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Declan OReilly
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19 Jun 2004
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Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 11:38 pm
Post subject: Keeping it simple for affiliates...
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I thought the following comment by Allan Gardyne in another thread is pure gold.
| Allan Gardyne wrote: | | Keep it simple. As an affiliate, you don't sell things. You might think of yourself as doing so, but you don't. You provide a service, and get paid for doing that. |
It is so easy to forget this point. If I went into a restaurant and received lousy service I would walk out. It should be no different for affiliates. Provide good service and people will come back!
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Phil Tanny
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Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2005 5:41 pm
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Hmm. Well, it works both ways.
Personally, I find that this affiliate quite often forgets that affiliate marketing is a sales job. OK, we don't do the closing, but it's sales nonetheless. We get paid when product moves off the shelves.
This doesn't apply to everybody, but I think it's a bit too easy for many of us to get caught up in the appealing "write about your passion!" thing.
It might be better to start off with a clear understanding that "this is a sales job" and then understand what part in that we play.
Provide good service and people will come back?
I really like this idea, but it's good to note that the vast majority of most of our traffic comes from the search engines, not repeat visitors.
A well marketed mediocre site will probably win over a high quality poorly marketed site. Microsoft rules the world, not Apple, because Microsoft mastered the marketing side, while Apple distracted themselves with the quality angle.
This sermon is to myself, pushing my own face in to regrettable realities I wish were otherwise.
PS. Only 8 posts to go, and then I must surely get some kind of amazing prize! 
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Declan OReilly
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 5:05 am
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| Phil Tanny wrote: | | Personally, I find that this affiliate quite often forgets that affiliate marketing is a sales job. OK, we don't do the closing, but it's sales nonetheless. |
You are right to a degree. If I go to see a really good movie I am going to tell you all about it the next time we run into each other. But ask me to pick up the phone or approach someone and give them a recommendation the same way I sold the movie to you and I am filled with trepidation!
Selling is still seen by many people as being an unworthy profession practiced by snake oil merchants and con artists. Most people have a natural aversion to selling even though we do it all the time. So terms like 'preselling' or 'marketing' are a lot easier to get our heads around.
I remember coming across a MLM company who indoctrinated its distributors into believing that they were not selling the product but 'sharing' it with their customers.
| Quote: | | I really like this idea, but it's good to note that the vast majority of most of our traffic comes from the search engines, not repeat visitors. |
I see YOU around here every day!
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Phil Tanny
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 8:52 am
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| Declan OReilly wrote: | | Selling is still seen by many people as being an unworthy profession practiced by snake oil merchants and con artists. |
Regrettably true. Speaking generally, the selling "profession" isn't really a profession, because it doesn't police itself and preserve it's public image the way real professions do.
Many blue collar trades, hair stylists, massage therapists, medical techs, teacher aides, nurses aides, legal clerks etc etc etc, all these areas have understood why licenses and standards are necessary to retain the public's trust.
When it comes to Net selling, even we presellers worship whoever peddles the most BS. No effort is made to create and promote a more positive definition of "selling". Rather than create this positive brand, net sellers pride themselves on their ability to withstand ridicule from the public.
It's really no wonder that many affiliates have difficulty thinking of themselves as part of the selling industry.
| Quote: | | I see YOU around here every day! |
This is true of course.
Now try to imagine Allan making his living off of sales to that handful of us who regularly visit the forum.
If you took away first time traffic from search engines, I'd guess Allan would not be living on the beach...
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Charlie
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 9:14 am
Post subject: Re: Keeping it simple for affiliates...
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| Allan Gardyne wrote: | | Keep it simple. As an affiliate, you don't sell things. You might think of yourself as doing so, but you don't. You provide a service, and get paid for doing that. |
I think of affiliate commissions as being paid for introductions. That's the paid service.
I once read about an experiment testing brain waves...
Apparently, alpha waves are reduced by "will" - in other words, if you want something to happen, alpha waves are cut down. (I think they might be increased by imagining it happening, but don't hold me to that.)
The experiment involved wiring people up to toy trains that were powered by alpha waves. The game was to see who could "make" their train win the race. The problem was, the more you wanted to win, the less alpha waves were produced and the slower the train went...
Competitive males (especially) cry now.
This is very much to do with affiliate preselling - even the crying. As with many things in life, the more desperately you push, the more people resist.
I'd love to herd them all with a big stick (wallets in hands) towards my affiliate link, but then I remember the last time I tried. Sob. 
| Phil Tanny wrote: | | It might be better to start off with a clear understanding that "this is a sales job" and then understand what part in that we play. |
I see it as monitoring whether your introductions are leading to sales, and if not seriously consider looking for different merchants to introduce people to.
I think most people can learn to presell much more easily than they can learn to sell (at least with consumer markets). The trick is not just to remember the difference, but resist the temptation to "will" that train over the line.
Cheers,
Charlie.
P.S. If you want to spend some more of those (increasing) affiliate commissions on your train set, I think the book was...
"The Alpha Plan" by David Lewis.
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AllanGardyne
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 11:30 am
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| Phil Tanny wrote: |
Now try to imagine Allan making his living off of sales to that handful of us who regularly visit the forum. |
I shudder at the thought. Fortunately, I don't rely on this forum to pay the groceries.
| Quote: | | If you took away first time traffic from search engines, I'd guess Allan would not be living on the beach... |
Nope. I could live by the beach even if this site disappeared. I'm fairly well diversified now.
Here some stats so you're not guessing...
Last month, people found this website via more 11,000 different phrases. So you're right - we obviously get a lot of first time visitors.
However, over all, 38% of this site's visitors were "Direct Request" visitors. I assume that means they either typed AssociatePrograms.com into a browser or used a bookmark. I assume that means we must be doing something right.
We get a lot of visitors who read the forum but don't participate. 
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AllanGardyne
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 11:32 am
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Declan, When I said "Keep it simple," I meant keep the explanation you give the tax man simple.
I like your interpretation, though!
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Phil Tanny
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 11:50 am
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| AllanGardyne wrote: | | However, over all, 38% of this site's visitors were "Direct Request" visitors. |
Yes, you're clearly doing a lot right.
And I don't doubt that you could live nicely on 38% of your current income.
Except that....
Most affiliates would not continue on 38% of their affiliate income, which means there would be less interest in what you sell, reducing your 38% to some lower number.
I'm just making the obvious point that while search engine traffic isn't the whole game, it provides the crucial make or break margin of profits for most of us.
I'm really making the point to myself, not to you guys, in response to my own weakness of wanting to believe that quality of content and a resulting loyalty of readers are enough.
Personally, I could use somebody repeatedly reminding me (thump, thump, thump on the top of my head) that this IS a sales job, and I'd better be clear about that before I go running off attending to other agendas.
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Dominique
Joined:
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 2:44 pm
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| Phil Tanny wrote: | Provide good service and people will come back?
I really like this idea, but it's good to note that the vast majority of most of our traffic comes from the search engines, not repeat visitors.
A well marketed mediocre site will probably win over a high quality poorly marketed site. |
A well marketed mediocre site will obviously be better visited than the high quality poor marketed site, but how about newsletter subscriptions, click throughs to your merchants and conversion rates ?
That's where the high quality site should win, certainly ?
How many people will click through and buy upon their first visit ?
I hope that making a high quality site in combination with some sensible search engine optimization (without knowing much about it) is the best way in the long run. Well, I certainly like to think so.
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Phil Tanny
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 3:17 pm
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| Dominique wrote: | | A well marketed mediocre site will obviously be better visited than the high quality poor marketed site, but how about newsletter subscriptions, click throughs to your merchants and conversion rates ? That's where the high quality site should win, certainly ? |
It's a reasonable theory certainly. I'm really not sure, just responding to instincts and exploring points of view.
Maybe a good way to explore this is to try to climb out of our webmaster hats, and consider our own web surfing behavior. The longer we've been webmasters the harder this may be.
As webmasters, there is a very clear boundary in our minds between our own sites, and other people's sites.
As web surfers, the Net seems more like one giant document. We dive in to this page to grab this info snippet, then off to somewhere else to read 3/4 of another page, and then clicking off again to snag another packet of data, etc. I'm not sure the typical surfer is spending a lot of time doing quality comparisons of our sites.
A perception of quality seems to depend to a degree upon some sense of scarcity, and info scarcity is really an endangered species, thanks to our own relentless efforts.
I don't know. I do know I'm creating content that is a lot better than what I was doing 5-10 years ago, and folks seem to care a lot less. I don't claim to fully understand this, just sort of bumping around looking for understandings.
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Declan OReilly
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Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 3:27 am
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| AllanGardyne wrote: | | Declan, When I said "Keep it simple," I meant keep the explanation you give the tax man simple. |
Is there something the tax man should know?
It keeps in with what you have being saying all long. Sometimes the 'simplest' sites are the most successful ones.
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Declan O'Reilly
Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code.
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Dominique
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Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 8:58 am
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| Phil Tanny wrote: | | I don't know. I do know I'm creating content that is a lot better than what I was doing 5-10 years ago, and folks seem to care a lot less. I don't claim to fully understand this, just sort of bumping around looking for understandings. |
Well, as a beginner, it is certainly good to know that the seasoned internet marketeers are not sure about everything as well.
The net is certainly becoming more and more crowded. Imagine you were still creating content like you were ten years ago (I mean, of lower quality). Would you stand a chance ?
Impossible to answer. Until somebody comes up with the answers, I think I am still relying on Allan, Ken Evoy and the others who tell me : create good content, and good things will come !
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Phil Tanny
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Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 11:36 am
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Hi again Dominique,
| Dominique wrote: | | I think I am still relying on Allan, Ken Evoy and the others who tell me : create good content, and good things will come ! |
The way you said that expresses my own misunderstandings of their teachings, as best I can tell. We've both left out an important bit in the middle:
1. create good content
=> 2. promote it like crazy
3. and good things will come
I'm not arguing against good content of course. But I think the days when good content alone is sufficient by itself are increasingly behind us.
I really don't think Allan and Ken ever suggested we could neglect the promotion end of things. But it is easy for some of us to get caught up in the joy of creativity and hear what we want to hear regarding the importance of quality content.
I think there is a degree to which those best suited to creating unique quality content will be disadvantaged when it comes to promoting that content.
Somebody who is fully immersed in creativity is probably going to endlessly put off the mindless tedium of many important promotion jobs like link exchanges etc.
Nobody is good at everything. We might be entering a more mature Net where the limits of the one man shop become more evident. It may become harder for we one man shops to keep up with larger more balanced organizations.
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Dominique
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Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2005 10:03 am
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| Phil Tanny wrote: |
1. create good content
=> 2. promote it like crazy
3. and good things will come
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Good points raised Phil:
1. Creating good content is not enough anymore
2. The challenge for the one man shop gets bigger and bigger.
But hey, we all like a challenge don't we ? Otherwise we would not have stepped into this business.
Thx for the interesting discussion to all in this thread. Certainly helped me to think over priorities once more for the upcoming weeks and months with my projects.
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Phil Tanny
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Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2005 11:19 am
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| Dominique wrote: | | But hey, we all like a challenge don't we ? Otherwise we would not have stepped into this business. |
That opens an interesting can of worms.
My sense is that there is a "pioneer mythology" left over from the launch of the commercial Net 10 years ago.
At that time, the first group to hit Net business were the type who gravitated towards new and different challenges.
But the Net is no longer new and different, and is increasingly like the "real world" where maintaining various status quos is the main concern.
We still have the lingo and stance of pioneers, but it doesn't match the reality as well as it once did.
On the net, some folks have built seriously successful businesses around various models, and it's only natural that they will promote and defend these models as long as they can.
The tide of history will roll on of it's own unstoppable momentum, and yesterday's pioneers will become more and more the force trying to hold back that tide.
My sense is that newbies will grasp the model shifts more quickly than the experts, because most experts become psychological and financial captives of whatever they have succeeded with in the past.
As example, if Ken Evoy, a true pioneer, were to write an article stating that net users are increasingly jaded in regards to quality text content, he'd be damaging his substantial company in the process. So, even if this premise were true (it's debateable of course) Ken is not the person most likely to first recognize and write about that trend.
My sense is that if we want to keep up with an accelerating tide of history, on and off the Net, we have to learn how to live in a state of ongoing unsettling disatisfaction.
That sounds like a negative message, and if change slows down or stops, then it is.
But if change continues and accelerates, then learning how to make peace with an increasingly insecure psychological environment seems like a constructive useful skill.
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