You had me hooked when you said, “$9,000 a month from a business selling a board game about medicinal herbs”. And here I thought I was pretty cool when I made a few hundred from a mini-site on man-boobs.

Great thoughts about motivating affiliates to promote for you. In addition to being a strong traffic source, affiliates can also be a free SEO team, depending on how the affiliate program is configured. Best of the Web is a good example of this, as they use referrer tracking, which allows their affiliates to place SEO friendly links to their site. Even still, for these benefits to be realized, you need motivated affiliates placing links for you.

I said no matter what, don’t miss the stuff that starts at minute 42.

If it’s the one of you presenting at Rich Schefren’s gig I watched it this morning. (As Jeff says skip to minute 42.)

I’ll be one of those following your free advice – as you suggest. At the moment I don’t have a list – though I do have subscribers to my blog.

At the moment I’m doing a couple of free ebooks – the first to promote my blog and the second to promote a membership course. I will be taking your advice in the talk you gave at Rich Schefren’s gig: to start with a few and then use them to endorse it and build from there. I do think this is good advice.

As you, and others, can see I have subscribed to your email list. Unfortunately on my current income (which I hope to increase hugely through blogging) I won’t be able to afford your course.

Yaro – cool article.

Evan – wait until you see my next video. HINT: do you consider 17 people a big list”

- Jeff

Very helpful.

The “slow and steady” approach can be a little unnerving at times, but I think that’s one of the things that will eventually make an internet marketer successful, if for no other reason than because most other marketers give up and go back to their desk jobs.

Well done!

Thank you for yet another terrific post.

I seem to be on everyone and their grandmothers mailing list (which is entirely my own fault of course!). So, in an attempt to reduce the amount of information popping into my inbox, I’ve unsubscribed from 95% of them over the past month of so. Your’s is one of the 5% that I keep because you seem to be an expert in your field and the information you impart is very insightful and actionable. To anyone who reads my post…No! Yaro has definitely not paid me to say this. I just believe in giving credit to someone when they deserve it.

Anyway…moving swiftly on…

I started an affiliate program for my blog a couple of months ago. To date, I’ve only got 3 affiliates. I produce all of the content for the blog myself and there just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to spend time attracting affiliates. To be honest, I don’t know how to do affiliate promotion for my site. I realise from your post that having an army of affiliates is a tremendously powerful way of expanding my visibility and I need to make time to motivate the few affiliates that I do have.

I would appreciate any advice you could give me here.

John O’Hara

It may be that I won’t know about a launch util I do one. I think this is true. This I’m sure is your experience. And from what I know of the experience of others it seems very true.

However Jeff is promoting a product that claims to be a formula, that emphasises that if you follow what he says to do then you will be successful. My argument is not with you but this approach of Jeff’s. (You seem to have the same problem as me.)

As to the slow and steady approach. As I say this is what I’m adopting. It was you who raised in this post the point that others don’t have the patience to go this slow route.

I really don’t think it insignificant that all the people Jeff speaks to already have big lists. For those of us starting out this is a major difference.

Finally, I made the point that Jeff’s stuff does actually have content, which distinguishes him (along with such people as yourself and Caroline Middlebrook) from the great majority of the internet marketers out there.

I have thought that an “insider’s club” existed with a mutual “back-scratching” going on, but you make a great observation that gaining entry does require a win-win arrangement for everyone.

Thanks, Yaro.

I did eventually buy PLF for several reasons -

- to fill any gaps in my knowledge
- to find out exactly how Jeff recommends recruiting affiliates
- to explore further how Jeff recommends building a list
- and most importantly but perhaps the most overlooked reason, to get the attention of Jeff.

As a client of a person you immediately command more attention from them, which is one of the main reasons I buy products. That’s also one of the ways to secure top JVs – buy their products and put them to use. As someone who sells a training program I love it when a person comes up to me with a story to tell of success from following what I teach and am most welcome to discuss a possible JV with them as a result.

Evan and others like him – I think you just need to explore further all of the elements that go into Internet marketing, especially list building if that is the area you feel most frustrated with, and above all else, put into action what you learn so you can see for yourself.

Until you experience a product launch you will forever be skeptical and some things you just can’t learn in any information product, which is why you might feel that some products don’t give you all the answers you want – it’s impossible to, you have to find them out for yourself.

In terms of how to build a list, Evan, you are a Blog Mastermind student so you know how I do it. I attracted 3000 subscribers in the first year of building a list. Before that it took a year of solid blogging to build up the traffic that eventually fed the list.

That’s a slow way to go about it, but it works – I’m proof of this and there’s plenty more bloggers in other markets building lists – I know because some of the other Blog Mastermind students are doing it right now.

Jeff talks about list building via Pay Per Click and blogging – in fact I wrote a blog post that detailed one such system he explained in a podcast he sent to his subscribers. You can read about it in this post – How To Launch A Niche Blogging Business.

I’ve actually been following Jeff’s videos and posts very closely because the Speed Launch Contest he’s doing caught my attention and I decide to try to win so I can get a Macbook, free copy of PLF and also coaching from Jeff.

I don’t know if I’ll win but I can tell you I definitely have sped through setting up a product that would have probably taken me at least a month (or more) to get set up if I had just taken my time.

I couldn’t agree with you more on how important an affiliate program is and motivating affiliates. I have many clients who think of their affiliate program as an afterthought and don’t really realize the power of having excited affiliates out there working for your business.

Thanks for the post!
Angela Wills

I agree with what Evan has to say about Jeff’s products, at the moment I am staying neutral, and observing what is happening. I have a homestudy course ready to make into reality, but as I only have a list of 125 subscribers, I feel that I need at least 1,000 subscribers for the PLF to be effective. I would love to hear from any body that has a small list and used PLF with success

Regards
Mark.

Jeff’s mini-case-studies don’t give any details about his (earlier version) of product launch formula. I wouldn’t bother watching them; they are mostly people following the formula and saying they succeeded + saying doing it this way didn’t hurt their list any.

Jeff talks about people just using the free stuff he provides to do a launch. There isn’t nearly enough detail in the free stuff – for me anyway, but I’m quite new to all this.

Jeff also talks to people who already had fairly large lists. No information on how to build one. This is the major problem for me as I’m just starting out. It may be great when I have a thousand or so subscribers, but not for now.

Jeff does provide information though, it’s not just hype. I’m not saying that the stuff isn’t excellent or that it doesn’t work. Just that it doesn’t have much to say to those of us just starting (a downside of the cartel model – oops I mean leader working together: it excludes those just starting. And means that, like Yaro, we have to take the slow and steady way.)

thanks,
timothy..

http://www.timothyadamdesigns.com/

I know you to be a top blogger, so it’s comforting to hear that you went through
the same process I’m currently experience
of building my blog asset.

The rest of the post was good, too

Now, if only Caroline would return my emails!

LOL

Thanks,

Dan

P.S. The asset I’m building is here

http://danielmcgonagle.name

This really interests me because I find myself in the unique position of being really excited about PLF as both a potential buyer and as a (I hope) future affiliate.