The Death of the PDF…

POSTED BY jeanmatt on May 16 under Affiliate Marketing

Well after seeing the post heading you might think OMG what’s going on… The fact is while PDF’s might not be dead yet it is surely fading and going nowhere slowly in my opinion! Especially for the affiliate promoting it.

I started my online and affiliate marketing journey way back when the internet was still pretty undeveloped and people kept making jokes about why your mouse is called a mouse and CD drives got used as Coffee Stands etc. Now back in those days me and most of the internets affiliates were making good amounts of cash selling e-books in the form of digital products. Things went well and my sales were super high with not much effort needed.

You have to remember that back then the PDF was the next best thing and people were blown away by the e-book concept… They just couldn’t believe that you could now read a book on your computer WTH, haha it’s true. So to continue with my story, I was doing well and then suddenly my conversions started dropping. I mean the same traffic was still plowing in but I simply wasn’t making the same amount of sales, so I changed my approach a bit with adding new promotions and soon it went up again. But after a while the same problem occurred with my new promotions and strategies.

That’s when I finally came to the realization that it wasn’t a drop in traffic, me being lazy or bad strategies. The e-books were seemingly starting to lose their value in the online marketplace. This was due to competitors jumping into the mix the moment a new e-book was released by providing similar content to that of the original. Also I started seeing a pattern around refunds evolving, ever since I started I had a refund rate but never as high as then.

That was the final straw for me and I decided to go ahead and start promoting physical products within the niches I was already familiar with. First couple of months were tough, but after 2 months the sales started coming in and picking up. My income then stabilized at about $4500 a month for my physical products. And that number stayed consistent sometimes going up with 10% - 13% and some months dropping with 4% - 7%, this is when I realized that I had to put all my effort into making this concept work. I soon realized that physical product promotions as an affiliate helped me gain some sustainability as with the e-books who made me constantly wonder where my business’ future will lead. It was also the first time that I could see my online endeavors turning into an online business that produced over $15000 per month. And that was what I was striving for all along… The consistency and longevity factors.

Don’t get me wrong I still think E-books are Great, great for the merchants that is. These merchants put out a week or so, do some research and bust out a e-book with a catchy and almost death defying title. They create buzz, get stacks of affiliates on board and before you can say “cheese & ham bam” they create a short burst of income. The e-book makes money for a few months, dies and after decomposing they simply do some more research… followed by some rehashing and goodness gracious here comes the sequel and so it goes on and on.

Here are my reasons for saying that the PDF is Dying…

High Refund Rate:
Info Junkies are the scum of the info and e-book world. These guys go out there and buy e-books read it, but with the sole purpose of refunding after they are done. They simply take everything on board and before long you have a whole list of refunds for your product.

PDF’s Value Dropping More and More:
Look at the average price of a e-book nowadays. And you can keep your eye on it, cause sure as hell it will keep on dropping. There are plenty of reasons for this factor - like the content getting outdated and rehashed, amount of competition, free vs paid and way more… The value simply isn’t sustainable anymore and offers little to no longevity for the affiliate.

Why Buy if it’s Available Free of Charge:
The newest trend, well not that new is to give away free reports in the form of a PDF. And heck some of these guys could actually charge for what they are giving away. So I ask you why would you buy something old and rehashed if you can get something better for free?

Customer Support is Considerably Low or Non Existent:
How many of these e-book offers actually come with support and if they do what’s the use. By the time you are done reading it the chances are that what you learnt is already outdated and why then even bother asking for help and support. But like I said how many actually offer hands on support?

Scammers taking Advantage:
Scamming in the e-book world is a predominant factor and one that the buyers are picking up on and nowadays they do fair amounts of research before actually buying. This makes it hard for the person promoting it - where in most cases they don’t know about it. Another factor is that so many e-book offers are misleading; they offer something with big catchy headlines and almost never produce. What happens the buyer catches up to it and sorry I want a refund a easy as that.

The Merchant Solution:

It’s up to you guys to be creative and offer your product or service in such a way, broadening sales and future prospects to ensure online survival. Try staying clear of PDF’s and go into the multimedia direction - providing customers with intriguing and informational videos, DVD series, audio files etc. In this day and age with technology booming all over you need to make use of it, the info is available all over the net and if you aren’t going to offer them something unique then someone else will… That you can be sure of.

The Affiliate Solution:

Instead of solely promoting Physical products or just sticking to digital - go for both and combine the two. Promote Physical products and offer your visitors free e-books available for download online or create them yourself. You can also up sell on one or the other, for example in the golf niche where you say for instance are promoting golf clubs… Up sell with a perfect swing DVD series or e-book manual. Use their interests and the relativity and fuse the products, which I like to call Strategic Affiliate Promotional Fusion.. Free and Paid Reports are great for extending promotional value along with grabbing extra leads to follow up on.

The most important point I’m trying to make with this post is that you need to keep customizing and monetizing your online approaches and strategy’s. I simply don’t see it happening that often in the PDF Ebook world cause of all the rehashed and outdated content available… So make sure you promote something unique that stands the test of time!