Why 1% Is Bigger Than 99% - A Message To Ad Networks & Self-Proclaiming Super Affiliates
Over the last few days I have been getting pounded by IM’s and emails from AM’s (affiliate managers) and brass from networks, most of whom I’ve never even heard of. Why? God only knows. I think someone dropped my name and email info in an atricle or post somewhere, but I have yet to find it and have them remove it. The reason they are after me? Not because of my forum or blog, but because I am labeled as a super affiliate. But what is a super affiliate really? And why is this label being thrown around more and more than ever before? Because it’s the spot that every affiliate wants to be in, and that every ad network wants to attract into it’s network.
Let’s just go over really quickly what used to make someone a super affiliate marketer, and what currently makes someone a super affiliate marketer. Years ago, super affiliates were the guys who never posted on forums, never sold any ebooks or products, never really spoke to anyone outside of their inner circles, never had a blog, never let anyone know who they were either. Suddenly, in the last year or less, there are like a million of them popping out and coming out of the woodwork claiming to be a super affiliate, or selling some piece of crap ebook to gullible webmasters on how to learn how to be one for $97, or just bragging about giant checks. Where the hell did these people come from, and since when are they really super affiliates?!
I’ll let you in on a little secret. You cannot LEARN how to be a super affiliate from an ebook or a forum or even a blog. It’s not something you can read in a book or learn from by watching TV or even attending an expensive seminar. It’s something that you can only become by doing a shitload of trial and error, over and over and over again. It’s like comparing this to being a hedge fund manager or some hot shot lawyer. Do you think they learned it from a few sources? Nope! They may have learned some stuff, but the reason they are at the level they are at right now is because it came from this one magical word, with no shortcuts or quick secret routes to, called…. EXPERIENCE. It’s not something you can learn in school, seminars, books, videos, or from friends. You can only gain it by actually trying it, and being successful, but also failing and learning from your mistakes! So why the hell are people still buying these scam artist ebooks?! I guess the greed, naive, and just plain lazy factors are things that they can’t get over.
Anyhow, back to the topic…
So a year ago, there were a very few bunch of people that were called super affiliates. But now there are tons of them. My theory behind this is pretty simple. Times change. That’s all there is to it. A year ago, is about the time when the ringtone boom started. So now you have alllllll of these guys spamming the crap out of social networks, using PPC, SEO, adware, whatever they can to make bank. And by the old and outdated standards, yes, they are considered super affiliates. The old standard was if you make at least $25k a month in affiliate revenues, then you’re considered a super affiliate. I don’t think that’s true at all anymore. Because we are an internet industry, things change and move pretty damn fast, and so should the minimum requirements or earning platforms for affiliates.
What do Darren Rowse (problogger.net), John Chow (johnchow.com), Lee Dodd (leedodd.com), Aaron Wall (seobook.com), Rosalind Gardner (superaffiliatehandjob.com), Joel Comm (whocares.com), or any of those losers giving the $10k seminars and selling those $97 “tell all” piece of crap ebooks have in common?
THEY ARE NOT SUPER AFFILIATES!!
They may all do well in their own right, not bashing most of them, but they are by no means super affiliates. I consider myself friends with some of them, and I’m not trying to be a prick here, and certainly not discrediting some of them (although some of the others should be), all I’m saying and pointing out is that their monthly and annual income levels are nowhere near what super affiliates are doing, not to mention very few of them actually do any real affiliate marketing. I’m sure I can make the list larger, but I just wanted to point out a few of the more popular ones that people always make references to.
A super affiliate 2.0 should be the following:
- Part of the 1% of all legitimate affiliate marketers (ebooks don’t count!)
- Monthly affiliate marketing revenues should be no less than $250k a month (revenue, not profit)
- Annual profits should be no less than $1 million based on your total affiliate marketing revenues
- You must be hitting the minimums for at least 1.5 years consecutively (to make sure it isn’t a fluke)
With those rules in place, that should cut down all of these bullshit claims by people dubbing themselves as super affiliates. Hell, with my retirement from affiliate marketing, I don’t even meet those standards anymore! But luckily I did, twice, once in adult, and another for 3 years (2003-2006). /end self plug.
So to all of you network reps, AM’s, and fake super affiliates, time to work harder, because finding people that hit the above criteria are pretty tough to find. There are under 1,000 of them in the world. You won’t find them actively posting on forums or blogs (because they have work to do!), you won’t be able to bribe them with higher payouts (they probably get that anyhow), and IM’ing and emailing them because you heard their name mentioned is a really dumb way to present yourself. Treat these people like they are CEO’s of major companies. Would you IM Bill Gates and say “hey, I heard your name from so and so, and they told me you are BIG!”.. only if you want to be blocked or laughed at. No, you approach them with respect, and don’t try to lie to them or give them the run of the mill ad network sales pitch of “well, we have the highest payouts and best converting offers” because EVERY network advertises that, and I for one am sick of seeing and hearing it. Generic pitches don’t work! Just be respectful, and honest, because by earning their respect for you, just getting 2 or 3 of these guys on board your network will make you more than all of your other affiliates combined on average!
To all of you self proclaimed super affiliates… Grow up. Stop lying to yourself, and get busy, instead of trying to trick everyone into liking you because of how much or how little you earn. Flaunting and bragging can get you only so far with the type of people you probably don’t want or need to impress. Want to impress someone and keep them reading your blog? Stop pretending to know what you’re talking about, trying to sell them shit, and start doing it on your own and reach that super affiliate status! It’s not THAT hard. Yeah, it takes work, but hell, everything does! And you also have to play the volume game and scale the hell out of your operations. Not to mention you can’t just depend on one single market or niche or even traffic source. Diversifying is your friend!
/end rant
So the moral of the story really is that ANYONE really can become a super affiliate. Sure it can be intimidating, but then again, what isn’t when it deals with being successful. I’ve said this loads of times.. if you find something that works really well, keep it to yourself or inner circle of friends, and play the volume game by scaling the crap out of it! You’ll never be BIG if you don’t take chances or gamble a bit. Make sure you do all of your trial and error, and your market research with things on a small or medium level too. You don’t want to screw something up by growing too quickly either. This whole thing takes time, and don’t be a lazy idiot and say you don’t have time or patience, because there are people sitting on death row right now with more time and patience and some optimism of being free than most affiliates have with making lots of money some day. Also, please stop buying these stupid ebooks on how to be the next millionaire on your block. They are a waste of money, and I promise you they won’t teach you anything that you can’t learn for free on a forum.
That’s it from me. Another long whinded post. But seriously. Instead of saying you agree or disagree, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Nothing will work out itself. So set your goals to a normal level, read, practice, read, practice, read, practice.. and when you’ve worked out YOUR own strategy, write it down, keep it to yourself, and add some volume and take some chances with it. If you fail, so what, we all do, just try again and this time you’ll have learned from your mistakes. Trust me, I make a ton of mistakes, sometimes pretty costly, but that only makes me want to try harder to get it right, and it should too for you!
Totally agree…
thanks for sharing….
Back to work. First thing’s first. I’m going to go and hack the shite out of my RSS reader. Reading all these “super affiliate” feeds is taking up my whole day.
I think I’ll just wait till super affiliate 3.0 comes out.
This is in line with the Carlton Sheets business model.
There are ‘entrepreneurs’ out there that have learned that people want the ‘quick fix’ and will pay $97 to get it.
Carlton may have made some coin flipping real estate, but he made serious cash-money-gold by selling his ’secret formula’ or whatever the hell he calls it, to suckers looking for the quick fix.
Same goes for affiliate marketing. You don’t have to be a genius to find info on Google, blogs and forums and stick it into and e-book and then market it as the ‘magic bullet.’
I learned how to play the affiliate game and make real money by reading, researching and conducting serious trial and error tests…But I have no intention of pimping my knowledge to desperate n00bs looking for a quick buck.
I could, but won’t.
The marketing of information is not new. Anywhere you find success, you’ll find snake-oil salesmen telling others how to duplicate it for substantial profit.
Enough said.
BTW, I think Aaron’s book (and Aaron as a dude) are remarkable and top-shelf.
The rest, can’t say because I don’t care.
Rocker
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Revenue Rocker Blog Coming Soon
250k a month revenue is a stupid statement. I’d rather make 200k a month and do no PPC, than make 250k a month and spend 150k on PPC.
Great Piece!
New phase there “super affiliate 2.0 “?
I agree with much of this.
I would say this about ebooks though. Yes, many are hype and fluff - since barrier to entry for this market being rather low. But IMHO some are worth reading - especially if you’re new to the scene. The decent ones can save you a bit of time hunting around the net. Depends on how much you value your time.
I personally don’t care how I get the info - as long as it is valid. The real key is to understand that nothing will provide the holy grail with everything you need to know on a platter (there is a lot of crappy misinformation on forums too). At the end of the day as you say, you just gotta do it, look at your results, adjust and keep on going.
Strange but true. I thought blogs like What do Darren Rowse (problogger.net), John Chow (johnchow.com), Lee Dodd (leedodd.com), Aaron Wall (seobook.com), Rosalind Gardner (superaffiliatehandjob.com), Joel Comm (whocares.com) are all the great names on the Internet who make it big time running online businesses. It seems my daily discovery there has been fruitful. Another guy who is making big bucks and he’s not telling anything, but just try and error …Thanks Jon. Nice to meet you.
This is a very interesting post! Where do we draw the line between Super Affiliates and Performance Marketers. My company, incuBeta (www.incuBeta.com), owns a Super Affiliate PPC marketing business, called Clicks2Customers, Inc. (www.clicks2customers.com), and this business alone will generate over $10m this year in revenues.
We employ over 30 staff in Clicks2Customers alone, and nearly 100 in the Group (although granted, the other staff are in other businesses non-affiliate related, that we’ve either built up or acquired).
We also recently raised a round of funding for acquisitions and an IPO next year.
Again, my question: Where does the line between Super Affiliate and Performance Marketer begin and end. I started the business in a bedroom and eventually it morphed into the company it is today. The business was started as an affiliate marketing business, and still works closely with CJ, Linkshare, etc.
I’m not sure where the line is, actually, but it’s very different to the businesses you mention in your post - and no, we don’t sell eBooks!
Vinny Lingham
http://www.vinnylingham.com
Vinny-
I think there is a line drawn between a super affiliate and a company who promotes through affiliate products or networks.
In your case, you wouldn’t be a super affiliate per se, because you’ve made a company out of it and you are planning on going public, so it’s more than just a one man show type of affiliate deal. Whereas when I was doing it, even with taking on a partner, we were small, and never wanted to branch out and create offices here and there or outside funding to go public.
But goodluck to ya on your IPO. I met you at ASW, and poked fun at you for 2 minutes about how I was beating your ass on the SERPs for the whole “affiliate blog” niche!