Part 4 : Role models and sob stories

Are there any role model affiliates out there - people or sites leading by example?
I've featured quite a few in my newsletter, starting with Ray Owens of Joke A Day way back in April, 1998, when he had "only" 110,000 subscribers.

Chris Pirillo of LockerGnome is another one using the power of a large opt-in e-mail list. Chris's book, "Poor Richard's E-Mail Publishing", is the must-have book for anyone who publishes a newsletter.

I've just been reading about Jeff Belton, who has earned $65,000 from One and Only. He did it by building a small team and helping his team members achieve sales. His methods are described in Declan Dunn's new book, "Net Profits: How to Win the Internet Game".

I recently interviewed Colin Fabig, CEO of wotch.com, which is combining viral marketing with affiliate programs and earns $20,000 to $100,000 a month from these programs. Wotch.com gives away mini-books, mini-browsers and cards, and urges people to pass them on to their friends. You can read the interview I did here.

The most successful affiliates are probably companies which we don't tend to think of as affiliates - large companies which run their own successful businesses with huge traffic and also act as affiliates for other companies.

Also, many of the well known marketers I listed earlier are also joining affiliate programs and earning commissions by selling to their own affiliates.

And on the other side of the coin - the affiliate "failures" - what are the commonest mistakes that affiliates make?
The commonest mistakes are building flea markets and banner farms and failing to understand that you need a lot of traffic to succeed. The really sad cases are the ones who try unsolicited bulk e-mail, sometimes after buying an allegedly "opt-in" email list from a disreputable source.

Others learn how to attract lots of traffic but have built obviously amateurish sites, and then wonder why they don't get sales.

The wonderful thing about providing an interesting USEFUL website is that people will WANT to recommend it. Nathan Power has put a lot of work into PayPerClickSearchEngines.com and the results are beginning to show. References to it are popping up at SearchEngineWatch.com, in LinkExchange Digest, in the virtualPROMOTE.com forums, in newsletters and so on. I subscribed to a for-fee website the other day and was delighted to see that both AssociatePrograms.com and PayPerClickSearchEngines.com are recommended in its list of good resources. The hard work is being rewarded.

Such unsolicited testimonials are fabulous free publicity, much more powerful than any advertising I could buy.

The affiliate marketing concept has seen an explosion in sales hype as thousands of webmasters try and persuade us to buy through their referral links. How can an affiliate best establish the visitor's trust in this kind of "sell, sell, sell" environment?
Build a professional looking site, which offers something interesting and useful. Buy the product or service and write an honest endorsement of it. Be specific. Make it obvious that you use the product. The most successful affiliates do that. If the product has small flaws, make sure you mention them. Doing so can actually increase your sales because you're more likely to be believed.

Finally, we've got to ask - what was the first affiliate program you joined, and how did it work out?
I'd rather not mention its name. I don't think it exists, anyway. I made the classic mistake of being swept away by the hype and thinking about the money I could make instead of the quality of the product I was selling. I think I sold three copies and then abandoned it.

However, the second program I joined, in mid-1997 I think, was Jim Daniels' "Insider Internet Marketing". I was promoting it on a free site and at first often earned $10 or $20 a month. When I reached $100 a month I was delighted. Now, I think a program is good if I can earn $1,000 a month from it. I tend to concentrate on a very small number of merchants and although Jim's book is still a wonderful introduction to marketing on the Net, his affiliate program has been overtaken by better designed ones.

And one line of advice for a would be affiliate?
Buy the product, work like mad - and take time to smell the roses.

Continued...