Hi Marshall and Gary here

Life is pretty hectic here at Small Business Internet Marketing.  It is amazing the number of small businesses that we come into help who do not have a website, or have a very poorly optimised website, or are having the most cost inefficient Adwords campaign run that you have ever seen.  These are generally a symptom of not having an internet strategy and doing things piecemeal.

Anyway, today it is about affiliate selling online.  As you are probably aware, affiliate selling would be one of the biggest drivers in the growth of the internet.  The fact that so many products today are available digitally mean that the owners of the products are happy to pay away large commissions to sell their product.  This is because once produced, the cost to provide the product is quite often only the bandwidth to download it.  In fact, most internet courses (you know – make $5,000 a week from home for 4 hours work) recommend that you do not deal with products that pay less than 60% commission.   Many internet marketing based offerings pay at 75% – have a look at http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm and search the internet category.

Yes – when someone buys a $67 product online, generally the affiliate will get $45 and the product owner $22.  The product owner is happy because there may be 100 affiliates selling the product, the affiliates are happy because they are making good money.  No problems – the affiliate is normally not disclosed here.  And because the purchaser is not paying any more to buy through the affiliate than if they bought direct, no-one loses (although you could mount an argument that all affiliate products are overpriced to allow for affiliate commission).

When you market as an affiliate to a list, the question of disclosure becomes a bit trickier.  If you have created your own list through your own marketing activities, you have every right to affiliate sell to them and undisclosed.  Provided the product price is not loaded, the people on the list who buy the product are not disadvantaged.

When you are a member of a body (professional, industry, network, etc), the answer, to us at Small Business Internet Marketing at least, becomes much clearer.  To offer affiliate products to this list without disclosing the fact that you may make money from it is pretty unethical.  Just because you have a commonality to other people through a professional or other association does not make them fair game to profit from!

Without exception, the message through the list from the affiliate seller is about how great the product is and how you have to use it.  Whilst the product indeed may be as good as promoted, the question mark is inevitably – “do they really think it is a great product, or do they really like earning the commission?”.  Unfortunately, you never know because you do not even know that they are affiliate selling – unless they disclose it.

So, if they choose not to disclose it, how can you tell if it is an affiliate sale?  It can be tricky, but here are a few hints to look for:

1. Half the time the nature of the communication gives it away.  If it talks about internet opportunities, great value, limited time offer, I have searched and found this great product, etc – it is a fair chance that this is affiliate selling.
2. The affiliate has to put a URL link in the communication. The not so internet savvy affiliate may just use the link that the affiliate program provides.  We saw one of these recently like www.thewelloffhaffiliate.com/?A_BID=Qq8PCpaD.  The code after the forward slash is their affiliate code.  Pretty obvious when you know what to look for.
3. The next level up is where a masking URL is used like TinyURL.  TinyURL and similar products are great, we use it ourselves all the time.  It turns a long and ugly URL into a neat short and unique URL to click on.  However, if you look at www.tinyurl.com you will see a suggested use is that “your affiliate link will be hidden from the visitor..”.  This is harder to spot, but keep a close eye on the bottom left of your internet browser and see if when the destination site is found, does a list of numbers or letters like in “/ADQ1342KZ” flick pass.  If so, you can bet your bottom dollar that it is an affiliate link.
4. When the URL in the communication takes you to an innocuous looking site and there is no forward slash at the end of the URL, chances are it is a sales page.  These are designed to get your name and email address to push market to.  Hover your mouse over the “click here to sign up” banner.  Then look down to the bottom left of your browser – again you may see a URL.  If it has the giveaway “/promo/gj123″ or similar, it is an affiliate sale – again.  Or at worse, just click on the link and watch the bottom left hand corner.
5. While we are looking at the bottom left hand corner – anything that flashes pass like Clickbank, Clixgalore, CommissionJunction or the like – definitely an affiliate sales as these sites are basically a clearing house for affiliate programs and sales
6. Lastly – repetition of similar email messages.  A lot of internet marketing based affiliate programs have a launch date and a close date.  Communication tends to ramp up to the launch date and the message becomes a little more assertive like “don’t miss this one in a lifetime opportunity”, “how amazing the opportunity is”, “no brainer”, etc.

A final point on all this.  Many internet marketing affiliate sales process have the ubiqitious “free offer” up front.  You can accept sign up for this without having to pay anything.  You will undoubtedly then be led to another sales page offering the best deal ever where you only pay $67 but get $4,946 of value.  Buy this, the affiliate gets their 50/60/70% commission.  Alternatively it is a free 30 day subscription and then $27 a month thereafter.  If you don’t buy it, you will be on another mailing list until you unsubscribe.

We have seen a recent offer where although the free offer was significant, if you read the affiliate program blurb, it had 14 ways to earn income (or monetise in internet speak) the free offering.  This again leads to the question – are they helping you via the free offer or are they profiting from you by using the free offer as the hook to get you in to then monetise you 14 different ways?

When should someone disclose that they are an affiliate – Small Business Internet Marketing will leave you to be the judge of this but at least you now have a few tools to spot it.

Your business buddies

Marshall and Gary

PS We do have affiliate sales offers, those on the side of this page are exactly this like BlueHost and Aweber.  But they have no loaded cost and we do not sell to any professional network, just those who take our recommendations for what they are – the best value we can find online.