The “Fatal Error” I was making as an affiliate
NO, It’s NOT about List Building.
You are probably quite aware of how things are in affiliate marketing. The rosy dream of getting checks while you are lounging around your swimming pool is what you have been sold on to. No hassles for customer support or creating product or testing your markets. All you need is to find a market and start promoting someone else’s product.
So lets get this picture straight. I mean I have been that way, where I’ve promoted quite a few products and tried to build list while hiding behind a website and an autoresponder. Of course blogging was a saving grace for me but still there is a missing piece.
Affiliate marketing is dog-eat-dog market. You know how tough it is to survive the number of affiliates out there. Don’t even talk about affiliate who uses unfair techniques like cloaking and cookie stuffing and take your credit. Though there are quite a few fatal errors that might be killing your chances.
Why Are You Not Creating A Brand?
I was talking to marketing friend (from real world… LOL). We were discussing affiliate marketing and how it has been hard for me. While we were talking he asked me a very simple question…
“Why are you not creating a brand?”
huh??? <– that’s me who just lost his train of thought.
“dude, it doesn’t matter what you are promoting you aren’t creating a brand”.
Though I dismiss him outright saying “he doesn’t know online marketing”. It kept bugging me for few days. Unless I realized how simple this question was.
My Slap on forehead moment…
Now if you don’t know what it is then lets say, you wake up late night one day and say “holy shit, I forgot to do my taxes”.
This is one of major mistakes or fatal errors that almost every affiliate are making. They are trying to hide behind a website and an auto-responder. If you think you are building a list and promoting affiliate products fiercely. I’d say you are leaving tons on the table.
Why Branding?
Because it builds loyalty.
You must have noticed in Internet marketing, where marketers are promoting products with tons of free bonuses. The competition is so damn hard, it won’t surprise you if one day they’ll even offer their new born as a bonus.
Notice people who are cashing huge checks. They have a brand of their own. People like Ewen Chia, Frank Kern and so many more, they have their own brand. They are called experts in their own small world. But if you go outside the Internet Marketing niche, you’ll see there’s only rare few who are trying to make a brand as an affiliate. In fact the number is so dismal that you can’t even count.
So how you go about creating a brand.
One of the Easy way to create a brand…
Now there are many ways to create brand online but I think One of the easy way to create brand is by creating products. The moment you create a product you become an expert (at least on percieved level).
I don’t understand why not you as a merchant handle all the customer headache (which is normally nonexistent) and you don’t have to worry about getting traffic as your affiliates will do that job. I bet today the toughest thing to do is getting traffic.
In today’s world, you can pay someone to create products for you. If it’s a hard good, you can find someone to source it for you. Heck You don’t even need to take inventory if you try hard enough. So what’s stopping you to become a merchant.
Second Easy way to create brand …
Second easy way to create a brand is by owning a word in your market. For example…
If I say “Mass control” who do you think of? Frank Kern right?
Or If I say “Manifesto”, who do you think of? Who else? Rich shefren.
Or if I say “Traffic secrets” Or “VRE” You automatically think of John Reese.
Or If I say “Stoming the search engines”, You’ll think of Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins.
Or If I say “SEO book”, you’ll automatically think of Aaron Wall.
What about “Warrior Forum”, its Allen Says (though this one might be bit hard for people to remember).
Do you need more examples? Now this can be hard too… I am personally working on creating my own word (which I am yet to finalize) But its fun thinking about online branding.
Well I bet I gave few things to think about in this post.
About the Author
Varun Pratap is working in online business as a pro blogger from 2004. His blog on Imbasics (Internet marketing Basics) is all about making money online ethically without resorting to tricks, techniques and gimmicks.
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This is good article on branding. You gave me few ideas to work on.