SiteSell Blog

Top 10 Lessons Learned From the Affiliate Summit

Ken's Blog

We just got back from Las Vegas and the Affiliate Summit yesterday. I'm glad to be home, though. I was getting withdrawal from being away from our SBI! forums (SBIers -- click here to login).

It was quite a show.

Several SBIers dropped by to say hello. It was great fun to meet in person. But I was amazed to find that several of them worked at large companies (including one Web hosting company) at the show! Coooool.

Everyone did a tremendous job. We had a bit of fun with the "long tail" approach as our marketing message. The key approach to affiliate managers is that they have a long tail, which is of course the 98% of their affiliates who do virtually nothing. So, we said...

"Send them to us. We're the cure."

Play Within Yourself... In Golf, Internet Marketing, and Life

Ken's Blog

This post picks up where my last post about "Mooch Marketing" left off. That post explained how Master Mooch Manipulators sell products and services at ridiculous prices to "mooches," the gullible who would love to believe that they, too, can be the Tiger Woods of Internet Marketing.

They show you "Tiger Woods" (i.e., THEIR own success story) and we'd all love to play golf like Tiger (speaking metaphorically), right? But they aren't teaching you how to swing like Tiger. The problem is that none of us has that type of talent. All they actually sell with that dream is a shiny-but-broken putter... for the "incredible act-now-before-the-price-goes-up/limited-seats-available" price of "only" $3,000.

How do they get away with it? Well, we would all really love to believe that we really could do that... if only we knew "the secret." And the willingness to buy into that dream causes us to pay crazy amounts for that broken putter. Result? Broken dreams.

But there's always the next time. Ah, "the next time" ...

People who have paid once for these false promises are extremely valued clients. Known as "mooches" by these relentless marketers, their names are traded on lists and cross-sold ruthlessly. Continuing with golf as the analogy, here's my best advice on how to maintain perspective and resist these dollar-sucking exercises in futility...

Success Stories and Mooch Marketing

Ken's Blog

I've been thinking a lot about Mooch Marketing since I first posted on it. One of their favorite techniques is "the success story."

These success stories/testimonials are either "false impressions" or "true but tricky" (they are the success!) Let's talk about the latter in some detail after a quick review of the former...