The Affiliate Marketing Totem Pole

March 11th, 2007 · Comments

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Affiliate marketing is a pretty broad umbrella. The term covers affiliate programs of all stripes, including traditional retail, gaming, adult, eBooks, and lead generation.

There is some friction among the different affiliate program types. I first noticed this back in 2001 on the Affiliate Force cruise. The crowd was largely composed of retail affiliates and merchants, but there were a share of gaming affiliate marketers there, too.

The gaming folks continually rankled the retail affiliate marketers with tales of gigantic checks and demeaning comments about the money potential in selling widgets.

I was reminded of all this when reading a blog post from Jon of Wicked Fire: My New War On Internet Marketing Ebooks. Jon is on a crusade to put the ebook publishers out of business.

Anyhow, I’m curious to hear what affiliate marketers from different areas think of the others.

Follow Shawn on Twitter.

Tags: Affiliate Opinions

Viewing 7 Comments

Mark from Bloglyne.com 1 year ago 1 point
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Hey there Shawn - Started what turned out to be a really long comment on this post. There was also some questionable language - So, I put it up at Bloglyne.com

Thanks for the post.

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http://www.bloglyne.com

Fast Eddie 1 year ago 1 point
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Good question - as far as I am concerned, affiliate marketing is all about traditional retail.

I don't care to be associated with the rest of that stuff.

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Tim Wilkens 1 year ago 1 point
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I run the affiliate program for a big brand and I consider retail affiliate programs to be the top of the totem pole.

Ebooks are fine by me. Some hype there, but if you can get past it, they are performing a service - they are saving me the time of doing research myself for the information.

Next up would be the lead generation programs. I don't like to be classified as the same industry as cpa networks and their offers, but I see them as better (read: not as shady) as the totems below them.

Porn and gambling - I want nothing to do with that stuff.

Below these guys would be MLM like Agloco that pretends to be affiliate marketing.

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ghoti 1 year ago 1 point
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That's the stupid thing about it -- someone who made his money in porn and now runs a forum where arbitrage, spam, and shady CPA offers are the main topics is now "exposing" ebooks.

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John 1 year ago 1 point
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Hey,

Quite an interesting topic this is. I work as an Affiliate manager in the online gaming sector and feel that this area is pretty competitive when compared amongst the others. Our average CPA's speaks for itself.

But on the whole I feel that the basics of affiliate marketing is more or less the same, irrespective of the product in question.

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http://www.johnbenjamin.net/blog

Thomas Green 1 year ago 1 point
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I do not know anything of this guy prior to reading your post. But whatever his message, he lost me with his anger and foul language. As far as e-books go, I feel they serve a purpose, it’s all magic when you don’t know what you don’t know, once you’ve gained the knowledge you know. There’s always something to learn and if someone is willing to provide that information to one that does not have that information, then it’s a value proposition. We’re free to choose, and part of the learning process is to know whom not to trust, and those with integrity will rise to the top. I’m one of the silly ones who has purchased an e-book or two and I’ve never asked for a refund, I’m grateful to those who are willing to convey there experience.

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http://www.postfallslanding.com

Andrew Johnson 1 year ago 1 point
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You are missing the point if you think this is a war against all ebooks. There is a big difference between stuff like Aaron Wall's SEOBook and some of the snake oil garbage that is being pumped across the web. I've seen many of the ebooks Jon is targetting -- sales pages that promise 7 figure incomes with the end result a $100 67 page "book" which tells you to buy Google ads to promote the same damn product. Thats a scam and pyramid scheme, not a service.

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http://www.webpublishingblog.com