Affiliate Marketing Wont Die (And Cant Be Patented)

You cant patent friendships, or recommendations, or word of mouth. So Amazons claimed patent on affiliate marketing will fall. Hopefully its fall will take the whole canard of patenting business processes with it.

With that nonsense out of the way, lets discuss the future of affiliate marketing, and what you need to do in order to succeed as an affiliate (rather than the manager of an affiliate program.) Most of these secrets are simple, and John McCrea of Affinia, an affinity software house, recently covered most of them at ChannelSeven .

First, and this is key, dont recommend what you dont know. When you sell someone elses stuff youre putting your name on the line, not just theirs. Is this something youd sell your mom, spouse or best friend? No? Then dont sell it to anyone else, unless you want to be seen as a slimy salesman.

Second, make the recommendation relevant. I do it with in-line text links, but you might consider graphics alongside the point youre making, like margin notes. This is the third point, that the presentation of a recommendation does matter, and that if you pre-sell the points that matter to you before a link is made, that link will be more effective. (Youre being paid for sales, not clicks.)

Theres an art to these things, but its an art that starts from the heart and one that can be learned. Oh, and one more point - which you first saw in "This Weeks Clue." Test, test and test your referrals. If youre to be a profitable affiliate partner, you (or someone you trust) must spend time testing programs, products, placement, and everything else that matters to your program.

The E-Mail Shakeout

Marty Chenard must be the only Web marketing genius without a Web site. Thats OK - he didnt know he was a Web marketing genius until we told him he was at the Abraham Super Summit.

Now he has taken the bit in his teeth and run with it, renaming "The Course on Advanced Direct Marketing" with an "i-word," so its now "The Course on...Advanced iMarketing and Advanced Direct Marketing." (For a free sample copy, in .pdf format, write him at abscorp@concentric.net and add the word "Dana" to the Subject line.)

"Severe drops in ezine and email readership is already starting to happen, and what is now a core strategy and technique for generating sales is going to wither and become less effective," he writes. Brilliant enough, but he then goes on to tell you how you can survive. Publish only when you have something valuable to say, he suggests. Limit the offers in your ezine so readers can concentrate on them. Invest heavily in headlines and lead paragraphs - they may be all your reader looks at. Most important, write "subject" lines that dont automatically get filtered. Terms like "15% off", "discount" or "reach millions free" are trashed faster than thought.

The course, of course, will continue. I cant think of many things that are worth $169/year, but if youre serious about selling, Martys course is something I can recommend.

The Wireless Gold Rush

Wireless Internet is coming, because digital cell phones must send data for use by 911 dispatchers. This reality - and the small size of the screen as well as the bandwidth - has big players staking out their turf big-time.

America Online , Microsoft and Sun spent their time at the recent Wireless 2000 show in New Orleans trumpeting their alliances, but theyre not the gatekeepers they think they are.

The gatekeeper is the protocol. Adapting the key elements of your offering to the Wireless Access Protocol, and getting it validated is the key step you need to take now in order to be ready for the coming wireless revolution.

Just remember one more point, from Forresters Josh Bernoff, underlined at a conference I attended last fall. Big opportunities come from tiny applications. The best of these tiny applications will be time and location sensitive.

Clued-in, Clueless

Clued-in is EverAd , which is adapting the shareware concept of ad-supported software to the MP3 business. With advertising support, real labels can offer free downloads and still get paid. In this way EverAd has adapted a breakthrough strategy from the software business to the music business.

Clueless is Clark Howard , a nationally syndicated consumer radio talk show host who just had his Web site redesigned by Access Atlanta. There are no e-mail addresses on it, anywhere. I was going to tell him about Getspeed.com, a site for showing your broadband options he apparently doesnt know about, but I cant reach him so good-bye. Oh, and while its easy to find Clarks home address and phone number from several sites, even those listings dont include an e-mail address.

About the Author

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business reporter for 20 years. He has written parts of five books, and currently contributes to Advertising Age, Business Marketing, NetMarketing, the Chicago Tribune, Boardwatch, CLEC Magazine and other publications in addition to ClickZ. His own newsletter, A-Clue.Com, is published weekly.

email - dana@a-clue.com
url - http://www.a-clue.com

dana@a-clue.com
http://www.a-clue.com