I am afraid that there will always be Copy N Paste affiliates I have written extensively about this on my blog and many still simply think that they will make money doing it. Only last week I came across a site that had taken eight pages off our site word for word including images. When I politely asked them to take them down their response was very hostile.

Unfortunately for them they were hot linking to my images so I simply edited those images with a few choice words of wisdom and again politely asked if they could remove my content. Still a hostile response so I contacted Godaddy their hosting provider and they took their whole site down with-in a week.

Yes by doing your due diligence you can easily stay ahead of the game and an even bigger bonus is that you can spot a scam very fast. This also helps to build relationships with others online which is another very important aspect that is very rarely discussed.

As for the mini-sites you are right you need to be creating your own content to place on them especially if you want free search traffic. If you have access to a resource like this you simply use the content that is provided to create your own, it’s no different really than doing research and then re-writing the content in your own words or from your user experience.

Another strategy you might want to adopt is also re-writing the emails you receive to make them unique to you and your subscribers. I really can’t count the amount of times I receive the exact same email from 5 or 6 different people on a daily basis. This for me is the fastest way to lose credibility in my eyes and if I see it happening I know the person has never used the product and is just doing a copy and paste exercise into their Autoresponder with no consideration of whether it is a benefit to me or not. Simply chasing some commissions at my expense.

Doing your homework (due diligence) applies to any business activity and affiliate marketing is no different. I agree that finding merchants who provide adequate resources is a bonus, however, the downside is that a proliferation of mini-sites spring up with identical content.

If you’re working a niche that is a personal passion it shouldn’t require too much effort to take the merchant resources, particularly articles, and rewrite them to create unique content for your website and subsequent mailings to subscribers.

Those subscribers are probably on several lists in that niche so unless you stand out from the others you may be missing out on commissions.

Yes many people think that it is very easy to set up their own product simply buy paying for a PLR product that they can market…

However I think that you and me are very aware that it is not that easy to do, you need your own product which has to be something unique that offers complete value to your customers, and if you don’t one of two things can happen.

You will receive no sales for all your efforts or your will have sales but experience a very high rate of refunds.

For anyone wanting to get into the online world to sell their own products they should always do a stretch in affiliate marketing first to learn the ropes of selling online and what the many strategies are they can use in the promotion of their future product release.

So for me I would have to agree with Jason on the promotion of digital products as an affiliate…
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About having your own product is good, but it takes a lot of effort to promote them plus the split testings that you need to do, argh that’s really a pain in the a$$. However, accomplishing something like that will really make you feel proud about yourself. I’m looking in to that as well, but not now

I enjoyed reading this entry and the comments too Ron.

It is much better to have your own products at the end of the day but before diving into that market it is really a very good idea to understand how different products are promoted by the many different vendors and affiliate networks that are available. This will help you to understand how to do a successful lauch of your own products in the future.

Thanks for the information I am sure some of our users could really benefit form this information….

I work with a gift affiliate program paying 12-20% with a huge inventory of products that will fit most any niche from Official Sports Logo products to pocket knives to business card holders. Their products could sell well in almost any niche and I will personally send anyone interested more traffic from Social Networking and provide incoming links too.

I linked a post on how to evaluate an ecommerce store that provides more information on this gift store to this comment. If you have any suggestions on what else I can do to increase interest and support their affiliates I’m all ears.