When I did the Sugarrae reader survey, one of the questions I asked was…
“Have you ever paid for a “turnkey” affiliate marketing product? (Such as a domain and a store setup to sell affiliate products with promises that it was ready, set, make money?)”
.8% of you said you had an found it useful. 6.3% of you said you had and found it to be a complete waste of money. What surprised me most is that 20.5% of you hadn’t yet done it, but were thinking about it. So this post is aimed at those 20.5%.
Let me be unequivocally clear. Investing in a turnkey affiliate site is a COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME, MONEY AND ENERGY for various reasons.
What is a “Turnkey” Affiliate Website?
There’s a sect of opportunists in the affiliate industry (who I’m not going to promote by listing) that like to tell you “there’s gold in them there hills” and offer to sell you the picks and shovels to go find it.
It usually goes like this… you pay a fee and for that fee, they give you a website that is setup like an e-commerce store that is actually based on affiliate datafeed(s). Many times they tout that the website also auto produces content for you in the form of articles, news and video. There’s nothing to do on your end! Simply pay the fee and you get an affiliate site that’s ready to go and you will make loads of cash!
It’s bullshit
I think of turnkey affiliate websites like I do sensational weight loss products. They prey on your desperation to lose weight (make money) and your laziness to workout (spend time and effort) and non desire to eat right (work hard). And like sensational weight loss products, if these things actually worked then everyone would do it. Everyone in the world would be skinny (making money online) with no effort required. Like sensational weight loss products – it’s all BULLSHIT.
There is no silver bullet that gives you instant, amazing results without any effort. Not in weight loss, not in affiliate marketing, not in life. The only person making a profit with turnkey affiliate websites 99.8% of the time is the person selling you the bullshit dream.
“But they said Google will send me traffic?”
I don’t think that Google hates affiliate sites (note that does not mean that I don’t believe they favor brands – IMMENSELY). But what I believe they do hate is non unique crap which is usually only promoted by getting low quality links (because, what quality site wants to link to something that has no value add?).
In fact, they created two updates/filters aimed specifically at these types of sites – Panda and Penguin – and a turnkey affiliate site is exactly the type of site both of them are aiming for.
Most of these turnkey website programs tout how your site can be ready in ten minutes or less. Do you really think Google – either organic OR PPC wise (remember, PPC has a lot to do with the Quality Score) – wants to index thousands of pages of automatically generated content that took less than 10 minutes to create?
“But they had several success stories.”
First, testimonials can easily be faked. You have no way to verify who they’re really from, especially when they’re merely from “April A.” in Adams, Alabama. That said, every rule has it’s exception. But those exceptions are typically people who would have busted their ass with WHATEVER opportunity they were presented with – meaning they’re people who succeeded that happened to buy a turn key affiliate website once. They didn’t succeed because of that – they succeeded because of their own drive and initiative.
Sorry, Affiliate Marketing – the Right Way – Takes Work
Bottom line is? If it were as simple as paying $100 to buy a website that will make “instant profit” and “give you financial freedom” don’t you think everyone would shell out the $100 bucks? Hell – shell out $10,000 bucks to buy 100 of them? When you look at it logically, you know it’s a product that preys on your desire to find financial freedom – and NOT a real solution to that desire.
So save your cash. Affiliate marketing is a real opportunity. You can make real money with it. But as I’ve said time and time again, it all comes down to what you put into it. Read my affiliate archives for free. Follow other successful people in the affiliate marketing industry who give back to the affiliate community.
Don’t give up the desire to get into affiliate marketing – but do accept that the fact that affiliate marketing – like any other legitimate business opportunity – takes real effort to make it work for you.
About Rae Hoffman
I guess I was hoping that this sort of crap wasn’t being pushed these days but who am I kidding? There are always boneheads selling false promises to newcomers who don’t know any better.
Thanks for emphasizing what a waste of money it is!
Nice article Rae!
I think “turnkey” in general lives up to the name, and that’s where its appeal is. Simple, easy, and you don’t have to have any web skills to get started. Obviously the marketing strategies for these types of businesses are geared towards selling these cheap sites to naive buyers without an ounce of web knowledge, and probably not much business sense either. I have found that regardless of what you do online, if you don’t have the patience to learn your niche, and that means a lot of research and trial and error, you’re not going to have much success with these types of sites either.
Its surprising how naive people are when it comes to buying this sort of cr*p. It’s all very well having an instant website selling all kinds of products but you need traffic, and thinking Google is going to automatically send traffic to your new site and a hundreds of identical sites is just ridiculous.
Would be affiliate marketeers are not the only ones who still have the “build it and they will come” mentality.
I quite often have ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses asking me to build them eCommerce websites and when I ask them how they intend to drive traffic to their new website they don’t have a clue and just give me a blank look. When I explain that I can help with SEO and give them a price, which is normally more than the website costs they decide they “want to think about it”.
I have probably lost a few sales this way but I like my clients to have a good understanding of what is involved in running a web business.
Many people still think that simply having a website will bring them instant riches but a web business is like any other business, it takes a lot of time and effort to build up.
While there are suckers out there there will always be people willing to sell them cr*p. Simple supply and demand.
All the best,
Roger
Thanks for this amazing and kick-ass post.
Affiliate marketing has been an up and down journey for me. It’s been 3.5 years and I’m still learning. It amazes me how much I “believed” at first, and how far I’ve come.
There are many paths to being successful as an affiliate but besides never backing down and never giving in, the truth is there’s only so much you can purchase from others – coaching, books, programs, articles – before you have to do the damn work. You can either hire someone to do the work for you – and pay a crap load of money to have it done right – or you can roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.
I’m ready for the challenge. It’s so much more than blogs and links to succeed in this game.
Thank you Lauryn. Glad you liked it. Also, had to comment to tell you I love your tagline. :)