which is to say once you are aware of these manipulation techniques, you will be better able to recognize them when they are being used on you or even against you.

Flattery: This isn’t just compliments and buttering you up, although that’s a part of it. Psychopaths can hone in on your insecurities and then provide you with the reassurance you crave to make you feel better. This makes you like them, trust them, and follow their suggestions.

As Marketers we do a variation of this in sales letters, agitating the problem and making the prospect feel the pain of the problem before we offer the feel good solution.

Favors and Gifts: The psychopath will do you a favor or give you a gift you might not even want. But still, now you feel obligated when s/he asks you to do something for them.

We do this in marketing, don’t we? We give away things, and in turn folks feel obligated to take a good look at what we’re offering.

False Intimacy: They’ll pretend to be interested in everything about you – your hobbies and interests, the kinds of music you like, your job, your family and so forth. Then they’ll tell you fake secrets to create an even deeper intimacy, at which point you’ll reciprocate and tell secrets about yourself. This is how a psychopath can go from ‘stranger’ to ‘new best friend’ in one or two meetings.

Again, marketers use a variation of this in sales copy, by first showing how similar we are to the prospect. “I had the same problem you do, here’s my story with all my dark secrets, etc.”

False Expectations: Psychopaths pretend things are already happening the way they want them to happen, before others even have a chance to think. So instead of asking, “Do you want to go to dinner?” They’ll simply say, “Let’s have dinner tonight, I’ll meet you at Harvey’s Grill at 8pm.” You’re not thinking IF you want to go to dinner, but instead you’re already making plans to meet him there.

Marketers and sales people alike will often ‘assume the sale’ to get the prospect to simply go along, rather than feeling like they have to ‘decide.’

Silent Treatment: Psychopaths will give random and unexpected silent treatments to throw you off. You might wonder if you did something wrong, and even try to make up for it with gifts or overt kindness. If you do, then the psychopath knows s/he’s got you wrapped around their finger.

In marketing, going silent is seldom going to pay. Out of sight is very quickly out of mind.

Over Asking: This is crafty – the psychopath asks you for this BIG favor, knowing you’ll balk. But then you feel bad that you had to say no. So when they now ask you for a small favor, you readily agree. Of course, it was the second request that they really wanted all along.

If you’re not using this technique in marketing, you’re probably losing money. Let’s say you offer your live coaching class for $1,000. Obviously a lot of prospects won’t buy it, which is when you offer them a recorded version for a whole lot less money.

Or maybe you want a fairly big name marketer to do an interview with you. You’ve already started building a relationship with them, so you ask if they would like to co-author a product with you. When they say no, you then ask for what you really wanted – a 30 minute interview. (Sneaky, right? But done correctly it does work, but only if you’ve already got a relationship with them.)

False Equivalence: A psychopath uses a logical fallacy to imply that if you don’t do what they desire, then it means something else. For example, if you don’t do what they want, then you don’t love them, or you’re stupid, or you’re immature, etc.

I just want to note here that outside the realm of psychopaths, false equivalence generally means two things are given the same weight, even though they are radically unequal. For example, if you have a scientist backed with decades of research stating a fact, and a non-scientist sitting next to him denying the fact, it appears both have equal weight, when in fact the scientist is backed by 99% of his or her peers on the subject as well as thousands of scientific studies.

In marketing, we can certainly use tactics like these to manipulate our customers, but it’s shady at best. I do recommend you stay on the lookout for it.

You’ll see this tactic used continuously on television and the internet, with ads telling you that you’re not a man if you don’t drink a certain drink, smoke a certain cigarette, drive a certain car and so forth.

Or if you don’t own an iPhone, you’re not part of the ‘in’ crowd.

It would be like me telling you that if you don’t subscribe to my newsletter, then you’re a lousy marketer. That’s blatant manipulation and in my opinion it’s time marketers let this one go forever.

Fake Normal: They communicate that, “Everyone is doing this,” so that the person feels inclined to do it, too.

We use this one a lot in marketing. “Everyone is grabbing ABC product, you better get yours, too!”

Fill Emotional Needs: Psychopaths will find your insecurities and unhappiness, and then provide reassurance. They’re giving people what they want and saying what they want to hear.

If we’re honest, we have to admit that we do a version of this all the time in successful marketing campaigns.

It’s perhaps a little surprising how much marketing has in common with psychopathy. Then again, we’re all about persuading and to a certain degree, manipulating – hopefully towards the BENEFIT and not the detriment of our customers.

If you are manipulating your customer for their own good, that’s one thing. If you’re doing it just to make a sale, you probably won’t be in business for long.

But one thing I learned from studying psychopaths is this – there is still far more that we can learn about persuasion, and sometimes we’ll find the answers in the oddest of places.