March 30

There’s a Sucker Warned Every Minute

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As promised I’m opening up my site to others in the space
to post their thoughts and opinions, and today I’d like you
welcome Thierry Martin of Benzinga.com.

Enjoy the article, click his links, and COMMENT!!

There’s a Sucker Warned Every Minute

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First of all thanks Brad for being open-minded enough to expand your
blog to include the “competition.”

Of course, I don’t really see other affiliate managers, launches or
programs as competition at all. We all eventually share the same
affiliates and end up promoting each other’s offers, with swaps and
webinars.

Most financial-product-based affiliates need to promote more than just
one program to stay afloat in the choppy waters of affiliate marketing,
and I see the same names appearing on every leaderboard sooner or later.
So it makes sense to share information rather than hoard it – all
publishers benefit from a healthy affiliate market.

Our niche has seen some challenges in the last couple of years, as
the “Jeff Walker style” launch formula that seemed to work for everyone
stopped producing the same outstanding results for most of the players.
I can point to a few reasons for this – a big influx of new players on
the publishing side producing increased competition for the newbies’
dollars and a sharp increase in the target audience’s ability to detect
and avoid the clowns who sell junk and couldn’t trade their way out of a
paper bag.

This has created a situation where we have an uphill battle, where all
of us, publishers and affiliates alike, have to counter the skepticism
of an audience that has been abused with promises of easy money gained
with little (or no) effort.

When I started out as a financial affiliate, there were very few
services available for the masses of people flooding into the online
trading world. The audience was starving for content, and just about
anything would sell in those days.

As the potential audience grew, most of the marketing by independent
publishers then shifted to a “get rich doing very little just by trading
stocks” style. Like the Nigerian “you have inherited $2 million bucks”
emails, it doesn’t take too long for the word to get around that this is
a scam.

So maybe there is a sucker born every minute. When that phrase was
coined, the internet wasn’t around for people to compare notes and get
advice. Now the “suckers” can be warned to stay away from garbage
systems with outrageous promises and misleading, if not outright
dishonest stats.

I am happy to see that the audience in the stock trading niche finally
moving from get-rich-quick systems to actual financial education. It’s
not as easy to make a sale, but this as a positive direction for the
industry, with the end result being a more transparent marketplace where
the customers get what they are promised, the refund and chargeback
rates are very low, and the customer retention is higher. Upselling
works because the customer is getting what they were promised and paid
for so they trust the publisher.

And the challenge for affiliates to survive in this rapidly changing
world is to adapt to the audience shifts. Quality lists and traffic with
real relationships are a must, as email spam filtering has made it
harder for everyone to reach new prospects.

As the marketplace changes direction, top quality programs, like Brad’s
John Carter service, are getting more of the sales that used to go to
those heavily hyped and often dishonestly marketed programs.

Now that I have properly plugged Brad’s service (just kidding, I mail
for it myself as an affiliate, and it IS awesome) I want to invite any
affiliates who are looking to diversify to the affiliate program I have
been managing at Benzinga / Marketfy for over a year now. We have a
system in place with trades being “verified” and a multitude of
different services offered so we have something for everyone. You can
check out our main page here http://marketfy.com/ and you can sign up
for the affiliate program here http://benzinga.postaffiliatepro.com/affiliates/index.php
if you think we are a good fit for your lists or traffic.

We have a webinar you can promote as well as multiple services,
funnels and landing pages we constantly test and improve. Hope
to see you there making commissions!


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