Affiliate Marketers are doing things all wrong - #WhatILearnedToday
I have been involved in affiliate marketing for more years than I care to disclose. The main reason for my secrecy is due to my lack of success. To be frank I am a terrible marketer. In a nutshell, I HATE selling with a passion. And the thing I HATE even worse than selling is being sold. So, being involved in an industry where I have to be contantly selling and that people are constantly trying to sell me something was a complete drain on my psyche.
Then a couple of years ago, I got involved with the Hive Blockchain. I saw that as a way to make money online without having to be contantly selling and having to wade through a barrage of ads on a daily basis. I could make money be just talking about what interested me. I could talk about playing games. I could talk about family history. I could talk about watching The Chosen. You get the picture. While I have not yet made my first million, I have been able to create a cache of a crypto worth a couple of thousand dollars (not a retirement, but MUCH more than I ever earned with affiliate marketing).
Now, with the relaunch of ListNerds, I am being thrust back in the the affiliate marketing scene. I am dutifully reading my emails every day and staking my earnings to help my income grow (standard "in for the long run" blockchain mentality). Then it hits me, every day I am receiving two types of emails in ListNerds. Those from affiliate marketers (the barrage of ads I was talking about) and those from Hivers (the ones that point to a blog post). I get the reasoning behind both, but this is where I had an epiphany. I still don't like being bombarded with ads, but I am receiving links to posts that actually catch my interest (some of which involve affiliate marketing).
So, let me ask you a thought provoking question. If all you had to watch on your television were commercials, would you even turn it on? I know...there will be a boatload of inspiring and comical Super Bowl ads on this weekend, but that is not what I am talking about. No dramas, no comedies, no sports...just someone trying to sell me their product or service all day long. THAT is what your standard affiliate marketer is trying to do. Their mantra is that if you throw enough against the wall, some of it will stick. It's all a numbers game. Well, I, for one, am done with it. So for every email I get on ListNerds that sends me to a site that wants my money or my email address, expect a downvote. However, if you are interested in sending me information I might find useful, interesting, or beneficial to me in some way, expect an upvote.
The moral of the story is this...STOP PUSHING YOUR CRAP AT ME SO YOU WILL BENEFIT FROM IT!! Start thinking about the person that will read your email. How will what you have to say benefit them? I'm not talking about a list of bullets points with features of your product/service. I'm talking about telling people how you have benefited from something or how much fun you had doing something or just what you enjoy doing. Let people get to know you. Here's another though provoking question...would you rather do business with someone you know or someone that just walked up to you on the street?
It's time to rethink your marketing strategy. It may take longer to "build your list" of people that want to do business with you, but the ones that do will be much more likely to stick around and listen to what you have to say.
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I totally agree, my approach is not pushing something with spammy mails but offering knowledge and showing people how they can use hive to start earning there. It can be about all kinds of things honestly. It can also be used to share posts like you've done which is great for engagement.
I do love your honesty btw :) I had to laugh a bit reading the first part haha. I personally never digged into this world simply because of the oldschool way it's done.. everyone deep involved seems programmed to send out spam :) which I hate. I will therefore ignore everything you say, and defo not upvote it. Mission simply not accomplished. I hope people will slowly start to see that you can send out high quality stuff and that it pays of to do so.
Nice post. The CTP crew teaches that it's a 4:1 ratio or so: pull people with value-laden content on your blog, etc. Then, in a 5 day email exchange, the 5th one would be the recommendation\link to where folks can learn more.
In your TV analogy, I wouldn't watch 100% ad tv. no point.
Great job pointing to benefits instead of features too (for those reading this who are marketers)
I thank you for your words. You really hit the nail on the head here. I feel the same way you do.Our mailbox fills up with someone selling there wares or you get the same email over and over again.Listbuilding should be that "list building". Extract the email address from the email.I too have been involved with Affiliate marketing for quite awile. Now here we are trying the crypto world which is new to most of us.Blogging and commenting is where the money is at.I got your email thru Listnerds.Thanks for your time.
I totally agree with you. I don't have a lot of voting power so I don't waste it to downvote marketers so I just ignore them for now but I'll start to downvote when I have more.
I have no doubt that marketers who don't adapt and still apply their old techniques will die on web3. Now engagement is king.
That is a great point, that I agree with wholeheartedly. We have all had that one friend that constantly quotes and talks about their favorite movie.
After a while, it gets tiring and boring.
When the same group of friends are sitting around bored, and someone recommends the movie, everyone is happy and will have a common joyous memory to recall.
I am the same way with my online affiliate marketing experience. I hate to sell and hate to try to get people to pay for something they might not need. I am glad I found CTP and then the Hive platform where things are not pushed to you and told to Buy... If you have a business you must have a marketing strategy and Listnerds in combination with the Hive Platform is a perfect combination as one of those strategies. Take care.
I like you hate selling to others. I worked for H&R block and quit that job due to always having to sell H&R Blocks products. Not to mention this company is to expensive. I do not like to be sold stuff unless it is something I happened to be looking for already. Since I hate selling I should probably get out of affiliate marketing, since I have some money put into Hive and such i will not quit. So I just keep on commenting on blog posts that interest me. Good luck with your Listnerds.
A valid point. We were discussing how it is time for a major change. The key to Listnerds is not the email to sell something. Instead it is the process which is the money maker. The end sale is just a bonus.
You made a great point with the tv illustration, it's also good to be clear upfront.
I have to agree because those asking for my email or my money just get ignored. I won't waste the votes I have to upvote any of that. I prefer to save my votes for stuff that sends me to a Hive posts and people definitely need to change.
Amen :)
The whole concept we've been trying to build in our affiliate marketing business for over a decade now is...Pull people, stop pitching them.
And we couldn't achieve that effectively before....Hive!
Now savvy marketers can use this tool to PULL people to their blogs, create engagement and be around people that actually wanna hear from them :)
BTW thanks for using ListNerds to promote this content...It's exactly what a lot of us WANT to read!
Awesome post and I totally resonate. I wonder if we're trying to bring this message to deaf ears.
I am right there with you Garrey! I also hate selling and being sold to. And if I get a sense that someone is trying to sell me on something I will dig my heels in harder and refuse more strongly. If I want something I will go and get it. If I don't I won't. One of the last experiences I had with being sold to was at a live event I attended. We were put together with a coach for a coaching session. Right! It was merely this person trying to sell me a high ticket coaching program that cost as much as a year in a top flight college. Then trying to tell me that I was never going to be successful unless I invested in myself by purchasing said program. They had no idea how stubborn I could be. I showed them though. They did not win.