On September 23, 2009, Google launched a new, free service that purports to be the next big thing in social communities. It gives everyday people the ability to provide their own comments on ANY web page they visit, in a frame that resides right next to the page they are viewing.

(This is exactly as if Google installed a gigantic graffiti wall in front of your storefront, handed out paint cans, and invited passers-by to write all over the wall, without giving YOU the ability to erase anything. Ummm. Are they serious? Do they actually believe that only honest people would ever use the wall?)

At first glance, one might think this is a great idea, after all, it isn’t like Google has done anything particularly innovative. Diigo, Stickis and Fleck are all services that allow the general public to annotate the web and share their comments about websites they happen to be visiting.

But there are a few things that make Sidewiki dramatically different from all the rest of the web annotation applications, things that all website owners should pay close attention to. Because with the introduction of Sidewiki…

… Your workday is about to change in ways you may not realize.

Let’s start by recognizing that Google has become the undisputed champion in the ongoing battle for eyeballs. According to a recent B to B Magazine article, Google currently controls a solid 90.54% of the global search market share over its competition.

There was some speculation that Bing was going to beat Google, and for a brief shining moment, it seemed to be on the rise, but after the initial curiosity clicks passed, Google once again took back its market share to stomp Bing and every other search engine.

Knowing this, it is critical to avoid the mistake of dismissing anything new that Google does. Because unlike all other tools and software applications that get released and must spend a great deal of money to reach out to all those eyeballs, Google launches its new applications already owning over 90% of the world’s eyeballs.

And it doesn’t cost them a dime to reach them.

Think about the sheer power of that market share, and now think about how important it is that you don’t ignore the latest Google application… the Sidewiki.

In effect, this tiny little application has the potential to completely alter your business model, adding new costs and frustrations to your workday. How?

By allowing absolutely everyone to comment on any page of your website, and allowing clickable links within those comments, it has flung open the doors to brand new ways to mess with your life.

This means that anyone who has the Google Toolbar installed, including your competition, now has the ability to say anything they like about you or your products, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Nothing. Zip. Nada.

Yes, you do have the ability to click a tiny link next to their comments and “report abuse”. Whoopty-doo. Based on early tests, it takes Google moderators at least 48 hours to get around to removing abusive comments.

If you run an online business like I do, 48 hours is a lifetime if you’re staring at a nasty comment that is appearing on your own website, one that hundreds of visitors can see while they are deciding whether or not to buy your product.

Think about the many ways this tool can be abused.

• Your competition could visit every page of your website and post a vicious lie about how you are a known sex offender and that if people want to buy products from good people, they should visit his site instead.
• People could post direct download links to your products on your order page, thus sabotaging your sales.
• Your own customers could confuse Sidewiki with your customer support, posting private information you are unable to respond to or correct in any way.
• Have a product for sale? Others can post their “better price” for that product and completely kill your sales.

And the possibilities are endless.

So in essence, by opening up this type of “social commentary” for the general public, and by not allowing website owners to have any kind of control over what appears on their own websites, Google not only enjoys 90% market share of all search engine traffic but also they now control over 90% of YOUR customers, YOUR traffic, YOUR ad space, and YOUR money.

If you think for one minute that Google isn’t going to slap ads all over it, you are deluded. So, if you’re running a site that has Adsense ads, you will most likely see your revenue decrease rather quickly when Sidewiki introduces ad supported comments.

Instead of Google being your source for traffic, it now becomes your traffic hijacker by piggybacking your website and diverting people away from it instead of towards it.

People have argued that this is wonderful for the “end user”, because it allows you to make decisions about vendors in a more open and fair way. If you’re about to buy a product from a scammer, Sidewiki has the potential to “protect you” by allowing you to see what other customers have to say about their experience with you.

The argument is that if you are a good vendor with great products, then you have nothing to worry about, and that the only ones who should be worried are the scammers.

This, I would argue, is blatantly false, and the exact opposite of what will actually happen.

The fact is that ethical business owners are usually not as creative or inventive as scammers. We’re usually far too busy building quality products and websites to think about how to use tools like Sidewiki to abuse people.

But the scammers and spammers are VERY creative and spend a great deal of time thinking up new ways to abuse systems, software, and applications. They are rubbing their hands in glee thinking up ways they can destroy your business and your reputation, and Sidewiki is going to be so easy to manipulate.

Imagine how much time and money you’ll waste trying to stomp all the potential negative comments that can appear on each and every page of your website?

At the time of this writing, there is no simple way to locate new Sidewiki comments that have appeared while someone is viewing different pages of your website, so the only way you can protect yourself is to load each page of your site manually, while Sidewiki is open, and reporting comments as abusive… manually.

If you have only one website with only three pages, this is no big deal. But most of us have multiple websites, with multiple pages.

The prospect of having to load each page of each website every day, just to see what people are saying about us, is patently ridiculous. You would need to hire a full time reputation management team to keep track of it all.

So, how can you protect your business from these types of scavengers? That’s a terrific question, and I wish I could easily answer it. This is simply too new a problem for an effective and simple solution.

There are some bright programmers writing code, as we speak, and a few scripts that are supposed to block Sidewiki from appearing on your site at all. But how effective they are remains to be seen.

Michel and I will be following this story closely in the coming months, and will be providing you with updates on the most recent tools and solutions. For the most recent Sidewiki blocking tools, go to our Updated List of Sidewiki Blockers where we will keep track of the latest and most effective solutions to protect your site.

Stay tuned, because this is going to be a very bumpy ride.

Sylvie Fortin

P.S. There are a number of discussions going on about this issue, and there are some interesting points for and against Google Sidewiki. For further research, here are some points others have made that I find particularly interesting to note…

• Paul Myers provides clear-headed advise about Sidewiki:
  Google Steals The Web and What To Do About Sidewiki
• iCop sounds off about the issue
• Google asks for public feedback about Sidewiki
  (read the comments and see what website owners have to say about this issue)
• Jeff Mills discusses the ramifications
• The Natural Search Blog’s perspective

Update (You’ll Want to Read This!)

A couple of people have implied that we’re fearmongering here, and should just “get used to” the idea of the Social Web. (Bah, humbug!)

So, because lingering doubts may still exist, I decided to do a bit of sleuthing to see what I could find, for your convenience. I decided to take the plunge and go dive into the disgusting world of Sidewiki comment spam, willingly exposing myself to some of the vile stuff out there. (You’re welcome.)

I thought I would start my search by installing Sidewiki and checking out what people have chosen to post on it while viewing Google.com itself. After all, if Google believes in true “transparency”, then they should have no problem with letting the general public post whatever they want on their own website, right?

Following a few threads, I was introduced to a writer I’ve never heard of before. His name is John Varley, and he is spitting MAD about Sidewiki. So angry, in fact, that he is on a personal mission to spew as much vulgarity on Sidewiki (while on Google.com home page) as possible, every single day, until Google deletes the comment garbage that currently is displayed on his own website.

This is the message he wants Google to hear, and it is his hope that Google will listen, especially since they claim to be properly moderating Sidewiki in a prompt and efficient manner, what with their RELIABLE spam-sniffing algorithms and all.

Strong Language Warning! John Varley’s clear message to Google on THEIR website. UPDATE: John’s Sidewiki entries were deleted, sometime between 10/17 and 10/18. See Update #2 below.

Also, here’s John’s message on his own website (this one is clean and intelligently written), where he explains his thoughts on Sidewiki, and why he wants it to die: Varley.net (See the big yellow box at the top, entitled “The Sidewiki Abomination!”)

(Or you can click here to visit “The Sidewiki Abomination” directly.)

I don’t blame him one bit, to be honest.

Take a look at the screenshot I took, after seeing the kind of garbage the real John Varley is seeing on his Sidewiki (I’ve edited the swearing out of it and added notations):

Sidewiki Abuse Example

Also, another interesting Sidewiki comment popped up when I visited my Facebook page. Apparently, someone was smart enough to post a warning to Facebook users, since some people may think Sidewiki comments are from Facebook Friends, when they’re not. (Or that their Facebook accounts were hacked.)

Worst still, some people are posting on their Facebook’s Sidewiki, thinking it is private (like Facebook’s “Wall,” for example) since they are someone’s friend and their account’s permission settings is set to “friends only.”

The potential for Facebook users to think Sidewiki is part of Facebook is enormous. In fact, the above alert goes on to say that Sidewiki entries are PUBLIC and not controlled by profile permission settings, and warns users to be careful.

That’s precisely the issue, here. Sidewiki creates the perception that the comments are from the website or are part of it, which can lead to some serious liability issues — reputation aside, it only takes one hateful or libelous comment to seriously damage and even completely destroy one’s business and livelihood.

So, do you still think that Google Sidewiki is harmless?

Really?

If so, then there’s nothing more I can possibly say to convince you.

Until it happens to you, I suppose.

Update #2

Since I wrote the update #1, Google has proven my point by censoring Sidewiki entries that they didn’t like. Not because they broke the Terms of Use, but I suppose because the comments were directed AGAINST Google.

The real John Varley’s Sidewiki entries have been deleted completely. Mysteriously vanished. Strange, if you ask me. In fact, here’s a screenshot:

I guess Google doesn’t waste time deleting comments they don’t want appearing on THEIR site, huh? Could it be because they want to protect THEIR OWN reputation?

But interestingly enough, the FAKE John Varley’s sidewiki smarmy entries remain intact at the moment, fully two weeks after they were posted, even though multiple complaints have been submitted about them. Google has made a clear decision that these types of comments are perfectly acceptable, by leaving them there for all the world to see.

This is utterly ridiculous, in my opinion.

Want more examples? Fine, here are a few more. (Yes, all are screenshots, so that I don’t have to keep posting updates when Google employees come here and try to close the barn door after the horse has left the barn.)

Example of how Google gives Sidewiki spammers the royal treatment

Another spammer’s example

A smarter breed of Traffic Hijacker

A particularly vile example of what you can do with Sidewiki…

Click images to view full sized version…

Oh yeah, I’m totally comforted by Google’s crack team of moderators who seem to be doing a bang up job of removing Sidewiki comments that violate their rules.

Clearly, I have nothing to worry about. There’s no such thing as spam. All people will use Sidewiki to post meaningful and thoughtful commentaries about sites they visit. And Google will block all comments that violate their terms.

Right.

(If you believe this, then I have a bridge to sell you.)

Bottom line, you can’t have it both ways, Google. Please listen to what we’re saying here.

We love Google, and have always spoken highly of your tools and objectives. We think you’re brilliant. And we use many of your tools in our own business. But this specific tool needs to be fixed. Please. Before more innocent people, websites, and legitimate businesses get hurt.

Michel and I will be keeping a very close eye on this story, and will update this list as new tools and applications are built to put the control back in the hands of website owners.

We will be posting our own commentary very soon on Sidewiki and how it may effect your your online business. But in the meantime, please refer to this list of available tools, which will be updated as they come available.

UPDATE: We’ve now posted our own commentary on the Google Sidewiki controversy, and welcome your comments and thoughts on the subject.

We encourage all comments to take place on our own public real estate space, using our own commenting functionality. We’ve spent a great deal of time and money on building an open community, and we feel that to use Sidewiki to voice your opinions, instead of our built-in commenting functionality, is likened to spraying graffiti all over our home. So, please, respect our home and speak to us in the manner we have set out for you to use. We’re listening…

Latest Sidewiki Blocking Tools and Scripts

Please note, the following list of external links is for your reference and convenience. We cannot take responsibility for the content of these links and suggest you do your due diligence is researching these resources before installing anything on your website.

• Robert Plank’s SideBlocker WordPress Plugin
• Catalin Ionescu’s Sidewiki Blocker version 2.3
• James Stein’s Block Sidewiki Tool
• Sidewiki Gone Javascript
• Sidewiki Defeat
• Sidewiki Blocker WordPress Plugin

If you know of any additional tools or scripts that have not yet been added here, please comment below and we will add them.

Latest Suggested Strategies for Dealing With Google Sidewiki

• How to Claim Your Website’s Google Sidewiki
• Block Google Sidewiki Users From Commenting On Your Site
• Will Bontrager’s 2 Level Approach to blocking direct and indirect Sidewiki commenters
• Update Patrol’s Sidewiki Comment Monitor Service
• Will Bontrager’s Script for monitoring your site for Sidewiki comments

Anti-Sidewiki Activism Options (help tell Google NO)

• Kill Sidewiki Before it Kills You! (petition)

The best favor you can do for yourself and your business is to always focus on one task at a time, and always finish what you start.

How the heck do you do that on the internet, when there are distractions everywhere you look, and in affiliate marketing… when there are new offers every day ripe for you to promote?

The answer is: if you’re going to promote a new affiliate offer, write all your emails and blog posts in one sitting, before you get bored or distracted with another offer.

Sounds intimidating? It doesn’t have to be.

Remember that when you promote someone else’s offer, they tend to give you at least one cut-and-paste email. Schedule it as a future broadcast and paste it in as-is, because time is limited!

If the email they provide is more than a page long, I’ll split it up into two parts and schedule the second email to go out a week later.

Once you have those first couple of emails, look at the sales letter and see if there are any huge chunks of sales copy you can paste into an email to further promote the offer.

Any decent sales letter usually has an interesting story, a benefit list and a feature list… so there’s three more emails right there.

After checking out the sales letter, I’ll tend to think of one or two things the sales letter hadn’t thought of, and I’ll write two quick emails explaining each one. Emails don’t have to be long, just a couple of paragraphs will do, with a call-to-action at the end to get people to click on your affiliate link.

And finally, I’ll type up a couple of reminder emails for people who might have missed the offer and need to see it again.

Now you have 7 or 8 emails to promote the affiliate product. Don’t save them in a text file for later… schedule them in your autoresponder right now to send out a month apart.

Using this technique, you can schedule over six months of email promotion for just one product, in 10 to 30 minutes.

If you were really motivated, you could find the hottest converting products in your niche (I prefer to look at the Clickbank marketplace since those sort by the best pulling offers first) and in one day, fill up your autoresponder with affiliate email promotions.

Or simply make it a point to add one new offer to your autoresponder every Monday morning, before you do anything else.

If you have a blog of your own, you only need to write posts and schedule them on the same dates the emails get sent out… don’t overthink it.

That’s the key to finishing what you start: work in sprints so you can schedule it on a timer and not have to work on that promo, or even think about that promo ever again!

I hope you enjoyed this series on affiliate marketing. Please leave your comments below so I know people like it and I can write more of these. If you want back-issues, here they are!

1. Add Your Own Unique Slant to the Offer.
2. Interview the Originator or Add Your Own Bonuses.
3. Bring Something to the Table: List and Traffic.
4. Invest in Your Business: Don’t Ask for Review Copies.
5. Write Affiliate email and Blog Posts in One Sitting.

Product owners and affiliates for the last couple years have lived a happy co-dependent existence. In the beginning, affiliates had limited choices. Today, it’s an ocean of opportunity.

The reason I’m writing you today is because I feel the industry needs a wake up call.

Here are the problems…

1. Affiliate marketers are becoming less dependent on product owners
2. Affiliates have more choices then ever before
3. Affiliates have evolved with the times but product owners have not
4. Product owners are relying too heavily on affiliates

Affiliates Don’t Need You Anymore

In the old days, an affiliate could simply link to a product owner and that was enough.

Then over time, more and more affiliate marketers were created by the product owners — so many new affiliates that, in order to start making sales, you had to offer some sort of bonus or incentive that no one else was offering.

Now in 2009, you need to go even further than just bonuses, because almost everyone’s doing bonuses at this point.

To compete with the massive amounts of affiliates, you now have to capture leads from your traffic, offer a bonus, and then point the prospect to the product owner.

Don’t forget that more and more people everyday are learning that they can sign up as an affiliate themselves and buy through their own links.

Affiliates are now generating their own leads, creating their own offers, and then sending the customer to someone else. How long before the affiliate thinks: “If I’m generating the lead and creating the offer, then why am I sending the customer to someone else?”

Basically, to compete in today’s world of affiliate marketing, an affiliate has to do all the same things a product owner normally does.

Most affiliates become affiliates to avoid the responsibilities of a product owner. You must alleviate some of the work your affiliates are having to do or risk losing them or worse gaining them as a competitor!

There’s a Network On Every Corner

Back in the day, Amazon, Clickbank, Linkshare, and a handful of others were the only affiliate networks on the scene. Now you’ve got over 32 “major” affiliate networks, not to mention all the small or start-up networks.

It gets worse, too, because new networks are constantly springing up and these networks are offering much more then the typical product owner.

Inside any one of the 10+ affiliate networks that I’m a part of, I’ve got all kinds of affiliate tools and a dedicated affiliate manager.

The average product launcher just scrapes by with a basic affiliate promotion kit. Banners, emails, keywords, and some links are not enough anymore.

Today, affiliates need brandable videos, landing pages, reports, e-courses, interviews, and articles… The Internet in 2009 is a content beast — your affiliates need content!

If your eyes are opening and you’re seeing the problems, then you should check out what the adult industry is doing for their affiliates.

The adult industry offers their affiliates free hosting, dedicated managers, a plethora of brandable landing pages, even whole membership sites that the affiliate can promote the product owner with.

Independents can beat the big networks by offering more customization, unique tools, and personal touch. If they don’t, then they’ll lose their affiliates. Which actually leads me into the third problem I see happening…

Affiliates evolved and optimized their methods for their product-owning partners. However, the product owners are still offering the same resources they offered 4, 5, and 6 years ago. Not only that, but it seems product owners have gotten greedier and lazier.

Product Owners Should Be Responsible For Conversions

In this last part, I’m going to speak for myself, and if anyone is feeling the same thing they can let me know in the comments.

The other parts I’ve already spoken with many other affiliates so I was comfortable speaking for the majority. This next part could possibly just be a weird fluke I experienced and could be totally alone in it.

But I doubt it!

Here goes…

Lately, I have been making some showings in the top 10s of different joint-venture leaderboards, which sounds great. However, for most of them my conversions have been almost totally dependent on my offering a bonus.

“Wait,” you’re saying, “you make more sales by offering a bonus to your subscribers who buy through you?” No!

What I’m saying is, if I don’t offer a bonus, then I don’t make sales. I know because I tried it on the last JV leaderboard I got on. I was in the top 10 for leads, and then when it came time for sales, I never offered a bonus.

Sure enough, I got an egg in my sales column as my reward for that test.

In the product launch right before that, I offered a great bonus and came in top five in sales, making several thousand in commissions plus winning a 52″ flat screen TV.

Here’s my problem though…

I could have just emailed my list, charged for my bonus, made the several grand myself, and not shared my customers with the product owner.

If the product owner’s sales funnel requires that the affiliate offers a bonus in order to make sales…

… Then what does the affiliate need the product owner for?

(Read that again.)

I understand there is a “game” to be played, but this is not the ideal situation for affiliates. And as a product owner you want to take care of your affiliates as best you can. For example, I’ll never promote for that guy again.

In my eyes, he charged too much money for his product and the price seemed largely based on knowing his affiliates would offer a much bigger bonus to compensate for it.

Meanwhile, the affiliate is only getting 50% of revenue. Yet the affiliate is motivating the crowd, generating the leads, creating the hot offer, and generating the sale…

… While the product own just created the product!

Creating the product is a big piece of the pie, but what I’m saying over and over again, here, is that, if I have to offer such a great bonus in order for your product to make sales, I might as well just sell my bonus!

More and more of the top affiliates are getting fed up with this.

Lazy launch days are numbered because affiliates are getting sick and tired of the product owners not evolving their methods to keep the affiliates hard work secure.

Here’s a quick solutions list so you can easily identify what you need to be doing to make sure your affiliates are happy.

What You Must Do To Keep Affiliates Happy

1. You must offer something unique to your affiliates or risk losing them to the networks.
2. You must provide every resource an affiliate would need to make the sale, including a variety of different bonuses.
3. The more you update your affiliates tools (e.g., emails, videos, reports, landing pages, etc), then the more they will go out and promote those new tools.
4. As your affiliates’ job requirements evolve, so should yours as the product owner to make sure the affiliate has what’s needed and is doing what’s required.
5. Protect your affiliates’ commissions during launches, and make their job as easy as you can — you are the CREATOR, they are the PROMOTER.
6. Never steal from your affiliates by denying commissions on backend sales, especially during the launch.

I’m not saying I’m the perfect product owner, either, since I’m missing a few of these elements in my affiliate program myself. Although, you can bet I won’t be letting much time go by before I start making sure I have them all.

Thanks for listening to my rant. And please post your comments and tell me what you think of this situation. I’d love to hear them!

No product vendor likes potential affiliates to ask for free “review copies.” It reeks of inexperience and penny-pinching. If you want to promote a product and need to see what it looks like on the inside, just bite the bullet and pay for it like everyone else.

As an affiliate, you have two relationships to work: with your buyers, and with the product originator. When you try to go the cheap route, you burn too many bridges early on.

Let’s also remember that whenever you pay for something, you’re more likely to take action with it. Just imagine you’ve work and saved your entire life for your dream car. Once you buy it, you’re going to actually use it and take extra care of it, right?

Then imagine somebody gives you the car outright. You didn’t earn it, you didn’t work for it, and didn’t pay anything for it. You still might cherish the car but you aren’t going to enjoy it the same way.

The same is true for getting “affiliate review copies” of products. If you actually buy the product, you’ll have more of a drive to promote and make your money back.

There is also no excuse for trying to save money buying from yourself as the affiliate to get your review copy. People have tried to justify themselves doing this for years, but there’s simply no way to explain it without sounding cheap.

Can you really see Michel Fortin, John Reese, or Frank Kern asking for review copies from each other? No way… $20 or even $100 is a drop-in-the-bucket investment for their business. You want to model those people.

Did you know that Russell Brunson and Matt Bacak attend each other’s $20,000 workshops, and pay each other for hourly coaching? There is no “keeping score” to see who makes more money off the other’s coaching.

If one of them needs an extra boost in their business, they pay for the tools and it pays off.

Usually I will pay full price for even my closest business partners’ products, even though I “could” get it for free — I’d prefer to have the tax writeoff, stronger relationship, and extra motivation that comes with paying full price.

I don’t always buy the products I promote as an affiliate… but if you want a review copy, pay for it instead of calling in favors. You owe it to yourself, your product originator, and your customers to actually invest in your business.

Affiliate marketing is not a “push button solution”… it’s just a different type of selling than product launch marketing or AdSense marketing.

You are not going to be able to just sign up as an affiliate to some program and expect to make money… you have to DO something with that link!

The big formula for internet marketing is:

List + Traffic = Offers.

When you sign up for something as an affiliate, that affiliate product or service is your offer. Once you have that offer, you need a list and you need traffic if you ever expect that offer to convert.

You’d be surprised at how many people forget this step!

For this reason, I don’t recommend promoting affiliate offers right out of the gate in internet marketing. Build up a list first, even if it’s built from a small $7 report or a free ethical bribe.

Join list building giveaways, place your signature link at the bottom of your forum posts, comment on blogs, leave testimonials for products you own, publish articles about your niche… do whatever you can to get as many eyeballs in your niche in front of that opt-in box. Add an e-mail subscription box to sites that need it, such as your blog.

Bottom line: build a list first, and then send offers to that list once you’ve built up 100 subscribers or more. Does that sound like a lot? Okay… then focus on 8 subscribers a day.

Do you think that with forum, article, blog, and giveaway marketing, that you could get a measly eight subscribers in a day? If you can, then keep it up for 12 days and you have yourself 100 subscribers primed and ready to receive your affiliate offers.

As someone who runs affiliate programs for over 50 of my own products, I can tell you 99% of affiliates are worthless.

They’ll signup and send no traffic, or send traffic and only bring in a couple of sales. What’s the common thread behind all these affiliate failures I see again and again? It comes in two parts: not making an effort, and not bridging their mailing list to your offer.

I would be thrilled if an affiliate came to me and said:

“I want to interview you for 20 minutes about (a topic directly related to both our products and skills). My list contains (size of list) subscribers, and the last offer I promoted converted at (this percentage) and brought in (this amount of sales). I’ll record the interview, convert it into downloadable form and get it out to my subscribers within 24 hours, with a link back to your offer with me as the affiliate, at the end of the interview. What’s a good time for me to call you up?”

Do you see all the points this e-mail hit?

Most important: this affiliate already brings in results. He has a decent sized list, already had a previous success promoting affiliate offers in this niche. He’s doing most of the work: he chose the topic, he will be interviewing you, calling you, and recording the call.

He’s also going to take immediate action once the interview is finished, and promote this offer to his subscribers within 24 hours.

When you interview the product originator with you as the affiliate, it shows that you care about giving your subscribers a good offer, and not just cutting and pasting the e-mail he gave you.

It shows you have an “in” with the originator so if your buyers aren’t getting support or need a refund, they can get to that person through you… they trust the product originator because they trust you.

Finally, it simply injects your personality into the offer. This offer isn’t being made by some outside source, it’s from you and the originator at the same time.

If the originator isn’t available or you just don’t want to go the interview route, offer one of your products as a bonus to that affiliate offer, that way it’s a blended offer.

If your subscribers trust you but don’t trust the product originator, they can still order from the originator with confidence… because if that product doesn’t deliver in value, your bonus will.

Stop being so lazy with affiliate marketing!

An affiliate program is where you can link to someone else’s offer with your special ID and get paid commission every sale you make. This process “seems” really hands-off and easy because there’s no product creation or customer support involved… just send traffic to a proven offer!

Here’s the problem.

Most marketers are lazy and don’t realize that affiliate marketing has its own disadvantages. It’s tougher to build a list using affiliate marketing, tough to convert and split test, and you have to devote most of your effort to pre-selling and marketing that affiliate product.

What the heck do you need to know about affiliate marketing in order to pull in decent results?

If you’re serious about affiliate marketing, setup a squeeze page that gets people on a mailing list first and redirects to the affiliate offer. Send traffic to that page using forum posts and articles.

Even if they don’t buy right away, you can keep broadcasting to that list every day with reminders about benefits for that offer… things they might have missed or even things you thought about the vendor didn’t.

For example, once I promoted an affiliate offer about how to create iPhone apps and I wrote a quick follow-up asking people… what if you thought of eBay or AdWords before anyone else? What if you registered even one or two English-word domain names like Business.com or About.com before anyone else? What would those be worth today?

What’s great about this is the product originator practically wrote your e-mails for you. You can copy huge chunks of the sales letters and add them as e-mail follow-ups… then add a call-to-action at the end of the e-mail so people can click your affiliate link to get back to the page.

Even if they don’t buy that offer, you can eventually hit them with a different but related affiliate offer as well.

Branding is one of the last things you should worry about — so if you really want to get to the point where you’re working on branding to get that extra 5 percent boost in sales, get through these steps first…

The big formula is: List + Traffic = Offers.

Step 1: Choose Your Niche and Skill Level.

A niche is an area of expertise like copywriting, stress relief, PHP, article writing, etc., and a skill level is how you will turn that expertise into a shippable product. A skill level might mean freelance projects, affiliate marketing, or site building.

Before you do anything you need to know what your area of expertise is. Everybody has one, because everybody has read books, had a favorite job, had a favorite subject in school, subscribe to certain niches of magazines.

If this is your first time choosing a niche, make it a skill you can prove. If you haven’t made any money online, don’t make your niche the “make money online” niche!

Not only that, you need to make up your mind about what your offer will be. If you are brand new, choosing freelancing since that is how you will make some quick money.

You might be an article writer for your niche, create videos, make graphics, write autoresponders or copy — but it needs to be limited to your niche so that you can establish yourself as an “expert” in that niche and charge more.

Maybe someday you can move onto site building, affiliate promotions or even your own products, but don’t make that leap until you have some freelancing experience under your belt.

Step 2: Create a Squeeze Page.

Present an ethical bribe to sign-up to a mailing list so you can start following up with prospects about your future offers.

This means you’ll have to sign up for an autoresponder like Aweber and paste the sign-up code to a very simple HTML page that also lists a couple of quick benefits explaining why they should get this information in the first place.

You do this to get people on a list, so you can send them offers later. These offers aren’t necessarily products but could be entire sales for sale or your freelance services.

You don’t even need to create the content.

Find the 7 best articles in your niche and grab them off article sites, leaving the bylines and resource boxes intact so the writer still gets credit. Compile all those articles into a Word document, put your contact info at the beginning and end of the book, especially if you are going the freelance route.

Then convert the Word doc to a PDF using either Microsoft Word 2007, OpenOffice or a free online tool (you can Google search for many great “doc to pdf converters”).

Step 3: Fill Your Follow-up Sequence With 7 Offers.

This might be 7 more articles in your niche and set them as e-mail follow-ups spaced 3 weeks apart. This will keep the leads fresh, and ready for when you have offers for them.

Do you offer freelancing article writing in a certain niche? Your offer then might be that three slots have opened up at a special price. Or the offer might simply be an affiliate program you are promoting in that niche for people who want to pay for the even better information.

Step 4: Create Special Offers, an Affiliate Program, and Joint Ventures.

Here is the fun part. Now that you have made a couple of sales, you can offer special deals to your list and repeat customers.

Maybe you want to order a “rush order” option to your article writing services so for 50% more, people can get their articles from you in half the time. Maybe you’ll give a 30 minute telephone consultation to each person on your list who buys a particular product through your affiliate link.

Next, you’ll want to setup your OWN affiliate program. Most people think that an affiliate program means you offer an e-book for sale, people refer traffic, and get a commission. But you can also offer an affiliate program for your freelance work!

Just get an account with an affiliate processor like Clickbank, setup a pitch page explaining your services, a payment button where people can pay you for services. Now you’ve given your friends and business partners a reason to promote your services — because they get a cut of the profits!

Take affiliates to the next level — find joint venture partners. Co-host an interview or webinar to provide content (with a link back to your web site).

Contribute to their content by giving them a ridealong product (a report of yours they can bundle with their paid product). Write a guest blog post.

Create a special offer just for that joint venture that they can place on their thank you page after they’ve made a sale, where they can get commission. Basically, customize an offer for them and make it as plug-and-play as possible.

Step 5: Brand Yourself.

Once you’ve got your niche and skill level, squeeze page to build a list, offers, affiliate program and joint venture partners, it’s finally time to establish your brand.

But it’s not as hard as you think. If the domain name with your name is available, for example, MichelFortin.com, register that domain name and add a blog to it.

You don’t have to make a big deal about your blog. To be honest, for the first few months I had only my resume on my blog. Later on I added a couple of articles, but it’s not worth your time until you get some traffic.

Let’s recap…

• Step 1: Choose your niche (copywriting, stress, blogging, etc.) and your skill level (freelancing, affiliate offers, site building, your own products)
• Step 2: Get an autoresponder, and add a squeeze page using a report compiled from free articles as an ethical bribe. Then use even more articles as follow-up messages.
• Step 3: Create seven offers for this list which might be affiliate programs, your own report for sale, a site for sale, or even your services for sale.
• Step 4: Create an affiliate program and joint venture system to reward people for sending traffic over.
• Step 5: Register YourName.com if it’s available, add your picture and post a couple of your articles.

That’s all you need to know about branding.

If you think I’m saying this because I prefer soft-sell approaches, think again.

The reason it struck me is that, and with all due respect to Ed, his post may be a tad misleading.

I agree with the fact that people today are annoyed, jaded, and even frustrated when buying products online — specifically, products in the Internet marketing industry. But I don’t think people are annoyed with hard-sell marketing at all.

They’re annoyed with something else entirely.

Before I dive in, please understand that Ed Dale and I are friends.

In fact, when Ed posted about his recent decision to dump all his friends on Facebook and promote a “fan page” instead, not only was I one of the first ones to agree with him and applaud him, but also I followed in his footsteps.

My comments here have nothing to do with Ed Dale as a person or even as a marketer. They are strictly my opinions on the strategy he pointed out and apparently endorsed.

First, to put this in proper context, let me quote a few passages from Ed’s article…

It’s a bit simplistic to describe like this but it’s the online equivalent of “Do you want Fries with that”

Now here’s the thing. Some people get SUPER annoyed when (increasingly a baby boomer) McDonalds server asks this question.

Your like, “Dude, if I wanted the Fries with that, I would have ordered them!!!!”

If this is sooo annoying – why do they keep doing it?

IT WORKS.

It works really, really well.

Really, Really, Really, Really with sugar on top well.

“Upselling” and “Downselling” (as we say in the biz ) works (…).

First off, I totally agree with this statement.

If you’ve been around this blog for some time, you’ve probably seen my wife’s video on Upsells, Downsells, And One-Time Offers in which she describes the process.

Upselling is not only an important aspect of marketing and particularly Internet marketing, but it’s also one that so many marketers fail to capitalize on. Marketers are leaving an insane load of cash on the table by not asking their customers to buy more.

Some of our students have literally doubled and even tripled their income by simply adding an upsell offer to their sales funnel, which took only minutes to implement.

Jay Abraham, one of the world’s most prolific marketing experts, is often quoted as saying there are only three ways to increase your business.

1. Increasing the number,
2. Increasing the frequency,
3. Or increasing the size of purchases.

The first one involves getting new clients. That’s just good old marketing. You want to find new, hungry prospects who will buy your products for the first time.

The second is new purchases from the same client base. It’s making follow-up and additional offers to your current customers, and getting them to keep buying from you.

The last part is the one people often miss the boat on. It’s upselling, where you get people to buy more or increase the size of their orders as they are buying from you.

Simple enough, right?

The specific issue I have with Ed’s article is not the premise but the analogy he used. Upselling is indeed akin to a McDonald’s server asking, “Do you want fries with that?” And it’s certainly something we should incorporate in our offers.

I also agree with Ed that the market is definitely annoyed and jaded.

But the issue I have is that the market is not annoyed with upsells as Ed Dale seems to imply. It’s annoyed with the type of upsell offers, which has more to do with withholding your customer’s order than it is with just asking them to buy more.

Huge difference, here.

For example, my wife wrote Internet Marketing Sins a few months ago, in which she covers 15 of the most egregious sins perpetrated by online marketers. In it, she covers this particular sin in great detail in a chapter entitled “Upsell Hell.”

(I prefer to call it “Upsell Jail,” because that is precisely what it feels like when one stumbles onto an offer of this kind. You feel helplessly locked in, unable to break out.)

As my wife noted so well, the issue is about holding the customer — i.e., their credit card information, their money, and yes, even their order — hostage.

The process works this way.

A customer comes to a website, reads the copy, and decides to buy the product. She clicks on the order button, fills in the credit card details, and submits the order form.

But before accessing the product she just ordered, she’s presented with an upsell offer.

She’s a bit annoyed, but it’s shadowed by the fact that she’s quite excited about her original order. So she takes the time to read the additional offer, decides she’s not interested, and clicks on “no thanks” (hopefully, when such an option exists).

The process so far is not that bad. But here’s the rub…

If she stumbles onto an offer by some very aggressive marketer, things unfortunately don’t stop there. Before she can access or download her product, even before she receives a confirmation that her payment went through successfully, she’s hit with another upsell offer. And then another, and another, and another.

In some cases, we’re talking three, five, eight, even 10 upsell offers or more!

Annoying? You bet!

Again, the issue has nothing to do with making an upsell offer. If it were me, I would have made the offer before the customer entered their credit card details (it’s no different than adding a product to a shopping cart), or after they’ve reached the confirmation page.

But to force a customer to wade through a barrage of upsell offers while holding their order — and their money — hostage is, in my opinion, the real problem, here.

Think about it.

The customer purchased your product after they have built up enough trust and confidence in you to buy what you originally offered. They probably took a long time to read your copy, perhaps even watched your video, looked you up on the web, and, with excitement mixed with a bit of trepidation, decided to go ahead.

However, when you hit them over the head again and again with a flurry of upsell offers, there’s no question the consumer will doubt you, get annoyed, never buy from you again, even hate you, or worse yet, tell others about you.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I’m a fan of aggressive marketing. I believe that you must ask for the order, and ask for it as many times as possible. In fact, I don’t mind marketers who are even more aggressive than I am.

But the sentiment some of these marketers share is what scares me somewhat.

Most of these aggressive marketers don’t care. Why? Because during these huge, mega-launches, these “drive-by” marketers only intend to sell one-hit products (i.e., not evergreen, long-term products with sustainable growth).

Their sole aim is to milk as many prospects as possible for all they can during a finite period of time. Sadly, some of them don’t even care if their customers ever buy again.

As one marketer called it, it’s a “churn and burn” mentality.

Admittedly, one reason may be because many of these marketers offer continuity programs, which on the surface may appear as a long-term strategy. (However, some continuity offers are forced in the backend of the same, huge launches.)

Plus, many of their products are indeed of high quality and very good.

But another analogy that comes to mind is that of snake oil salesmen. The parallel is ostensibly there. Snake oil salesmen drive into town, sell their entire lot as fast as they can, and skip town as soon as they’re done.

In fact, this brings me to another issue Ed brought up in his post. Ed said this…

Yet in this so called “depressed” (more on this in a minute) economy – Internet Marketing stuff is being sold at RECORD numbers.

Record numbers?

Yes, if you want to count unit sales. And during mega-launches where everyone and their neighbor’s pet parrot is emailing you with the same offer, it’s no wonder that such sales incur huge, record-breaking numbers.

But in this case, as it is in many cases of late, the offer is cheap or even free — the purpose being to force people onto a continuity program. Let’s not forget affiliate commissions for the launch and on the recurring income afterwards.

So record-breaking sales doesn’t necessarily translate into record-breaking profits.

(That’s a whole different issue for another day, although I must add that some marketers are overt and clear about their backend continuity offers. They may be forced continuity, which is perfectly fine, but they’re not hidden or slipped under the radar.)

So the numbers are there, I agree.

However, what about long-term, residual income? What about Jay Abraham’s point #2, “frequency of purchases?” Well, that’s a non-issue for many marketers because their clients are forced onto a continuity program, anyway.

But will they buy more from the same marketer? Of their own volition?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But I daresay, retention of their initial order, if these marketers don’t go out of their way to coddle those customers sufficiently, or at least offer excellent — not average or above average, but truly excellent — content, will likely suffer.

So when some marketers purport to make millions with their sales on launch day, are they actually talking about gross revenue? Or are they talking about unit sales or their predicted revenue over the long term based on 100% retention of their new customers?

Something to think about.

As Frank Kern’s grandfather once said to him (from a presentation Frank gave at a seminar) when he used to work in his grandfather’s used-car business, after Frank was all excited about a sale he made that wasn’t quite finalized…

“It ain’t sold ’til you got the money!”

Finally, let me come back to the analogy Ed Dale made. To me, asking “Want fries with that?” is a wrong analogy. A better one is, after you asked for a burger the server says:

“A burger? Sure, that’s $3.00.” (You hand over a $20 bill.) The server, holding your burger in one hand and your $20 in the other, continues:

“Now that you’ve given me $20, how about fries with that? No? How about an apple pie? No? Then how about an extra burger for only half off, and you better decide now because this is the only time I’m making you this special offer!”

Remember, you’re hungry. You paid for the burger. You see the server holding both your change and your burger, almost taunting you. Naturally, you’re getting annoyed by now. Just when you think you’re finally getting your food, the server quips:

“OK then, I know you’re hungry, but before I give you your burger and your change back, may I interest you in our burger-of-the-month club?”

Can you see the frustration?

So when a marketer says, “It works!” I cringe. Why? Because they’re using results — specifically, they’re using superficial, short term, prediction-based, best-case-scenario results — to justify their marketing efforts.

Well, of course it works! It’s no different than saying “Want money? Go rob a bank! Why? Because it works!” Needless to say, when you hold someone hostage at gun point asking for their money, you bet that it works.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say:

“But Michel, isn’t your analogy extreme and just as far off as the fast-food one?”

Sure, my analogy may be a little extreme. What some of these marketers do may be entirely legal and, unlike a bank robbery, no one can get physically hurt.

But when it comes to the ethics of the thing, it’s not that much different. Because, while it may be legal, saying that “it works” when it has no choice but to work because you’re forcing it to, then it’s not so far off the mark.

In short, it may be legal but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right.

Plus, the bank analogy is dead-on in other ways, too. For example, unless that bank’s security has been reinforced, consumer confidence restored, and the bank robber apprehended, chances are those consumers will never go back to that bank.

They’ll likely close their accounts and take their money elsewhere.