I want to talk to you about the greedy 50%
commission level. This is common in the
information product world…
50% commissions obviously aren’t common for
general consumer merchandise, most services
etc. But the “lesson” here still applies.
Let me ask this …
Who is more valuable in a profit equation:
1) the product creator / merchant who
developed the product?
2) the affiliate who actually makes the
sale?
Without hesitation, you should have answered #2.
Did you?
If not… this is DEFINITELY for you…
Again, talking about the info-product world…
the product is the cheapest, simplest, easiest
piece of the puzzle, all things being equal.
Unless your info product has the cure to cancer
or next month’s winning lotto numbers,
there’s a long list of other similar products
already in the marketplace that the customer
could buy and the affiliate could market.
The customer buys YOURS because the affiliate
did a good job in getting the sales offer
in front of the customer and it converted.
But if you don’t appreciate the work they did
for this and the risk-free sale that you
(the merchant) get to enjoy, you risk losing
that affiliate. Quickly!
Do you know that you could run a VERY
profitable business even if you paid out 100%
commission on your product?
It’s called the back-end and it’s where your
(and nearly all) business profits live.
The front sale normally serves only 2 functions:
lead acquisition (if you have a lead capture
with your sales page) and CUSTOMER acquisition.
The problem instead is that most merchants
don’t build up a strong back-end strategy
so they can’t seem to figure out how they
can go and pay MAXIMUM commissions to affiliates
on the front sale.
** Here’s another important function the
front sale does for you… **
If you maximized your commissions, your
affiliates are obviously turning a good return
on their investment.
Well, do you think this helps build a “brand
association” in their mind? Ie: Your company
gets viewed as one where they’ve made the
most commissions.
So when you release a new offer you now
benefit TWO FOLD:
(1) customers hopefully already recognize
your brand because your affiliates pushed
it hard, many have now bought your products,
they loved it, so they associate YOUR
name with a VALUE brand … but …
(2) affiliates also think of YOU as the
company they make their most commissions
with so when your new product launches they
know to sign up and promote aggressively.
Chew on that for a minute.
The 50% commission, in most cases, (especially
for low ticket and mid ticket me-too
products) is basically saying “we put a
half-ass commitment into our affiliate program”.
Of course you can’t pay 60, 70 80 or certainly
100% on ALL of your products as you do need
the back-end profits … and I’m not trying
to say don’t EVER use 50% … all I want
you to do is give it extra thought. Are you
making your affiliate program valuable to
affiliates?
This is one of my pet-peeves with ClickBank too…
The maximum commission they allow a merchant
to pay on there is 75%.
But in niches like internet marketing,
it’s commonly understood that up to 25%
of an affiliate’s referrals are lost to
commission theft.
So that affiliate is back to making only
about 50% commissions yet you still enjoy
the other risk-free 100%.
(Not to mention ClickBank has a cap on the
price of your product and charges merchants
hefty fees per sale!).
Here I am with yet another long email
and there’s still A LOT more I could explain
about the above…
And again, it’s why I’m VERY excited about
the opportunity that the launch of this
brand new digital marketplace brings for
AFFILIATES and MERCHANTS:
And as a merchant, you need to give thought
to putting at least a couple of front-ends
on there to capture this new database
of affiliates that’s already 1900+ strong
yet this hasn’t even launched.
This WILL be bigger than ClickBank and
CB is a giant.
I wish I could explain the many reasons
that make me confidently say that…
but this email is already ridiculously
long.
So enjoy your weekend! And go poke around
at what has me very excited…
This is part 2 (somewhat) to the email I
sent a couple of days ago…
If you missed it, I posted that one at the
mini blog:
http://www.robthegenietoth.com
I don’t mince words too well so let’s just
dive in…
There are a lot of CLUELESS merchants out
there when it comes to their affiliate program.
They “get” the awesome leverage potential
and all the other benefits of having
hundreds or even tens of thousands of
registered affiliates actively promoting
their website for a cut of the profit-pie.
They “get” that much…
And the talk of wanting this is everywhere…
How do I get affiliates? How do I get others
to promote my stuff?
Simple answer: “give them a reason to want to!”
Most merchants I come across really aren’t
doing much to be an attractive proposition.
It’s the same tired-old pitch. Medicore
commissions for an unproven product and a
pretty pathetic “pitch” that basically says
“our programs pays the most, sign up here”.
Savvy affiliates… you know, the ones that
are active and produce results… the ones
you WANT in your affiliate program, they
demand the best.
I mentioned 2 variables that help define
“the best” in the other email including
frequency of payment (how often, how quick
they get their commissions) and volume
of sales as tied to the number of notifications
they get from your affiliate program.
It’s that “frequency of payment” point
that I want to give you an insider tip about.
Please listen closely…
****************
If I was sitting at a table with you…
I’d PAUSE, lean in, look you directly in
the eye, with a very SERIOUS face and speak
slowly with a very SINCERE tone as I told you…
“there’s a brand new expected standard in
the world of affiliate programs that you
MUST pay attention to”.
****************
The other day I recommended that you explore
www.RapidActionPro.com and the part of the
video on my resources page that talks about
e-commerce platforms.
(The Genie Advantage Resources are posted at:
http://www.robtoth.com/genieadvantage.htm )
There’s a new affiliate network or “digital
marketplace” officially launching April
1st and you want to be among the early
adapters for it…
ClickBank has provided a great opp*ortunity
for merchants and affilaites worldwide for
years. But it comes with plenty of “leaks” …
one of which is the delayed payments.
Then, just a handful of years ago PayDotCom
launched. Smart merchants starting copying
their ClickBank offers to also run in the
PayDotCom marketplace … and a new group
of affiliates became loyal users of PDC.
It too, however, lacks what will now become
a very valued “norm”.
When you buy a new car these days you
EXPECT power-windows, you expect MP3 player
or certainly at least CD player. These are
basics you have come to expect… yet
they used to be rare premiums not long ago.
Well, INSTANT PAYMENTS will be what a
growing segment of affiliates expect and
demand.
And chances are your in-house affiliate
program and certainly ClickBank, PayDotCom
and many smaller marketplaces can NOT
offer this…
THIS brand new marketplace does just that
because it’s based on the RapidActionPro.com
technology and the benefits to an affiliate and to a
merchant are enormous…
It’s about to kick off a tidal wave that
for the next year or so will be “new and
different” (like Squidoo once was, Skype
once was, Ebay once was, Twitter once was,
PayDotCom, ClickBank even Google once
were)… but by 2011 … as this hits the
“tippping point”, the masses of affiliates
will EXPECT instant payments.
There’s a lot more to this “trend puzzle”
but this email is already long.
So …
My tip to vendors who currently have
info-products (digital OR physical) in ANY
niche either with an in-house affiliate
program or on ClickBank, PayDotCom etc:
*TEAR* through this site or write back
and ask me questions because this marketplace
hasn’t even officially opened yet and
they already have just shy of 1900 affiliates
registered. That will grow at a monster pace!
And my tip to affiliates… learn the
benefits that this new site will offer to
you, namely INSTANT payments.
Read through the site and create a fr*ee
account right away:
You won’t “get” it all right away, I’ll do
my best to explain the benefits.
Write back if you have immediate questions
though, then at least I know what I should
answer for everyone.
But the short of it is, this new network
will reach the heights that ClickBank now
enjoys without a doubt. It won’t get
there tomorrow, or next week but for all
the “better alternative” pros it brings to
the table and the bigger benefits to merchants
and affiliates… it will take off hard and fast.
And like I said, not that long ago all of
these sites and technologies were just a
“new concept”: Skype, Twitter, Squidoo,
Facebook, MySpace, Google, YouTube, ClickBank,
PayDotCom, etc.
But the growth of this particular network
means a new milestone will be set for what
affiliates expect from a quality affiliate
program.
So if you understand the big mo*ney
associated with being at the front of a new
trend, take it seriously, get registered for
fr*ee (though I DEFINITELY recommend the
upgrade) and poke around: http://www.27am.com/rbank.htm
Affiliates today have NO SHORTAGE of what
offer they can promote. Physical or digital.
Merchandise, info-products, services. And
any subject/niche you can dream up.
In the internet marketing / information
marketing arena … the “noise” of how many
aff opps there are is pretty insane.
So if YOU have a product that you’d want to
recruit affiliates for and have them
promoting long term… here are 2 points
to focus on:
Affiliates like mo*ney.
Go figure.
And this means 2 things…
1) Payment notifications
Just being told (via email) that they
received a commission is enough to spark
a little fire of motivation in an affiliate.
Given the exact same effort being put in,
nearly every affiliate would rather see
10 x $100 payments vs. 1 x $1000 payment.
Same amount of money… VERY different
response.
That does NOT mean you don’t sell $1000
products (or whatever), but if you’d like
to “train” your affiliates to promote
YOUR product line and you want to build
that merchant-affiliate relationship, you
SHOULD have several lower ticket, high
commission-percentage and high conversion
offers so they can get accustomed to
seeing payment notifications from your company.
2) Instant commissions
Would you rather wait 60 days to receive
your ea*rned commissions or 60 seconds
(ie: instant)?
Exactly.
Instant payments are BIG BIG motivators
especially since most affilaite marketeres
are struggling and don’t have predictable
ca*sh flow.
Not to mention if you want your affiliate
to succeed, you should return his ear*nings
to him as quick as possible so that he
can re-invest that into additional promotional
opp*ortunities for your product line.
What this means is if it comes down to
promoting your offer or any one of 20 other
similar quality and similar priced products…
but YOURS pays instant commissions, YOU
get that affiliate.
It’s on those principles that I built www.MoneyNowGenie.com which does pay
instant commissions (ie: literally you can
promote now, and have ca*sh minutes from
now assuming you generated sales).
The software that I use to be able to offer
this instant commission opp (and enjoy the
growth that it provides me) is http://www.RapidActionPro.com
Did you read through that “Genie Advantage
Resources” list I posted a few days ago?
There’s a particularly critical discussion
in the video that I recorded … it’s
this part:
08:15 – 26:03 … The discussion on
“E-Commerce Platforms”
Veteran marketer Doug Hudiburg and I talk
about several e-commerce systems but
spend time explaining why the http://www.RapidActionPro.com script is so
unique and so powerful.
SUGGESTED HOMEWORK:
I’m going to send you a part-2 to this
email. Let’s call all this, above, required
core education before you can get “part 2″.
There’s a definite shift that’s about to
break open in internet marketing…
I’ll explain all of it but you need to
be familiar with the above first. If you
didn’t watch that section of the video
or haven’t seen my www.MoneyNowGenie.com
site etc … do that as important back-ground
homework.
I’m about to address your “mon*ey now” needs.
P.S. The Genie Strategy Hours, coaching,
business development and 1-on-1 mentorship
sale price closes in a couple of days.
You can STILL SAVE $500 right here:
Thanks to the ever fun tax season, I was digging through the boxes where I store my previous years’ tax files.
It turns out that I haven’t thrown ANY of them out. I have personal taxes here from 1998 and business taxes from my first year as a sole proprietor in 2002.
Obviously, those can all get shredded.
Here’s where the FUN begins…
In the mix, I found a daily planner.
First off THAT was worth a laugh.
I actually used to use paper and ink for my daily to do list and important date reminders. Paper? Ink? Really!?!?
I’m leafing through that daily planner and some of the amateur and ridiculously ineffective steps that I used to take back when I was in the “sink or swim” crash course of business are “LOL” worthy…
(I should point out… I never took an ounce of formal education in marketing, advertising, business development … all of it is self-taught)…
Get a LAUGH out of some of these entries with me:
* Dec 29, 2002 … “head out early… post mini flyers at colleges. Bring stapler”
There’s an advertising idea you should NOT add to your marketing arsenal unless maybe if you’re starting up a tutoring-from-home business or you want to sell old textbooks and cheap laptops.
(Even then, I’d say hire a kid for $20 to do it for you).
* January 9, 2003 … “setup fax broadcast”
A) That’s just a dumb idea all round. FAX? Even in 2002/2003 that was fairly dated technology. And BROADCAST fax? Well that’s just spamming via fax.
B) Not only was the idea terrible but my ability to stay on track and be organized back in those days was so bad that I never followed through on this idea. In THIS case, that’s obviously a very good thing.
* Jan 18, 2003… “create a new $40,000 before June 1st”.
It’s interesting because today, knowing what I know now, I think just about ANYONE could pull that off. $40k in 6 months is very attainable. BUT, that’s knowing what I know now…
To have thought back then that I could create $40k when I barely even could SPELL business was silly.
* July 3, 2003 … “get all my ads converted to Spanish”
This was some sort of ill thought out gameplan to advertise to the Spanish market. Slight problem… I don’t speak Spanish. At all! So while the ads might have gotten converted (never followed through on this one either)… how would I communicate with the leads/customers?
* July 12, 300… “Buy ad in Urban Trendz”
THIS I remember!
$700 I put into a weak, untargetted, ineffective display ad that ran in one issue of a freebie “TV listings” type publication. Results? 2 calls to the toll-free that I set up. Neither turned into anything. But either way, the sale to a lead would have been worth about $30 … with no real back-end. So I would have needed 30 BUYERS to make this even remotely worth my time… $700 well wasted.
I was anxious to grow my “business” quicker but I knew nothing about effective advertising (obviously). So this was yet another place I flat out burned-up money on.
What about you?
Do you have any similar stories of your own? Email them over.
P.S. While this is a biased recommendation, consider the fact that if I had invested even just that $700 dollars that I wasted into a ridiculous ad attempt (and trust me, I lost THOUSANDS)… to bring in a proven advisor, someone who could look at where I was at and then give exact “next steps”, how quickly would I have made progress? How much money would I have saved by not wasting it on obviously ineffective tactics? How much would I quickly have made by instead taking steps that produced RESULTS?
P.P.S And that’s just for a complete beginner… imagine if I instead already had a developing business and brought in that same strategy partner?
P.P.P.S. You see a doctor about your health (or at least about your SICKNESS) right? You may have an accountant (I pay $350/hr for mine). Have you paid for a fitness instructor? Or a mechanic in the past? WHY did spending the money in those cases make sense? Because each of those professionals KNEW what they were doing and “fixed the problem” …
Here’s a link to SAVE $500 and have me step in and provide clarification, monetization, and action steps:
I get asked what software I use for X … what site I use for Y …
Figured I’d make a list of the ones that come to mind (I’ll expand the list in the future I’m sure)…
I’ve tossed a good number of them onto a new webpage and provided a paragraph about each. Some of those paragraphs actually have marketing tactics in them… worth skimming.
ALSO… Knowing that this was going live today, I jumped on a short webinar with veteran marketer Doug Hudiburg and we recorded a video discussing some of the more “critical” tools in that list.
Obviously not all of the tools will be relevant to you. I just tried to think of any “advantage” tools that I use. I hope that resource list becomes as much of an asset to you as it is to me.
P.S. In conjunction with the release of this Resource list, I have a 50% off sale running for my time blocks. So you and I can work together and make some fast advances in your income for half the regular rates. I close that sale on Sunday March 21st.
