The bottom line is just this: if you want to be a better-than-average affiliate marketer, you are going to have to offer more and better bonus incentives than your competitors offer. All affiliate marketers for any product are trying to sell to the same basic customer base, and that base is not unlimited.
In order to get an edge and rise above what is common, ordinary, and average, you will need to get really creative with the incentive bonuses that you offer with your affiliate product or service.
Don’t Cut Yourself Short With Offering Rebates!
Rebates! Rebates seem to be all the rage in today’s marketplace. Rebates are everywhere. Out in the brick-and-mortar world, there are ‘mail-in’ rebates and instant rebates offered on every product imaginable, from computers to home appliances to cars. In cyberspace, rebates are everywhere. Rebates are offered on all kinds of programs, software, products, and services.
A rebate is simply a discount on fancy clothes. The principle is exactly the same. The customer pays less than the list price for whatever the program, software, product, or service might be. The customer is getting a bargain. That’s true. The question, however, is what exactly is the seller getting? The answer to the question, what is the seller getting, is pretty simple. The seller is getting less money than he is entitled to get on every sale he makes.
If the seller is giving a 50% rebate, that means that he will have to sell twice the number of programs, software copies, products, or services to make the same amount of money he would have made had he not offered the 50% rebate. The seller is giving away his profit, especially if the seller is an affiliate marketer because any rebate an affiliate marketer offers his customers comes out of his commission. For example, if you are marketing a product that sells for $197.00 and you earn $98.50 from it, offering a rebate of $50 means that your commission is only $48.50 per sale.
You aren’t going to be earning very much per sale. That can’t be a good thing. There has to be a better way than offering big rebates…and fortunately, there is. One of the big problems with offering big rebates is that the offer attracts what is known in the business as ‘cheap customers.’ Cheap customers are those who never expect to pay the full price for anything, ever, or under any circumstances. They expect to get something for nothing and that something for nothing expectation will always come out of your pocket. You are simply better off without cheap customers.
The answer to the rebate question is just this: give your customers a good reason to buy from you at the full price. Even if you have to pay something for incentive bonuses, it is better than offering a rebate to the customer. You will attract a better class of customers who will continue to buy from you. Many affiliate marketers think that offering incentive bonuses that are valuable enough to entice people to pay full price for an item is just too much trouble.
They will tell you that it is easier, quicker, and just a lot less trouble to simply offer a rebate or a discount than it is to find bonus incentives. Okay. I agree. Offering a rebate or a discount is certainly easier and quicker and a lot less work than finding bonus incentives that are of enough value to make a customer pay full price for a product or service. However, it is simply not the best thing to do.
The customers that have deep discounts and 50% will attract rebates are the cheap customers, and once you discount or offer a rebate, they will expect you to do so with every product or service you ever offer them. You are going to be working for peanuts when you could be working for the whole peanut gallery.
Don’t waste your time worrying about lazy affiliate marketers who offer deep discounts or big rebates. They will attract the cheap customers that you don’t want anyway, and those lazy affiliate marketers will never be any competition for you. If you are willing to go to the trouble, put in the work, and make the effort to find incentive bonuses that make it possible for you to sell products at their full price to your customers, you will leave those lazy affiliate marketers eating your dust.