You can learn a lot about marketing from other marketers’ messages and their delivery.
In that vein, I’d like to know what you thought of the Affiliate Marketing Sham report [find out why this link was removed].
Did you find it interesting and informative or piled high with hype? Did the report leave you concerned about the future of affiliate marketing and affiliate[link removed] marketers? Or, did you think ‘X’ was too dramatic in his assessment?
What tactics does X use to build desire for his product? Does ‘X’s’ approach build trust and make you ‘hungry’ to learn more? Why or why not? What do you think of this marketing approach? Would you use it to promote your own or other people’s products?
If you haven’t already done so, take a critical look at the Affiliate Marketing Sham [link removed], then post a Comment with your answers to the above questions.
When enough comments have been posted, I’ll post a follow-up with my own thoughts on the subject.
About Rosalind Gardner
Dear Rosalind:
I enjoyed Affiliate Marketing Sham very much (it confirmed a lot of what I already know – and a lot I didn’t know – about Internet affiliate marketing.) But I have 3 questions:
1.) Even though it wasn’t a ‘hard sell’, I am trying to figure out what the author is selling (if anything) because ‘line me up, I’m probably a buyer’; 2.) What is the author’s ‘true’ motivation in providing the .pdf (an audience? a ‘pre-sell’ for his upcoming DVDs? and 3. The author has what seems like a legitimate beef with someone else in his industry – but why is that beef so important to be included in his .pdf? Are we to learn a lesson from it (because if there is a lesson, yes I’d like to know)
That’s all. Thank you, Rosalind!
-Jordan M.
Yes, Mr. “X” makes sense…the rule-makers change the game so fast it’s hard to keep up (and make the same $$)…keeping control makes every bit of sense. I’m just tired of the “attack” mode (is EVERYBODY really this angry). And then again, I guess you have to write for your audience–and what an audience it is: filled with rich jerks (no pun intended) laughing all the way to the bank.
I think what he has to say is very valuable and very interesting. Somewhat hyped but has valid points. His rant with Lozer was a little much and though it was used figuratively(be careful what you wish for)someone might take him up on his offer. It was a very good read and my interest is peaked.I would not use his exact tactics but keep it close to the letter.
Hi Ros, I really have a hard time seeing the difference from one to the other program, if one looks back over a few years, they all say the same thing with rearainged word, just mr opinion.
Re: Aff.Mktg.Sham: Too much hype for me. X came on like ‘GangBusters.’ Hope it isn’t true that Internet Marketers ‘use and dump neophytes.’ As a Super Affiliate, Rosalind, do you see yourself ‘being used – or a Big-Time Loser?’
Framkly,that Circus Barker approach to promoting a product (report in this instance) really turns me off.
I usually do not follow the link – ‘read on.’
Actually I found it gruff and unexpected and was suprised that it was coming from your recommendations. The content may be accurate, but if I wanted that level of venomous spew or prolonged rant I’d sign up for the help desk at a methodone clinic on a day they ran out. I want facts, concise and simple. Not a Tom Clancy/Blink 182 meets Miss Manners firefight.
This guy is a litle over the top and seems to have a grudge with a fellow Internet marketer.
However I think he may have some valid points.
The one thing I would like is to have a system to see if referrals that I have made are getting credited to me. I have often wondered if I was getting credited with my referrals.
He is a bit vulger but I hope that is just a marketing ploy.
Steve Knorr
While I initially found his approach to be on the strong side, I have to give it to ‘X’…he raised some interesting points. I’ve recently started making the move towards building a list, which I’ve been hearing as good advice from many marketers, including you, Ros
I appreciate the move to separate oneself from the rest of the pack, so I’d probably try to use that approach in my marketing efforts.
Wow thats one peeved off rant/sales page. But it was good that he layed out what a lot of us newer to the game might have been suspecting. I personally found it entertaining.I do think that tracking in tis industry SUCKS HUGE. And I also suspect it is designed that way. Greed and lazyness on the part of merchants of course. Customer support is also lousy, for the above listed reasons I suspect as well. Nothing worse than emailing off a question about what ever product and getting some Virtual asst reply with a generic non-specific answer. The other point I have noticed that he makes very apparent is the deluge of “get rich quick crap products being flogged by every other IM “guru. Joel comm is particularly bad for this, he mentions cody moya but based on the number of emails I get Joel comm is by far worse than cody. While its good to monetize a “list”, I hate being referred to as an income point. Anik Singal is getting bad for this too. If you have to be on these lists be on them to learn how to write emails, and Nothing else. Unfortunately there are a lot IM junkies out there, who’ll buy everything. Like MLM junkies of which I personally know a few. On his point of list building for others I do feel I should be compensated for sending people to opt ins. Based on my exit link tracking and by the number of people I send to various places. I know I am not being compensated for building someon elses business. My personal opinion on all of this is that the business model on the net doesn’t mirror the real world in any way shape or form. I am in the custom home building niche in the real world. I have to cultivate relationships by giving discounts, customer service and a number of other things in order to get contracts and keep my pjt managers happy. This doesnt appear to be the case on the net. In my business I have suppliers that I buy from then resell their product. I get 80% off some products. Basically I am buying using my aff link and then reselling much higher to maintain costs and make a profit. In IM land merchants cry that people buy using their own aff link. If you want me to promote your product you better give me a discount, Know what I mean. Any hoo thanks for the ebook ros and thanks for letting me have my say. Hope all is well with you.
Cheers and beers from Canada
Shane
Read the antagonistic sales letter, blah, blah,blah. Filled in the obligatory pop up for further info. Read that this ‘Mr X’ is “not interested in dealing with Newbies or Know it Alls” Being a newbie I wish you’d mentioned that and I’d have not wasted my time reading through it all.
Hi Ros,
the report was a pure waste of time. Mainly self-promotional and guiding you to buy his soon-to-be product.
Would you have recommended it to your readers, if it wasn’t for the 35 cents you get per download?
My Name is John And I Have been at this for a year I love It. there is no doubt the system has problems This means you do more. Because of Rosalind Gardner I kept my eyes open blogs,podcast,youtube,revver,lists,newsletters.
The good thing for me is I was broke when I started and could not dump money into ppc so I had to look for away and I did Blogs Are powerful. just look at all of us good job rosalind Thanks for your book. Newsletters are great source of info that is right on the trend.
Ros,
I manage Affiliate sales for what we hope is a respected and trusted publisher with a handful of products and well over $1 million sales each of the past couple of years.
We sell through ClickBank (though aren’t 100% happy with them), commission our Affiliates 75% and work with them as closely as we can despite C/B’s efforts to keep us away from them….
I read X’s comments and I think there were some valid points. We do EVERYTHING we can to make sure our Affiliates get paid what they unquestionably deserve. What other do is out of my control.
Quite apart from slim profit margins I think there is a larger picture, and that I think X’s blast is a PEFECT example of what’s going on in this “industry” now. There haven’t been major advances in the way we do business fundamentally for two years, however, the purveyors of information have gotten MUCH BETTER at promoting. That is, even minute “developments” are now getting hype and attention FAR in excess of what they merit or deserve.
I subscribe to a number of what I believe are key newsletters as a way to keep up with developments in internet marketing and am getting really tired of the waves of blasts that come with product launches. The cross-promotion and mutual stroking that is going on is WAY out of hand. I shudder to think of what it must be like for a new marketer to try to sift through all the sh*t that’s out there to get a handle on what the important points are to internet marketing and how they should get started.
Each day I spend several hours working with new and seasoned Affiliates to help them get the best possible results for their efforts. To be honest I see the old 80/20 rule play out day after day, but I also understand that the 20% that produce well will need to grow if we are to grow, and adding even one good Affiliate to this group each month is well worth the time and effort.
So what do I think of X’s “report”. That there’s probably a seed of truth in it but reading through the angst, anger and hype isn’t worth it, and I guess we’ll go on making money in partnership with our Affiliates the “old fashioned” way – one relationship at a time.
I can’t speak for others, but we are well aware of where our income comes from and who generates it, and we do everything we can to make life easy for our Affiliates including rewarding them handsomely for the work they do.
Please note that I did not include a URL with this message, and I would ask that you not print my e-mail address as I don’t want to be accused of tooting my own horn on your blog and profiting from it. We already have enough of that going around.
Thanks and best regards,
John
Hi Ros,
Very interesting, and useful. I didn’t read his whole report for a couple of reasons. First of all, it became clear that his marketing approach is to plug into the programming we have received through the TV, Radio, Magazine and news media, that of gaining attention with controversy, conflict, rage, and violence. Even though I am aware that more and more marketers are turning to this to gain attention, I was still caught up in it for a short time.
The second reason I didn’t finish the report is that I feel using gutter language is unprofessional and totally unnecessary. The more that professionals condone the use of such language by ignoring it and getting into his program, the greater popularity it will gain. I refuse to be a part of it.
The third reason was what I take to be inherent lack of honesty. He is hammering affiliate programs and yet all he is doing is promoting (pre-selling) his own. In addition, he is trying to play off John Reese’s station by attacking him. To me he shows very little ethics in this approach. Also, until I read the first part of Mr. X’s report, I had never heard of the “Black Book” or what ever. I think it is safe to say that at the very least he promoted to his own list (which he denies) to sell out so quickly, if indeed he did. Let’s just say that I think that Mr. X falls in the catagory of marketers that I try very carefully to avoid. I have deleted and unsubscribed to everything associated with him.
I want to thank you Ros for puting this up. I am now forewarned about him and his tactics and I can now block his address.
Thanks again.
Ken
I had found this report previously and for the second time did not receive the link in my inbox. I can only assume that my ISP has branded it as spam. Sounds like I’m not missing much though!
Sorry, I replied too soon, I did receive it, it was a little slow in coming. I thought the guy made some sense and didn’t find it too offensive, with the exception of his nihilistic tendencies! He crystallised some of the nagging thoughts I had in my mind, a quite convincing sales letter I thought, notwithstanding the comments of the ethical fellow above, there does seem some obvious loopholes in the way affiliate marketing is currently run. Although I am a newbie and taking things slowly as I learn, the sums I have done on various PPC strategies make an income seemingly quite hard to come by as competition and costs increase. I sense there is a sea change coming and maybe what this guy has to say points to what the change will be?
Hi Roz,
Blog classroom newby here.
I don’t like LOUD RAP, or people yelling at me or mysterious( “X” ) unidentified sales professionals touting their products which are also mysterious.
Who is this person yelling and selling me a tool or product -a product that he/she never specifically identifies? I tend to think it’s a young man due to the tone and language and excess testosterone.
I do not like the ad.
David
I wish more online marketers were honest like Rosi. Most of them sell crappy ebooks with no value. God Bless Rosalind for her Super Affiliate Handbook!
My first impression was “Well, in grammar school, when you wanted to make a report seem more then what it was, you wrote larger.”
Content-wise, I found it to be pretty thin of useful information. It’s obviously a sales pitch to purchase something down the road, and .X. is building his/her list. Well, good for .X. However, .X. violated one of the big rules of copywriting…..X. did not build up my trust in them. They could be making it up. I have no way of knowing how true the information is or even really how knowledgeable .X. is. Lesson to be learned? Write good copy and put your best face forward.
The issues raised in this report are interesting, particularly about the loss of commissions.
However, what was said about PPC advertising and list building is certainly nothing new. Its already known that it has become increasingly more difficult over the years to use PPC as a form of advertising, forcing people to change tactics.
There’s already very useful resources out there from trustworthy marketers that I have bought that have been incredibly useful to me.
Everyone should know how important it is to build lists and I, as an affiliate, have not had any problems in doing so.
Its quite evident to see this guy is using the very powerful tool of paranoia to pursue interest.
Does he have anything new up his sleeve?
I’m intrigued, but I’m not going to find out first hand, since this ‘X’ person has failed to build any trust.
After you read the report, you might also like to check out X’s other site DeathOfCrap.com.
If you’re going to do copywriting, you can either:
1) do what everyone else does, and get what everyone else gets.
2) do the opposite of what everyone else is doing, and get very interesting results (instant fans OR a cult of people waiting to bring you down. Or likely a combination of both).
There’s an adage that there’s no new knowledge, just old knowledge being presented in a new way.
Affiliate Marketing once you think of it, has it’s roots in direct marketing, door-to-door sales (even if you’re ‘knocking’ on the email doorstep of someone halfway around the world).
If you can figure out what’s happening in the marketplace now, and step it up/reposition/reframe it a different way, you’d have the beginnings of a ‘revolution’. (though it might merely be old wine in a new bottle).
Hi Ros, Hi everyone,
Most his (or her’s?) comments are eyes opening for me since I don’t even have a website yet, just educating myself.
I do think it’s deliberately high with hype. It looks like a way of doing a big income sale with just one product. On the other hand,if everything he mentions is true, why hide and not reveal who he is. Well known respectable marketer or new coming guru?
Internet Marketing Secrets revealed by Secret Internet Marketer. Umm!
In any case, good because I learned quite a few things from it. Too bad the anger is so obvious.
I think it was a lot of talking and not concrete solutions. He did raise some interesting points and it is good to get a cynic’s view so you don’t get snowed under by affilaite programs that mismanage or don’t pay out.
However, I kept scrolling down and down the page waiting for the “big secret” and there was nothing that really knocked my socks off.
Definitely could have been better.
Hi Rosalind,
Based on what I read, my guess the Sham will tell you how to build your own business/list instead of building someone elses list… and that is not new.
Best read SAH, and don’t waste your money on something else.
Read the introduction and wasn’t compelled go go any further. He obviously is planning to sell great volumes of something to get start up capital for whatever. His presentation was okay but I smelled a rat ahead, but Im sure he got some bites there’s a sucker born every second as W.C. Fields once said. Im not that sucker.