If you’ve been looking at starting an online business for a while, you’ve probably seen several different business models floating around. Probably the most popular one is affiliate marketing.
You’re told you should use lead magnets and free gifts to build an email list. Stick those lead magnets on a squeeze page and send traffic to it, right? Well, if you’ve tried it, you’ve already discovered that it doesn’t work very well.
After spending time and/or money on sending traffic to that page, you’ll usually notice most people aren’t exactly giving you their best email address. In fact, about one-third of them are giving you a fake email.
And of the ones that are giving you a real one, it’s usually one they reserve for “junk” which is how they think of your promotional material.
That means it’s an address they don’t check regularly and so it’s about as useful as a fake one. And keep in mind, they’re called freebie seekers for a reason!
They don’t really buy things. Usually what happens at this point is that a struggling internet marketer starts to realize his or her marketing emails are getting open rates of around 4 or 5% and generating zero sales and that all their effort in creating a lead magnet and landing page and driving traffic was a giant waste.
So, they give up on IM and assume it’s all a big hoax. Sad story, but it happens every day and it’s the ultimate end of about 95% of would-be internet marketers.
So, what are the other five percent doing differently? Easy. They’re creating and selling products of their own.
You see, when you create and sell a product of your own, you’re creating a different type of list. A buyers list.
Unlike freebie seekers who make it a point to never buy anything and also rarely give you their real contact info, buyers actually buy things (crazy right?).
These are people who are serious about internet marketing and actually regularly pull out their credit cards and buy things.
And because the email you collect comes from their transaction info, you’re finally getting real email addresses that people actually check!
And beyond list building, selling your own products carries another benefit. You control your profit. You don’t have to split sales revenue with anyone (although you certainly can if you’re having affiliates help with a product launch).
So, you’re either keeping all the profit for yourself or you’re choosing how much to share with affiliates. Either way, you’re in control.
