General question, can vendors fake their CTR/conversion rate which they often display on their 'affiliates' page to try and attract affiliates? I know most screen shots can be faked, but just wondered about peoples personal experience. Thanks, Adam
Yes, a lot is faked. Your judgement should be the only thing deciding if you will promote a product or not. A lot of vendors even set up mailing lists to get affiliates to promote their products, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if the product is good and converts.
I think there is a lot of faking that goes on, but a lot of genuine people too. I think you have to use your own judgement a little, and once you have looked at a lot of products over a month or two you sohuld get a feel for what will convert at a decent rate, or at least an idea of what you can convert. Also take a look at how the site changes, how the gravity changes overtime, and if there are updates from the vendor. I also think that those programs that launch with stats of "converts 1:30" when they are only talking about 1 conversion need to be looked at very carefully, for sure a conversion of 1:30 is good, but only if it is on a decent number of conversions - 10, 20, 100+? Finally; if it looks too good to be true it probably is?
A lot of vendors show conversions that they themselves have experienced, as well as their friends who are their affiliates. They really know how to promote the product well, and their stats are what gets posted first. So you shouldn't trust the first stats that you see as what you will be able to get without their instruction.
There is no doubt in my mind that 90% of the statistics are faked or at least modified in order to only show the top converting affiliates.
As there is no way for us to verify any vendor's claims, we can not believe them in any way. It doesn't make sense to trust screenshots. Videos are more reliable. I usually choose a product to promote based upon a mix of factors like gravity, nice sales page, selling potential/opportunities and my gut feeling.
Go and google murdering someone, its easy, sure its easy but not everyones doing it, ok thats kind of a bad example but you get my point!
Yes, everything can be faked pretty much, but there would be little point in faking conversions as you would get an affiliate, and then an agry set of affiliates and then no affiliates! I put the conversion rates from the best affiliates on my aff page sometimes, but the results are not typical for everyone it all depends on how you are promoting and the quality of the landing page/pre sale pitch. So to wrap up I would say use your own judgement when looking for someone to promote and after all it is YOUR results that matter when promoting. Chris