Affiliate Silver Bullet Refocuses
383 words | Last Updated: April 6, 2008 |
Dustin Struckman realizes the mistake of the first version of the Affiliate Silver Bullet, and launches a second version which promises more focus, and more leads.
But is it enough? Or does the future appear bleak for video opt-in pages, affiliate marketing, and emailed follow-ups?
Do you remember the original version of ASB? Your drive traffic to your special page, and those visitors will be presented with a squeeze page that contains flashy graphics and video. They then subscribe and are treated a series of emails which promote several products.
In the first version, you are given ten products (and email follow-up sequences) each month.
The inherent weakness? Lack of Focus.
Let's suppose your site gets 100 visitors a day. You can program your site so that the ten different offers rotate evenly among your visitors. In other words, 10 of your daily visitors will see Product #1, while the last 10 will see Product #10.
Do you see where this is going? It will take 10 days before each of your offered products are seen by 100 people.
With the new version, you're now just promoting ONE squeeze page. In just ONE day, 100 people will see the offer.
And that's the secret of focus. You can rapidly test your online ideas by exposing each idea to the greatest number of visitors, in the shortest amount of time. What used to take you ten days will not just take you one day.
To sweeten things, Dustin Struckman announces this new feature: Free Leads.
They probably realize that a lot of Affiliate Silver Bullet customers are not able to build a list quickly. So, the group of Dustin will spend on advertising and will, in effect, gift you with free leads. Even if you yourself did not advertise, your "own" list will benefit from the ad campaigns of ASB.
I put "own" in quotes because up to now, you still do not know the details of those lists. It's still kept within the data vaults of the creators of ASB. I wonder when there will be more transparency regarding the mailing list performance.
Just the same, this refocused campaign is an exciting and welcome development. I hope that version 3 involves more transparency, but in the meantime, let's see how this new direction will benefit the subscribers.
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Manuel Viloria is your friendly multimedia internet publishing coach who helps you gain more traffic for your web sites. Whether it's through blogging, podcasting, article marketing, videoblogging, email listbuilding, or even through Web 2.0 or social network marketing, you can increase your website visitors today. For more information, please visit Make Money Online | ManuelViloria.com.
First Posted: April 6, 2008 | Filed in: Make Money Online
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I am still with Affiliate Silver Bullet, and I am excited about the new version, but at the same time I am not so sure about how successful it will be.
It's very interesting that Dustin Struckman is more focused this time, but on the other hand, I am not so sure if he really is. Now, we drive traffic to his blog, that's all we have to do. We will get free leads, and if the people coming from our traffic signs up to his newsletter and they end up buying stuff, we will earn commission.
But how is this more focus?
The original version of ASB had 10 new bullets every month, we could do whatever we wanted with the bullets, we could promote one of them or all ten. Now, Dustin Struckman will promote for us. He will find the products, he will write the sales letters, he will make the videos (or get other people to make them), he will do everything, just like he did in the original version.
To me, nothing has really changed that much. We don't get as much information, we don't get to see the products, we only drive traffic and we get the extra leads.
I guess I am a little critical here, but that being said, I am very excited to see what my first month of the new version of ASB will bring me. Hopefully it will earn me more money than the previous version
In the previous version, you were free to promote any (or all) of the ten products featured each month. In other words, the various ASB subscribers will promote whatever they like, and without having to coordinate with other subscribers.
In the new system, all the subscribers will be focused with just one thing: driving traffic to a single location (Dustin's blog). That's what I mean by focus.
By sending traffic to just one place, Dustin can now systematically test which of the products are worth promoting. The disadvantage, however, is that you do not have access to that kind of traffic/conversion information.
If you have Brad Callen's Affiliate Elite script/program, however, you'll be better off using the original version of ASB and focus your efforts on promoting the best performing products.
Please note, though, that Affiliate Elite does not provide the historical performance data of some of the bullets. In such cases, you'll be better of with Dustin's Version 2.
I am still part of ASB but I have my doubts as well and I am getting increasingly annoyed because I have no idea of what is going on.
To be honest I am only one step away from pulling out.
It all seems very mysterious to me. No information, nothing.
And nothing has come out of it so far...
B.
Hi Manuel,
I posted some months back when I first started using ASB. I have just recently unsubscribed from ASB, I'm quite disappointed with the way Dustin has just given up on the original ASB rather than focusing on improving the system.
He blames the subscribers for not having the know-how to use the bullets, that's a pretty poor excuse for giving up on the program.
I think he just bit off more than he could chew, searching for ten top products every month to get his subscribers to promote while building his list i.e 120 top products in one year - I think that was a bit too ambitious - I used my own Aweber account and hosted the bullets on my own server - took me a whole day to learn how to do that, I was fussy which bullets to promote - I think if he had made it a bit cheaper and stuck with it, coming up with a couple of good video optin squeeze pages each month would have been enough.
I don't believe his new program will be successful either, and for the subscription fee, needs more transparency - he might get a few more months of subscriptions before people give up - I hope not, for the sake of his loyal subscribers - check out his new project & his IMgeni.us blog - tell me what you think,
cheers,
Paul
It has always been an issue of transparency right from the start, Paul. How I wish ASB would provide its subscribers with better information regarding sign-ups and conversions. Then again, there must be a pretty good reason for that.
Since you've taken the time to host the bullets on your own server, you probably have a better idea why certain stats have not been freely shared with ASB customers.
This revised direction of ASB gives me the impression that they're trying to refocus in hopes of improving conversions, or at least quickly identifying the winner products. I wonder if ASB is seeing a major attrition of subscribers, and is scrambling to find ways to improve their marketing info collection activities.
I've checked the performance of some of the products promoted by the ASB system, and the Clickbank performance (as shown by the Affiliate Elite software) isn't that encouraging. That will most likely lead to ASB subscriber dissatisfaction because they won't quickly experience the results they've been looking forward to.
(Some subscribers have had more success earning affiliate commissions from selling ASB memberships, than from the products promoted by the Affiliate Silver Bullet system.)
To help revive ASB, Dustin will need to quickly find winner products to promote. Otherwise, that crucial missing ingredient (along with the transparency and data the ASB subscribers need) will further reduce ASB's chances of success.
UPDATE: Dustin Struckman sent me a message because I subscribed to one of the ASB bullets of SlyMarketing. In the email, Dustin promoted Michael Cheney's free live training, which leads to a squeeze page for "Dustin Struckman's Friends." I wonder, though, what benefit ASB subscriber SlyMarketing will get out of this, considering that I am on that mailing list which Dustin sent the announcement to.
I wonder if Dustin will send more non-ASB related email broadcasts to people who subscribe to ASB mailing lists.
I'm also on just one of Dustin's lists under another name because I wanted to sign up to one of my own hosted bullets & Aweber optin lists to see if I was building Dustin's list as well as my own for non affiliate bullet products - it seems so. Now I'm getting weekly product promo for all sorts of products that are DustinStruckman.biz/recommends etc . . of course without my affiliate link in them.
michaelcheney.tv/dustinstruckmanfriends/
DustinStruckman.biz/recommends/slapback
DustinStruckman.biz/recommends/wholesaletraffic
DustinStruckman.biz/recommends/private
DustinStruckman.biz/download/thoughtstring
DustinStruckman.biz/recommends/slo
DustinStruckman.biz/recommends/players
DustinStruckman.biz/recommends/butterflyreports
DustinStruckman.biz/recommends/jeffwalker
dustinstruckman.biz/recommends/million
DustinStruckman.biz/recommends/xfactor
DustinStruckman.biz/inspiring
The deal was that as an ASB affiliate his list is ours and any future products he promotes to our sign-ups will have our affiliate code in it:
ASB : "We've built a system that continues to work for you month after month, driving visitors to your opt-in list and following up with your subscribers until they buy the products we recommend . . . and then you get paid."
A lot of products are being promoted to my alter ego, the other guy who signed up to my opt in list but none of these products have my affiliate link in them.
Anyways - I'm concentrating on my own list now and wouldn't have signed up for Aweber and learned all it's ins and outs if it wasn't for Dustin - so that's the bright side of things
Cheers,
Paul
[From Manuel] Yes, Paul, the added Aweber knowledge is a great plus!