Affiliate Target [review]
POS:
None that I can seeNEG:
Not a viable tacticToday Im taking a look at Affiliate Target a new software product by Daniel Ashendorf So what is Affiliate Target. Well first let me start by showing you want it claims to be. It claims to be a software that lets you “Legally Steal Millionaire Gurus’ Most Valuable Secrets”. So what does it actually do? […]
Today Im taking a look at Affiliate Target a new software product by Daniel Ashendorf
So what is Affiliate Target. Well first let me start by showing you want it claims to be. It claims to be a software that lets you “Legally Steal Millionaire Gurus’ Most Valuable Secrets”.
So what does it actually do? Well the basic concept is this:
If your a product creator you are probably going to want to get affiliates to promote your product for you. The thing is that about 90% of the affiliates out there are not so great. In fact the vast majority of the sales come from the top 5-10% of the affiliates that you have.
What this software does is let you enter keywords related to your product into it and then it will search for affiliates of that product and pull their contact information such as their email and social media accounts so you can then contact them and ask them to promote your product.Im my testing this product most often returned Google Plus information and allows you to follow the users on G+.
Sounds good? Umm no. Sounds really bad. This is a spamming tool. Sending unsolicited requests to promote your product is not only ineffective its a good way to annoy the affiliate and ensure that he does not promote for you. I have worked with a lot of top affiliates and I can say for sure that this is not how its done. You cant just message an affiliate, especially a top performing one, and expect them to just suddenly want to promote your product.
This guy claims that this is a best guarded secrete. Well its obvouse that he has no idea how affiliate marketing really works. Honestly only newbies approach a good affiliate cold like this and try to send them unsolicited requests to promote their products. People who actually understand how affiliate marketing works know that you need to build a relationship with an affiliate before asking them to promote for you. They are after all doing you a favor. They are endorsing you to their customers. They can do this with any of a hundred product creators asking them every day to promote for them. Anyone who honestly thinks just bugging them out of the blue with a affiliate request is going to do anything other than annoy them is fooling themselves.
Some other things that jumped out at me on the sales page also showed me that the creator of this product has no idea what he is doing in the IM business. For example I noticed this:
First of all the whole idea of using affiliates is not to drive massive traffic at all. Anyone can drive massive traffic for pennies. But it will be bad traffic and will have a very low conversion rate on your offer. The point of affiliate marketing is to drive good traffic. You drive good traffic by convincing the affiliate that your product is a good purchase for their list and getting their endorsement. A good affiliate might send you 500 clicks only to your offer. This is hardly massive traffic. But those clicks will convert well because of the relationship that the affiliate has with those people.
The second thing that is wrong with this statement is the part about “without massive cost”. This cant be further from the truth. Affiliates send sales and they expect to be pad well. At a minimum a affiliate is going to want 50% of the sales price, with you covering all the transaction costs. Many want more than that and can often demand up to 70% or more. This is expensive, but you make it up with volume so its worth it.
As I said its obvouse just from the sales copy and from the fact that this guy actually made a software to help you spam affiliates that he is totally new to this business. But I wanted to make sure I was correct about this before I said it so I spoke to the creator of this product on Facebook where he told me that this is his first launch ever.
He also told me that he has no affiliate sales. Kind of funny this guy has no experience as either a product creator or a affiliate marketer and here he is creating a ‘system’ that is going to provide you with the “Guru’s most guarded secret”. I actually continued this conversation with Daniel and tried to explain to him that the concept of this software is not a solid tactic, but he refused to listen to me. Ah well I tried.
The software itself was fairly well done. The interface is very clean and I was glad to see that there was a training video built right into it as well as a way to contact support directly via email. However there where some strange things. For example in the lower right of the screen is a drop down to select the language you want. But it only has one choice (English). If it only has one choice then why even have a option drop down in the first place? Also when testing this software I came across a on screen PHP error. Given that I’m a developer myself I know very well that its almost impossible to write 100% bug free software (which is why updating it is so important) however this error happened when I was just using the software as it was designed. I wasn’t doing anything unusual. This makes me think that the software may not have been well tested with a group of beta testers before it was released.
My final word on this one. Don’t walk away from it. Run. Spamming affiliates is not a viable tactic for getting traffic. Buying software to spam affiliates from a product creator with no experience in the IM business is not a wise investment. If you really insist on bugging affiliates to promote for you then simply head over to MunchEye and pick some people launching products (about 90% of them are also affiliates for other products) and grab their contact info for free and go ahead and send them an unsolicited message. However be warned your not going to get a very good response doing this.
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A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.
About the Author
I had wanted to give this product a try but it seem it doesn’t worth it. By the way, what’s the difference between this and jvgenie – also a software that helps find affiliates. Any idea on that? Thanks.
Im sorry I have never heard of JV Genie. Either way though its a bad tactic to just contact potential affiliates out of the blue. Honestly the best way to get an affiliate to notice you is to send them a few sales to their own launches.
Thanks for another detailed review. If you have time could you take a look at this wp plugin – VideoNova … its on jvzoo . It’s a wp video player plugin with some cool monetization features like .. youtube style video ads, banners, overlays etc.
The sales page said it’s “Mobile Responsive and Compatible” which is the only reason I purchased it because I would like a player like this for my mobile apps & websites. I tested it out & from what I can tell it only works on desktops 🙁
I look forward to getting your feedback on this one … if you have the time. 🙂
Thanks.
I actually just got review access to this and I will be releasing a review on it Monday morning.
Thanks Brett. I’ll hold off on getting a refund until after your review. 🙂
I published the review early for you 🙂
http://brettrutecky.com/Software-detail/videonova-review/
Brett,
Than you for reviewing my product.
I hope you dont mind me commenting on your review:
1. I did explain that although this is my first launch on JV Zoo, I run a $1 million company selling physical products online, and that I used the same tactics to find affiliates for company. Hence this was a tried and tested idea
2. You call contacting affiliates with a product “spamming”. I call it “Business Development”. It will be a sad day for commerce when direct selling, prospecting, reaching out, call it what you will, become spamming. Spamming is defined in Wikipedia as “the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages (spam), especially advertising, indiscriminately”. My product is far from this – its rather an individual email to potential distributers, not spamming.
3. I interviewed a number of successful internet marketers prior to releasing the product, and they all started by contacting affiliates with their offer. As my facebook says (the one you copied) “we gotta start somewhere, right”?
Thanks Brett.
Regards
Dan
Dan, contacting someone unsolicited is spamming. You can try to use a nice word all you want but its still spamming. Period. Also as I told you selling physical products online or offline has no bearing on affiliate marketing they are two different things. You refuse to accept this fact and its that ego attitude that is going to be your shortcoming. As I told you this type of tactic is NOT effective. If hearing that from a successful product seller AND affiliate still does not convince you then just look at your own results. As of this writing you have sold less than 50 copies of your own product and you have gotten less than 1000 clicks to its sales page. Your going to insist that you know what your doing and going to tell people how to get sales to their launch yet your own launch is a total fail. You seem like a nice guy but you really need to put your ego aside and 1) accept that you dont know this business and 2) start listening to people who try to help you. I wish you all the best of luck, with your ‘I know everything’ attitude (despite the fact that you have no experience and have failed in your one launch attempt) your really going to need it.