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DQ News: Why I don’t do product recommendations (or, Naomi blows the whistle)

(I wanted to title this piece “Hey, look! A whistle!” but I was informed by my admin staff that it would be cutesy and self-indulgent. I then suggested adding “Why don’t I blow it?” to the end, and was met with one blank stare and two eye rolls. Thus, the title you see above. Blame my staff. I do.)

So tell me… have you gotten any good product recommendation emails lately?

You ever think they were maybe a tad too enthusiastic to be believed?

Been on Twitter or Facebook and seen normally sane people telling you that a certain product is the best thing they’ve ever seen in their life (even better than that week in Cancun without the kids) and that you must get it right now?

Uh huh.

If you’ve been hanging around IttyBiz for any length of time, you’ll know I used to have a lot to say on the topic of affiliate marketing.

If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is, before I explain it, please take a moment to congratulate yourself on a well lived life.

Congratulations – you are not a sleazy internet marketer.

Affiliate marketing is basically commission sales. Bob puts a link to XYZ Magic Bullet Formula on his website, or reviews it, or maybe heartily recommends it. He goes out on social media and tells everyone he knows how EXCITED he is that XYZ Magic Bullet Formula is available for purchase. He sends you an email telling you how much XYZ Magic Bullet Formula changed his life and his business forever.

Much swooning takes place.

The link he gives you has a unique embedded code in it. If you click on his link and end up buying XYZ Magic Bullet Formula, he gets a substantial cut of the price.

Because of this, he will often run a special promotion telling you that if you buy XYZ Magic Bullet Formula through his special link, he’ll give you something of his own, often something expensive for you to buy, but free for him to give. (Fifteen hundred dollar info-products, anyone?)

IttyBiz has done custom promotions similar to this a few times in the past, albeit for charity. Once we ran a promotion that if you bought a certain product through our affiliate link, we’d give our cut to a charity that builds schools in Cambodia. We did another one giving not only our affiliate share, but the entire purchase price, to Kiva, an organization that provides small loans to ittybiz owners in third world countries.

If the product for sale is physical – books, for example, or electronics – the cut is usually between 5 and 25 percent. If the product is digital or online software, the cut is usually 50%. If you have a bigger “list” like mine, businesses will often offer you a higher percentage based on the fact that you’ll send so many warm leads.

It’s not uncommon for someone to offer me 75%, 100%, or even 110% of the selling price of a product simply because I can send so many people.

It does not require a huge leap of the imagination to guess how this whole mess gets a little out of hand.

To accommodate affiliate payout, prices went up. Customer incentives became ridiculous. Bribes went through the roof.

If you simply send enough traffic to a page with prelaunch content on it, you can “win” an iPad, or an Xbox, or a MacBook. (One promotion I saw offered a Kindle and a Roomba vacuum cleaner “for the lady affiliates”. I’m not joking.)

If you sell enough Product Launch Formula, you not only net $1000 for every copy you sell, you also get a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

If you send the right number of emails during a software launch and you’re one of the top five sellers, you get a higher affiliate percentage, extra “bonus” cash, and the promise of a “reciprocal mailing”.

What’s a “reciprocal mailing”, you ask?

Good question. They’ll send an email to THEIR list recommending anything you want.

Anything you want.

Think about the implications of that for a second.

I buy some software one weekend and the next week I’m going to get an email heavily recommending something the sender may have never even seen. And the next week a different thing. And the next week. And the next week. And one more, for good measure.

Yeah.

Competition was insane. A new product would come out, and a person who was on a lot of mailing lists was getting 10 emails about it.

Ten emails saying it was nearly open. Ten emails saying it was open. Ten emails saying it was about to close. Ten emails saying, no really, it’s ABOUT TO CLOSE. And ten emails next week saying, “because of popular demand, it’s open again! OMG! Gasp!”

It was embarrassing, and terrible for the consumer. (That’s you.)

From a consumer standpoint, you could never trust the recommendations you received. Once you’d been on a few lists for a while, you started to know what it was all about. It’s reached the point where you can barely trust a paperback book recommendation because you don’t know what kind of kickbacks they’re getting.

From an ittybiz standpoint, it got to the point where if you didn’t have anything to bribe an army of affiliates with, you really got left behind. Strong affiliates were naturally going to promote for sellers who could sweeten the pot enough to make it worth their while. Very good products were getting left behind.

Smaller ittybiz owners were making their starter products and pricing them as such – $50, $100, $500 and the like. The stronger affiliates weren’t even looking at those products because while the payout would be comparable – 10 copies of a $2000 product is the same as 100 copies of a $200 product – the bonuses for the former would be incredible, and for the latter, non-existent.

The little guys were getting screwed.

Then we consider that if IttyBiz promoted for someone else, we didn’t ever know what was going to happen AFTER I sent my people. What if the seller went loopy? What if they turned out to be a dirtbag? More than one person in this industry has become quite unsavory after their first taste of real money.

I send you to XYZ Magic Bullet Formula and I have no idea what they’ll do to you afterwards.

Because of all of these shenanigans, I got out of the affiliate game. I canceled my own affiliate program a couple years ago – if you see someone recommending something of mine, they’re doing it out of the good of their heart and not because they’re getting compensated in ANY way – and stopped doing affiliate promotions for other people.

I did several series of promotions last year for Dave Navarro – if you were around at that point, you might remember the Failproof videos – that were very clearly not affiliate promotions. If you bought something, I didn’t make a dime.

(Naturally, this led the known universe to assume we were sleeping together and that I was being paid in sex. Obviously, I neither confirm nor deny. The scandal’s good for traffic.)

Lastly, I don’t like promoting things when I could do a better job of them myself. I have a pack of ninjas here who can make ANYTHING. Why would I sell you Joe’s copywriting course when I can simply make my own, and trust it will be done right?

Anyway, for the first time in years, I’m making an exception.

I’m going to recommend something to you that I truly could not have made better myself – I’m actually taking the class – from someone with leagues more integrity than anyone else in this industry.

It’s called the Creative Entrepreneur’s Roadmap and it’s… a roadmap! For creatives! Who want to be better entrepreneurs! (I love it when they don’t try to get cryptic with the names, don’t you? This is a marketing idiom you should be paying attention to, by the way. It’s better to be clear than clever. Hence, my title change, above.)

I have seen every part of this course. Many of my clients have taken this course. (This is the fourth intake for new students.) So many of the people I know and like have loved this course that I decided to get into it myself. (I did get it free, because Mark wouldn’t take my money.)

Some disclosure: I am very, very good friends with the creator and primary teacher of this course, Mark McGuinness. I’m also close with the rest of the teachers, including Sonia Simone and Brian Clark from Copyblogger Media.

Mark has translated wine lists for me in real, terrifying Chinese restaurants (the ones filled with legitimately Chinese people.)

He has repeatedly rescued me from overwhelming crowds of people.

He gave me a book called the Profanisaurus, a thesaurus of profanity, and wrapped it himself.

(He is also very handsome, which has nothing to do with anything. And he has a gorgeous accent, which has plenty to do with everything, since you could take the audio version of this class if you wanted to.)

I have been on his mailing list for years and I have not ONCE seen him do anything with less than than utter integrity.

The Creative Entrepreneur’s Roadmap is extremely good, and worth far, far more than the purchase price. (He also has payment plans for those who aren’t ready to pay the whole shot at once.)

I very strongly recommend this product, and I don’t recommend ANYTHING. It truly is a roadmap, and few courses I’ve seen can honestly say that.

If you are a creative type in (or trying to be in) business, click here now to get the details.

One of the members of a previous session of this class used what she learned to reach number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list. I’m not saying you’re going to get that, but I am saying this: I’m writing a book too, and I’m thinking about a LOT of things in new ways because of this course.

If you’re a creative type and you’re looking for a roadmap, I heartily recommend this class.

If you want to get in on this session with me, registration closes Tuesday. Join me?

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