Here's something I've been playing with, and my results have been pretty good, too.
A few months ago a friend was launching a big product with lots of cash prizes for the top affiliates. I knew there would be tons of affiliate competition, with every affiliate trying to out-do the others with bigger and better bonuses.
How to compete?
I decided not to.
Instead, I thought about what every affiliate's bonus pages would look like: Highly polished, slick, professional, lots of graphics, videos, etc.
Odds are they would all start to look very much alike, right?
So I thought... what if I did something different?
What if my page looked like something you might get in the mail - black and white sales letter, using the Courier typewriter font, very old-school looking...
And what if, instead of a highly polished professional photo of myself, I used one where I just woke up? Or one where I just finished exercising, or just finished the yard work?
In other words, I looked like the guy next door and not some slick marketer.
Taking this thinking to the next level, I decided I didn't want to spend time or money on creating a bonus. Everyone else was doing that, so why should I?
Instead, I would hold a live class. The homework would be to go over the program before class. Then in class we would implement, step-by-step, what was in the program. And I would record the whole thing, so people could just follow along.
In case you're wondering - it worked beautifully. My sales were a very decent 5 figure number, and my commissions were half that plus bonuses.
And one more thing - I cheated, too. I had my virtual assistant run the class for me. She got to learn some great new skills, and I put less than 2 hours into the entire project.
The takeaway: When you have a lot of competition, it's time to stop directly competing and find another way.
If they are using tons of graphics and slick videos, you go with a 1980's black and white typewriter look.
If they are offering bonus packages filled with 5, 10 or 20 products, you offer no products (I offered hold-your-hand training, which in my opinion is worth far more anyway.)
You get the idea.
Do you know what would work even better than that?
MAILING the actual letter. Yup. Talk about old school. If you collect real addresses of your BUYERS, you might consider doing this on big ticket items.
I know marketers who do this. They are few and far between, and they are KILLING it. They only mail to buyers, which greatly improves their conversions. They use a service to send out the mailers for them. And they make more on one of these mailings than most successful marketers earn in 6 months.
Which brings me to my second idea... if you don't already have the mailing addresses for your buyers, start collecting those now.
When you have a sizable portion of them (at least 200, preferably 500) approach a marketer with a product your list would love. Make sure there is plenty of profit in that product. Take the sales letter, adapt it to a black and white mailer (cheap to produce) and send it to your buyers.
See what happens. Tweak, rinse and repeat.
You can easily DOUBLE your income using this method.
Know why? Again, because it's contrary. It's different. Almost no one is doing it.
Your customer gets maybe a half dozen pieces of mail in a day. Two are bills. Two are sales flyers from local businesses. One is a catalog.
And then there's that mysterious white envelope. Yeah, it's going to get opened. Yes, it's going to get read.
Wow! They're surprised. Someone they know from ONLINE is sending them REAL MAIL.
They don't throw it out. Instead, they open their browser, type in the URL and ORDER THE PROGRAM.
Sure, not everyone does, but... enough do. Believe me, I've seen this work time and time again. Which is why I'm about to start sending out sales letters via snail mail (Shhh, don't tell anyone!)