5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Spy! (45)
1) It will stagnate your ability to be creative and solve problems quickly youself. Starting new verticals, angles and niches will be way harder if you mostly lean on others. Put time and effort in exploring things.... it's essential in life and affiliate marketing.
2) It brings you on the wrong track. Besides the fact you might copy stuff what isn't performing well, you also copy stuff 100 others are copying too. You are going to compete with the same shit, what most likely ends up in a mediabuy battle with skyrocketing rates.
The originator will eventually win because he probably tweaked on things you can't see, unless your targeting/bidding system is better ofcourse.
3) You are the tail, all the time. That means you are always behind in anything. Things will be milked out very quickly and you might be able to scrape some dollars, but during the time you are copying someone, he/she already is thinking ahead on what/how to optimize.
4) You will always fish in a pool of same kind of angles/landers/ads. You won't find much progressive stuff. And specially these out-of-the-box angles are making the difference in being a taker instead of a maker.
5) It's kinda hypocrite to cheer, compliment, thank on the forum, while you copy their shit to fill you own pockets. People crying about not doing BH because it's unethical bla bla bla... think again before you copy!
Ofcourse their are exceptions and people might be banking big time on spying, this is just a little tease post to create a discussion and maybe motivate some lazy people ;-).
I'd tend to say that moderation's the key here.
Never spying? You'll be starting from a blank slate, and whilst that might give you original approaches, it'll also cost you a lot of time to catch up. (Been there, done that.)
Just ripping? As you say, you'll be starting at the tail, fishing things that have already partially burned out.
IMO, the best use of spy tools is to gain understanding, not a folder of ripped landers. Knowing what currently works is really useful - but it's a starting point, not an end goal.
I think spying is great, you have to start with things that work, or are much more likely to work.
Reinventing the wheel is one of the worst things people do when trying any new business - you should build on what works. Of course, if you don't add anything to it, you will always be a step behind, so you have to add something of your own in the mix after you learn your vertical/niche/market.
Good post buddy, almost in agreement as we discussed on Skype earlier, "you need to be creative on your own"
But I think its good to get the juices flowing finding popular posts with huge likes not necessarily even affiliates post just something that is generating huge volumes of interest and coming up with ways you can "affiliate" that and turn into something more sellable with a conversion at the end point.
So for inspiration I think yes, but if you want to be big time aff you need to come up with your own concepts to get ahead of the rest
Also, just because something has reasons to not do, doesn't mean it doesn't have reasons to do that outweigh the negatives and make it into a positive action.
With spying, if you do it to try and rip off creatives, there's a limit to what you can do of course, but there's more to spying or competition research than that. It's just smart to keep an eye out for what everyone else is doing.
Originally Posted by manu_adefy
Originally Posted by caurmen
Inspirational yes, I believe it should be.
My "problem" is that spying has been promoted too much these days...without putting ??? at it.
Originally Posted by stickupkid
Like playing the lottery, a bunch of people waste their money and once in a while someone hits it big - I don't think it's smart to do business like playing the lottery.
Originally Posted by manu_adefy
I share your view, PARTIALLY 
Spying has reached ridiculous levels and there are dozens and dozens of affiliates who do nothing, but copy stuff from others and never try anything on their own. This is just silly indeed.
On the other hand, trying to come out with own creatives and funnels just like that out of the blue ... that's a waste of time IMO, with massive chance to fail.
I'm a big fan of using spying to get a benchmark funnel and to have something to start with quickly... but then I always change stuff to fit my own style.
Spy, copy ... then innovate ... that sounds like a better approach to me, compared with staying away from spying completely.
Great post man. IMO, I would say that in AM the sole purpose of spying should be to improve oneself. Creativity comes from reinvention and if spying can be done in moderation and with self-discipline then we would all score big in AM.
Originally Posted by stickupkid
My point is that as an affiliate, or whatever you do in life, you should learn from others and add your unique twist to it but not try to start from 0. You will be at a huge disadvantage. Out of the box, disruption, innovation - bunch of buzzwords that lose touch with reality. They are great on selling motivation but they suck at getting things done - it's the disease of all startups to fill up their pages with the latest buzzwords and argue why they should NOT have sales/revenue/traction.
Don't know how familiar you are with the concept of expected value but the idea is that something can be rare and still have a positive expectation, while something that happens just as often can have a negative expected value.
New without using existing knowledge is a negative expected value gamble in my view - that's why I think spying is so great. It puts new people up to date with all the latest trends so they can improve on things that were neglected up to that point.
Originally Posted by manu_adefy
Do you apply the same logic to coding then?
Take it from someone that has done 7 figures in profit every year for the last 5 years. Spying is a must because it gives direction; and inspiration. You can have wild awesome ideas (or so you think) blow all your budget trying to make them work -or- you can spy, see what has been working well, and make your own variations of it or similar angles.
Just my 2 cents, based on years of experience.
Personally I've found little value in Spying. Yes I do it from time to time. I'll poke my head out there and see what others are running or what LP's / angles might be doing and what traffic networks they are running those kinds of offers on. I don't however rip campaigns. It's just not worth the hassle.
I get ideas for offers and ideas on what could work and compare that information to what I'm running now and what has worked for me in the past.
The largest and most profitable companies in the world engage in spying, ripping and modifying the ideas of others as part of their competitive intelligence and research.
I agree with both caurmen and IAmAttila.. you can't limit yourself to just spying without also using your own creativity to find an edge. But any savvy mind knows that great ideas are hard to come by and expensive, so you start with an idea thats proven to work, create your own version while minimizing your risks to achieve a profitable outcome.
Andrew
Originally Posted by manu_adefy
We have to differentiate between experienced marketer and newbie.
Trying to innovate and reinvent the wheel is the worst a newbie can do.
The chances to beat the control group are close to zero.
It takes massive amounts of time and money while success is far from being guaranteed.
However doing the same as everybody else is not a way to make solid money in the long run.
What worked well for me, independent from the traffic type, is reverse engineering & copying key players and then switching up one high leverage variable.
Bringing a lander / campaign from a competitive GEO to a less competitive, bringing a campaign from one traffic source to another, running a campaign on a different traffic type, finding a new or exclusive offer, tapping into a new demographic / pain point.
Originally Posted by stickupkid
That's why I think discounting spying is quite the slippery slope. You can spy for the wrong things and basically waste your time with it but generally it's not bad, it's vital.
If you don't learn and apply what others created, all coders would start with binary code - that's certainly not the most productive use of their time. Yes, most frontend webdevs are oblivious of such low level code, but they are productive for the market. Marketers that spy and do few or no changes and make a profit are still a productive part of the market, so I see 0 problem with that strategy.
Guess your goal of starting a longer discussion was achieved though, seems a lot of good explanations about how to treat spying, instead of the magic bullet many beginners consider it
One other point about spying: it's useful not only to see what's working, but to spot the "negative spaces" - what people aren't running.
Often, after looking at a whole bunch of landers, you'll think "well, there's an obvious alternate angle of sale here - why's no-one trying it?"
Sometimes those angles/lander designs/whatever are total duds, but sometimes they really work.
In general I agree on the inspiration part, for sure. I get my inspiration from other things tho' but I can imagine it could help guys big time to spy. Still as a beginner you should rely on your own instinct, values, creativity mainly. Unless you just want to bank big time and don't give a damn about developing yourself.
Maybe my perspective is also a bit different from others. I am more of a marketeer with almost zero technical skills. For me it's "never" a problem to come up with new ads/angles/ideas. But if you are a born coder, you might lack creativity and other skills which are needed to make things convert.
Still I stand my point spying is not a must, but especially we should encourage newbies to trail & error more instead of just saying "get an adplexity account" and see what's going on.
Encouraging newbies not to spy, will help them burn their budgets with just a few lucky conversions (if any) and then quit!
In my opinion having access to spy tools will make newbies familiar with lots of stuff involved in AM and for non-tech guys having ripped landers saves tons of hours an money. As for trials and errors, are one thing one can't avoid with or without spying.
It should all come down to your own strategy, no body is keeping no one from being creative or silly enough to dare and try new things.
I wouldn't made any profits without learning how to spy manually when I started out (at that times there were no spy tools for mobile).
The content discussed on public forums and blogs was ... well let's say a bit ... misguiding.
The books were teaching stuff that was not the real thing.
Only spying opened my eyes and totally changed the way how I approached my campaigns.
I think for newbies it's important to see how things work.
Yes it's less bread for gurus to teach their "secrets", but who cares.
But..
..once you understand why and how things work you should start doing your own twists, angles, scripts and generally experiments, so you can branch out and build your own advantages.
I see spying like a compass that shows you if you are going the way you intended to go, so from time to time you have to take it out from your pocket and take a look if you are still on the right track.
Originally Posted by erikgyepes
Another thing to keep in mind is that most spy tool don't give the full picture... merely a "broad picture" of what's around
e.g. don't take for granted that only generic banners work on mobile only because you see them all around adplexity... unless you can say for sure that adplexity does spy everything (it doesn't...)
not spying at all is really not helping yourself, thinking spy tool data = the full picture is not good either
I am a newbie with mobile pops and tbh I can see the value of spying initially to give you some idea of what others are doing. However, how does a newbie know what is working and what is not, after all we cant see conversions.
Also the landers I downloaded are full of weird code and makes you ask if backdoors are present, personally I have decided to order some LP's from our friends "Banners and Landers" and experiment myself.
At least I can be sure Im not giving away traffic!
I agree with the OP and here is why. I don't claim to be an industry veteran but I've done over 7 figures yearly and I've learned a lot of crap the HARD way.
> Spying is a great way to get an "idea" for what others are doing currently. Yes I use spy tools all the time, BUT
> I see people ALL THE TIME think that copy & clone = profits! WRONG!. By the time you copy & clone my ads/lander its already used & abused and isn't converting like it used to. So your cloning my burned out crappy old shit that I stopped using because it sucks now.
Case in point ....
Back when I was big into nutra on FB, everyone did the exact same angles, ad, lander...etc and it was hard to really make a solid profit from it, especially when dealing with FB bans every few days on your 20 accounts. Then one day I decided to do something nobody else was doing, I made the "Flash Sale" angle (This was years ago btw) and really made it seem like this was an EPIC sale about to expire in 1hr. I was the first to do this with nutra on FB. I put a countdown timer on my lander saying "Flash Sale Expires in 15:29..." and since I was first to do this, my ROI went through the roof, went from making $1,000/day to $10,000/day within a week. Then as time passed, I noticed my ROI was dropping and saw that everyone else was using my angle, thus it was burned out a bit as all these users see the same "Flash Sale" ads every day from different advertisers.
Point being, be FIRST to market with a new idea, thats how you profit the most. Cloning and expecting a profit is for the weak and lazy.
I don't know why many of these tools market themselves as "spy" tools.
They are competitive intelligence tools.
I don't know any Fortune 500 company in the world that does not engage analysing their competitors.
One of the very first things you do when you write a business plan for a new startup is competitive analysis.
I am not sure telling people to not engage in competitive intelligence is really very sensible advice.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
hello
Originally Posted by stickupkid
Modified yes, exact same no. And trust me, more people just simple copy after spying than modify.
Originally Posted by stickupkid
We've been talking with my friends about just these 2 car models when the Mercedes "copy" came out, so it rang a bell in my head when I saw you mentioning them
Originally Posted by matuloo
Recommending beginners not to spy at all is the worst thing you can potentially do nowadays. No ideas, not being able to see what competitors do, what seems to be trending - huge disadvantage. If you open a cafe in a city, I bet you'd like to know what your competitors are selling ^^
@stickupkid rather than naming this thread '5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Spy!', you should have named it '5 Reasons What You Shouldn't Do When Spying'
Each of your 5 bullet points only turns out being a disvantage if your whole workflow is spy => rip => launch. As soon as you start improving and changing things, every point you mentioned is not valid anymore.
So I think the bottom line of this thread: everybody seems to somehow agree with your points until to some extent. But as long as you don't rely on the ripped campaign and actually split test, improve and change things, well welcome to the world of AM, that's what everybody is doing.
Originally Posted by matuloo
Originally Posted by fjk87
Recommending beginners not to spy at all is the worst thing you can potentially do nowadays. No ideas, not being able to see what competitors do, what seems to be trending - huge disadvantage. If you open a cafe in a city, I bet you'd like to know what your competitors are selling ^^
@stickupkid rather than naming this thread '5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Spy!', you should have named it '5 Reasons What You Shouldn't Do When Spying'
Each of your 5 bullet points only turns out being a disvantage if your whole workflow is spy => rip => launch. As soon as you start improving and changing things, every point you mentioned is not valid anymore.
So I think the bottom line of this thread: everybody seems to somehow agree with your points until to some extent. But as long as you don't rely on the ripped campaign and actually split test, improve and change things, well welcome to the world of AM, that's what everybody is doing.
Well sorry for making you cry, but I'm really convinced it's nothing but the hard truth :P
agree to Caurmen 100%. The key is Understanding. Is like learning accounting. People who just learn only by memorizing journaling habit is way more stupid than the one who understand why it should journal like that. Let me ask how many of you know what the to increase for ? and why sometime we need contra account ? For some people who learn just by memorizing the accounting journal find it hard to answer that question. Just my 5 cent. In all mean I do not intent to offend some people who is in accounting or who love it.
For a beginner about to start, how much time would you suggest allocating towards learning copywriting, creating good ads and landing pages vs. the rest of the work done in Affiliate marketing. There's just so much to learn, would you recommend the approach of first getting the hang of the mechanics, tools, processes in Affiliate marketing first- by copying others, and then AFTER that- learning about the vertical, audience, creating ads targeting that audience?
Thanks!
Thanks! So what I gather is, for someone starting out it's more important to just start testing. It seems that knowing the basic of what copy works and copying and tweaking successful ads is the way to go.
Just had another question, if the end goal is to use the knowledge gained from affiliate marketing to create my own offer would it serve me well to then learn the following in depth - 1) copywriting 2) study trends 3) build good funnels 4) learn psychology of the market and program the market to be more receptive to the offer (more LT focused). I know the forum is mostly focused on Affiliate marketing but wanted to get your thoughts.
Some parts can be outsourced, most of them actually. But with some level of understanding of all the parts, you will be able to define what you want built better.
this thread is gold. Thanks to everyone contributinng.
interesting thread
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