Introduction
In the past two years, you’ve probably seen the proliferation of “death of” this, that or the other thing. There was the death of online marketing, the death of email marketing…it seems like everything is dying. We’re not claiming the “death of affiliate marketing” or anything silly like that. What we are here to tell you is that affiliate marketing is about to change forever, because…
All off Internet Marketing is changing redically..
That’s true for not only the most common meaning of Internet marketing (i.e. selling digital products to people who want to make money online), but also for all kinds of Internet selling. The bottom line is simple…
Internet selling, and thus affiliate marketing, must change because Internet users are changing dramatically.
Today’s online shoppers are savvier, smarter, more demanding and less patient than they’ve ever been before.
This is a HUGE industry shift…
It’s something that will leave most Internet marketers in the dust.
We have been in the Internet marketing world for a long time. Between the two of us, we’ve sold literally millions of dollars worth of products of all kinds on the Internet to people all over the world.
With that experience under our belts, we can say without absolute confidence that…
You either have to be positioned perfectly to ride the extraordinary wave that’s coming, or you’ll be swept under by it, and your ability to make money online will take a serious hit. If not vanish entirely.
Fortunately, we’re going to tell you exactly how to put yourself in the driver’s seat as this change sweeps the industry.
You’re going to know precisely how to cash in on the change that will kill so many other businesses.
It all starts with understanding the Internet retail revolution that’s going on, so let’s start there…
The Internet Retail Revolution
In the early days, selling on the Internet was very basic. You might say it was like riding a bike instead of flying a plane.
The Internet was brand new. It was novel. People had never seen anything like it, and just about anything would draw their attention.
If you set up a website with some flashing graphics and maybe some music playing, you would probably attract lots of visitors who told you that your web site was cool.
But people forget that selling on the Internet was VERY slow to mature.
In the early days it was a challenge just to get people to buy anything, because they were deathly afraid of having somebody steal their credit card information.
That has died down. People are more than willing to whip out a credit card and buy something online. Or use PayPal, or use a debit card, or pay in other ways.
It’s not a problem anymore.
What’s different now is that Internet shoppers and buyers have become much more sophisticated.
They aren’t impressed as much by flashing graphics or gimmicks.
They’re looking for substance:
• They want to be able to find exactly what they’re shopping for, without having to spend much time looking.
• They want to comparison shop with a few mouse clicks.
• They want the entire process to be convenient.
• They usually want to find bargains.
• Safety is a given for them—they simply assume online buying is safe.
So Internet retailers have grown up. They had no choice.
The most obvious change is that the largest retailers on the Internet today are focusing like a laser beam on customized product search, because that’s what gets the attention of their savvier prospects.
You don’t have to look any farther than the Internet’s number one retailer.
Amazon.com is a perfect example of the massive industry shift that’s going on
If you look at Amazon’s home page, you’ll see obvious evidence of what we’re talking about.
Notice the menu on the left side of the page. Amazon calls that their Departments menu, but the name really doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the menu is there at all…
Its the first step in the customized filtering process that lets shoppers lets Amazon what they want to buy with pinpoint precision
Don’t miss the power of that. And if you dig deeper into Amazon’s site, you can see just how specific this filtering can get:
The filters on the left side are extremely specific. They let a shopper drill down to filter the huge number of products Amazon sells.
As they drill down, they’re telling Amazon exactly what they want to buy.
This is nearly priceless marketing intelligence built into Amazon’s website. It attracts prospects who want to shop, then allows those prospects to tell Amazon what they want to buy.
THAT is the Internet retail revolution right there…and it represents an unprecedented opportunity for you.
You probably already know what affiliate marketing is. It’s when you promote somebody else’s product for a cut of the profits.
Sounds easy, and it really is. It’s actually one of the most popular Internet marketing methods there is.
But the Internet retail revolution is virtually screaming two important messages for Internet marketers with their ears open.
The first message is,
Why in the world are you messing around with information product affiliate marketing when Internet retailers with affiliate programs are like an untapped gold mine?
We hope you get that.
There’s nothing wrong with promoting digital products at ClickBank or elsewhere. Lots of people like digital products. ClickBank commissions can be good and we both have made very nice incomes from promoting downloadable products like ebooks and software.
But the retail affiliate marketing world makes that look like chump change.
It’s sort of ridiculous when you consider the numbers. We’ll talk about that more in a minute.
Before we get to that, here’s the second message of the Internet retail revolution:
Internet selling has gotten PERSONALIZED, and affiliate marketing needs to do the same…
Not to be too blunt about it, but any affiliate marketer who doesn’t understand is doomed.
Personalization is the next big Internet retail wave. You either ride that wave, or you’ll get drowned by it. It’s that simple.
The good news is that if you can figure out how to ride it, you’ll be shocked at how much retail affiliate income you can stack up FAST.
The “hidden” Affiliate Mother Load
Like we said, retail affiliate marketing is kind of like an untapped gold mine for most affiliates.
They really don’t even know it’s there.
Most people who try affiliate marketing naturally gravitate toward digital products, and they completely miss the retail product opportunity.
Seriously, have you really thought about promoting products at Amazon?
You probably shop there, but you probably haven’t thought about promoting products to other Amazon shoppers.
Let us show you what you’re missing…
Amazon.com is the world’s largest Internet retailer. And when we say large, we mean HUGE.
They sold $34.2 billion worth of products last year alone…
And they’ve been growing like a weed every year for a decade…
Now, it’s obvious that you won’t make $34.2 billion in a year by promoting Amazon products.
But the point is, the money to be made is so huge that there’s plenty of room for you to take even a tiny sliver of that pie and still make out like a bandit.
We’re talking about serious affiliate commission checks.
Michael has promoted lots of pretty expensive digital products online, from home study courses to big-ticket coaching programs.
And the commissions from those things have been very good…
That kind of performance has been good enough to win lots of affiliate contests too, which usually means even more cash and prizes…
There’s definitely plenty of profit potential in all of that.
But promoting products at some of the largest retail web sites makes all of that seem like a drop in the bucket.
The markets are so much larger.
The shoppers are so much hungrier to buy.
The seasonal shopping spikes can be so much bigger.
It’s such a fantastic opportunity that your eyeballs ought to be bugging out of your head just thinking about it.
And it doesn’t matter too much what product or product category you want to promote.
You can make heaping piles of affiliate cash all over the place.
Consider just one market, the market for computers and electronics.
This is where people are looking for iPhone accessories, video game consoles, cell phones, laptops and other products like that…
That one market category alone accounts for…$26,475,151,006 And that was just last year.
The income potential from sales of that magnitude is shocking. You can dive right in as an affiliate and cash in.
But here’s the sad truth.
As massive as the income potential is, and as big of an opportunity it represents for affiliates, even the ones just getting started…most affiliates will never be able to own a share of the billions people spend at retail web sites every year.
The reason is simple…they’re doing it WRONG. Don’t misunderstand what we’re saying here. They were doing the best they could with the tools they had, but in the end, the tools they’ve been using just won’t cut it anymore. Once we explain, you’ll understand exactly why.
“Static”is a killer
We already showed you how Amazon lets their customers interactively customize their product search.
That’s a MONSTER revolution in Internet retail, without a doubt. But think about what’s really going on there.
Amazon’s web pages have cool widgets on them, but is that what’s so revolutionary?
Nope, not even close. Yes, the web pages are well designed, and that counts, but cool widgets on a web page aren’t the point.
The big deal is that the page is interactive.
Specifically, Amazon lets prospects dynamically search their product listings to figure out what they want to buy interactively.
And Amazon essentially gets to look over their shoulder while they do it.
Remember that the next big Internet wave is personalization. Well,
Amazon has figured out a way to build personalization into its site without having to guess at what each visitor wants to see
The power of that marketing tool is hard to exaggerate. It’s phenomenal. And it’s completely different from the way most affiliate marketers try to do business, in two very important ways.
Let’s start with ads…
Most people who try to promote any product as an affiliate use online ads to do it, at least some of the time if not most of the time. Now consider the typical Internet marketing advertising approach. It looks like this:
That’s not a bad approach, but there are a few problems with it.
First,
Static Ads Just Sit There!
You have to hope somebody will see your ad and click it. And there’s almost nothing you can do to guarantee that will happen.
As hard as it might be to believe, given how popular Google’s AdWords PPC program is, this kind of static affiliate advertising is going to DIE.
By definition, static ads aren’t interactive. They don’t draw a shopper in at all.
They’re designed to target people who are looking for a highly specific product, and that’s about it.
That’s fine…if you already know what somebody is looking for. When you do know, targeting that one product is smart marketing, because it maximizes your chances of getting an affiliate sale.
But what if you don’t know exactly what somebody’s looking for?
In that case, you don’t want to target a specific product. You might want to target a wider market of people who don’t quite know what they want yet.
Or you might want to give yourself the chance to present a prospect with additional products in a niche when he changes his mind halfway through browsing.
That makes the second problem with static ads pretty obvious…
Static ads don’t let you personalize your affiliate promotions to sweep up today’s savy Internet retail shoppers.
The next big wave, the one every single affiliate should be jumping on, is personalized advertising that draws in today’s savvy shoppers.
If you can capture the attention of those people, you’ll find yourself able to rake in affiliate commission that will bulge your bank account beyond belief.
But static ads give you little or no flexibility to provide a personalized shopping experience.
They definitely are NOT personalized.
If you’re an affiliate trying to create highly targeted ads to drive visitors to specific products, you’re essentially guessing at what a given prospect wants with an approach like that.
Like we said, you’re targeting a very specific product when you use ads that have product-specific “long tail” keywords.
But—here’s the key point—you’ll need to create piles of ads to target every single possible product within a category to maximize your chances of getting an affiliate sale when somebody is just shopping around.
And that brings us to the third big problem with static ads:
They’re WAY to much work
It’s just too hard.
Not only is it hard to set up initially, but it’s also hard to KEEP it up as trends change. New products get hot, old products fade away, and you’re stuck maintaining a bunch of ads that end up needing constant adjustment to keep up with the market.
(By the way, there ARE smart ways to use both static text ads and static banners, but you need to know some powerful “next-generation” techniques to avoid losing money and giving up commissions.)
And the problem gets even worse when you consider where lots of affiliates send people who click their ads.
Review Sites: RIP
Most affiliates who try to promote products at big Internet retailers like Amazon point their static ads to static “review pages.”
You’ve probably seen pages like this targeting products in various niches at Amazon:
Pages like that list some products, include some information about them and might even recommend a “top” product, or something like that. It’s smart marketing to send people to your own website before sending them somewhere to buy an affiliate product. If nothing else, doing that gives you the chance to capture an email address and build your buyer list. But these review sites are just about as static as text ads! They might look nice. They might even be a little bit interactive by giving visitors links to click. But they’re extremely basic. Still, most affiliates trying to promote products at the Internet’s largest retailers are using static ads pointing to pretty much static review pages.
The bottom line is,
That’s yesterday’s affiliate marketing, and it’s going to stop working very soon
It’s going to stop working because it doesn’t support the personalization demands of today’s online shoppers.
Think about how the affiliate marketing world has grown up with the Internet. There have been four phases so far:
1) Promoting Anything With A Commission (late 1990s)
2) Promoting Digital Information Products (early 2000s)
3) Promoting Big Ticket Info Products (late 2000s)
4) Promoting Retail Products (NOW)
The first phase was promoting just about anything that paid a commission. It worked well for most affiliates because the industry was young and novel.
The second phase was promoting digital information products, often targeted at other Internet marketers trying to make more money online. That worked great too, especially as more and more people started to get on the Internet.
The third phase was promoting so-called “big ticket” information products, like home study courses. These were a HUGE hit with the Internet marketing crowd, and there
were some great products that made affiliates a lot of money.
The fourth phase, which we’re in now, is promoting products at the largest Internet retailers, like Amazon.
The problem is,
Affiliate marketers are using Phase 2 tools to promote Phase 4 products
That simply doesn’t work as well as most affiliates desperately hope it will.
The markets they’re going after are completely different from the first few phases of affiliate marketing. And the shoppers in these new markets are much pickier. They have much higher expectations, driven by the Internet retailers maturing in the way they do business.
We told you that there’s an Internet selling wave just starting to reach astronomical levels.
That’s the huge market shift toward personalization at sites like Amazon.
Well, affiliate marketers simply must respond to that. If they don’t, and they stick with
old methods of product promotion, they’ll get left behind.
Tomorrow’s Affiliate marketing Wave
Affiliates have to figure out a way to increase the personalization of their sites if they
want to promote products at the largest Internet retailers effectively.
There’s no real alternative.
Unfortunately, the tools most affiliates are familiar with aren’t going to get them there.
Without question, the next big affiliate marketing wave is going to be figuring out how to…
Personalize affiliate promotions to draw in savvy shoppers and maximize conversions at internet retail sites
Static review sites aren’t going to bridge the gap between today’s techniques and the
intensely targeted individual customization the Internet’s largest retail sites have
conditioned people to expect.
Shoppers demand it now, and they’re only going to demand more.
So what can a smart affiliate marketer do?
The only answer is that you have to get smarter, and your websites have to get smarter too.
It’s no longer enough just to slap up a site in any old niche, even a pretty one, and expect today’s sophisticated shoppers to click your affiliate links. The days of “if you build it, they will come” are over.
Instead, you have to:
• Attract the right kinds of prospects, specifically the people who want to shop interactively
• Give them the shopping experience they want, which means static review pages are out
• Send them to big Internet retailers ready to buy, meaning they already know what they want, and they’re willing to “click through” to purchase
Affiliate marketing has entered into the new Internet retail age, but there’s good news…
The next generation is coming
As affiliate marketers, we have put a ton of research into what works and what doesn’t in
today’s environment. In particular, we have dug deep into the opportunities the largest Internet retailers represent…and we figured out how to do it.
45,624 Amazon.com prooducts and $922,273 in sales later, we KNOW what works
Even better, we’ve created the next-generation tool that will help literally anyone transform themselves into a retail niche affiliate marketing wizard.
Pretty soon we’re finally going to reveal the stealth tool we’ve been developing for months now. There’s no doubt in our minds that it will change affiliate marketing forever.
It’s called…
You’re getting this report as part of our pre-launch for the software, and we’re still putting the finishing touches on a few killer features, so we can’t reveal too much here.
We CAN say this:
• Affiliate Cash Snipers will make it easy, simple and quick to set up next generation interactive affiliate review sites that will shock you with how good they are.
• This tool will make it easy for anyone to essentially “read minds,” find out exactly what people want to buy, and send them directly to some of the largest Internet retailers to make their purchase.
• Forget everything you think you know about affiliate marketing, especially for consumer products…because this is going to change the game.
Get ready for the launch that’s coming soon. Strap in for a wild ride, and be ready to jump on this while you can. It’s going to be limited. The doors won’t stay open forever.
The anticipation is already intense, just from the very few people who have seen Affiliate Cash Snipers.
The Z Code software is live…and after doing a few bets myself and pocketing the cash, I can tell you that this is REAL!
