The Changing Landscape of Affiliate Marketing

You may have noticed a shift in how affiliate marketing is being done. There are people that are hanging on to the old way and people who have changed their strategy and moved onto the new way.

What Are The Affiliate Marketing Changes?

The old methods of affiliate marketing is to set up an affiliate link cloaked behind another URL which contains a redirect command. This means that an affiliate link is disguised behind a more appealing URL which disguises the destination of the link and makes it more likely that the link will be clicked on.

In the past, people were tricked into being sent to a product to buy and the owner of the referring link was paid a commission because they sent the traffic to the product vendor.

The rules have changed!

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) came out with some new guidelines in an attempt to protect the consumer from being misled. One of the laws that came out now means that Internet Marketers must make an open disclosure for their affiliate links.

In reality, there are still many people that are not doing this. They are still choosing to disguise the hyperlink using cloaking and URL shortening software or utilities.

These changes have driven a change in the approach of affiliate marketing. Affiliate Marketing used to be about matching highly targeted traffic to a high converting offer.

Now affiliate marketing is about matching highly qualified traffic to a high converting offer AND adding value to the original offer in the eyes of the prospect by adding some complimentary bonuses which help them get even more results.

The question now becomes:

What is the best complimentary bonus that I can offer to the original product that will help the prospect get even greater results from their purchase?

The bad news for you is you could now really struggle promoting the big launches because the big guns have an arsenal of products on their servers and in their warehouses already at their disposal. The big guns can simply look through their stockpile and determine which of their existing products would suit the offer they’re promoting best and offer that to the prospect should they decide to make a buying decision through their affiliate link. However all is not lost!

How Can You Compete Against The Big Guns?

Well, you could create a product that perfectly compliments the product on offer and massively adds value to the original proposition. In effect, this increases the value of the purchase in the eyes of the customer and makes it even more likely that they’ll make the purchase and even less likely that they they’ll seek a refund for the product.

You could always offer consultancy time through Skype which would help the customer to use the product. This is especially useful if you ave expertise in using the product and there is a degree of knowledge required to effectively use the product being sold. This is the case with products such as Optimize Press, Easy Video Player 2, Profits Theme, Market Samurai and Wishlist Member.

Think about this for a second… In The old days, customers would only get the product that they paid for, so they had to perceive that the value of the product to them was in excess of the money they were going to part with. Now, with your additions to the product, they’ll be more likely to buy the product because there is even more value for the price they are going to pay.

However, you should also be aware that consumers are being conditioned to go bonus shopping once they’ve made a buying decision about a product.

This is actually putting the customer in a greater position of power and accelerates their learning curve, results and ability to leverage. The macro effect of this is an expansion in the Internet Marketing marketplace which creates even more opportunities for more people to deliver real value.

This now means that you really need to be a product creator just to be an affiliate marketer. This is so you can add products to your asset base which you can use to offer as bonuses for other products when you promote them. Saying that, there has been an alarming trend in the industry where marketers are giving away products that they once charged $1,000 for. This must be extremely annoying for the buyers that purchased that $1,000 product.

Savvy buyers might even consider that they will have an opportunity to get a product for free if they are patient for a few months and await for that marketer to offer their own product as a complimentary bonus for buying another product they’re promoting as an affiliate through their link.

There are plenty of people out there who are hanging on to the old way of doing things and making some great money from it. Eventually though, other governments will catch up and implement similar restrictions insisting that affiliate marketers make open disclosures about their affiliation.

This means you need to think in advance of how these changes will affect you when the inevitable day has come when these enforcements make you change the way you do affiliate marketing. Doing so now will put you ahead of the curve and give your business an opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

To Your Online Success,

The Profit Share

The mutt's nuts or the dog's drivel? I double dare you to leave a comment! :-)