Often comes up in forums, etc… do I have to buy all the products I’m gonna  promote? I mean how can you really promote something unless you’ve used it yourself. Unless you’ve been there…as it were.

Well, this ongoing debate has surfaced in a place I’m frequenting more and more…

I’ve already popped up a quote from Tiffany Dow on this post and I can’t help heading back over there… ( I know, I know… pretty lady, right? OK! I plead guilty… but Tiff is real smart… let’s leave it that!)

Anyway, Tiffany is currently doing a live case study as an affiliate marketer promoting ‘you know who’s’ Magic of Making Up. Check it out here plus my comment and her response.

Thad has also popped on Tiff’s blog here.

Tiff is not comfortable with the whole “fake story” method some affiliates resort to using and Thad has suggested a 3rd party alternative which Tiffany is now doing in a “Dear Abby” style.

All cool!

I find the whole debate on the ethics of promoting stuff you haven’t actually used yourself fascinating.

Certainly, in the IM niche Thad and I only promote products we have used and got genuine benefit from but in other niches we don’t always. MOMU is a great example of this… I mean how can you really say you’ve used it unless you really have… unless you sling your husband / wife out for a trial. LOL!

Thad and I promote mainly in the financial services area… that’s our background… but we haven’t used all the products or services we promote. I mean you just can’t…

And all those dog training guides… I mean do you need to buy all of ‘em!

The short answer is of course you don’t. Your niche research should tell you if a product is good or not… what people are saying in the forums, etc… what the sales page is like…

After a while you get an instinct for these things and, of course refund rates are the acid test.

There is one area where I wouldn’t do this though and that’s pretty much anything medical… cures, pills, etc… we don’t do those anyway.

Another area is in the ‘Make Money Niche’… unless something has really helped YOU make some success online be very careful about pretending you’ve been there!

I always have a chuckle about all those sites that claim “I made $40,000 a month using ‘SuperSillyMoney X”. I just hope their Tax Returns match their claims!

Let me know your thoughts!