What exactly is the difference between Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing and Brand Marketing? People think that Affiliate Marketing and Internet Marketing are the same and Internet Marketing and Brand Marketing are the same. I tend to disagree. I am still trying to master all three, but I noticed that there are some differences and some similarities as well. But all in all, WAY different marketing tactics. It’s been my mission to try and bridge the gap for quite some time between all three and I think I’m getting there slowly.
If you can master all THREE of these types of marketing, you won’t need any VC money or other money to make your companies big and successful. It’ll just happen. Trust me. 
(some people aren’t really interested in making it “big” and some are happy to just have a small biz and be okay. me? i’m shootin for the stars!)
(p.s. – it’s 70% about trust, authority and the free model…the other 30% is personality and character)
Okay so here is what I have discovered over the last 5 years…
“Affiliate Marketers” are people who push products via various traffic sources for commission checks. Most of these people are to themselves and have very little contact with the outside world. I used to be this way. I used to sit at home and just churn away at my first big success story. Google Arbitrage. I had my own systems built via outsourcing and hacked some stuff up myself. I was absolutely killing it online with arbitrage. I could have made Shoemoney look like a joke with that check he holds over his face. LOL.
As time went on I was getting heavy with affiliate marketing. From authority sites, to data feed sites, to arbitrage, to ppc, to damn well near anything. Anyway I could monetize affiliate stuff, I would. I was a lone soul on this journey to make it big. And I was determined too.
But my life took a small turn. I met someone through my AM in Azoogle (this was back in 2004). He was a local dude (and a great friend now) in Jersey and I said hey why not meet up with someone else pushing some volume. He used to make some good money with flowers and tax stuff. I would make some good money with ringtone stuff. Was a good fit to meet each other!
Anyway, so we met up and he kept talking about all these marketers that I had no idea about. These are what I call “Internet Marketers” or “guru’s”. You see them all the time and they are everywhere. They sell products on how to make money online and have long sales pages and use direct response marketing. These products could be training, DVD courses, eBook’s, whatever. I was ALWAYS skeptical of these guys but this friend of mine swore these guys were geniuses, so I decided to get involved. I signed up for like a billion lists and kept following the trail of incestuous JV promotions that these guys would have amongst each other.
However, one thing I stuck to was I never bought any of these products. That would be nothing but information overload. But I kept getting roped in and roped in. The copy they used to write was hypnotizing and the dream of becoming an internet rockstar was appealing to me. I was making good money, so that meant I can make a product about what I do. Then I would get some people to help me promote it and start my “internet marketing” career. It’s just multiple streams of income, so why not?
One thing I noticed along the way is that a lot of internet marketers use deceptive language and tactics to get you to buy stuff. Whether the system, ebook, training, or whatever it is they are selling works or not, they are feeding off YOUR hope. The hope and dream that these poor newbs have of making it online is instantly filled with these internet marketers or “guru” tactics. It was ALWAYS the next big thing to make you millions of dollars.
This REALLY bothered the shit outta me so I wanted to provide some damn value if I was to launch a product. That is when we released TheNewPPC.com 3 years ago. It was a series of free videos that showed market research, keyword research, bidding techniques, setting up campaigns and a bunch of other stuff. This was before of any of the cool tools and software that’s out now. It was a lot of manual stuff you needed to do back in the day so we made videos for it all.
We got an outstanding response from all the people who watched the videos. We were literally one of the first few to cross the “Free Line” and provide VALUE to people. Was that such a crazy concept? I mean everything was headed towards free. Google, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc. So why not get MORE exposure and build a BRAND by giving away FREE content?
Made sense to me. This is where I was thinking of building a brand. I now realize that building a brand via direct response is not a bad method to build a brand, but there are SO many other ways to think bigger. Direct response personal branding was more like a cult than a brand. Infomercials can do it great, but individuals are a bit different. That is more self branding.
I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be different. I wanted to stand out from the crowd. I wasn’t your regular “guru” off the block selling you some over-hyped ebook or software promising you that you can push a button and make money. In fact I got an email from a “guru” the other day and it literally said “push send and make money” as the subject. I was like WTF? Don’t you REALLY wish it was that easy?
I mean my computer spits out cash everyday. Right from the CD-ROM, doesn’t yours?
(random thought insertion here…)
Don’t get caught up in people’s hype. You know if you can trust someone, right? Are you intuitive? Do you practice being intuitive? You know if you can trust someone within the first 5 minutes of meeting them or listening to them. A ton of internet marketers are fake, just by watching their videos and reading their emails. It’s pretty easy to figure out what their intentions are. If you haven’t mastered this, being intuitive is EXTREMELY important. In your personal life, social life, online, anything really.
That’s why I stick to my “crew”.
Very few are there to HELP you. Most are there to TAKE your money.
(back to story…)
So there I was, making money doing affiliate stuff, but driven by the “rockstar” ego in me to be a popular “guru” and release a product. Unfortunately, it never happened which is for another post (long story). So I just continued to release content and give away stuff. I eventually got around to giving away FREE licenses to HexaTrack. That went viral and I literally never launched it and built a list of 5,000 within a couple months just through word of mouth. We since have closed the doors to the free version of HT because of other ventures.
But I didn’t want to be seen as a “guru”. Because I’m not. I’m not a guru by any means and don’t really want to be one. I just want people to learn and implement. Knowledge is power.
Along my journey I realized I just want to teach people the real deal. Not stuff that worked last year. So I continued to give stuff for free. Tons of material and content that I could have easily sold for thousands of dollars. If I ever get around to it, I’ll make a section on this blog with all the stuff I have. But its easily accessible online now.
My first official “product launch” was Google Goggles last year. Now this tool just kicked ass. It literally examined your landing page as if Google were looking at it from a PPC perspective. I cracked the algorithm pretty good and decided to make a tool out of it. I’m a huge believer in finding gaps in the market and making tools for that gap. This launch was great but again, the headache of dealing with customer service was a bitch. And quality of the users I received from JV’s and partners was okay at best.
I want to cater to mid to high level affiliates looking to change their game. Provide insight to people who want to learn advanced strategies and learn to think outside the box. Now I’m not saying a newb cant learn from this, sure they can, but more qualified users = less customer service = happier customers = higher LTV of a customer.
That’s why our latest “launch” was the seminar we did. It was a $4k price point and we literally said in videos and on the sales page that this was NOT for newbs. However newbs still ended up coming. They learned so much in that seminar, that their heads started spinning. =)
Now I do not want to turn off any newbs by what I say here. I love ya’ll. I was right in your shoes at one point. I know how frustrating it can be. That’s why I have dedicated two members of my staff to literally take what my biz partner and I have taught them and make it into a newbie course. Step by Step. (watch for more details on that…)
After the seminar, I decided I wanted to go big. Even bigger. Not for my personal name, but a bigger brand. We are in the process of building REAL brand-able sites with ridiculous ideas that could spawn multimillion dollar revenue streams. That is what I call brand marketing. Taking an idea and making it huge by branding it to a particular niche or community.
My goal is to bridge the gap between these three as I see that these three marketing angles are starting to converge and become one. Affiliate Marketers are becoming Internet Marketers. Affiliate Marketers are becoming Brand Marketers. Internet Marketers are tapping into Affiliate Marketing now and are tapping into Brand Marketing as well.
But is there a true connection between all three? We’ll find out soon enough.
