In previous posts, I wrote about how to find products to sell, how to choose the “right” products and how to evaluate them.  Essentially, all this requires you to do is to research to learn which products offer the best value to your visitors/shoppers.  “Best value” means high quality at reasonable cost that delivers the benefits and satisfaction promised.

The research and evaluation you do, when it is understood by the public which you serve with your blog, gives assurance to people who purchase from your site and enhances your reputation as an honest, responsible entrepreneur.  When you inspire trust, people are more likely to feel comfortable when purchasing something that you are promoting.  You want buyers to be satisfied with their purchases so they will return to your site another day and so they will remember your site and tell their friends.  Your sterling reputation pays dividends in future sales so pay attention to the reputation you are building.

With this in mind, what happens when a product that you are promoting (even after your diligent efforts suggest that it is a good product), turns out not to be the good product  you thought it was?  This can happen, although, with thorough research, it is less likely to happen to you.  You can tell if a product is not what it purports to be when it doesn’t work as described, or it doesn’t deliver the implied benefits enumerated in the promotional ad.  Sometimes you may not be aware that there is a problem with a product until a visitor/buyer makes a complaint about something to you.  In that case you need to contact that person immediately and find out the details so you can try to help the individual resolve the problem, if you can.

There is another way you can discover that there is a problem with a product you promote favorably;  that occurs when you are researching another product, and you happen to read, in a forum or in another blog,  something very distressing  about a product you have been advertising.  What should you do?  I’ll tell you what you should do because this post was inspired by just such an experience that happened to me.  In my case, the person who was using the product and complained about it was………me.   ( more about this later.)

However you discover that a product you promote is not a good product, there are three things you must do and each action should be taken immediately as soon as you find out about a product negative;  here are the three actions you should perform together:

1)   You should alert your readers and inform them that there is a problem, and describe the  nature of the problem.

2)  You should apologize.  Although it is not your fault and product provider is responsible, You advertised a defective or problem-riddled product and someone may have purchased this because of your promotional activities or ads.

 3)  Without delay, immediately “pull” the product ad from your site.

From the inception of “Bloggasurus” I advertised two products on my site that I, in fact, used myself.  One was Rob Benwell’s “Blogging to the Bank” and the other was a hosting company called “Hostazar” which was my hosting company.  In early January 2010, Hostazar’s servers went down—for about two weeks!  When you are trying to promote a web site, build traffic volume and improve your page-ranking on search engines,  this is the “kiss-of-death.”  When your readers are becoming accustomed to visiting your site on a regular basis and then can’t find your site anywhere on the Internet for weeks, they conclude that you gave up and so, they give up on your blog and move on to something else.

I was exceedingly frustrated and completely exasperated.  Not only could I not find my site on the Internet, but I couldn’t access it to  rescue my data and I couldn’t even get in touch with the web masters at Hostazar who were incommunicado (I later learned, this was because they were not even in attendance at their headquarters to maintain the servers.)  My site was still very new and this problem was also new to me so after two weeks when the staff returned from a holiday absence, and the servers were back online, I breathed a sigh of relief and immediately got busy writing new posts, correcting display anomalies from “validation errors” and making such improvements as I could—on March 26, without warning the servers were down again.  My website vanished and, although I did not know it at the time, It was gone permanently.  I sent a total of 14 support tickets in a desperate attempt to find out what was going on.  more than ten weeks later I started to get replies from these requests and I pieced together this scenario:

 1) Hostazar had been sold at auction without announcement to the hosted clients and had a new owner.

2) No one had been available to respond to questions during the transition.

3) Data on the servers was apparently erased.

4) Rob Benwell was the previous owner and now,  unfortunately, has a tarnished reputation because of questionable business practices (not including the auctioning off of his hosting company without consideration of his 4000 clients.)

  For the complete narrative about this disaster ( if you like disaster stories) please refer to my previous post:

                         http://bloggasaurus.com/uncategorized/apologies-farewell-and-welcome/

 So, the hard lesson from this is that you should do the best you can to find good quality products to promote and research them as best as you can.  If something goes wrong, then, you must address it immediately by alerting your readers to the problem; apologize ( you should do this to disassociate yourself from the product) and then remove the advertisement(s) ASAP.

Handling  product-quality problems in this way will allow you to make the necessary corrections quickly so that you can get back to writing for your blog and communicating with your readers. 

Do your research; sell your products confidently and make money, honorably.  You will really enjoy yourself and your success will be well deserved.

Take Care and Good Success,

–Wil