Honesty in affiliate marketing?

[kenpachi]

The reason I ask is because I have a lot of interests in niches related to health and fitness and I would like to follow through on some of those niches, but I'm trying to come to terms with the ethics of promoting something purely from a marketers perspective of wanting to "cache in" versus giving an honest more personal evaluation of a product that does highlight some of its short-comings.

From what I have read in various posts, it's my understanding that in order to sell products and do well in this game, you need to focus on the marketing aspect and really sell the product you are affiliated with. My problem is I am rarely, if ever, 100% satisfied with a product and to me it wouldn't feel right promoting something without including the caveats, but by doing this wouldn't I hurt myself as as affiliate marketer?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Actually you may have heard you really need to sell hard from high pressure ebook people but I don't think it's true as much with retail products.

Purely speaking, it's the merchants job to sell and close the sale. Your job is to send targeted traffic HOWEVER pre-selling helps. I think of pre-selling as setting the stage, it does not have to be a hard sell at all. Many affiliates just have product pictures and descriptions, there's no presell even. There are lots of affiliates that have a whole vitamin store with thousands of products or a fitness store with hundreds of products. They aren’t pre-selling all those products and they certainly aren't personally trying every supplement and doing full reviews.

When you are selling retail products it's very different than eBooks or Internet marketing products. In the retail environment you don't need and seldom see big long pitchy sales letters.

I'm not saying don't ever sell, it's just you don't HAVE to and a softsell, presell in most cases is better anyway. You also don't need to tell them everything about the product - that's the merchants job. Your job is to get them to the merchant and if you can send them there with a little more info and in the mindset to buy, so much the better.

I get the feeling you are thinking to sell the product you need to write a big long thing ABOUT the product. Sometimes you are better off writing about the problem people are experiencing, the pain, the condition or whatever and you just conversationally mention this is a product a lot of people with this condition have gotten relief from. It does not have to be in the form of a full review or anything. Reviews are only one of many possible styles.

Side note - Keep in mind with health products you can't make any health claims especially saying anything is going to be a cure or language along those lines. You have to be pretty careful what you say or you could possible get in trouble.

Did that make sense and address any of your concerns or did I miss the mark?

 

[kenpachi]

Wow, that is a very good answer and does address a lot of points! Thanks for taking the time to write it. The issue I am facing is with my new chosen niche (health related) there are a few products which I have tried that work reasonably well, so I thought why not write a full review of the product and let whoever visits, decide, based on the information given if they would like to learn more about it.

Since this niche is also quite personal I really don't want to BS people (something I couldn't do regardless of the niche) into buying something and instilling in them that this will work a 100% and it is the end-all-be-all for their condition.

I think ultimately I am going to go with the full review, and for future products I am going to go take your advice and go a bit lighter on the pre-sell, especially for products I haven't used personally.

Oh and thanks for the clear distinction between affiliate and merchant, it helps a lot to think about it in those terms.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I totally get you on the health products. I'm going to be doing something similar and with some health conditions and products I'm very familiar with. So I understand your feelings. It's tricky because if you tried something that really worked, you want to tell others. Yet you know it won't work the same for everyone, so you hate to give out false hope or maybe even cause them a problem because they took something you recommended.

 

[ChocolateChip]

I'd also like to say thanks to Linda for such a good explanation. It's hard when you're new to steer away from selling too hard! Especially if it's something you're enthusiastic about! So it was helpful to have it all sort of summed up. And I'm also in agreement about the honesty thing. At the moment I'm just going with products/services that I have personally used and would whole heartedly recommend because that is what I feel comfortable with.