I’ve been doing affiliate marketing for a little over a year now with a few breaks in between. I’ve done pretty much every type of marketing out there and I’ve seen it all.
I just can’t believe how many people are still following those gurus out there.
Now I don’t mean the average CPA guru that actually provides decent content. I’m talking about the clickbank weekly launch gurus that make 90% of their income from these product launches.
You’d think that eventually people would catch on to the con that’s been going on…
But then you visit cbengine.com and you see the latest product launch with an 1100 gravity. 1100!!!!
WTF!
That’s just insane and you know the guru is laughing to the bank… for now (more on that later).
The shocking part is that people are so desperate to learn from these so-called master at marketing that they’re willing to buy product after product with hopes that they’ll magically make money.
Dumb. So dumb.
How many successful non-scummy business people do you know that made all of their money following someone else? I personally don’t know any.
Now there are plenty of scummy business men that make their money copying others (like the 546th SEO product on Clickbank that just launched tomorrow).
But other than that, I really don’t know many. All of the people I know that have been successful have created their own ways of marketing.
Sure, plenty of people use SEO and PPC and CPV and all of that, but it’s the unique way of marketing that they do it.
Lucas at CPVDen.com has one of the most unique ways of making money with CPV traffic that I’ve ever seen and I’ve never seen or heard of that anywhere else.
So yes, while you would just be a follower doing the same exact method he does, you can instead use your head and come up with other creative similar methods that are for your own style.
Now I’ve recently been big with list building. And you might say “well Jeff, everyone does list building. You’re just a follower.”
First of all, hardly anyone does list building. That’s a fact. You’re signed up to a bunch of lists and it’s because of people like you signing up, they’re making the big money. How many lists do you actually have?
The fact is about 9/10 affiliate marketers don’t have lists.
Let’s look at every single legitimate successful marketer online. They all have lists and it doesn’t matter which niche they are in.
A great example is Mike Geary who owns Truth About Abs. This guy created his own brand from the ground up using article marketing, PPC, Facebook, and now media buying and plenty of fish. He did it all on his own and recruited affiliates in the process and now look where he’s at?
He’s doing $1 mil per month now.
And he doesn’t even force visitors to opt-in to his list. But when you do, he’s good at sending a high quality article every 1-2 days.
That’s a real, long-term business model that he’s been working on 5+ years now.
What about you? You’re probably stuck trying to run some CPA ring tone offer on Media Traffic (which sucks by the way). How long is that going to last you? You really think doing that stuff is going to get you to $1 mil per month?
Hell no.
Now I’m not bashing CPA marketing. I do it because it makes money. But I also work on my own products. Whether it’s writing ebooks, making audio and video products, or whatever, I’m working on my own products that I can sell and recruit affiliates for.
That’s where the real money is.
So instead of following the next “SEO Traffic Loophole” think about your own business instead. Where do you really see yourself in 5 years? Do you honestly believe you’re going to be making millions in 5 years doing pure affiliate marketing?
No, you won’t.
Let’s look at every single guru making big bucks.
They all have their own product somewhere. Whether it’s a training ebook, a forum, webinars, interviews or whatever. They all have some sort of product that they can expand on over time.
Do you?
You probably don’t even have a list. I’d start there if I were you…
Copywriting is the number 1 skill to learn in internet marketing but I’ll talk about that at a later time.
In the meantime, stop buying products and start making your own. It’s not hard. I wrote a 60 page ebook in the relationships niche in under 2 days. You can do the same.
-Jeff