“5 Star Affiliate Progams” Some paying out over 10K a month

I'm normally very turned off by hype. That's why I dislike American Football. Who wants to sit through 3 hours of pregame crap and then have to listen to John Madden for another three hours. Play the f**king game and get on with it.

But this site doesn't really bother me. It is a marketing site. You do need enthusiasm for marketing and sales. The best definition of selling I ever read was that successful selling is "enthusiasm transfer". If you are enthusiastic about your product, and can transfer that enthusiasm to someone else, they will want to buy.

I think the info about how much the top affiliates are making is very interesting and germane to a prospective affiliate. I might not use the five stars everywhere, but that is your brand and you are obviously attempting to brand all your offers.

If the site is working for you, and with clients like National Geographic it seems to be working, I wouldn't change anything.

 

Nowhere on their site does it say what "911" means to them. Heck, it could be their birthday.

Even if it does refer to 9/11, it seems to me that it must be because that day held special meaning for them. I cannot see that as a terribly bad thing.

9/11 is largely forgotten here in the U.S. Americans have big hearts, but short attention spans. Usama bin who? Was she on The Assistant?

Perhaps it is good to have an occassional reminder?

 

When someone tries to sell me enthusiasm, my instinctual reaction is to wonder what they are hiding and what I am really getting for my money.

I don't want to buy enthusiasm. I want to buy facts and ROI.

They are different kinds of buyers. I am sure that selling technique appeals to some.

Personally, I am emotionally moved by CTR and CPC.

 

I'm not suggesting that anybody sell you "enthusiasm". I said you have to be enthusiastic about your product to sell it.

If I tell you I've got this product but is only in black and white because I don't want to look too much like I'm excited by it, but if you really persist here are are some boring statistics about it, but you know what they say about statistics, so buyer beware. For god sake don't let you emotions become involved. I'm sure that's how you chose your life partner -- no enthusiasm -- just show me the facts.

What utter bullshit. We never do anything without developing some enthusiasm about it. One of the reasons I have not been posting much on this forum is that to a large extent I've lost my enthusiasm. Nobody seems to read anything or learn anything, they just keep asking the same dumb questions. Now you tell me that you don't have any enthusiasm about anything you do??????

 

Bob,

Well that pretty much sucks for the rest of us that you lost your enthusiasm about posting here. I have read most but not all (not yet!) of your posts with great interest since you have some strong opinions and great insight. As a newbie, I have learned due to people like you on the forum.

Has it all been the same old dumb questions lately?? Had in there and some of us newbie's may ask some more intelligent and possibly intriguing questions.

 

There's quite a bit of difference between having enthusiam and buying enthusiasm.

It's a bit like buying love. I am not opposed to love, but I wouldn't exactly want to buy it. Yannow what I mean?

Choosing your life partner isn't much related to choosing an online advertising system.

When I buy a car, I go to Consumer Reports and Edmunds and see what meets my requirements and has the best ratings from the Subject Matter Experts. Very left-brained.

Other buyers are very right-brained. My umm... "life partner" wouldn't let me buy her a Honda Accord because she didn't like the way they look. She ended up with a completely impractical (for Colorado) Mitsubishi Eclipse Spider.

Look at Google's interface. Plain. Simple. No hype. Has it worked for them? Yes. Why? Because they knew their market. The Internet then, and even now, is dominated by left-brained thinkers.

Hype, to a left-brained thinker, is a huge turn-off. It makes us think we're being scammed. The difference between enthusiasm and hype... a very fine line and one that is difficult to discern from a distance.

 

Linda:

Just as a note, we really are not discussing your site anymore. We are discussing sales techniques in general, not picking on you. <blush>

I've linked to your site from the Internet Search Engines FAQ and I've tried fruitlessly to find an affiliate program on your site which matches the content of any of my web sites. I think my web sites are just too boring and specialized. <blush>

 

Hey VS, do a Google search for "it's like 9/11 never fuggin happened"

You might get more than one hit.

 

i swear this happens to me....!

 

Wow I can't believe all the stuff that is coming out of this thread. Very interesting perspectives on everything!

So interesting how different people think and view the world. One of the reasons my site works for me is that most people in the industry know me or my reputation, know how I write and know my integrity. So interesting though how people that don't know me and just look at the site perceive things. I just trusted and assumed that people would understand and believe what I wrote. But then again I am OFTEN accused of wearing rose colored glasses!

BTW 911 Health Shop was registered in August 2001 - PRIOR to 9/11 that we know and should ALL remember. 911 in this case stands for emergency health shop or *dial* 911 on the net for health stuff (I guess). It's just a domain name with no reference meant toward the event. 411 Health Shop and other variations must have been taken.

Wow tough crowd here. One of the affiliate forums I mod is reputed to be one of the most critical forums out there. People get flamed for EVERYTHING and there are super hot polical posts all the time. Not once has anyone ever taken offense or even mentioned 911 in that context.

You guys are great. Love reading what comes up in this thread!

 

Thanks again, so much, for everyone's good feedback and constructive critiques.

Made LOTS more changes and toned the site design down even more. I think I finally reached a happy medium. (Now people on the other forum that liked it the way it was may say it's too boring.)

Old:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040216071857/http://www.5staraffiliateprograms.com/index.html

New
http://www.5staraffiliateprograms.com

(I know the red candy cane does not look great but as soon as our Holiday Contest is over that whole paragraph will go away.)

The true test is Shawn - hey Shawn what do you think now? A little better???

 

I don't know why but when I visit that your site it literally hurts my eyes. It could just be that I've literally been on my pc for the past 39 hours or it could be the combination of white background with somewhat light blue text.
To be honest when I view the site for the first time it looks just like a generic parking page take one of my parking pages as an example http://www.bubbarmy.com there's links on the left and aff links in the middle. Maybe try some darker background colors and not such bright linking colors :]

 

Looks fine to me.... .....I must join one of your programs soon, tenant stream is intriguing.

Cyclops

 

Hi Cyclops,

TenantStream is no longer a client and don't know if their program is even running still. You must have seen that on the "old" copy of my site.

Please see the link below for all current programs. We have added a TON of new ones so the old version of my site is not accurate at all. Love to have you on our team though.

 

>>>TenantStream is no longer a client and don't know if their program is even running still.<<<

Aaarrgh, I only saw it recently and have spent quite a bit of time researching keywords and ways to promote it .......back to the drawing board

Cyclops.

 

Cyclops,

So sorry, we are always trying to add the best programs and some of them just don't work out for various reasons. That one was VERY niche and hard for affiliates to make money at since it only targeted apartment owners.

Check out some of our others and PM me if you want some advice. We have many more coming in Jan. and a HOT one coming that's perfect for post Xmas sales.

 

Changing the topic here a little bit, or I could start a new topic just for this stupid little question, or maybe not ...

How can we identify "parasite free" site cookies? Linda please enlighten me (or us?)

Ta