Posts Tagged ‘Affiliate Marketing’
What Affiliate Marketing Training Overlooks
Affiliate marketing training is generally designed based on the style of the teacher. That makes sense. What the training often ignores, though, is that we’re not all the same. There are three basic types of affiliate marketers, and your type plays a huge role in how you ultimately promote offers. Which one are you?
The Numbers Guy –
The numbers-based affiliate is a very logical, testing-oriented affiliate. Instead of using a lot of intuition, he or she will rely heavily on available data, then test and test while letting the numbers guide the way. These affiliates tend to be men, and they are usually very analytical in most aspects of their lives. This can be an extremely effective way to market, but it also means that you’ll typically have a higher rate of new campaigns failing, along with a bit more expense to get things going. The upside is that these guys can optimize the heck out of any campaign. Once they are onto something good, they make it great.
The Intuitive Marketer –
These are the affiliates who have a pretty good understanding of the way a certain market works, and they use that intuition to craft campaigns. What they’re not always good at is testing and tracking. Even still, it doesn’t always matter because when these affiliate marketers are good, they’re really good. They tend to have a much lower failure rate early on, but without a lot of work, they often lack the ability to really optimize and scale a campaign.
The Relationship Marketer –
These affiliates may share traits with either category, but the fundamental difference is that they’re audience builders. They don’t care as much about guessing demographics or optimizing campaigns because they’re building a following and marketing to those people specifically. When these affiliates are well-liked, they can be hugely successful on their limited follower base. The downside, of course, is that not all followers spend a lot of money, and marketing strictly to fans can be a big limitation on total income.
Which of these affiliate types are you most like? Are you a hybrid, or do you find that you have to work really hard on a particular skill? Share in the comments!
CPA Marketing Hit Again – Acai Lawsuits
CPA marketing is an incredibly exciting field, given the possibilities for overnight riches. However, what you don’t always see is the potential for immediate losses. That’s especially true if you don’t stay on the right side of the law.
For years, those of us who paid attention to ads watched as certain affiliates lied, cheated, and stole their way to millions. they suggested celebrity endorsements that didn’t exist, they used fake images to demonstrate weight loss that never happened, and they promoted the most questionable of companies. Today, some of those people are finding out exactly why it’s not a good idea to try to cheat the public in that way.
Oprah and Dr. Oz were frequently used as testimonials or endorsers of numerous acai berry products that affiliates promoted. Although it’s true that Dr. Oz and Oprah had discussed the potential of acai berries, they certainly didn’t endorse all the questionable products that flooded the market. Recently, they sued a number of affiliates and companies that were involved in this mass deception and abuse of their images.
The affected affiliates learned a hard lesson, but those of us who are smart will learn from their mistakes rather than repeating them. Make sure that you promote companies that actually deliver on their promises. Even a minimal amount of research can save you a lot of trouble down the road. You should also make sure that your advertising is in accordance with FTC guidelines and your own personal moral code. You’ll still make a good living, but you’ll sleep a lot better at night.
Make a Business Plan and Stick to It
As a highly motivated entrepreneur, you might be experiencing a sense of frustration. Instantaneous success just isn’t a realistic expectation; it takes savvy and patience to get ahead in business, especially on the Internet. Given the proper tools and strategies, you can excel. The real trick is to prioritize your time in an efficient manner. As your own sole employee, it’s up to you to sit down and hammer out a business plan.
If nothing else, be sure that website marketing is positioned near the top of your list of priorities. If no one knows about the products or services you are offering, it’s impossible to do any selling. By employing affiliate and CPA marketing, you can tap into proven expertise and help spread the word about your offerings. The world of e-commerce is competitive and congested, but you can still get the edge if you associate yourself with the right people.
The Smart Affiliate: Internet Marketing for the Long Haul
To the average affiliate, internet marketing is about fast profits, regardless of how short-term the results may be. That’s exactly why the FTC has been jumping in to police flogs, and why Google and Facebook are making it increasingly difficult to use their advertising platforms. Most affiliates just aren’t in it to generate quality, long-term results.
That said, there’s a lot of money to be made (and gray hairs to be saved) in sticking with a long-term strategy in your affiliate marketing efforts. Next time you want to tackle a niche, don’t think of the fastest way to arbitrage traffic. Instead, think of how you could build a serious resource that would actually impress or help people. If you feel like you need to hide your site from human reviewers or resort to strange techniques to prevent bans, you’re doing it wrong. The point here is to STOP feeling like you’re earning on borrowed time.
But what if your site doesn’t make much money? What if you put in all that time and you’re still not earning much? Here’s the beauty of it – you can ask for help! With a lot of affiliate marketing, it’s scary to do that. Someone could rip off your landing page or steal your keywords. When you create a complex, valuable site, though, you put in a LOT of effort. Even if you show it to an entire forum and ask for suggestions, the odds of anyone copying you are extremely slim (especially since you’re saying it isn’t making money yet!) Even better, your first-mover advantage means that you’re already established in the niche, and competitors would have to work much harder to overtake your progress. You can’t say that about most forms of affiliate marketing. Building a quality site is so much more than just matching traffic to the advertiser.
I’m not saying you should never go for the quick money – but if you want a long-term, sustainable business, you should consider putting a couple of high quality projects on your to-do list.
Have you ever taken this approach? How did it work out for you? Let us know in the comments.
Building Your Internet Marketing System: What You Should Know About Gravity
I recently had the opportunity to discuss my personal internet marketing system with a Clickbank representative, and what she said completely rocked my world. But first, let me tell you a little about how I’ve been using Clickbank as an affiliate.
I do a lot of PPC and SEO to sell ebooks, and I’ve always had a very specific checklist for picking the ones I thought would have the best shot at being winners.
- Good landing page? If not, it’s not going on my to-do list.
- Good payout? 50% or higher commission is a necessity.
- Solid gravity? I usually looked for somewhere in the 30-100 range to avoid “duds” or saturated niches.
It turns out, I was ALL WRONG on the gravity. Although Clickbank tells us that gravity is determined by the success and volume of an offer, they leave out one key detail. Each separate affiliate promoting an offer is counted once. That means that an offer with 100 different affiliates who each make just 1 sale would actually have a higher gravity than an offer with 2 affiliates who make 1000 sales each month. As such, gravity is not all that useful to us affiliates.
Now that I’ve learned to take gravity out of my evaluation, life is much easier. I’m finding all kinds of untapped markets that I would have shied away from before. So, if you haven’t done Clickbank in a while, I’d encourage you to take a second look with this information in mind.
Conferences – Highly Effective Internet Marketing Tools
If you’ve never been to an affiliate conference, you probably don’t realize what effective internet marketing tools they can be. Shows like ad:tech, PubCon, LeadsCon, and Affiliate Summit draw thousands of attendees, all of which play some role in the internet marketing industry. In fact, it’s virtually impossible to find industry leaders who haven’t been to quite a few of these kinds of conferences.
Even if you’re not earning a lot just yet, it’s a good idea to get to a conference as soon as possible. Consider the benefits:
- You get to mingle with others who are in the position you want to be in.
- Networks host great parties.
- You find new tools and traffic sources before other affiliates.
- You get out of the house.
- You get inspired.
- You can ask for clarification on things that confused you before.
- People take you more seriously because they see you in person.
A lot of people look at conferences and they see the insanely high price tags of buying the top conference pass. Ignore that. Unless you have a lot of money to blow, you’re going to be better off with the free (or almost free) conference/expo pass that lets you get out onto the exhibit floor but not attend most of the sessions. The real value is going to be in your casual interactions, not the corporate-dominated speeches that people are paying for.
So next time you see a conference advertisement, consider going. Find out where the parties are being held, brush up on your social skills, and have a great time with it!
Internet Marketing Tips – Skip Affilicert
After talking with a few affiliate managers over the last week or two, one of the best internet marketing tips I’ve picked up is this – skip Affilicert. If you’re not already familiar with it, it’s basically a site that checks you out as an affiliate (and calls a lot of people that you work with) and then declares you “Affilicert Approved”. While this sounds like a great idea at first, the reality is that the networks just aren’t buying that it makes you a better affiliate.
From what I’ve seen, affiliates aren’t exactly jumping on it, either. Numerous affiliate forums have declared it “useless” or even an invasion of privacy. The questions they ask are very intrusive, so it’s not hard to see where that complaint is coming from. Why give your personal information to yet another company?
If you really want to get accepted at a network, just pick up the phone and call them. Or better yet, if you’re able, meet up at a trade show and say hello in person. In an industry where so much happens on the computer, face-to-face contact can have huge benefits when it comes to trust. There’s nothing WRONG with Affilicert, exactly. It’s just a waste of precious funds that could be more effectively used for testing new campaigns.
Have you ever had trouble getting accepted to an affiliate network? Share your stories in the comments.
Generating Multiple Revenue Streams
When I graduated high school, the American dream seemed simple and attainable. It was just a matter of finding a union job at a factory, paying a down payment on a house and marrying my sweetheart. As most people will readily attest, things aren’t quite so simple anymore in this fluctuating economy of ours. For starters, the dependable industrial jobs are drying up steadily.
In order to protect my family’s nest egg in case I’m ever laid off from my day job, I found a way to generate multiple streams of income by utilizing a variety of affiliate marketing tools. Just as we are taught to diversify a portfolio when investing in the stock market, diversifying your employment skills helps to minimize risk. There are so many chances for a business income opportunity online these days that one would be foolish not to strike while the iron is hot.
Improve Your Affiliate Marketing by 200% or More
Do you want to know how to improve your affiliate marketing efforts by 200% or more? It’s actually very simple. Just sit down with a list of concrete goals. When you sit down and randomly say, “I’m going to work now,” you will probably start off without a lot of direction. Maybe you’ll check your email, then head over to a few affiliate networks to check your stats, then check your Facebook account or RSS reader…and before you know it, a couple of hours has passed and nothing is done.
To maximize your work-time effectiveness, pick out just a few tasks that you want to tackle each time you sit down at your desk. If you finish them early, get up and go enjoy yourself. You’ll start to associate the benefit of free time with your increased productivity. You’ll also start to develop some idea of how quickly you work.
When you make a to-do list, be sure that you break large tasks up into smaller, more manageable tasks that you can handle easily. Big tasks are intimidating, and you start to get frustrated when too much time passes between check marks on your list. You should also limit the total number of items on your to-do list. Over time, you’ll get familiar with how much work you can do in a sitting, and how much time you can spend before you start to get tired or ineffective. For most people, the upper limit in a given day is around 4 hours. That’s not to say that we can’t work longer, just that we start to compromise our efficiency and see diminished returns after approximately that much time has passed.
Once you get in the habit of using written to-do lists, you’ll never turn back. Successful people are those who have mastered focus, and your list will get you through the toughest part of it.
Internet Marketing Training: What to Do When Your Commission is Charged Back
There are plenty of topics covered in most internet marketing training courses – how to pick a niche, how to buy ads, how to make a landing page, and so on – but very few cover the topics that matter once you start to make a little money. Like what do you do if someone rips off your landing page? What if you get angry customer emails that should have gone to the original merchant? What if your site gets hacked? They’re all issues that many of us will deal with, which is why I wanted to start talking about the topics you don’t always get in training courses.
To start off, let’s talk about something extremely common – the reversed commission. This is especially common on networks like Shareasale or CJ where the merchant actually manages the affiliate program. With CPA networks like Azoogle or Clickbooth, the network has in-house people managing things, so you’ll probably only get reversed if there is a serious problem with something you’ve done, or if the advertiser doesn’t pay the network (and most networks will eat losses from advertisers who don’t pay).
To begin with, you should figure out why your commission was reversed. Shareasale makes this easy because they require advertisers to choose a reason when they void your commission. If you don’t understand the reason, though, or if you aren’t given one, you should contact the affiliate manager directly to figure it out. That’s the only good way to ensure that you know what’s going on so you can prevent it from happening again. There are a variety of common reasons:
- Self referrals (many merchants do not allow this)
- Unapproved method of promotion (such as bidding on the company’s trademark)
- Non-qualified sale or lead. Many merchants do not allow you to receive commissions on their existing customers.
- Returned order. If the order was refunded, returned, or refused for delivery, you can expect to see your commissions reversed.
Whatever the reason, check to ensure that the reason was covered in the merchant’s terms of service. If not, you may be able to politely point this out and get your commissions back while still maintaining a good relationship. If the merchant is unwilling to provide a good explanation and stand by their policies, however, you may want to ask the affiliate network to step in and get your money. In this case, hurting the relationship is probably not a big deal, as you don’t want to work with a company that doesn’t pay you like they promise.
Have you ever had a commission reversed unfairly? Let us know in the comments!