Publisher VS Affiliate Thread.

Hey Here's a good late night questions for some of you big dogs. I am a long time affiliate, I make really good money being an affiliate but am looking into being a CB merchant. I have some, or a lot of questions, I want to clear up.

Which one takes more work for reward, affiliate or merchant?
Being a merchant should I go for a very competitive niche, or try to find a very unique Niche?
Being a merchant should I bring out a whole bunch of quick sites, or very few quality sites?
What the most difficult thing about being a merchant? Customer Support, More Resources?
Is there good money in top gravity products, if yes how much? Example: FatLoss4idiots vs SALEHOO vs JAMORAMA.
Should I make a Merchant Page to advertise myself only?
How difficult is it to get approved?

If you have any other input for me, it would be very helpful.

Vene

 

Lots of questions, lots of answers:

More rewarding? Depends how you market. I am a publisher, but I haven't made a dime from my product yet. I am also an affiliate for some products, and they made me some decent money.

The niche question is asked by everyone, and you will get a trillion different answers. I went to a very non-competitive niche, and not made a nickel. Others went to non-competitive niches and make a fortune now. It's the same for competitive niches. Make sure there is a market for your product, build a list, build trust, ask them what they want, and then give it to them. It won't guarantee you any sales, but it will definitely increase your chances.

What's quick sites? Why do you need so many of them? I don't understand the question.

The most difficult thing is getting first good affiliates. I am still waiting for a serious affiliate, but apparently good affiliates don't fall from the sky. To get gravity you need affiliates, and to get affiliates you need gravity. Customer service is easy if you know your product and your niche well, otherwise customers will see you as fake and it'll kill your business.

Good money in top products? Probably, if you can outsmart your competition and get enough traffic. Those products convert well, all you need is traffic. And getting traffic is difficult with them.

By "Merchant Page" do you mean a page only you know about, and affilaites promote other pages? If so, it's possible, but I don't see any reason for doing that.

The difficulty to get approved depends on your understanding of ClickBank's rules and your product. As long as it's an eBook or service that does not deal with anything illegal (like torrents, warez, etc.), you will get approved easily. Also make sure that your pages comply with all ClickBank's guidelines.

Good luck with becoming a merchant!
nadavs

 

Thanks a ton Nadavs, very helpful. From your response you seem to be more on the affiliate side, but you seem to dip your feet in the "publisher" waters here and there. By quick sites, I basically mean just slopping something quick together and work from there versus spending months on making a site. I guess my main concern, leads to the most basic of Publisher of Affiliate questions: Should I spend my time advertising to see if a product works, or should I make a product then advertise to see if it works?

Vene

 

I think its best to have your hand in everything. Keep affiliate marketing, if you think of a good product then just go with it.

publisher is kind of on-going work. When you make 30+ sales/ day you do get a few questions you need to answer. as an affiliate you dont need to do any of that.

I think its personal preference really. If your a really good affiliate marketer then spend most time doing that.

there is a lot of money in products like FatLoss4idiots. This product owner would be on over a million/year from this product alone and would probably hire somebody to answer emails.

Follow the CB rules and you wont have a problem with approvals. You can also email them before you start making the product and ask if there will be a problem.

 

The question about advertising to see if the product works was already answered: build a list. Find out what people want. Ask them if an eBook or whatever you can give them will help them (don't mention the word free).
If the feedback is positive and you think you can make a better product than the competitors (otherwise you can just recommend something as an affiliate), go for it.

If you don't have a list or don't want to build a list, your best bet is going for competitive niches, but you're going to have a harder time advertising there than other niches. If you decide to go into a less competitive niche with no list, there's a greater risk (but, as you know from economics, bigger potential reward).

nadavs

 

The only part I don't like about being a publisher is having to answer all the emails that I get. Roughly half of them are about problems with downloading the product and than saying they're going to call the credit card company (my niche isn't internet savvy).

I'm split 50/50 on who's better... publisher or affiliate. As an affiliate I don't have to deal with customer service, but I do have to work a lot more on setting up campaigns and writing.

As a publisher I'm very happy except with dealing with the customer service part of it. We've finally escaped the catch22 of affiliate marketing (gravity of 20!!). I would say as a publisher this is the hardest part of selling a product. People won't sell your product unless it has a high gravity, but in order to get a high gravity you need to make sales.

Overall? I'd say I like being a publisher more because my affiliates do all the hard work for me. A couple of suggestions though. On your thank you page use clickbanks script to make it secure. I also added in a script which checks how many times they've accessed that page (don't want link sharing). People can access it twice and after that they need to contact us. Also, make sure to force download your product. People are stupid and will open it in a browser and not save it. Google "php force download pdf". I just implemented this yesterday so I'm hoping it will cut down on the number of emails I get.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks guys, +rep

 

Usually a vendor with a good product makes more income than his affiliates because his product will be promoted by many affiliates and he can make more sales.

 

Are you saying that the "good product" vendor will make more because of all the branding their affiliates are doing?

 

A good publisher will make most of the money. He does nothing, and his affiliates are promoting for him, using their time and money (it's called leveraging). If he has one affiliate, the affiliate will make most of the money (if the commission is over 50%). If he has 50 affiliates, he can just sit in front of his ClickBank account, hit F5 every two minutes and watch the sale bars grow.
nadavs

 

Yeah I'm looking into becoming a merchant , I have a product I wanna sell too will start it this weekend!! Anyone here a good webdesigner???

 

Web designing is the easy part for me, Sales Pitch or copywriting is my achilles heel. Anyone know a good ebook to learn solid copywriting?

 

If you have a decent product, then it definitely pays to be a merchant. If you can get a few affiliates to start selling your product, then that is 100% pure profit.

And - See my signature for a good way to overcome the Clickbank catch 22. It helps to build your gravity so that you can attract affiliates.

Good luck.

 

Thanks a lot for the tips, Its coming along fine, some concerns are coming up though.

Should I worry about hosting? I use a shared hosting plan.
Price? Will setting my price lower directly affect a higher gravity?
Should I have the same, lower, or higher price than competitors.

What price products do you prefer to promote?

Vene

 

Excellent!! Nice info and answered some questions I've had about the affiliate vs publisher... I'm thinking aff is beter

 

Quick little question, is it better to show clickbank my complete page, or show them a smaller version to get approved faster?

 

I actually bought FatLoss4Idiots just to see what they are doing and to see what kind of quality it has. I actually know quite a bit about this sort of stuff and... I was absolutely shocked by how awful it is. I mean it's a dreadful laughable product. Yet they are making a ton of sales and as an affiliate for them I know they dont get many (I haven had any) refunds. I think it's precisely because they don't have any customer service to speak of and they also don't seem to mention the fact you can refund it anywhere on their website. Very interesting.

 

They would both be really rewarding. If your good at internet marketing, you can become a successful affiliate. You need lots more skills to become a successful merchant.

 

The more rewarding one, however, is being a publisher with good affiliates. There's a really simple reason for that, too:

Let's say the publisher gives 75% commission.
If he has one affiliate, the publisher gets 25% of all sales and the affiliate gets 75% of all sales. Well, seems better to be an affiliate, doesn't it?

If there are two affiliates making the same amount of sales, the publisher gets 25% on 100% of the sales, which is 25% total. Each affiliate gets 75% on 50% of the sales, which is 37.5% of the sales.

If there are three affiliates making the same amount of sales, they and the publisher all make the same amount of money, even though the publisher gives them 75%! The publisher gets 25% of 100% of the sales, but each of the affiliates gets 75% on a third of the sales, which is 25% total, just like the publisher.

When there are four affiliates, the publisher makes most of the money (publisher: 25%. Each affiliate: 18.75%). When there are 100 affiliates making sales daily, the publisher is probably earning enough to buy a new car every month.

As you can see, the publisher always gets 25% of the total sales, but the affiliates' share is getting smaller as more affiliates join.

Conclusion: if you can, be a publisher.
nadavs

 

Actually money back guarantees are a marketing ploy and one I use extensively to drive sales.

It's a known fact if you offer a guarantee or warranty that more than 95%++ will never use it.....