Posts Tagged ‘review’
Now that the dust has begun to settle, I thought it might be appropriate to offer an opinion about Mike Filsaime’s AffiliateJump.
First things first. This post is not about promoting AffiliateJump. Nor is it about trashing Mike. (I won't name names, but there is actually another marketer out there who has also reviewed AffiliateJump, is misrepresenting a few things, and is being very unfair to Mike.) I simply bought into the program and this is my honest assessment.
Before I convey that assessment though, for those who may not know what AffiliateJump is, let me begin with a little background:
CPA, or Cost Per Action, marketing has been gaining momentum lately. Perhaps for good reason — after all, CPA is all about generating leads (freely submitted contact information from potential customers) and offers you the chance to make money, significant money, from a single customer. Some CPA offers pay as much as $200 when a customer signs up.
Further, you don't actually have to sell the customer anything. You simply send them a link.
Many Internet marketers are promoting CPA these days, and certainly some are making some serious money.
But the problem for many has been how to get accepted by the CPA networks. This has proven difficult for some as many of the networks require, among other things, a proven track record and a demonstrated ability to generate traffic, certainly two requirements newbies, and even some more experienced marketers, can have difficulty with. Additionally, there is the problem of choosing which offers to promote as well as how to promote them.
Mike Filsaime's AffiliateJump promises a turnkey workaround for these challenges. For example, you don't have to be accepted by the CPA networks. By simply buying into AffiliateJump, you are guaranteed to be "accepted" automatically.
Through AffiliateJump, your offers will be available to you through an easy-to-use interface, and you can build "websites" to promote those offers in just a few minutes, or actually, even seconds if you're not too particular. Not only that, but you don't have to buy a domain name to do it. That's all taken care of for you.
Then all you do is promote these "websites."
Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, yes and no.
While the folks at AffiliateJump seem to be working on some of the shortcomings, as of this writing there are definitely some problems. For one, the "websites" — or actually pages — that AffiliateJump allows you to create will all be located at similar domains (there are several available, but still a fairly limited choice). For another, the domain names, being limited, will not necessarily have much to do with the names of the products you'll be promoting, which means you could have a more difficult time driving traffic to your site.
You are given a choice, and with care you can get somewhat close in some cases, but certainly not all, and the closer the domain name comes to the name of the product or service that is being promoted, generally the better. Search engines seem to like it much better when the domain name and the content somewhat agree.
Another drawback, but another thing the folks at AffiliateJump claim to be working on improving, is that the pages generated are extremely similar, both in appearance and content (they don't have to be exactly the same, there are some customizations available, but they are very limited as of this writing).
Here are a couple of examples:
If your browser doesn't support frames and you would like to view the example page, Click Here, then use your browser's Back button to return to this review.
If your browser doesn't support frames and you would like to view the example page, Click Here, then use your browser's Back button to return to this review.
While the pages are attractive enough, it means all the other AffiliateJump members will be promoting pages that may be identical to, or vary only in minor respects from, the ones you are promoting, and it means the sites will look very similar to the search engines. Very similar, as opposed to identical, might not be a fatal drawback, but keep in mind that many of those very similar pages are likely to be hosted at the exact same domain name. So, you know, if that's not fatal either, it's certainly not good.
It could be a major problem, in fact, in terms of attracting visitors to your pages. While a Google rep very recently said Google does not actually penalize duplicate content, he also explained that the effect is often the same, and it is a truism in internet marketing at this point that the search engines don't like duplicate content, for whatever rhyme or reason. So if, say, a hundred, or a thousand pages all look extremely similar, it is likely only a few will get any attention from the search engines and the rest will be left out — and given Murphy's law, probably yours, and that would mean no search-engine-generated visitors to your offers. Of course you could drive traffic through advertising, but keep in mind that for every product or service offered, you'll be competing with every other AffiliateJump member for the exact same offers.
Another drawback is the price. To be able to create 100 offers, you'll pay. At the time I signed up, it cost $200 for the initial setup fee (refundable, but only after you have earned $1000 in commissions) and then $99.95 a month thereafter. There were cheaper options, but hardly worth having in my opinion, as they were so limited in terms of the number of pages you were allowed to set up and promote. Additionally, there are some of my long-time internet marketing acquaintances who are, rightly or not, outraged that anyone should be asked to pay for the opportunity to promote the offers of a CPA network in any case, and while AffiliateJump may yet prove itself very worthwhile for some, or in one sense or another, they certainly do have a point.
It seems odd that these matters were not given more thought from the start, especially considering Mike Filsaime's experience. It would be tempting for a cynic (or realist?) to surmise that AffiliateJump has been designed to make a lot of money for Mike, rather than having been designed with any real concern for creating any real opportunities for its members; however, as I said at the outset, I'm not about trashing Mike here, and also as mentioned before, there does seem to be a sincere effort on at AffiliateJump to address many of these issues. Recently, they have also been adding some training videos.
I'm not prepared here and now to pass a final judgment, and I am going to reserve the right to recommend and promote AffiliateJump at some point in the future if things improve enough; however, some of my continued evaluation will depend on how long I decide to remain a member, and in conclusion, newbies, and less-experienced marketers — who are clearly the primary target customer base for AffiliateJump — are, in my opinion, the ones least likely to be able to profit from AffiliateJump, so I'd warn most to stay away, at least as it stands now.
Meanwhile, if you are truly interested in CPA marketing, which admittedly can be highly lucrative, I'd like to suggest something you may find more worthwhile.
To receive an email about my recommendation, and a full explanation as to why I recommend it, please enter your name and email below. And yes, we (my company) may, very occasionally, send you another recommendation or notice of opportunity, but we certainly will not SPAM you or waste your time, and you will be able to unsubscribe from the list anytime you like simply by clicking on a link that will be included in any email we may send you.
Best regards,
Richard D. Farley
