First post: A couple questions

[Peter Alawii]

Hi everyone,

So as a complete beginner in this field, I've been doing quite a bit of research, trying to figure out how this works. A lot of questions have come up.

One of the first sites I discovered was Clickbank of course. I had no idea these Market Places websites existed, I thought it was such a brilliant business model. But then, scrolling through the various opportunities, I got a strange feeling.
I've read a few things about web marketing techniques, SEO or SEM. And when I look at a site like Clickbank, I don't really know what to think. It just felt like the vast majority of the products an affiliate can sell are a little bit weird to say the least.

You check out a product and you wonder if it's for real, that's how much "scam" is written on it in my opinion.
For instance, the numerous "Enlarge your male organ while printing money", "Get yourself 6-pack abs in only one week", or the usual "Our Forex system averages a 2500% ROI per year." Basically I'm left wondering if there are any reasonable/decent/promising products on that site.

An other question I had is how many sites offer the same concept? Is there a site specialized in retail products?
Also, do any of the available markets apply some kind of policy over the products they accept to put online?

I did read a few posts about landing pages and I found a very wide range of opinions. To some people, the typical CB product landing pages seem to strike them as suboptimal, not too appealing, and poor-looking overall. To others it's just a matter of what sells and what doesn't, and they've found that those landing pages do sell.

Last question: I saw an old post from Linda Buquet where she put a link to a free copy of Jeremy Palmer's ebook but it isn't working anymore. Is it still available somewhere?

Looking forward to your replies. Thanks in advance.

Peter

 

[victorm]

Welcome to the forum, it is great you took time to do your research and ask yourself these questions - I think you have already found some of your own answers.
To get the other side of things on e-books, I found this thread very informative

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Peter,

Welcome to 5 Star. Thanks for joining us.

I'm personally not a big fan of ebooks for many of the reasons you mentioned although many affiliates start there and some say they do well there. I'm sure Clickbank does have some legitimate or even half way decent products, I'm just not sure how to find them with all the noise and hype.

"An other question I had is how many sites offer the same concept? Is there a site specialized in retail products?"

The sites that specialize in retail products are called affiliate networks. The biggest/best are Commission Junction, Google Affiliate Network, Shareasale and Linkshare. Between them they offer millions of product from thousands of retailers including big names like Macys, Walmart and almost every major retailer. Commissions aren't as high as they are on ebooks because the products have hard costs and aren't info products.

Best advice is read the stickies in our newbie forum about getting started. Then work on finding a good niche topic to focus on. Then find the right products that people interested in your niche may want to buy.

Hope this helps and best of luck! Ask questions along the way.

 

[Peter Alawii]

Thanks so much for the replies. I will check the stickies most definitely. And thank you for posting a link to that thread victorm, interesting stuff.