Traditionally, a sweatshop is a manufacturing facility that forces employees to work exceptionally long hours in exchange for very low wages. Some U.S. garment suppliers operate sweatshops in third world countries, where workers are paid a few cents per item manufactured, despite the fact that each garment often retails for well over $100. It's a tragedy that poverty is so prevalent in portions of the world that people are willing to work for such minimal compensation. In reality, even people from more financially developed nations are subjected to working conditions that barely escape the definition of slavery. In the U.S., for example, an employer is required by federal law to meet a minimum exchange of just over $5 for each hour of work performed, and many of the most physically demanding jobs available to citizens without a college education pay no more than this ludicrous minimum. Any human being's time is worth far more than the pittance offered by sweatshop factories and minimum wage positions. In fact, the very idea of working for such unacceptable levels of pay is enough to enrage most people. Why then, are thousands of people willing to spend hours of their time each day glued to their computer desk for absolutely no return of any kind? Granted, it takes time to build profit in any business, and there is definitely a big learning curve for new entrepreneurs. But how much time and money has to be lost before the alarm bell starts ringing? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you are a hard working affiliate who drives thousands of visitors to your referral URL every month through a variety of advertising venues. You surf the traffic exchanges for hours each day, post your pre-written ads to dozens of safelists, and submit your affiliate banner to any website that will accept it. Despite your diligence, you make no sales (and thus zero dollars per month), but the company behind your product, service, or opportunity boasts an average of $10,000 in monthly sales. You start to wonder what you are doing wrong. You have followed the instructions in your affiliate training emails, and done everything the smiling, positive thinking administrators have suggested to promote your affiliate link. In fact your efforts do produce sales and sign-ups, but not in the way you would hope. It is hugely the owner(s) of a company that benefit from the grunt work performed by the affiliates. What Program Owners Know about Branding: Well informed marketers know how to use a tactic called branding to build an awareness of their company and the products/services they offer. McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and hundreds of other household names have used branding to secure positions at the top of their markets. The idea here is to keep your company name, logo, or slogan in front of your target audience on a continual basis. Television commercials, highway billboards, and catchy radio jingles are not designed to make us rush out right then and there to buy a Coke or a Big Mac. These forms of advertisement are simply meant to plant the seeds of recognition and desire into our sub-conscious minds, so that when the time comes to purchase a soft drink or hamburger, we are likely to recall a specific advert, and purchase a product based on that recollection. The process of branding is an extremely powerful form of promotion, and the owners of all major network marketing companies have found a great way to apply this technique for free. One of the first things you are told as an affiliate is "all you have to do is refer people to your free affiliate website". This suggestion is made over and over throughout the course of your training. What's more, whenever a frustrated affiliate complains due to lack of results, they are reminded of the need to keep driving traffic to their free website, and told the rest will take care of itself. A replicated affiliate website is nothing more than the company home page plus a simple referral code. A few thousand people working hard to promote their affiliate sites are providing an incredible amount of free exposure for the owners of the program. A few of the affiliates will make sales/referrals with replicated URLs, but most will not. However, a good deal of sales and sign-ups will be collected by the administrators as a result of all the free publicity their domain receives from affiliate advertising. You see, most people will see a website dozens of times before they finally decide to try the product or sign up for the opportunity being offered. Quite often, an individual will just type a domain name into their browser out of memory and go directly to the main company home page. Even if a program uses cookies to track a prospect after their first visit to an affiliate site, this only works if the visitor has cookies enabled, or hasn't deleted them since that initial visit. And let's say that affiliate cookie is still in a person's browser when they finally decide to sign up or make a purchase. This only helps you if your affiliate URL was the first one they visited. The banners and text ads you find in your member's area are also designed to brand the company or individual behind the program. You should never spend your time or money placing these ads. Use of these resources will benefit the program owner(s), but seldom result in profit for you. Promoting a replicated page is not a reliable way to build an income for yourself, but it's a terrific way to put more money into the program owner's pocket. |
