Random thoughts:

• Judging from emails I got from 2 “super affiliates” (who will remain nameless), some people weren’t too happy about my CPA to CPA post this week. Guess that means I’m doing something right
• Going back to my post about the Google update, my accounts were updated earlier this week. Luckily no impact on volume yet. I don’t think I got all the changes promised yet.
• Like affiliate marketing contests? CX digital’s Billionaire contest started after the Monday after the countdown clock ticked down. If you aren’t a member and wan to sign up through my link - you’ll be sure to be approved and get the best AM.
• The latest MSN adcenter desktop tool is really stable for me, none of the glitches on the previous versions.

Here’s some links to simply your life and stop being bothered by marketers.

• Stop receiving credit card and insurance offers in the mail.
• While your at it, reduce all of your junk mail.
• Stop telemarketers on your cell phone and landline.
• The only way to get a real, free, and non-affiliate credit report

Have a great weekend everyone.

Back in June 07 I wrote a post about how to set up a campaign on Google’s pay per action (PPA) beta network. There wasn’t much interest in the post and the service in general, but I saw this as a huge opportunity. I have been running many PPA campaigns every day since then and making solid money off of the program. Unfortunately the service is ended in August, but it was great while it lasted. Here’s what I did, and hopefully it provides a concrete example of thinking outside the box.

Since you can arbitrage anything I got to thinking why not do an offer to offer arbitrage. The idea was basically a PPA to CPA arbitrage, essentially just CPA to CPA. The beauty of the PPA/CPA system is that it puts the burden of advertising on the publishers, in this case Adsense publishers. You set your conversion action amount you are willing to pay that publisher for brining you the sale. The number of clicks are irrelevant because you don’t pay for them (but more on that later).

So in this example I had a CPA offer that paid $12 per lead. I set the PPA action amount for $7. So for each completed lead I netted $5 after giving $7 to the adsense publisher. The high payout generated a lot of action for publishers, I tried lower amounts but that led to less interest by publishers.

Now the big problem with this type of setup is technical. You have to have a white label or self hosted offer, because the action confirmation code Google used need to be a static and final confirmation page. The dynamic pages that most affilite networks use to place normal Google tracking code or other pixels did not work for the PPA network code. Luckily I had an offer I could have total control over, so this worked.

So how did it go? Very well. Once publishers started running the ad the clicks started pouring in. Since the action amount was higher than most, a lot of people tried it. The conversion rate was low, but that wasn’t where the majority of the money was made. Which brings us to the part about the free clicks. Finding a way to monetize the free (non converting) traffic is the key to the whole thing.

The defined action was not the only exit point on the landing page. There was a small email signup link to grab double opted in emails for future selling. There were thousands of clicks coming into that page that didn’t convert well on the primary action, but did sign up for the email. Then I was able to convert these free clicks into sales via newsletters. In fact, when I calculated a CPC cost, using the paid out actions I was charged for against the free clicks - I was effectively paying .002 a click. That’s over 100,000 Google clicks for $200

Even though the Google PPA network is gone, there are lots of similar things you can do like this (not the Google Conversion Optimizer though, because that does charge you for all clicks). Hopefully lightbulbs are going off in your head as you read this

It seems that every affiliate these days follows the same formula. They make a little money, then start a blog. There are many good reasons to start blogging. Networking, brand building, making money, helping others, etc.

But if I had it to do all over again, I would not start a blog.

When I started blogging, back in 06 there were not many people blogging about PPC and affiliate stuff. It seemed like a great idea back then. But looking back at the time spent writing the 250+ blog posts I have done, the ROI on that time was not good. In fact, from a pure numbers sense, it was the worst business decision I have ever made.

Figuring 1 hour per post, that is over 6.25 40 hour work weeks spent blogging. If that time would have been spent building new campaigns/sites who knows how much revenue would have been created. Rather than making money, this blog has probably cost me a hundred thousand dollars in lost revenue.

Now of course its not all about money. I do really like helping people and giving back to the community, which is the only reason I continue to blog at this point. And I have met some people I might not have otherwise met.

When I advise new affiliates starting out, I say don’t blog. You don’t need the distraction. Keep focused on building your network of campaigns and content sites. To still get most of the networking benefits of a blog without the work - sign up for Twitter. Spend all the time you save working productively and you will be far ahead of the affiliate blogger crowd. For every John Chow or Shoemoney that makes good money from their blog, there are thousands that never make a dime. But actually doing the stuff you would blog about has a much higher percentage chance of success.

Just my opinion, what do you guys think?

 

By now I’m sure everyone has read about the coming updates to Adwords. By the way, if you don’t already subscribe to the Adwords blog I highly recommend doing so. You can read the full details of the update there.

Apparently these changes will be rolled out more slowly than originally thought. I talked to my rep this morning and he said they scaled back the number of accounts to get the new system right away. I guess there were “issues” on Saturday. So chances are most of us still won’t see them for a couple weeks. My account is unchanged.

I know some people are a little freaked out about the news, but all these improvments sound positive to me.

• I like keeping all keywords active, which I think will help with long tail traffic and allow you to get a few hits on short tail terms that you are low bidding.

• The first page bidding sounds useful - kind of like a throwback to the old Overature days.

• On the fly QS calculation for each query is what might really slap some accounts down. But overall this is also a good thing. Anything that weeds out more bad affiliates with junk campaigns and landing pages is a beneficial for serious affiliates.

So did you get the new changes yet?

When entering a new affiliate niche, most of us buy a new domain or two and start adding a bit of content to help with quality scores. But a technique that has really been working great for me in the last year is buying established sites to send the PPC traffic to. Its a pretty simple concept, just find a site that has already been aged and has good backlinks and trust established with Google. Then when you send your PPC traffic, especially Google, you are way ahead of the quality score game.

Of course, this is an extra expense for your campaign that you will have to absorb with your profits before breaking even. That is why I like to use this technique in the “ramping up” phase, after I already have a tested campaign showing some promise. I consider it a good expense though. If you are building a campaign that will be hitting hundreds or thousands a day in profit, spending a couple thousand for an established site is not much in the big picture. My most recent site buy for PPC was $4,200 for a PR4 site with over 1,000 links in a good niche. That money was recouped so many times over, and continues to pay off every day. Not to mention the site brings in about $300/mo in passive revenue - nice bonus.

The time consuming part is finding the sites/domains. You have to sift through a lot of junk to find winners. But if you have a winning campaign on Yahoo/MSN that just won’t work on Google, it might be worth your time.

In almost everything you read about affiliate marketing, you hear about the power of networking. Meeting new contacts, possible business partners, and sharing new ideas is a very important aspect of any business. Of course it can also be a lot of fun. But don’t forget, networking alone will not make you any money. There’s a perception out there that showing up to the right conference or event and meeting that superstar affiliate will jumpstart your income. Unfortunately it won’t. Its what you do in your home or office, in the late hours of the night that are going to build your business.

Networking can also lead to distraction if you let it. Never lose sight that you are running a business. Its great to have 1,000 twitter followers and 500 people on your IM list, but at some point you have to turn off your IM, Twitter, and cell phone and just put your head down and get to work.

One of the unique and best things about affiliate marketing and making money online is that its not about who you know, its about how hard you work behind the scenes. Anyone can sign up for an affiliate network and PPC program and start making tons of money, without ever meeting anyone or being “connected”.

Can you make money online without networking - YES.

Can you make money online without hard work - NO.

I’m definitely a fan of networking - I just think its a bit over emphasized for our industry. Hard work is what really fills up the bank account, and there’s no getting around that.

What you think?

You are probably familiar with the term “contrarian” as it relates to an investing philosophy. It basically means that whatever the majority of people are doing, you do the opposite. There are many people that have used contrarianism to become very successful. Warren Buffet made his billions by going against the conventional wisdom and being a contrarian.

I have always followed a contrarian approach to affiliate marketing. Although I didn’t set out to do that, it’s more of a personality trait for me so it seemed natural. Now that I recognize the success it has allowed me, I have embraced the concept even more. You have to be confident in your abilities to be a contrarian, because by definition you are going against what everyone is doing. But by doing so, you will find vast untapped markets, underutilized traffic sources and techniques, and hidden potential in offers.

Affiliate marketers tend to move in groups towards specific offers and tecniques. While you may have limited success within the roaming herds, I believe you will always do much better going in different directions. It’s more about the mindset of just thinking for yourself and not following what everyone else does.

It’s hard to give exact examples without giving away what has really worked for me. But here are few:

The two biggest affiliate niches - ringtones and dating, I do not run. A contrarian would not spend time in niches where 95% of marketers are working. When conventional wisdom said Adwords was the only way to drive big volume, I jumped on MSN early and was racking up even bigger spends. When everyone started using Aweber, I found an even better solution that I feel gives me an edge.

Basically whenever something becomes too popular and crowded, a true contrarian is already looking elsewhere. I think that’s a great business strategy to follow.

Writing good ads is one of the most important parts of your campaign.   It can mean the difference between success and failure.  Although every campaign is different, I have found general trends through testing that usually work. The overall formula I like to use when writing ads is this:

Title and Line 2: Repeating the search term, starting the pre-sell

Line 3: Reassuring the customer, showing authority, and bonus selling points if space.

Display URL: Providing confidence in next step.

As always, its easiest to see with an example. Let’s use the example of a shoe offer like shoebuy or zappos. This ad would be for a search hitting the keyword “running shoes“. Here is a sample ad:

Ads may look simple but there is a lot going on here.  So let’s break it down.

1. The search term is repeated in 2 different places on the ad, reinforcing the search, increasing quality score, and bolding that text for increased CTR.

2. Saving money. Everyone wants to save money, so in 2 places on the ad we have show they will save money. On line 1, the word “discount” and on line 2 the phrase “on sale”.

3. Urgency. The word “now” on line 2 evokes a sense of urgency.

4. Numbers and percentages. People scanning a page always stop on numbers. On line 3 we use “100%” which draws the eyes to the ad and increases CTR.

5. Reassurance and final selling points. On line 3 we provide buyer reassurance with the guarantee and the bonus point about free shipping.

6. The word free. If there is anything about the offer that is free, its a good thing to put in the ad. “Free” jumps out at people.

7. Sentence case. Capitalizing the first letter of every word usually leads to higher CTR.

8. Display URL. This is a simple display URL but effective because it further reinforces the search term and lets the person know the domain is related to what they want. Not overly hyphenated or too long. Also I capitalize each word in the domain if its multiple words.

Even though this ad doesn’t have a call to action like “click now for coupon” it should still lead to a good CTR. Once the searcher gets to your landing page, you can then close the deal with a clear call to action. I like more descriptive and informative ads, which usually work well. In addition you get more serious clicks which keeps expenses down and leads to overall better conversion rates. At any rate this is just one of the techniques that usually works great for me, there are tons of ways to write ads for different situations.