While trying to clear the fog from the darned red-eye flight that I took on the way down to Affiliate Summit in Miami, I spent a little time in my hotel room on Monday going back through through some of the older notes that we'd received on our RosalindGardner.com support desk.
Having spent 4 hours on Sunday at the jam-packed Meet Market and having just come up from the Exhibit Hall, where throngs of people were ccrowding around merchant and affiliate network booths, the following letter struck me (for the second time) as completely ridiculous.
| Hi Rosalind,
In the ad about your book, you talk about your financial achievements online mainly between 1998 and 2002/2003. But, being an e-business professional myself, I am skeptical about one's success potential nowadays through affiliate programs as the Internet has now become saturated with e-businesses and dominated by some major ones (like eBay.com. Amazon.com, and a few others). It's now very difficult to have the kind of success that you had in the late 90s and early 2000s. I tried affiliate programs, myself, last year and was totally unsuccessful. I don't believe in affiliate programs at all. For example, why would someone buy an airline ticket from my unknown travel site when everyone knows about Expedia.com or Travelocity.com? People prefer to go to the big names (which are considered more reliable and safer) than the unknown ones (which are often considered unreliable and potentially unsafe). Your success was possible when the Internet was relatively new and e-business/e-commerce was a big buzz-word, but that's no longer the case. I wish you could prove me wrong but I don't think you can! Regards, K. P.S. I hold a B.S. and a M.B.A. degrees in marketing and e-business/e-commerce. |
Well, here's what I have to say about that!
SHEESH!
No one will ever convince the well-educated, yet extremely cynical ‘K' wrong. He calls himself an e-business professional, however, his closed mind and bad attitude precludes any possibility of success in affiliate marketing – regardless of what anyone could say to him.
For the semi-skeptical out there, (which is a healthy approach to any new venture) I'll talk about my recent experience at Affiliate Summit 2007 East to help alleviate some doubt.
OK, so if there's no possibility of success in affiliate marketing now, why the heck does the show get bigger and bigger and bigger? Why would merchants and affiliate networks flock to drop big coin to exhibit at Affiliate Summit if there were no affiliates promoting their programs? Huh?
Affiliates of every stripe go to Affiliate Summit – from Super Duper affiliates (the big coupon site folks), to plain ole Super Affiliates like me, Jeremy Palmer and Scott Jangro; and newbie affiliate marketers just starting out.
Right up there with seeing old friends again, my favorite thing to do at the Summit is to meet other affiliates who have become successful and new affiliates who are bringing their well-thought-out plans and site strategies to the Summit for review and to meet potential merchants.
The first affiliate I ran into at the Summit was Ajay Kandala, an affiliate marketer and CJ Performer who introduced himself to me in the elevator. He told me he'd been in the business for just 3 years and had recently quit his job.
There were ‘kids' who, like Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom, never really had a ‘job' other than the affiliate marketing business they created to help put themselves through college. Now they're laughing their millions all the way to the bank.
I heard one story about a merchant and affiliate who connected on a more personal level to discuss how they'd started their now BIG businesses. They were shocked to learn that one had started from a basement bedroom while the other had worked from his bathroom.
I met people who, realizing that they loved affiliate marketing but learned they weren't ready to start their own business, had become successful top-dollar affiliate managers for major merchants and networks in the last year or two.
I also met with a few merchants with whom I'd consulted as recently as 6 months ago – just as they were getting into using affiliate marketing to promote their business – and now they have successful, growing businesses that get exceptional press and affiliates lining up at their Affiliate Summit booths to join their programs.
So, what do all these people have in common?
Belief.
Contrary to K's implied suggestion that a B.S. or an MBA is the best predictor of success potential, it's obvious that won't get him anywhere so long as he doesn't believe in himself or the channel.
Sheesh again.
That's all affiliate marketing is… an online sales channel in which merchants (stores) pay their affiliates (sales people) commissions based on performance.
So then, what's not to believe?
Imagine what would have happened if Mel and Patricia Ziegler of Banana Replublic said ‘why would someone buy clothing from my unknown clothes store when everyone knows about Gap and Old Navy?'
There'd be no Banana Republic, right? But they believed in what they wanted to sell, and lo and behold, their empire grew so big that Gap actually bought the company in 1983.
Anyway, the whole notion that someone doesn't believe in a marketing model based on existing competition strikes me as completely bizarre.
I see proof each and every day that this channel is still very much in its infancy, is growing by leaps and bounds and that existing competition within a niche means little or nothing to those who have a unique plan in which they believe.
Bottom line – Success has no room for cynicism.
By the way, the other thing that the successful affiliates, managers and merchants had in common, was that they'd ALL read the Super Affiliate Handbook – the industry's standard training manual for affiliate marketers. Isn't it time you got your copy of the Handbook?