Transparency and Affiliate Marketing

I was trading emails earlier today with Sallie over at Affiliate Marketing Adventure earlier today discussing transparency in our blogs.

I have a difficult time being to transparent when writing posts concerning affiliate marketing because there is always the risk that a fellow affiliate marketer will copy my work.  For example, in earlier posts I’ve written about my problem with the LEGO group concerning one of my domain names.  I went out of my way in that post to make sure I didn’t mention the actual domain name in question for a few reasons.  I hate it the idea that other affiliate marketers can copy my work.  When you consider the path that someone would take in getting to my blog you realize that a high percentage of my visitors are going to be affiliate marketers and, more specifically, BANS affiliate marketers.  A visitor is going to get to my blog either from a search engine or through a link from a fellow affiliate marketers blog.  It’s a good chance that these visitors are looking for ideas for BANS sites.

Now I’ve got to say that I would love to give my two cents to help anyone with a project.  It would be very cool if each visitor that came to my blog went away learning something they didn’t know about affiliate marketing, the Build a Niche Store system or anything else I may write about.  If that is the goal of writing in this blog than it would be smart to be transparent with everything I write about and give readers as many ideas as I can.  But I don’t want anyone copying my work.  It sucks putting in the work to research a niche, finding the best keywords to promote, designing a website, and creating unique content only to have some loser affiliate marketer copier copy my work.

I’ve read a few different instances where affiliate marketing bloggers have had their work copied.  One famous instance of this is Shoemoney reavealing how he was making it big with affiliate ringtones.  He basically laid out step for step how to make a ton of money with affiliate ringtones and everyone copied him.  He recently did a post called the seven deadly sins for trying to make money online where he touches on not revealing exactly how your making a killing online.

I just read Marks post over at his blog, the Niche Store Builder, where he discusses how easy it is to impress MSN.  He mentions in his post that he would not reveal the website in question or his earnings.  This is a fairly common theme for internet marketers because many people can be envious of ones success and put effort into, not only copying their work, but doing what they can to sabatoge their work also.

I think we as bloggers have to draw a line with how transparent we are with our affiliate marketing projects and do our best to be as descriptive as possible while avoiding malicious visitors.  I am interested in networking and helping out as much as I can so feel free to send an email if there is something I write about here that you would like me to touch on a bit more.  But I won’t do your work for you.