The Hacker's Nightmare
Written on 5:12 AM by Unknown
In Affiliate Marketing
A Personal Story Is Priceless
Relax!
Not only am I not going to sell you anything, I want to give you something.
I'm a technologist, not a salesman, though I do of necessity strive to improve my marketing skills. Right now I have a story of discovery to relate from my own experiences and, if you adopt the core idea presented, I guarantee you will see a significant income boost.
This information has made a BIG difference to many of my own affiliates.
-oOOo-
There is a perception among online marketers that people on "lists" (prospects, customers, subscribers, etc.) have a very narrowly defined range of interests. That is to say, if a marketer focuses on, for example, restaurant owners, the accepted wisdom is that he should never try to promote non-restaurant-related products to his list members.
There is some wisdom in that advice.
If you're not careful there is the risk that you come across as a Jack-of-all-trades, rather than as a knowledgeable and respected specialist in the core subject in which your list members are primarily interested.
But such a policy also has the tendency to...
(a) reduce your potential income as an affiliate marketer, and...
(b) fail to maximize your "perceived value" to your list members.
There are at least two weakness in the "specialize only" argument:
* No one — not you, nor I, nor anyone else — is only interested in one specific topic or endeavor.
* Every core topic has related branch topics.
Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that you should promote, say, a book on Bonsai to your list of restauranteurs. That really would be too much of a stretch, even if one or two might have such an interest. The topic in no way relates to restaurant management.
But for every specialist subject there are closely related topics that are certain to be of interest to all members of the specialist group.
For example, like it or not, the restauranteur is a businessperson, and so must have an interest in general small business topics. He or she will be interested in such things as advertising tips and techniques (newspaper, radio, Yellow Pages), staff training and incentives, customer loyalty schemes, copywriting and presentation (menus, place-mats, wall posters), and so on.
My point is... look hard enough at your target group and you will always find a wide range of associated areas of interest—areas which can improve both your own income and your value to your list members.
Obviously then, if you are not promoting related products and services to your list, you are not reaping all the income you could be and should be.
Perhaps even more importantly, you are not being "all you can be" to the people who rely on you for information and recommendations.
How I recently learned this lesson for myself
The light dawned for me when I noticed a pattern in the people most successfully marketing my book The Hacker's Nightmare.
You must understand that I wrote The Hacker's Nightmare™ to show ordinary, everyday, non-technical computer users how to protect themselves from the threats and vermin of cyberspace, because all other available resources were either incomplete, ineffective, too technical, too expensive or just plain waffle.
In the main, my own marketing efforts had been targeted at novice computer users, and the results have been gratifying. But I discovered that my most successful affiliates were taking a different approach, one which showed up my own as being somewhat shortsighted.
These successful affiliates recognized that they had a responsibility to be as indispensable to their list members as they could be, in every relevant way.
After reading The Hacker's Nightmare™ themselves they then had significant knowledge about safety and security that their list members did not have, and the smart ones saw an opportunity.
Recognizing that data and identity security is important to everyone, they saw it as their duty to help their lists to protect themselves, as well as to provide other specialist assistance related to their core expertise.
After all, if you are online, then your data/identity security is most definitely a pertinent issue.
So what I did—when I noticed this—was to run a little test, and the results are what compelled me to write this article.
I contacted four affiliate who had a few sales of The Hacker's Nightmare to their credit, and who had lists that in no way related directly to any computing, technical or security topic.
I asked those people to write a brief letter to their lists, in their own words, about the importance of being confident of their security online.
If they had a personal story about how they themselves had been saved by information in The Hacker's Nightmare™ I asked them to tell it in their own words. I didn't supply any pre-written template. It was very important for the test that they not use any boilerplate template provided by me.
I don't know about you, but I'm more than fed up
with getting the same tired old eMail plugs...
"Bill, I'll burst if I don't let you in on this amazing secret blah blah blah"
The exact same thing sent out by a dozen or more different "marketing gurus".
Anyway...
The lists of all four marketers were relatively small (about 2,700 the biggest) ... but the results were astonishing!
One of the four I approached told her poetry and short stories list (!!!) how I had helped her through a serious spyware crisis.
The immediate response was 126 book sales from a list total of only 627 people. That's a 20% response from about the most unlikely list you could think of. And the math will tell you that this retired lady picked up a very nice bundle in affiliate commissions in the space of only a couple of days, just for writing a personal anecdote that took her less than an hour to compose.
* She didn't have a monster list
* She didn't have a team of buddies hammering their own lists for her
* She wasn't a genius copywriter
* She wasn't a super-saleswoman
What she did was something that any one of us can do...
She just told a personal story to people who "knew" her and trusted her to be telling it like it is.
REWARD: Several thousand dollars for an hour's work!!!
So why did it work? How did she sell so many copies of a "technical" product to a decidedly un-technical list?
Regardless of what you might have assumed to be the case generally, PC and Internet security IS a topic that is occupying the minds of a very great number of people all the time, no matter what their core interests.
A Jupiter Media report revealed that 52% of online users indicated a strong interest in stories and articles about Internet security and privacy. Fifty-two Percent Of All The Millions Online Globally!!!
By comparison..
How many other "niche" markets do you know of that interest 52% of the entire Internet population?
Errr ... how about none?
Now, in contrast to the success story above, here's a "Lost Opportunity" story:...
I actually invited five of my affiliates to participate in the test, not just four. One declined to participate because her list was exclusively female and dealt with "women's topics". Why she thought none of her members would be interested in improving their security when she herself had bought The Hacker's Nightmare was never explained.
Anyway, this prompted me to do a little research on the Internet usage of women.
None of this will come as any surprise to the ladies reading this article, but it'll be an eye-opener to a lot of guys with preconceived notions of who is interested in what.
Here's a random list of stats:
* Jupiter Media Metrix: 44% of women with children said their usage of the Internet caused them to spend less time watching TV.
* 29% of mothers surveyed in the US said they used the Net to play games online.
* 29% of mothers surveyed in the US said they used the Internet to download music.
* 40% of mothers surveyed in the US used the Internet to research for school and homework-related projects.
* 41% of mothers surveyed would buy things online that they wouldn't have bought otherwise.
* Women without children are heavier users of the Internet, and they also tend to use it differently. They make travel arrangements, do research for work, bank and read the news online.
* Women without children are also bigger spenders online. Around 63% of them spent over US$100 online over the past three months, compared to 52% of women with children.
* NetSmart Research: Women will make up 60% of the online population by 2005.
* CommerceNet: Women consumers online have passed the 10 million mark.
* Women's Consumer Network: Women make 75% of their families' financial decisions.
* Online banking services are predominantly used by women.
* Forrester Research: 46% of women are decision-makers for technology purposes.
* Pew Research Center: 41% of women go online daily.
Many of my personal customers are women. Many of my personal customers are in business for themselves - online, off-line and both.
And remember, even people who do all their business off-line still use the Internet, and they have the same safety concerns as the rest of us.
So, here's your REAL market for an information product like The Hacker's Nightmare...
Old - young - male - female - boss - employee - blue collar - white collar - restauranteur - grave digger - computer novice - nerd - guru - etc. - etc.
Security is special topic and a rare opportunity.
It's like food, air and water - everybody needs it.
Identity theft as a result of Internet insecurity is a MAJOR concern to literally millions of people.
There is no such thing as an inappropriate list when it comes to providing information that is highly relevant to EVERYONE.
So are YOU being "all you can be" to your list members?
* Try to view the interests of your customers and subscribers in a new light.
* Remember that nobody has only one interest, or only one area of concern in their lives.
* A story, and particularly a personal story, is one of the most powerful and effective marketing tools of all. How is it that you still remember stories you haven't heard for 10, 20, even 50 or more years? With time facts and figures become meaningless, but events told as stories mean something, and stay with us.
* Whatever your area of expertise, whatever your main products and services happened to be, try selling your prospects with a story. You don't have to be a Stephen King or a Jack Kerouac—just tell it like it is. Make it interesting and it will be worth a fortune to you as an affiliate marketer.
* And if you're concerned enough about your customers to offer them some "different" advice that everyone needs, consider becoming an affiliate for The Hacker's Nightmare™. It's the best product of its type available anywhere at any price, and provides a win-win situation for both you and your list members.
