Mark Ling of Affilorama dropped by to give his thoughts on my post concerning joint ventures among the guru clans (see comments in previous post). He was quick to point out that my thinking on JV’s is not entirely correct. It was pretty cool to have someone with Mark’s experience to give us a different perspective on how the game is played.

Mark indicated that:

“You are not entirely correct about what you are saying though. Right off the bat his argument is questionable. But let’s continue.

I believe that MOST good affiliate marketers with large lists demand to be able to test drive the product they are promoting before they recommend it to their list, at least virtually all of the people I have ever JV’d with have been this way.

Which means that even though they promote lots of products, most of the products are great.”

Well I am glad that there is some sense of, dare I say, morality being practiced in the black arts of affiliate marketing. I suppose I did make an assumption that most of these big list marketers really have no interest other than to make a buck. And if you look at the volume of email that I get, from the same blokes, you would have to wonder how they could possibly have time to review all the stuff and make an honest assessment. So the product might be great, but can it make me money? The guru gives you the hard sell but do they actually use it to make money? Who knows? And maybe it doesn’t matter since something I do could make me money and keep you in the poor house.

I swing on numerous pitches, especially ebooks, and have just found them to be junk. I ask for and get a refund on most. I guess you get what you pay for. I mean I haven’t shelled out $100 for John Reese’s newsletter. Too expensive. But what does that mean? How much time and money have I wasted otherwise when that type of product could be all that changes my business for the better?

I suppose that is the reason that I keep buying product and memberships. In the hope that this one will be the one that clicks the light on. But it also works against me because I may not give something enough time to actually work out before I get seduced by the next sexy thing.

Mark says that if an idea increases sales 2% then it was worth it. Maybe I need to temper my expectations when buying these products. Despite what the 57 page sales copy says about being the next member of the five figure holy grail of monthly goodness (FFHGOMG), I should be happy that I get a couple of ideas and build upon that to achieve FFHGOMG enlightenment.

So I buy what I can afford and am disappointed when the product doesn’t deliver. Come to think of it, I’ve bought what I couldn’t afford and got screwed with that as well.

A little help over here. Please?!

[tags]Affilorama, Affilate Marketing, Adsense, Internet Marketing[/tags]