Warning! Don't Buy that E-Book

By John Hartley

One of the biggest problems when you start out as an affiliate is to resist the urge to buy the latest e-book or video set that comes out. There is something coming out every week, and some of the e-books which were brought out a year ago are as good as some of these new ones. Save your money and don't buy that brand-new e-book about affiliate marketing programs.

Skip the lifestyle bit

When you look at a sales letter you MUST learn to skip all the rubbish telling you that if you buy this e-book you will be able to live the life of the rich, in a fabulous house with a couple of Ferraris, and working two hours a day. This e-book will not give you that.

First, you need to skip to the next section because it is not true. Most of these guys work 12-14 hours a day, albeit with some strutting of their stuff at seminars in nice places. Secondly, you already know that you started affiliate marketing to make money without working for someone else, and to get a few holidays or vacations, or just spending more time with your family without the stress that goes with a Job. So ignore this irrelevant stuff, yes, it really is irrelevant.

… and the graphs showing Clickbank earnings

Also, ignore all those graphs showing Clickbank earnings. These are not what you will earn, and conveniently ignore the fact that the earnings were obtained with a pretty hefty Adwords or other pay-per-click advertising campaign. It is easy to sell $5,000 of affiliate products a month. Just spend $10,000 on Adwords! I'm not saying they do this. However, they can certainly boost their advertising spend to boost sales in the knowledge that folk will buy lots of e-books when they see the gross figures!

The recent spate of video instruction products are much worse. Why? First, because they are long, and the important bits go so fast you can't make notes easily. Often, you miss them because the speaker, who is untrained in public speaking, is mumbling.

As a rule of thumb, the more videos there are, the less you should want to buy the product!

Find what this product does or gives you

So should you avoid all these new e-books and video sets about affiliate marketing? No. First, when you read a sales letter, concentrate on where it says what it actually does, or what information it actually gives you. You will find that in most cases this takes up quite a small part of the sales letter.

Then, you need to compare what you are doing in your affiliate business with what the e-books or videos are offering. Is it compatible? For example, if it is all about advertising on Adwords, and you are not doing that, are you ready to do it?

If it is a keyword tool to find keywords, do you actually need the tool? If you do a lot of keyword research, or need to, will this tool be better than Google's free tool, which of course, is based on the keywords people actually use at Google's search engine.

What's more, you will be told that each e-book is absolutely vital to your future. This is just not true. There are so many products or services in any niche that you can ignore a lot of them. But it is a good idea to read some sales letters to see what people are saying. Meanwhile, keep your credit card locked away in a drawer in another room!

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