Imagine this. You have 10 best Internet marketing gurus together in a war room to develop a strategy for your on-line business. You ask them to craft one slogan that would help you most and they propose something like: "It's LIST, stupid!"

Don't make this mistake in your on-line business--be it network, referral or affiliate marketing. You might say, "That list stuff is for those gurus selling their own info products or publishing ezines." You do what your upline does or your affiliate creator recommends: promote your opportunity or program. But is that smart thing for you to do at this time?

A DIFFERENT MARKETING APPROACH

Michael Southon, one of those on-line gurus, says in a recent book review:

"On Internet, it's not products that make money, it's lists (products don't sell, lists do)."

I'm going to propose something heretical to many of you Internet marketers, regardless of whether you are of network, referral or affiliate variety. Brace yourselves, now...this could be revolutionary...especially to your upline.

Don't promote your opportunity or product(s) to marketplace; promote your list!

OLD-THINK DRIP CAMPAIGNS

To explore why, let's first look at a very common marketing approach: email "drip" campaigns to purchased opt-in leads.

A drip campaign is one where you send out a series of prospecting letters to a list, usually of opt-in leads. Because it takes multiple impressions to convert a prospect, you "drip" letters on them over a period of time.

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Title: 10 Great ways to fail as affiliate 'seller' Copyright Eric Koshinsky, 2003

Only by knowing how to fail are you able to succeed.

10) mlm Pyramid schemes:

If you don't know it already, multi-level marketing and other pyramid schemes really only work for very few who get in early. There is also a general mistrust of mlm in public which makes them harder to work with. Don't confuse mlm with a two tiered (leveled) affiliate program that pays you a bonus on referral comissions as well. Unlike MLM, your earnings are NOT dependant on recruiting in decent affiliate programs.

9) Awful programs with terrible payouts

Be very careful in choosing what you promote. Go over promo material first, and get yourself a freebie copy (or some sample chapters etc.) to preview before you join program. Watch out for programs that pay a 2% comission on a $4.00 product and only send a check once you have reached $200 in total earnings!

Ok that was a bit exagerated, but you get point. Look for a good balance of comission rate, product cost, and payout level before you go gangbusters promoting a dud that will never produce any income. Also, do a little research on company before hand. Contact people giving 'testimonials', visit alexa.com to see where they are positioned, and keep an eye out for others promoting same programme.

8) Trying to beat system

This is normally a result of a "I'm gonna get rich quick" mentality. Trying to beat system will always result in failure. It may not be immediate, and you may even make a little money at it for a while, but you will get caught. Many affiliate programs are now starting to make use of black-list data. This is information about individuals that have tried to scam affiliate programs, used inappropriate marketing techniques such as spam, or in some way broken an affiliate Agreement. Once you are placed into such a list, you will quickly find it hard to join quality affiliate programs. The simple way to avoid this is: find quality programs that you are genuinely interested in, buy, subscribe or use them, and then promote them with integrity.

7) You have no stake/interest in product you are representing.

There can be any number of reasons for this. You don't like it, you don't know anything about it, it is your brother's product, you only took it on becuase it pays $25 per lead. Any one of these reasons will seriously cut down your profits. Basically, if you're not into it, skip it. The less interest you have in what you are doing, more difficult it is to succeed. More on this a little later.

6) Unrelated to your website

This is one of biggest and most common mistakes. Usually it is caused by a strange illness called Big-Payout-itis. You can normally tell a victim of this disease because they are normally found in a daze with $$ in their eyes. Keep products you represent simple, relevant, and related to content and purpose of your site. Big payouts are not direct ticket to big profits. If you give your visitors a meaningful and compelling reason to click link, you will get profits. Never forget that 20 sales at $5.00 each and 5 sales at $20 each are same as 1 sale at $100. Think of yourself, how much are you willing to comfortably spend? How does that compare with your visitors?

5) No context (like a banner ad - sitting there looking bad)