Product theft is becoming more and more of a problem online even with the low cost tools that are available to prevent it. As an experiment I decided to contact 65 of these vendors to see if they were aware that their download page was exposed to anyone that wanted to steal their product.

My results were kind of what I felt they would be, even if I don’t understand why. I found over 10,000 products that I could download with out paying for any of them and you would be surprised at how many are the so call big guns who just had major launches over the last 2 months.

The email I sent to them:  (I left out the product and name to protect the unprotected)

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 02:10:22 +0000, scubaman wrote:
> I don’t know if you know it or not but people can download your ——
> —— for fee, take a look at this link your on the bottom of page >
>
> If that is not bad enough look at this guys site who is telling everyone
> how to find and  steal products—————–
>
> He is only one of many sites that are putting out this information, for
> some reason they don’t think there is anything wrong in doing this.
>
> Why do I care? I’m an affiliate marketer and this robs money from me as
> well as you the vendor, there are a number of ways to stop this, here is one
> that cost only $27.00 if your interested.    Download Warrior

Here are 2 of the responses,  which one is the Internet Marketer?

1
 Sir,

Your software, nor anyone else’ will keep these people from posting our
product for free across the Internet.  That’s just the way it is.  We
accept it and move on.

Thanks anyways,

xxxxxxxx

2
Thank you for bringing this to my attention

xxxxxxxx  

In away number 1 is correct you can’t stop all theft of a product but you can stop the search engines for posting your download page for all to see, and that is where all of these product are listed, on all the major search engines.
I can understand to some degree the internet marketers prospective on this, Now this is just my opinion, IM products have a very short shelf life and then the information is out dated and not worth much, so they do a big prelaunch have all their buddies hit their list collect there money in the first 2 or 3 weeks and then they don’t care anymore.

Here is where the problem comes in for us as affiliate marketers, we then start spending time and money to promote these products that anyone that knows what to look for can download for free, it cost the vendor nothing so he don’t care, but we as affiliate marketers should care.

I don’t promote very many IM products anymore, and recommend if you are new to affiliate marketing you consider non IM products or only IM products that take the proper steps to protect their download page. With non IM products the people looking to buy are normally unaware the products can be found for free.

Myths concerning affiliate marketing are appealing and attractive.  People who do not know the entire system the wrong way round are prone to believing that it is something capable of giving them great fortune overnight.  Stories concerning affiliates who earn tremendous amounts of money swim in their heads, and while these stories are as true as they can be, there are those who believe that they are going to have the same fortune once they indulge in this particular business.

It is true enough that affiliate marketing is financially rewarding.  People who have gone through everything to be able to succeed in this business are reaping the seeds that they untiringly sowed.  Many of them enjoy the kind of existence that was not possible for them to have had under ordinary circumstances.  Having gone through the A-Z of affiliate marketing, however, these people are the ones who know that while such business is lucrative, there is absolutely no easy money in it.

Ignorance of this fact is one of the main reasons why there are people who fail miserably in the internet business.  There are those who believe in myths concerning the easy money involved in systems such as affiliate marketing.  They do not know that there are those who have wasted time, effort and too many resources in trying to pursue the life of ease that they believe this business will give them.  And so they go into affiliate marketing armed with nothing but myths and fantastical notions of wealth swimming in their consciousness, never realizing that they bound to make mistakes that would prove to be their downfall.

What may be the reason why in businesses such as affiliate marketing, many are called but few are chosen?  Perhaps the answer lies on the fact that many affiliates make mistakes that result from their ignorance of facts concerning how the entire business runs.  Affiliate marketing is not as simple as an affiliate promoting a merchant’s wares through his website and getting paid for it.  It is also about knowing the market and the customers at hand.

Discovering what the most common mistakes affiliates make can perhaps dispel the gloom about myths surrounding affiliate marketing by correcting some wrong notions about it.  It might also be able to make those concerned understand that like any other business, there are dos and donts involved in this one if they want to make each of their steps count.  The first common mistake affiliates make is their lack of knowledge concerning principles involved in their business.  This refers to the affiliate’s knowledge of search engines in particular.

Affiliate marketing involves advertising, and advertising through the internet could not have been better without the existence of search engines.  What every affiliate has to do is to make these search engines his best friend through studying search engine optimization closely.  This way, he is able to know what to do in connection with building a better website to ultimately use for his business.

The second is that affiliates make the mistake of stuffing their sites with banners that do not provide enough information about the product at hand.  The best way to battle this mistake is to provide good content hand-in-hand with such banners.  It is important for customers to know and understand the features of a product, and good content will be able to help them realize this goal.

The third is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting only one product.  Consequently, customers are not given enough options to choose from.  There is also the risk of generating fewer sales as compared to having more options for customers ponder about.  It is always better to give them a few better alternatives than to give them only one.

The fourth is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting too many products.  As a result, customers are confused and end up beyond making a choice.  It is perhaps good to give them only the best choices.  This is because it is ultimately up to them to judge which one is the best for them to patronize.

All in all, affiliates that are doomed to fail in this business are those who do not exert enough effort to understand everything involved in the industry that they are in.  Knowing their path step by careful step will prove to be beneficial to them, as there is no other way to succeed than to go through any path slowly but surely.

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All the products that you want to sell online are ready.  You have already signed up with the Google Adsense program or with other affiliate marketing programs and you have already prepared the ad you want to post on your affiliate’s site.  Your mind is now set to being the next most successful online businessman.  But is there anything else that you might have forgotten to prepare?  Maybe none.  But how about your landing pages?  Are they all set for your business?

Landing pages are simply web pages where visitors are directed to whenever they click a result in a web search or whenever they click a web ad.  For affiliate marketing, landing pages would refer to the web page where you, as a merchant, would want your potential customer to be directed after clicking your ad on your affiliate’s website.  Landing pages are, at most times, nothing really different from other web pages in a particular website, especially if the said website is an e-commerce site.  Some online businessmen would even use the homepage of their websites as the landing page for their ads.  Are these businessmen making a big mistake?  Or should you follow their method in creating landing pages for their ads?

Well, you can always follow what most online retailers do, directing their potential customers to the homepages of their websites.  But if you want to achieve something more from your online business, and if you want to earn a lot of profits, you better create a special landing page for your web ads.  Why?  Here are a few reasons why you need to use landing pages for your web ads.  And take note, it would do you a lot better if you create a great landing page than a so-so one.

Reason no. 1: It is the only way you earn conversions in an affiliate marketing program.

There are a variety of affiliate marketing programs today, but most of these programs let the merchant pay the affiliate in a pay per click basis.  Basically, all you have to do is sign up with the program and submit your ad.  The program owner would then distribute your ad to various affiliates who would then place your ad on their websites.  Whenever your ad is clicked, a visitor would be directed to your landing page and you would have to pay the affiliate for his service.

As a merchant, you earn in an affiliate program through conversions—that is whenever a visitor that is directed to your site actually buys a product on your site.  Without these conversions, you actually earn nothing from the program.  Also, the more visitors that your affiliates have directed to your site, the larger would your expense be.  And the only way that you can recover from these expenses is through conversions.

Now, you sure won’t get any conversion if you have posted an ad on your affiliate’s site without an actual landing page for the potential customer to be redirected into.  It’s just like advertising a product without actually having a store to sell your product.  Your advertisement may be enticing enough to encourage people to purchase a product, but without the landing page, how will they know how to purchase the product

It is therefore important to have landing pages for your ads because it is the only way for you to earn something in an affiliate program.  Without landing pages, all you do is spend money paying your affiliates without actually getting anything in return.

Reason no. 2: Other web pages may just not be enough.

Many people make the mistake of making their website’s homepage as the landing page for their ads.  The same is true for those who make use of other pages like a “contact us” page or a product page.  Homepages are often designed to serve multiple users and contains a lot of links to other pages or to other websites.  The same is with the other two pages mentioned.  If you want to be successful in an affiliate program, we’re sure that you don’t want your landing page to cater to the needs of various people, most of which may not be really interested with your product.

When choosing a landing page, you must always have the customer directed into that page in mind.  Therefore, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and the contents you placed on your ad.  It is also important that the landing page can induce your visitor to take action—that is to purchase your product or at least provide leads for potential customers.

Final Word

You probably entered into an affiliate marketing program with these things in mind: to save on advertising expenses and to gain more profit.  But if you get into an affiliate marketing program without actually having a landing page, you’ll end up paying too much without getting anything in return.  So if you still don’t have a landing page for your ads, you better start creating one now.  And don’t get us wrong; it isn’t enough for you to have just a landing page—it should be a great landing page!
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As an affiliate, you’ll know how hard it can become to continually raise your traffic levels and ultimately your sales.

This is partly due to the fact that very few people are usually seeking out your small mini site that is designed to presell a product.

One of the best ways to get around this constant uphill struggle is to leverage other people and their hard work.

This is done by jumping on the bandwagon of new products and services, and on the general gravy train of well known brands and people. Here’s a few ways to do that…

1. When a new product is launched online, there will always be a period of huge search volumes. These searches come from people using all sorts of keywords to find the products and do their buyer research before handing over their cash.

As an affiliate, this is a great opportunity to get in front of these people as the new products are released to the market, and this works particularly well as keywords relating to new products have less competition in the search engines (making it easier for you as an affiliate to be found).

2. Secondly, you can siphon money off other successful marketers indirectly. This is done by looking at how they are making money and modeling their system.

For example, you could monitor a set of PPC adverts for a specific set of keywords. You would see over a period of time if these people continue to advertise with these keywords and if they do, you can be pretty sure that they are making a profit from their system.

All you need to do is examine how they are making money and model your own business around a similar process (do not copy other people’s work however, as this could land you in court).

3. Post comments and add content to big sites. Spreading your content around the web is one of the most effective ways to get more traffic, but to truly take advantage of the success of others, your aim is to get your content found on the big traffic sites where your target audience hangs out.

This is really easy and there’s plenty of ways to do this…

- Join some forums and leave your website link in your signature box, then start making some useful posts.

- Add comments on social sites such as Myspace, Youtube or Yahoo Answers.

- Or post comments on high traffic, on topic blogs in your niche.

- Or better still, create some high quality content that is totally exclusive and original, then offer that content to a big player in your market for them to post on their website or blog (in exchange for a link back to your website).

As you can see, with so many websites popping up daily allowing you to add your own content (and links) to, there’s an increasing amount of opportunities to get traffic to your website. The key is to get in front of the right people. Do this by leveraging the big players in the same market as you and getting your links seen by THEIR visitors.

If you make the effort with just a few of these techniques, you’ll soon be piggybacking the rich and start seeing your own affiliate cheques rolling in.

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