What usually happens when an affiliate marketer goes to Clickbank or Commission Junction and signs up as an affiliate marketer for a particular product or service that is relative to his affiliate marketing business topic?
The first thing this affiliate does is usually to place a logo for the product on his website and send out a marketing email to his list recommending the product or service he discovered. If this average affiliate marketer has at least some motivation, he will make his email as good as he can.
It will address each member of his list by name and there will be bullet points listing the advantages provided with ownership of the product or service. Then he will sit back, cross his fingers and toes, and hope to make a few sales. Well, that IS a plan but it isn’t a very good one.
If this average affiliate marketer happens to get lucky and be included in the launch of a new product, he does pretty much the same thing. He notifies his list of the upcoming launch (the average affiliate marketer usually only sends one preparatory email) and then he sends out the marketing email at the launch.
He will make a few sales…very few. Of course, he won’t be working very hard either and maybe he is very happy being an average affiliate marketer. There is a problem, however, with being average. Average is a very crowded place.
Average! Why would anybody want to settle for average anything? Doesn’t ‘average’ mean ‘common or ordinary…nothing special’? If you are not happy with being an average affiliate marketer, then you need to keep reading.
What puts one affiliate marketer above the average affiliate marketer? The answer is uniqueness.
Being unique is a quality that sets one apart from all of others. If you want to be better than just average, you will need to develop some uniqueness in your marketing techniques that will set you above just an average affiliate marketer.
Average affiliate marketers just don’t grasp the idea that in order to sell tons of products, their offer needs to be more valuable than the offers their competitors are making. Most affiliate marketers won’t offer any incentives to their lists for buying a specific product from them rather than buying the same product from someone else.
Some affiliate marketers will offer some bonus incentives but they will be pretty ordinary and things that are really not of much value or even unrelated to the product that is being promoted.
The really GOOD affiliate marketer will offer bonus incentives which are BETTER than anything that is being offered by any other marketer and are directly related to the product that is being promoted. The really GOOD affiliate marketer will give his customers a very good reason to buy from him.
Actually, the whole idea of offering better incentives to customers is just plain old common sense. If you can buy 2 ears of corn from vendor A for 20 cents or 2 ears of corn from vendor B for 20 cents and vendor B throws in some butter to go on the corn free of charge, which vendor are you going to buy from?
Affiliate marketing is the very same thing.
You have to offer bonuses and you have to offer better bonuses than those that other affiliate marketers are offering.
For example: Let’s say that there is an E-Book about Email Marketing that you’re an affiliate for. It’s a very good book that has been written by an Email Marketing Guru. It is selling for $100 and your commission is going to be $50 per sale that you make. There is an elaborate live launch for the product. Your competitors are offering an additional E-Book or two as bonus incentives.
How can you get an edge here? The only way that you can possibly get an edge is to offer something that your competitors are not offering. You could have set up a free teleseminar that will take place within a few days of the launch for those who buy from you or you could offer a free 30 minute downloadable audio tape that further explains certain points in the E-Book.
The people who buy from you will be getting a better deal than they could get from your competitors. The product will always be the same…but the bonuses that are being offered is where you can get the edge.
Tip: Never underestimate the power of ‘free’. Everybody loves getting something for nothing or getting something extra. They especially love getting something that others are not getting. And that brings me to another, finer point of offering bonus incentives.
If you can offer something such as a free teleseminar that is related to a product launch, you need to limit the number of people who will receive the bonus. That makes it more exclusive and thus more desirable.
This is tricky.
You don’t want to make customers mad but you do want to make those who get the added bonuses feel like they have gotten something others have not gotten. You might phrase your offer to say that the first 200 people who buy the product from you will be allowed to join the teleseminar live and others will receive a transcript of the teleseminar. Like I said, this is tricky but it can be done.
The bottom line is just this: If you want to be a better than average affiliate marketer you are going to have to offer more and better bonus incentives than your competitors are offering. All affiliate marketers for any product are all trying to sell to the same basic customer base and that base is not unlimited.
In order to get an edge and rise above what is common, ordinary and average you will need to get really creative with the incentive bonuses that you offer with your affiliate product or service.
Interesting post.The reason why most people in the affiliate marketing business did not turn out to be very successful is that they try to offer almost everything under the sun instead of giving all their attention in a particular niche market. If you want to become a super affiliate, try not to scatter all your efforts; concentrate on your niche and make it grow by means of promoting, advertising and selling it well.
Thank You for the information. I am just getting ready to start affiliate marketing and your article will be very helpful. I would also like to Thank Tom for his answer to the article also. You have both opened my eyes to the world.
Have a great day
John/Annette
@Tom: Yes, that’s also one of the reasons why affiliate marketing doesn’t work for everyone. It’s best to start within one niche and once you’ve got this running well, you can start expanding into other niches. Good point!
@John/Annette: You’re welcome :). I’m glad it has been helpful to you.
Detlev