Internet marketers have for ever been trying to work their way around this embedded net culture by producing more influential sales copy and creative deliveries. They focus on the value and utility a product provides and work with the emotional side of the consumer to make them think “this is really worth it… if I was to buy 1 coffee a day for”.. and so on.

However I have noticed a recent change in marketers, notably Internet marketers, and the way they go about selling their products. It looks like we are heading into a world where everyone is starting to understand the power of the word FREE. 6 months ago you would never have seen it but today the net is full of FREE digital products with many of these products worth several thousand dollars. If they are not free then they are free + shipping. You buy the product for free, they send it out and all you pay for is shipping and handling. Easy.

So how are they making their money?

The answer is in the back-end. Every good marketer (even every bad marketer!) knows that once someone has committed to buying from you, then they are more likely to buy from you again no matter the size of the initial investment. This is because you already have them saying ‘yes’. Even if you give something away totally free you have already started the ‘yes’ process and developed an emotional need for the consumer to reciprocate. What do I mean by reciprocate? Well if you give something away for free you trigger something inside your consumer saying “man I should give something back, I got this for free.. may I should..” This is purely subconscious but its a fact and it’s extremely powerful.

What is in the back-end and what do they do?

Once you have said the first “yes” they simply hit you up with a few upsells and upgrades to the original product. Or put you into some type of continuity program where you get the first month free and then are charged a monthly fee for there newsletter or whatever it may be. Some people may think this is sneaky but most good marketers will make it very easy for you to opt out. The easier it is for you to opt out, the more likely you will hold onto it on your own accord because you have been given the option and therefore built an element of trust.

Do the numbers add up?

You bet. Imagine you were selling a $97 product and were able to sell 100 of these with a recurring of $30 a month. You would make $9700 + $3700 per month. Ok now imagine you were to offer that $97 product for Free! Think about the numbers you would receive. Say the amount you sell has increased to 300 which means you will make $0 + 9000 per month. This means you forgo the original hit but make 3x per month, every month, comfortably making more revenue over the next 2 months. Not only do you make more money, its a hell of a lot easier to sell something for free than to try and charge $100 for it! On top of this you can always offer back-end upsells and the more people you have exposed to these back-end offers, the more money you will make. If you offered these upsells to the original 100 buyers then you would simply have less numbers going through your sales funnel meaning less additional revenue.  Also remember that the more people you have on your buyers list, the more you can sell them in the future!

So its a no brainer really. For your next launch, try offering something for Free. Promote it like mad and then hit them up on some great back-end offers and a continuity program. You’ll be surprised how easy it is as well as the long term benefits it provides.

Don’t think about your big up front as this can blind you. This about your list, your backend and your reccuring. This is where the money lies.

Fittingly, I have only recently written an article about affiliate marketing and whether affiliates should hide behind their links using cloaking. I take the approach of being transparent especially when communicating directly to my community. My reasoning is that I prefer to promote the fact I’m using an affiliate link with the hope that my users will appreciate this. The rational is, “hey guys, I’m providing you with some awesome information so if you like it and want to buy, use my link so I can keep providing it”. Not particularly greedy or unfathomable and I believe it’s quite fair.

Back to the issue at hand, will this signal the end of affiliate marketing as we know it? Well if it is implemented and policed diligently then I believe it will cause some changes. Will these changes be bad? No I don’t think so.

First of all, reading the Washington Post article it definitely seems to focus on the blogging side of things. Reading between the lines however makes me think it may turn into a full blown affiliate marketing disclosure ruling. That means PPC marketing will get a hit along with the review based affiliate sites that go with it. I can imagine there are many affiliate marketers out there who will start kicking and screaming as their revenues dive or they begin receiving ‘cease and desist’ notices from the FTC or whoever. PPC programs and courses will become pretty much outdated as their approach to PPC marketing will become void and technically illegal.

Think about Twitter! How many affiliate links do you receive a day from optimistic Twitterpreneurs hoping you’ll be the one to make them their commission? Will they, or you, need to disclose the fact that an affiliate link is being used? Where will that fit in the 140 characters? The phrase (affiliate link) on its own including parenthesis is 16 characters which means over 10% less room and a reduced chance of a click through. Maybe it isn’t so bad, I think I’ve seen enough of the Maverick Money Makers sales page for a lifetime.

Even if it’s a full industry crack down I can’t see it as being the end. What it may do however is clean up a sometimes sneaky industry. Maybe it might promote the need to develop relationships with people before you can start earning an income. Maybe it may turn white hat completely legitimate marketers into black hat masterminds.

I’m interested to see how things develop. I think my approach will lend itself to the changes but how some of the other guys and my Acai Berry buddies deal with this is going to be interesting to watch. Stay tuned.

]]> http://www.williambakhos.com/the-end-of-affiliate-marketing/feed/ 6 http://www.williambakhos.com/bing-search-engine-marketing-ppc/ http://www.williambakhos.com/bing-search-engine-marketing-ppc/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:15:53 +0000 William http://www.williambakhos.com/?p=730 Today I decided to take advantage of Bing’s search engine marketing. Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine is picking up steam and growing every day. I thought here is a great opportunity to jump in early with some PPC advertising before the market gets completely saturated.

I signed up (of course wanted to get a nice $50 credit!) paid a small $30 deposit and was excited about getting a new ad running. But wow… what an interface! Absolutely horrendous. just unbelievably tedious, exhausting and frustrating. Bing has used Yahoo’s search marketing with the platform and interface being probably the most frustrating I have ever used (and seen). I have in the past used Yahoo search marketing and I remember it was very complex but I went into this open minded thinking maybe things have changed. Yet the colors are still dull, you don’t know what tab takes you where and to be honest, being on it for too long actually makes me kinda depressed.

I would have thought Microsoft and Bing would have really made something special out of it. Looking at the actual appearance of the Bing search engine itself, its obviously very consumer orientated bringing up warm emotional and fuzzy feelings with cute animals and picturesque landscapes. Then when it comes to the backend, they screw everything up by using antiquated UI outlines (again).

This is the very reason Apple is trumping them at the moment. As an Apple user you are always exposed to sleek, impressive and user friendly functionality no matter what level your at, business or consumer. However when your with Microsoft your left with programs like Frontpage and back-ends like Bing advertising which leave you feeling somewhat gloomy. At the moment Google is search engine’s ‘Apple’ and Microsoft is, well, Microsoft.

To check out these video squeeze pages click the link below:

Hot Video Squeeze Templates

I saw possibly one of the most amazingly honest marketing attempts in a while. Brute honesty is some what non-existent but there is always something that takes you by surprise.

Check out this listing for an old washing machine.

And now look how much this peice of junk is going for. There may still be room for some honest marketing yet!

Before you do anything, think of a field that you know a lot about or think of yourself as an expert in. Try to find something you are really passionate about as this helps, but it not necessarily an essential. Now once who have a few ideas, put them to the following tests:

1. Is there competition?

People often associate an industry that has plenty of competition as being an industry you should stay away from. I think that’s quite a silly approach because why else would there be plenty of competition other than the fact that it’s a profitable market? If there are plenty of people advertising to this market then that’s a good sign. If the market wasn’t profitable then why would people keep advertising? Use you competitors as your market research.

How do you do this? Let’s use “weight loss” as an example. The first step is to do a Google search for, you guessed it, weight loss! Now once you do a search have a look at the right hand side of the page at the sponsored listings. Its full. Check out the more sponsored links tab the the bottom. 54 pages of weight loss ads! 54 pages! I feel sorry for the guys on like page 32.. Who’s ever visiting these guys? Now go back to the original search and visit the top sites in the organic search. Do they contain a lot of advertising? Banners? Adsense? You get the picture.

2. Clickbank it – Is it popular lately?

No not Google it. Clickbank it. Clickbank is the largest affiliate network for digital products online. I’ll go into a little more detail of Clickbank later in this report but for now quickly visit Clickbank (www.clickbank.com), go to their marketplace (small link top-right of screen) and do a search for your niche to see what comes up.
Now you need to take note of how many products are for available for promotion and the more the better. Its for the same reason we did the Google search earlier. More advertisers = more people buying.
But most importantly you need to have a look at the “gravity” of the product. You can find this under the product description in a faded grey text with other info such as $/sale, %/sale and so on.
I’m not going to explain gravity because that would take me forever and I’ll end up getting confusing myself. Just take my word for it. You want a higher gravity. The higher the gravity the more that item has been promoted and sold recently. Gravity places emphasis on recent interest and sales of that product but in short, the higher the better.

3. Google Keyword Tool

This is different to simply doing a search in Google. Google’s Keyword Tool (do a search for Google Keyword Tool) allows you to see the volume of searches for particular keywords. So back to the weight loss example, the search term “weight loss” has a global search volume of 5 million searches. To put that into perspective “learning guitar” is at about 350,000 searches and “cheap flights” is almost 24 million.

4. Ebay Pulse

A great final test especially relevant for physical products is using Ebay Pulse. Visit pulse.ebay.com. Ebay pulse tells you what’s hot on Ebay right now, a great indicator of what is selling well on the internet. Great to use especially if you want to sell physical products.
The conclusions? You want to sell something that is high in demand, being sold recently and is a proven profitable market. If your product gets a tick for all these tests then your product is sellable and most likely profitable. Don’t be afraid of big markets just because there is plenty of competition. Where there is plenty of competition there is even a bigger market and getting a small piece of the cake is much easier than trying to take the whole thing!

(This is straight out of my ebook, Bootstrapedia. If you want to get a copy, first grab your version of Think and Grow Rich and I’ll also send you my book!)

I stumbled across this site a little while ago which I thought I would share with you. It’s called BubblePly.com. It’s a cool free service that allows you to put text and comments on any online video as well as an embedded link. The potential for Internet Marketers and the Video Marketing industry is huge.

So here is the scenario, you grab a video from Youtube, stick a link in it, post it on your blog and submit it to Digg, Reddit or Twitter and if people like the video then they will (hopefully) pass it on or bump it up the social network ratings order. The great thing about this is that this video could have a link to any site you wish as well as a related affiliate product.

Below is an example I just created:

What is “The Lock In”? Not sure if it has been used before but I’d like to claim that I coined the term. I’m sure someone will jump at me but until then, I coined it.. there. The Lock-in is what I call it when you buy a product or service and you are then locked-in to that agreement even though their is no obligation to do so.

I’ll throw out a few examples. Have you ever used Salesforce as a CRM system? Have you ever decided to export your database to an excel file or similar? There is no function to do so and therefore you are “locked-in”. Your contract has finished and you want to try another CRM system but you can’t export your data easily so your stuck. The lock-in. You probably end up choosing to continue with their overpriced service simply because the cost and effort or switching is really not worth it. The lock-in. There is a way in fact to extract information from Salesforce but its through a function so far fetched from anything mentioning “export data”. And oh yes, there is a mighty big “import” function their for you, don’t worry. But export? Ha! Dream on! It’s hide and seek Salesforce style.

Apple does this well too. If you buy an Apple computer, iPod, iPhone or whatever and you need accessories then you better buy Apple products. The lock-in. Software? Gotta be Apple. They are no doubt getting a little bit better but its there and it’s obvious but tolerable. It’s tolerable because Apple has loyal and dedicated users who take pride in using Apple products.

I recently was confronted with the lock-in when it came to my car. I drive an Alfa Romeo 147 GTA. Looks great, goes great but built by a bunch of lock-in specialists. I needed a light fixed on the car and I thought it should be no big deal. Well this car has ‘lock-in’ written all over it. In order to change the headlight you need to remove to whole front bumper of the car, charged at $160 per hour by Alfa specialists. Then they need a special Xenon light bulb which can only be provided by Alfa (think of the charger of your phone, only one particular adapter will work) and this costs $475 for the bulb alone. That’s not a typo, thats Four Hundred and Seventy Five dollars for a light bulb! Oh and by the way the ballast/transformer powering the light is damaged and I’ll need genuine Alfa ballast for this too. That will cost $1490. Once again, not a typo. So 4 hours of labor removing the bumper and installing the parts, plus the Ballast and Bulb will set you back a total of $2605. $2650 to change 1 single light on my car! Thats one mighty lock-in.

I understand why it’s done and any good entrepreneur or businessmen will look at working with some level of ‘lock-in’. In cases such as Apple, they can get away with it as their products have a ‘cool’ factor plus they have a great brand associated with it. Salesforces is purely frustrating until you figure out how to do it. Alfa is ridiculous as you are only buying parts that provide a functional aspect to the car. I understand if I needed a new set of wheels, thats different but the lock-in though all the mechanical aspects is just plain ludicrous.

My final  thoughts on the lock-in? I’d buy Apple for sure. I’d use Salesforce again and although it can be inconvenient their lock isnt so hefty. I will never buy an Alfa Romeo again. Ever.

Take note: when you use your ‘lock-in’ use with immense care because a lock-in can be used positively in a manner to promote your business and improve relations with your customer. In the same light it can also cost you a customer for life.

So why did the movie critics absolutely blast it? Think about it, the movie wasn’t terrible. Wasn’t even bad, it was simply average. You would be right in saying that the hype behind it caused a massive anti-climax when the movie finally came out and because it didn’t live up to the hype and the expectation, people deemed it as a flop. However that’s another story completely.

There is another element here that is taking effect. That is that people no longer tolerate “average”. We live in a world of web 2.0 where everything is intertwined and whatever information we need is literally on our finger tips. We expect everything for free or maybe in return for our (other) email address. Even the Telcos are treating us like people! Can you believe it.. people!!!! That’s just insane!

Only 10-15 yrs ago people expected average. Average customer service. Average airlines. Average electronics. Average cars. Bank West. Virgin. Apple. Tesla. Just think about this paragraph a little bit before going onto the next one.

The key point is that people no longer tolerate average stuff. TV advertising is dying because its pretty average. Mobile media is growing because it’s not average, although in a few years it may be.  Today, if you release a product that is average then it’s not actually average, its boring and awful.

The aim here is to be extraordinary in whatever you deliver and also how you deliver it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in the product itself but can be through your execution, your marketing and your communication. I know it can be a bit scary going out on a limb and not following the standard procedure but if you don’t someone else will. That person may not succeed but if they do, not only will the rewards be highly prized but you’ll probably find yourself doing what they do but with less reward.

First of all, there is very little chance you can make up the advertising dollars spent by the advertising revenue on your site. To effectively get good advertising revenue, either through Google Adsense, Adbright or whatever, plenty of organic traffic is the way to go. Why? Well first of all you need to think of your site as a real business. Where advertising is your revenue model, using paid Adwords traffic to drive traffic is effectively your cost of goods sold (remember accounting 101: COGS?).  It’s your main expense. With organic traffic you don’t have that expense. (I know, not too technical here).

Most importantly however, (this is the part to really think about) Adwords traffic is traffic that came from a contextual environment. A contextual environment is your ad showing up on a relevant and contextual keyword search, another site or a blog that is in a similar niche. So the amount you pay for an ad is roughly the same amount you will receive for a click on your site, as you also run contextual ads. This means that in order for you to make a profit, or even break even, almost everybody who comes to your site must click an ad. You will need a 90-100% CTR on your site which isn’t going to happen. The only way around this is to drive traffic from probable alternatives (ie get traffic to a credit card site from a job search site) but then it will be difficult to get good conversions as your not playing the percentages. Or you can run several ad campaigns from different ad networks but then again it would kinda look like this.

But what if you sell a product? I’m still not sold on this. I honestly don’t think that Google Adwords does that great of a job to drive qualified and potential customers to your online business. I may be wrong and you may have a completely different take on this so if you do, please share. Some bloggers have their own secret tips. There are too many factors you need to overcome in order to break through to the sale. These include your anonymity, trust, competition and desire from the consumer. I can’t imagine that receiving 10,000 people from Google Adwords would compare to receiving 10,000 referred and organic traffic, either by word of mouth or through recommendations.

Genuine organic traffic is traffic that is not complicated with the earlier mentioned barriers of anonymity, trust, competition and desire. I think if your interested in running a successful online business the hardest part will be developing a following and building the genuine organic traffic.  Nothing valuable comes easily overnight, it requires you to provide value, day in day out and accept the fact that the rewards are long term. Sure you can use Google Adwords and I’m sure that you will benefit from it, but the real value comes later down the track when your effort and persistence becomes worth the effort. Work hard, don’t give up and keep at it as everything else is just a fragile quick fix.