Note: After writing this I realized that I’m making a huge assumption about you, the reader – you want to be honest with your visitors and make money while providing value through your advertising and affiliate programs. If you just want to make money hard-selling them whatever you can, you won’t like this article.

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I’ve been working on an interesting article for this blog about how the people who make the big bucks online get it done. I’ve hung around DNForum and Sitepoint an some of the other forums where these guys (and gals) hang out, and I’ve been Private Messaging, Instant Messaging and even speaking on the phone with some of them.

Your relationship with your customers is based on trust, regardless of your business. Trust is even more important in cyberspace or the blogosphere, because you never really know who is behind the words that are being typed and what they are up to behind that keyboard (I am in my pajamas right now sipping my second cup of coffee while my German Shepherd is nuzzling my leg).

Clickbank makes a bucket of money selling information, including ebooks, reports and software. Some of the people I have spoken to are making thousands of dollars a month recommending ClickBank products.

Many of the people I’ve spoken with make a lot of money (as in tens of thousands of dollars a month) recommending ClickBank products to people.

I think this is terrific. Where I start to squirm is when people put up a site that purports to recommend ClickBank-related products based on personal endorsement, meaning that they claim to have used the product and recommend it.

Here’s some text from a ClickBank landing page:

I have found a proven method anyone can implement to very easily earn an extra $500, $1,000 or even $5,000+ every single week, with only 15 minutes of your time, and create a significant ongoing monthly income. This method is a no-nonsense, set it and forget it system, which will virtually run on 100% autopilot. People just like you are earning enough money to quit their jobs within the first month. Stop worrying about the bills, cancel your daily commute, never leave your family for a job that is making someone else rich, and start living your life the way YOU choose!
This well guarded System has never been revealed until now!

Would you spend $40 to get this program? I can tell you without reading to the bottom of the page that it doesn’t work. How? After twenty years in the business world I can tell you that it’s not going to happen the way this guy says.

But he is pushing all of the buttons, and there are a lot of people out there making big bucks helping people flush $40 at a time down the toilet. In fact, the paragraph above is from the top program in a certain ClickBank category.

When something appears on your website you are making an endorsement of that product or service, which links you forever to that product or service. Making a recommendation based mostly or solely on reward is unethical. In fact, there is a lot of talk about increasing clickthrough by blending advertisements with content. This is just another way of abusing the relationship you have with your visitors, which is why it is against the Terms Of Service for most ad programs (including AdSense).

I spoke with someone who is making almost $10,000 a month doing just that. People believe they can make a quick killing out there (this guy actually is), and they are willing to pay big bucks to learn how. This seems to lower their trust barrier. As soon as someone who looks semi-credible endorses a product, they shell out the money to buy it. What they don’t understand (or what is obfuscated) is that the person making the recommendation has a vested interest in selling it to you.

He places strongly worded reviews of ClickBank products on his web site. They look like content, but they are just big advertisements for the products. I asked him if he has ever looked at the products he recommends. He hesitated and said Some of them. I asked him how many, and he said A few. and chuckled.

He obviously doesn’t care what he sells to people, and doesn’t value the trust he built with his visitors by getting them to his pages. You should.

Does this mean you shouldn’t recommend ClickBank products? Absolutely not. But here are a few tips:

1. Try the product before you put it on your site or blog. An endorsement implies that you use the product. Make sure you know it’s something you want to attach your name to. If you don’t have the time or money, Google [product name] review, and see what people have to say about the product. If the website is just a pile of links or a bunch of breathlessly positive reviews, find another site. I also always Google [name of product] sucks, to see if there are any angry people out there. If someone takes the time to put together a negative web page or two, they’re pretty mad.

2. Look at the landing page for the product and make sure you can handle it. I would never, ever point my visitors to the landing page I excerpted above.

3. Make sure the company doesn’t bypass its own affiliates. I’ve noticed that this does happen. Type a clean (no clickbank subdomain or affiliate code) URL to the site in your address bar. See if the price is the same as the affiliate coded price. If it’s lower, that means the company is selling the same product cheaper to people who come without an affiliate code, which is dishonest. Someone who is dishonest with their affiliates isn’t someone whose book I want to read or software I want to use.

4. Visit the forum or feedback area for the product. You can get some great insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the product from a product forum. If a lot of people are saying a feature isn’t there or doesn’t work, chances are that’s true, and you don’t want your visitors angry at you because the product is lousy.

5. See what webmasters are saying about the product. Visit SitePoint or DNForum and search for the product. See what others are saying about it. Again, remember that some people may have an interest in being overly positive.

6. Send an email to the person who wrote the software or book. I like to do this. Ask what the average ClickBank chargeback rate is, when the last time the software or book was updated, or any other question that might interest you. If you get an evasive response or no response at all, don’t recommend the product.

7. Make it clear that you are an affiliate of the program you are flogging. Even if it’s elsewhere on the page, it’s the right thing to do.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 18th, 2006 at 4:31 pm.
Filed under Affiliate Programs.
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