Mathematical Proof Affiliate Marketing Is Pointless

sirgold said:

Everybody that states that if "not tested in practice then it doesn't mean much" is defying the common rules of logic. IF there were no misinterpretations or neglected points a math model would explain MORE than the pure empirical observation what happens in reality. All this IF the model has been formulated correctly...

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Except for its not a mathematical equation, its Internet Marketing and there are zillions of variables and theories are just that, theories; in addition everyone has different marketing methods that are better suited to their own products or to those of an affiliate (most importantly contacts). Some things sound great in principle but will get you nowhere. You need to actually try and test and do comparisons its not some formula, and even if it were the formula would be based on your experience with the different approaches not your theory on the different approaches.

I don't understand your leap in logic from a producer needing to sell 25 books to an affiliate marketing needing to create 25 different sites to be equivalent.

Bottom line is, for many people, finding a product that is selling and jumping into that market has a higher rate of success than than trying to market bullshlt if you don't have a product worth anything to anyone. There are a lot of products on Clickbank with a gravity of zero because they weren't marketable to anyone.

But if you have a experience with something that you can market to others that are paying for information, sure, try making your own product.

According to Mark Ling, CB Apex Elite Super Affiliate & creator of Affilorama & Affilioblueprint along with countless other products, recently stated that on his last visit to Clickbank Headquarters the Execs @CB said that the MAJORITY of top grossing members where AFFILIATES and NOT product creators.

Reason being is that product creators, as you mentioned must spend time researching, developing and launching their products only to see the initial spike of sales due to launch hype. Whereas super affiliates just focus on marketing and only marketing. They have uber successful systems of networks already in place & would rather not be bothered with anything else except funneling traffic, collecting 5-6 figure checks then rinse & repeating it all over again.

So I would say that your math is terribly mistaken.

In IM, and in the "offline" world, A LOT of the time the ones who make the products make MUCH less than the ones who sell it. (don't jump on me, obviously not ALL of the time).

Think of the people who make your Coffee - who makes more? the coffee growers or starbucks?
There are millions of examples for both arguments, but the point is: Making a product does NOT always get you more money.

As for the math in the original post - there are some major flaws in that logic:

• The lifespan of a product you build isn't taken into account. (the shorter the lifespan, the more affiliates are favored, and ebooks have a relatively short lifespan)
• The fact that an affiliate can promote multiple products at the same time (often using the same resources), while a product creator can only make and support a limited number of products at a time.
• The investments costs are not taken into account, and they are generally much higher for the product creator.
• In the example, the affiliate making 75% would only need 33 sales to get the same $975
• The idea that the affiliate would need to create 25 websites (1 website per sale?) makes no sense at all - they would most likely make all of their sales from one website.
• The guy who owns the website runs the same risk of getting deindexed as anyone else, if they use BH methods to promote their site, and as far as I know, most product owners DO try to promote their own website. Conversely, affiliates who promote products responsibly run no particular risks of getting deindexed.

Taking a closer look at one flawed assumption:

1 carefully researched and written ebook is approximately equal to 25 quick cheap affiliate websites

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If, as you suggest, a carefully written ebook takes 4-6 months to write (let's call it 4 to favor OP's argument) and a quick cheap affiliate site takes 2 days to make (easily less time, but again to favor OP's argument). In 120 days you will have 1 ebook or 60 sites. By OP's formula, making 60 aff sites is equal to 2.4 ebooks.
Conclusion: your time would be better spent making the aff sites.

You can't boil it all down to a simple formula that works for everyone...YOU may do better making a product, or maybe at selling, it all depends on what your talents are (and your starting budget). But you can't extrapolate that into a strategy that works for everyone.

wowhaxor said:

Except for its not a mathematical equation, its Internet Marketing and there are zillions of variables and theories are just that, theories; in addition everyone has different marketing methods that are better suited to their own products or to those of an affiliate (most importantly contacts). Some things sound great in principle but will get you nowhere. You need to actually try and test and do comparisons its not some formula, and even if it were the formula would be based on your experience with the different approaches not your theory on the different approaches.

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With all due respect. Nope, this reply is out of "focus" and beyond the scope of my statement. If a mathematical (this includes statistics at large) theory is valid -no matter how many variables you consider in a system- that's gonna hold true. Period. You're describing a pre-galilean vision of the world in this statement... No other branch in the history of man has ever been as precise as mathematics (and all sub branches) to describe a phenomenon and IM doesn't certainly differ because it's some unsolvable godsend discipline...

Like there's ppl making a living as pro-gamblers in different areas you can definitely try to understand if something works or not simply by formulating a math model. And this is MORE complex than OP's case. Even certain branches of economics are now relying on math models you know why? Because they predicted the credit crunch, with sad, cold machines that were crunching big numbers... Unlike economists, just saying... Sometimes it's simple, like what OP tried to do: just a few numbers in a supposedly linear system. Sometimes it's harder like trying to calculate the odds of certain events. It's not like Martingale is the only system ever thought of relying on numbers, so if doubling doesn't work (again because it's neglected time or resources are finite entities...) you can trash math as "there are things with too many variables"... The complexity as in "number of variables" added to a system is an irrelevant objection from a mathematical standpoint to try proving the method (in this case mathematics) itself is bad or inadequate.

If you try to prove (or prove wrong) something "adding numbers" like OP did with an interesting hypothesis no matter the area you're trying to describe, it falls down to a math model. That can be true or can be partially true or even false. In the case of OP his numbers are neglecting (or wrongly taking for granted) certain variables. The variables could be a gazillion times a gazillion times a gazillion that wouldn't change jack.

All the rest of the reasoning you're making is simply proving something else, it can't be a direct answer to my statement that's addressing the underlying layer of the problem. If the variables considered were right it'd be possible calculating if being an affiliate is or not a waste of time. The system is so simple it's not even probabilistic or stochastic.

And the answer, is NO the hypothesis is WRONG, it's NOT TRUE that aff marketing is useless UNLESS you have an infinite amount of imagination, resources or time in your hands or know for sure a method to turn your campaigns into a massive success.

Best Regards.

DocBrown said:

So in other words, if you?re an affiliate marketer you need to set up 25 affiliate sites in order to be making the exact same amount of money as the guy who just went off, carefully researched and created an ebook. Now I?m not talking about just any old ebook you?d get made up for you at elance for $1000. I?m talking about spending 4-6months researching and writing the ebook.

What I?m saying is that 1 carefully researched and written ebook is approximately equal to 25 quick cheap affiliate websites. The only difference is that the guy who owns the ebook is safe in terms of getting de-indexed by google (after all it?s just a sales page so SEO isn?t that important). The affiliate marketer on the other hand has to throw stuff at his sites such as UAW, scrpaebox etc to get traffic which run the very real risk of upsetting google and having your sites de-indexed by google some day.

So if you spent the next 2 years writing carefully constructed ebooks (or whatever type of product you want to create), you might be better doing this rather than creating 100 crappy affiliate marketing sites which could be de-indexed at the drop of a hat as often happens to people on this forum.

It?s often stated that the people who make the real money in IM are the ones who own their own products. Are my above calculations proof of this? And therefore proof that affiliate marketing is just a waste of time?

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Your math may be correct on one single successful product. But what are the odds of your product being successful everytime?

You are basing your math on a 100% probability that each product has a high number of consumers that are willing to spend money. As well as a high number of affiliates selling for you.

Do you expect to spend 2 years creating products to sell and every single one of them will be successful? How many well researched products do you think you can create in 2 years? How many of those will get 100+ affiliates that make at least 1 sell?

jdog37 said:

Your math may be correct on one single successful product. But what are the odds of your product being successful everytime?

You are basing your math on a 100% probability that each product has a high number of consumers that are willing to spend money. As well as a high number of affiliates selling for you.

Do you expect to spend 2 years creating products to sell and every single one of them will be successful? How many well researched products do you think you can create in 2 years? How many of those will get 100+ affiliates that make at least 1 sell?

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And what product would need 2 years of research, and add in the fact that the information might or might not be obsolete after 2 years.

Either way the op's logic is quite flawed. You could for example create your own product, fine. For some quick money you could push a related ebook to your list, and so on.

There's more than one way to do affiliate marketing.

I can't say you are completely wrong, but it depends.

Let's take an example a clickbank product called Panic Away (panicaway.com).

This product has been sold more thsn 60 000 times for the last 7 years
The price of the product is 68$, so the author gets 17$
60 000 x 17 = 1 020 000$
or 145 000 per year
or 12 100 per month...

Well, man you can live your life with this money or 6 months efforts (to prepare the product) made your life (almost forever).

simple as that, isn't it?

affiliate marketing is exactly the same model used in offline businesses from over 50 years .for eg: insuarance agents , real estate agents ------ hired by companies to promote there service in exchange of commision .

in real world people used to refer other people , talk to other people to get sales , they advertise and promote the service .(if u know an insurance or real estate agent u will know what i am talking abt)

aff marketing ONline is the same ,u refer people , ur visitore which like ur site and follow u and trust u .they see ur reviews abt products and trust ur opinion and then they buy stuff .
there re no billboars or things like that online so we use the virtual real estate (websites)to advertise and promote the product



well writing up all this seems BS to some of u but the point is how can this be useless if the same is followed by offline businesses and still being fiollowed .

you cal culation says ::::: IT is more profitable to have a product rather than building aff sites .

But aff marketing is useless-----Not proved brother

This is the most idiotic reasoning I've ever read. I actually feel somewhat stupid after having read it.

You are using false logic and clearly show that you have a very skewed sense of making money online.

Don't make threads telling people to NOT do something if you can't do it yourself.

Nah, I don't *think* OP posted this with some sort of agenda or out of some horrible disillusion, it was an interesting point IMO. Still false, but an interesting point to me.

Um... That's just business!

Suppliers take a knock so they don't have to actually sell their shit to the public.
Sellers sell the shit to the public because they can't be bothered to create a product.

It's a parasitic cycle where both sides take less than they could make because they have to do less work

sirgold said:

With all due respect. Nope, this reply is out of "focus" and beyond the scope of my statement. If a mathematical (this includes statistics at large) theory is valid -no matter how many variables you consider in a system- that's gonna hold true. Period. You're describing a pre-galilean vision of the world in this statement... No other branch in the history of man has ever been as precise as mathematics (and all sub branches) to describe a phenomenon and IM doesn't certainly differ because it's some unsolvable godsend discipline...

Like there's ppl making a living as pro-gamblers in different areas you can definitely try to understand if something works or not simply by formulating a math model. And this is MORE complex than OP's case. Even certain branches of economics are now relying on math models you know why? Because they predicted the credit crunch, with sad, cold machines that were crunching big numbers... Unlike economists, just saying... Sometimes it's simple, like what OP tried to do: just a few numbers in a supposedly linear system. Sometimes it's harder like trying to calculate the odds of certain events. It's not like Martingale is the only system ever thought of relying on numbers, so if doubling doesn't work (again because it's neglected time or resources are finite entities...) you can trash math as "there are things with too many variables"... The complexity as in "number of variables" added to a system is an irrelevant objection from a mathematical standpoint to try proving the method (in this case mathematics) itself is bad or inadequate.

If you try to prove (or prove wrong) something "adding numbers" like OP did with an interesting hypothesis no matter the area you're trying to describe, it falls down to a math model. That can be true or can be partially true or even false. In the case of OP his numbers are neglecting (or wrongly taking for granted) certain variables. The variables could be a gazillion times a gazillion times a gazillion that wouldn't change jack.

All the rest of the reasoning you're making is simply proving something else, it can't be a direct answer to my statement that's addressing the underlying layer of the problem. If the variables considered were right it'd be possible calculating if being an affiliate is or not a waste of time. The system is so simple it's not even probabilistic or stochastic.

And the answer, is NO the hypothesis is WRONG, it's NOT TRUE that aff marketing is useless UNLESS you have an infinite amount of imagination, resources or time in your hands or know for sure a method to turn your campaigns into a massive success.

Best Regards.

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Hey,

I don't think you're getting my point which is that it is so dynamic that your results from your process today are not going to be the same as tomorrow and your process is always evolving so you can't make a mathematical equation for it that would hold up any longer than say a couple of days.

i thought u would come up with some formulas,the title is misleading
however. your missing some points, if you wrote an book, lets say 20 years ago. you never got the full amount of what the book was sold for, i think u got less then it is today if you have some affiliates. + you dont have to put efforts into market it ( which takes the most time in my opinion) instead your outsourcing it to others. everyone profits and if you do it right you brand your own name and future products will sell x100.

Actually, there are a few things useful about this. First off, whenever an affiliate posts your link, that is another backlink to your sales page. Lest say that those 100 people create 100 links each. That gives your site a total of 10,000 backlinks. This will boost the SERP rankings on your page by a significant amount. Another good thing about having affiliates is that they are just doing extra work. Just because you have them selling for you, does not mean that you can not sell your own product too.

op i totally agree with you. The difference between the product creator and the affiliate marketer is thatAssume the product creator doesn't take efforts to promote)

Product Creator: Spends a decent amount of time and money to create a product.
Affiliate Marketer: Spends heck lot of time and money to try and promote the product.

Although the AM does earn his share of reward but it is something like passive income for the creator. However, as everyone pointed out lets not forget that without AM's there could be a serious dip in sales ...

lobozebra said:

Actually, there are a few things useful about this. First off, whenever an affiliate posts your link, that is another backlink to your sales page. Lest say that those 100 people create 100 links each. That gives your site a total of 10,000 backlinks. This will boost the SERP rankings on your page by a significant amount. Another good thing about having affiliates is that they are just doing extra work. Just because you have them selling for you, does not mean that you can not sell your own product too.

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No,

Affiliate links are usually redirects and often redirect to the merchant/affiliate company first then to the site, its not the same as a 301 redirect (in MOST cases) it will pass no link juice in terms of search rankings.

DocBrown said:

Not really. I've written an ebook and got some sales but nothing major. I'm just starting out.

I'm just doing some maths tbh that's all (and i did say i was open to correction on the matter). Intelligent correction btw not someone telling me i'm BLIND etc etc

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I think it's great that you brought the subject up. I think it's also great that people are putting in their two cents on the matter. I honestly don't know how much money can be made by an affiliate, but I do know that the person behind a launch can make some very real money. So it stands to reason, that the top affiliates would also make some good money on a launch. But, I've also met countless "marketers" that make nothing but pennies. And still come off like they are god's gift to affiliate marketing. They always get mad when I tell them how much $ I make on twitter... but that's another story.

wowhaxor said:

Hey,

I don't think you're getting my point which is that it is so dynamic that your results from your process today are not going to be the same as tomorrow and your process is always evolving so you can't make a mathematical equation for it that would hold up any longer than say a couple of days.

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Hey brother! I'm risking to be pedantic here, but I'd love to reply again. I got perfectly what you said and I have to repeat and expand what I wrote before. Your post ISN'T an answer to my point let alone to OP's question / demonstration about aff marketing being or not worth your time to make a profit instead of publishing something. In other words, he's asking if it wouldn't be the case to create something -under any circumstance- instead of promoting products made by someone else.

And I already wrote that his demonstration is flawed and why. Hypothetically if he had added a few more considerations and had demonstrated that actually it's statistically less profitable than publishing some own shit HE WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT. And this would PROVE that if you make some money as an affiliate, it's just a fluke. Plain and simple. It would prove that you can make money, but it's not a sustainable model. Again, very similar to math models of games, or bets on races where the variables of today are not the same as tormorrow. A lot of this "mathematical debunking" has been made in the past in basically any field of our existence.

Now, everyone saying it's "the most stupid thing" should demonstrate why it's so "stupid", btw... And the point of OP is NOT stupid at all.

Back to your remark. If the variables in a system change dynamically, again, your math model can take care of it and elaborate a way to statistically predict what's gonna happen. OP was simply using a linear system, but I'm comfortable with expanding this to something a bit more complex. Weather forecast is a good example of this on top of my head, I already mentioned gambling on different things, but the list could really be 3 pages...

Even in a system where conditions change (by the hour, the second, the week or the month as you're describing: again it's irrelevant) you can still formulate a reliable analysis. A reliable probabilistic prediction as it happens all the time. Again, that's why the mathematicians dealing with economics predicted credit crunch while the "standard" economists hoped for the "hidden hand of free market" to fix things... Damn you M. Friedman.. lol

So to wrap this up. Again, it doesn't change anything if the system is gonna be different today or tomorrow or in 10 years. It's just a matter of putting the reality you're observing in the right "grid", formulating a model with the right variables, be them set in stone or dynamically changing. Be the system a simple linear one or a probabilistic or stochastic one. The quoted remark still doesn't prove:

a. OP's doubt. Aff marketing is statistically less profitable than being a publisher no matter how many products you're gonna put out and when

b. Your assertion. If the variables in a system change you CANT't really say what's gonna happen in a certain time frame from now.

Both these alleged points not only are not proven, they're false. Be this IM, weather forecast, stock or molecular analysis.

Regards.

1. This isn't math. Stop making these thread titles.

2. As a product creator you also need to have support staff or check your email 24/7 for the rest of your life to issue refunds and answer questions.

3. You can be in more markets as an affiliate faster than what you could as a product creator.

4. Being an affiliate lets you know how profitable you could become as a product owner. You state it's POINTLESS. In fact it's not. You can get traffic and sales as an affiliate and gradually create your own product to make even more money.