Here is a website you should be following, whether you are new to affiliate marketing or experienced. He’s a great friend of mine and he is one of the main reasons I am still business today. Seriously he is definately one of the best marketing minds on the internet, so I urge you to join his facebook page and keep up with his blog.
Here is his facebook page:
Justin Harrison – Facebook Page
and his blog
There are 2 ways of promoting an affiliate program. One is to send your visitors directly to the merchant’s site and the other way is to capture the visitors email address and then send them to the offer.
Now the first way is easy and limits you from any kind of responsibility, but the problem is you will spend your life brokering traffic and at the end of the day you will have gained nothing, because if the merchant stops the campaign you know have to go and find another way of generating your income.
The second way is the correct way because you are now creating a customer base and a long-term revenue stream. If the merchant pulls the plug on the program, you can always find similar products to market to your list and therefore stay in business. The downside with this model (if you want to call it that) is you are now putting your name on the line and that’s where the Moral Responsibility comes into play.
Now the reason for this post is something happened to me this week which fully explains the above and its been an extremely valuable lesson for me so I am going to get right down to it without mentioning any names.
In December 2009 I started promoting a particular campaign, and the more I got into it the better it did. It was almost like having an atm in my lounge. The problem was I didn’t like the product because I new it was complete bullshit, but I did it anyway. I used the first model in the beginning because I was uneasy about the product, but as time went by I realized this was a big market and I was wasting the traffic because I wasn’t building a list.
So January came and I decided to put up a newsletter form and remove the affiliate link. It was all going well, my list was building fast, sales were coming in and I had started to communicate with the list. Then one morning I got an email from a lady saying she had paid for the report I was promoting and had never received it, could I help her.
Being the person I am I offered my assistance seeing I referred her to the product. So I contacted the affiliate network for help, but was brushed off. They said it was not their responsibility as their job is to get affiliates to promote the campaign and they cannot get involved in the service delivery of the company in question. To a degree they are 100% right because as they explained, if I had bought a Laptop from a Company and it was faulty I couldn’t hold the media or newspaper who advertised it accountable, I needed to take it back to the store where I bought it from.
Now they are 100% right, but in this case, the company this lady had ordered the report from had no contact details on it. The email address she and I replied to was set up to an automated system and kept replying you have won a gift, to receive it click here and the link then redirected to an order form to buy the report again.
Now to me this is not right because there should be contact details to the company in question, because things do go wrong and all this lady wanted was her report and she couldn’t get it because the company couldn’t be contacted in anyway.
My argument here is the network should have at least had the courtesy to email the company with the ladies details and assist in helping her get here report. They are the direct link and should take some responsibility in circumstances like this. I might be wrong here, but that’s my opinion.
Anyway I decided since they were not going to help, I would and offered to pay any charges for the credit card reversal and if the bank wouldn’t reverse it then I would pay her back in full. What else can I do, I referred her to the product and therefore I must help or it says nothing for me as a person.
Subsequently I have stopped promoting this product completely on the basis that there is no product support or contact details on the merchants site and I really couldn’t live with myself if I caused other people to go through what this lady has gone through.
The moral of the story here is:
As affiliates we need to take responsibility for what we promote. We need to step up to the plate and put our name to everything we do. The days of brokering traffic are long gone and if we are to survive we need to build up some trust to the people we promote to and help them when there are problems.
We can’t just take the money and run anymore, because it’s just not right. We need to get involved in what we are selling, believe in what we are selling and offer as much support to the customers as we can when things go wrong.
This happened to me yesterday and it really pissed me off. I chose a program on one of the networks that I wanted to promote to my list. I phoned the network to check if the campaign was still active and that I was sending it out in my newsletter. They told me its fine, the campaign can handle volume and is working fine.
So i put together a great email and sent it out to over 4000 people. As the day passed I noticed no leads had been made and couldn’t understand why. Then I received a mail from one of my subscribers saying he had filled in the form and it wouldn’t submit. So I went to the form and filled it in myself.
I was shocked , the form didn’t work. What a waste of time, and the fact that it made me look like a real idiot to customer base didn’t help either.
The moral of the story here is before you promote a lead campaign test the form yourself first. You only get one chance so check it properly.
I am not going to say which network it was because my intentions here are not to bad mouth people, but really its purley to give you some insite that no matter how good you are, you still need to check things thoroughly before your market it.
At the end of the day its poor delivery from the network in questions because they should have checked and tested it before it went live. But this is what you must expect when promoting products here in SA.
Serioulsy its about time a new Network came on board and actually gave us some good products to promote.
Welcome to affiliate program.
My name is Dale Maxwell and I have been an affiliate since 2003, and since 2007 it has become my full time business. It hasn’t been an easy ride, because this is a very difficult business to succeed in. But I must say I count my blessings everyday as I am now fortunate to be working from home and for myself.
When I first started this site a few years ago it was about the different affiliate programs that were available in South Africa. It had category pages with all the different offers and eventually became out dated because most of the merchants had removed their offers, so i spent alot of my time removing and adding pages, and then one day I got aggrevated and then deleted it. (lol)
So I decided I was going to start a blog and see if I could help other affiliates, because really this is not an easy business to succeed in and it can be very lonely.
There is one thing I need to make clear when you enter into this business. DO NOT think you are going to make money overnight, because you won’t. It takes hard work and dedication and if anything you will probably only start making money in your second year if you have done the right things.
Anyway enough of the preaching, if you would like to participate in the blog you are most welcome and you can post any question you have in the articles provided.
