Do you think that products who do well on CB tend to have very active publishers who do a lot of their own marketing besides leveraging on affiliates? Does anyone remember any great publishers who go out of the way to promote and build the initial hype?
Frank Kern, some of the products you see on the marketplace with just 1 or 2 gravity are his, he stated once that he doesn't like to use Affiliate for his CB niche products, that's the one I know about.
Anyone around here today who has been here the past year or so will never forget Falfalero (or whatever his name was) and his scammy a$$ Water 4 Gas clone. He promoted the crap out of it and pretty much made enough to never have to do IM or work again in a period of about 4 months. Good product or not, he was a great promoter of his own product to customers, his product to affiliates, and himself as a "brand"! Wonder whatever happened to him? I'm sure the sales still trickle in!
Many publishers do a lot of PPC work on new products to optimise sales pages, test conversions, gather keyword lists etc and give it a boost until affiliates can sustain it.