Pesach Lattin – Page 22

2010-12-032011-07-13

Why Playboy is Becoming Irrelevant & How Performance Marketing Can Change It As a Brand.

Despite being one of the top men’s brands in the world, Playboy is suddenly more irrelevant than ever. While commentators have been correct in the last ten years that it was a diminishing brand, 2010 was the year that started to put a nail in the coffin of the once mighty empire of Hugh Heffner. Men in all 50 States used to know the Playmates by name, now most of them aren’t even aware that they still exist. The reasons are simple: Playboy has failed to change its image in the last 10 years and most likely doesn’t have anywhere enough time to fix it.

First of all, some statistics about Playboy that are extremely interesting. Since 2009, Playboy has kept a very consistent reach, according to Alexa. This is even with a growing population of internet users, who in theory should be more interested in Playboy. However, the second chart says it all. Despite having constantly the same reach of users, they aren’t as interested in the property as they once used to be. The traffic rank has seen a serious drop in visits from their audience – especially in the most important time of the year, right before Christmas. Anyone who knows the season knows that a drop in traffic during this time is a death knell.

Why is this happening to Playboy? It’s simple:

1) Playboy still thinks like a print magazine with pictorials. Let’s be honest in the age of internet porn, no one really cares about seeing a few select girls naked, when a large part of the college co-ed population is naked somewhere on a website. Chart below shows you the reach of PornHub vs. Playboy. It’s like comparing my blog to Google.

2) Girls don’t give a crap about being in Playboy. Very few gals care about being in the magazine and the pay is pretty worthless. Being a Playmate now draws about as much attention as being a member of the Pittsburg Pirates.

3) Hugh still runs the show. Let’s be really honest here, Hugh isn’t exactly a spring chicken and his choice of girls is a bit outdated. Most of them are now selected for their ability to clean dentures and spoon feed Hugh. I’m friends with a few of them, and while some are quite attractive, many of them are a bit on the “chunky” side. Note the photo of Ashley Hobbes and her double-chin photo.

That is what it comes down to, Hugh hasn’t adjusted for the time. He is still stuck in the 1950’s where Size 10 girls were considered thin, and bleach blonde girls were the hottest things out there. Times have changed significantly and people like Alessandra Ambrosio now, who would rather be in Victoria’s Secret not Playboy.

However, maybe it’s not too late. As I mentioned, there are some thing that perhaps Playboy can learn to grow its base and learn from our industry.

1) Grow your newsletter base. Before you try to sell me for a $7.00 membership, you need to get me interested. Build a newsletter base with exclusive content only to the newsletter, and use a program like Pop-Up Domination to get those email addresses. Use CPA marketing to get as many people subscribed to that newsletter and provide actual content. I promise you’ll make more money in the long term with advertisers and sponsors than selling cheap memberships to see your gal’s tits.

2) Have a real product. You are still trying to get people to subscribe to your magazine or join your website. That has already been a proven failure. Playboy can be a resource, a service for men that goes beyond photos. If you curious how that might be done, go to IGN.com and take a quick look at why they are 10 times your size. With content that is relevant to modern men, from gaming to sexy girls, you could actually gain an audience that buys products online. With that, you can start affiliate and CPA programs to leverage that audience. Imagine being able to sell tickets to the playboy mansion online to everyone, with an affiliate program attached to it. Imagine having an affiliate program selling men’s shaving products with the playboy logo. The possibilities, once you have an interested audience are endless — plus you can get affiliates to sell these products and drive more traffic to Playboy.com

3) Get Rid of Hugh. Ok, I know I am beating a dead..umm.. horse here, but enough is enough. Yeah, I can only wish that when I am 90 years old I can have a bunch of half-naked girl around me. Still, he doesn’t exactly represent the modern man anymore, and worse than that he is starting to look and act like Grampa Munster. Image is everything and no one wants to think of Depends Diapers when they are looking at Bunnies. Playboy needs a change from the top down in order to become relevant — and to do that, it needs to look into the industry that knows how to produce results immediately: Performance Based Marketing

2010-11-302011-08-11

Groupon is Affiliate Marketing’s Biggest Success

Rumors are everywhere about the possible purchase of Groupon, the well known group coupon and discount site that was founded less than two years ago. Despite this, some people are saying that If you are to believe the rumors, Google is going to buy Groupon for upwards of 5 Billion, making it one of the biggest success stories of 2010. Analyst are talking about how great this buy out would be, how this is a needed part of the Google infrastructure in its battle against Facebook. However, what those analysist don’t know and what Groupon and probably Google is hiding from them is how Groupon became so successful, so fast, so quickly: Through Cost-Per-Acquisition Affiliate Marketing.

Yes, Groupon owes a great deal of its success to Peformance Based marketing, where they have paid affiliate and CPA networks to promote their product over the internet. For those in our industry, we all known this method: pay for every new person who subscribers to your newsletter. It’s a true and tried way, and can generate enormous success for anyone who wants to grow their business fast. If you spend only $1 per new subscriber through performance based marketing, you could have a company with over 30 Million new subscribers/users for as little as $30M. In the fast paced interactive media industry, any company that suddenly has 30M users from nowhere gets attention, and can have value way over the $30M that was just spent.

They want to hide this, because although much of the market knows that Peformance Based Marketing is one of the quickest ways to get new users, a lot of the media from the NY Times to the Wall Street Journal is ignorant of this method and doesn’t understand that almost any company, with cash can generate enormous value and interest really fast. If Groupon can generate that interest that fast, it means that all of the other Coupon sites that are popping up can easily take a significant part of the market share, very fast. Take a look at companies like Living Social which were launched at about the same time as Groupon – they have taken a very aggressive CPA marketing strategy and traffic charts on Alexa show that on some days they are almost catching up with Groupon. With this realization, this means that Google’s purchase could be worthless in a a year when another company takes it over using the same techniques.

I’m not sure how much money Groupon has spent on CPA Performance Based marketing, but a friend told me confidentially that he has inside information that it was upwards of $150M since the start of the year. He told me that Groupon was being considered a monumental failure until late 2009 when they started to acquire new subscribers via CPA Advertising. A look at Alexas traffic chart for Groupon confirms that they had very little traffic until basically 2010, when they suddenly skyrocketed out of nowhere.

It is my opinion that Groupon is one of Performance Based Advertising’s biggest success stories.

2010-11-22

Making a Holiday Gift Guide

t’s starting to get towards the holidays, and as an affiliate or affiliate network, you need to start thinking about holiday offers. Instead of charging you $2,500 to sign up for my non-existent DVD list, I’m going to give you several great ideas of how you can, as an affiliate (or get your affiliates) to make money this holiday season, plus some ideas of where you can make this work.

1) First of all you need to create a Kids Holiday Gift Guide. This is extremely important. Get a simple domain like giftguide202.com or something similar. This will be the basis of whatever you do, and it’s important. The webpage should look holiday like, put a bunch of gifts, trees, Santa Claus, toys and a sign up form in the middle “Get the 2010 Holiday Gift Guide with links to where to buy the hottest gifts”

2) First of all, sign up for an associate program at Amazon.com. yes, the 4-6% that you get isn’t that great, but you are only going to use this as a way to get people in the door and make initial money.

3) Sign up for PeerFly affiliate network.

4) Here are the top gifts for 2010 that you need to include.

XBOX Kinnect http://amzn.to/cmQuTK – you want to promote the full console and the feature. The reason is simple, many people will buy the whole thing for their kid and family, and it’s a high level price. You want to talk a bunch about the XBOX Kinnect, and remind people that it’s the hottest gift this season.
CrazyCritters – Get this from Peerfly, offer 1306. It’s not really one of the top gifts, but since the others are, they will trust you that it is, plus it has a high CPA in comparison
Nerf N-Strike Stampede ECS. http://amzn.to/aRvvYu – mention this is hard to find and that Amazon has a 12% discount on the product!
Dotza Coloring Pens’ At Peerfly 1108
American Dolls are always huge: american doll http://amzn.to/auDztT
Imaginext BIGFOOT the Monster’ by Fisher-Price http://amzn.to/aSmqaO
Matchbox Stinky The Garbage Truck’ by Mattel http://amzn.to/9KdKLN
Zhu Zhu Pets are huge again this year Kung Zhu Pets: Toys & Games http://amzn.to/bDwGfn

You are going to keep the list small, because the main amount of money will not be made on amazon, but instead emailing them in the future with other offers. If you this right however you will make at least 100% from the first mailing on the names that you collect.

5) You also need to sign up for an autoresponder company, if you haven’t done already. I recommend AWEBER. Signup with this link and it will cost you only one dollar to try out.

6) You are going to want to pull offer 1740 from Peerfly which is the xbox kinnect giveaway zip/email submit

7) In your auto responder, set it so that a day later you are going to send an email to anyone who subscribes telling them that you noticed they were interested in this product and you found this site that is giving them away. This will result in a very high CTR and conversion rate – why? Because even if they weren’t interested, they will be because you showed them the day before about this product.

8) Segment your audience based on their clicks – this is very important. If your subscribers clicked on links for girls items, put that in a separate list from those who clicked on boy’s items.

9) You have made a list that most likely you can email over and over again and make some good income. In coming days I will show you some boys & girls affiliate programs, with specific offers you can mail in the future. Check out peerfly, you will want to mail your lists based on toy items you find there, and on Amazon, at least once a week with a new product until the holidays.

10) Sign up for 7Search here. If you sign up with this, they will match the first $100, so yo uwill get $200 worth of credits. Right now there are almost NO Toys, ToysRUs, Christmas Gift type keywords. Use these. Obviously you can use other search engines – but you want to acquire the new signups to your guide as fast as possible, cheap as possible. Each signup should be under $2.00 CPA preferably.

2010-11-222011-07-11

Offervault adds new "Set Country" Proxy Feature

Affiliate Marketers who are members of Offervault can now view landing page previews for offers that show in the US, CA, UK, AU, regardless of where they reside in the world.

Offervault, the leading aggregator of online affiliate programs and cost per action networks (CPA networks), has added a new “Set Country” feature to the Offervault member’s area. The set country feature provides an automatic proxy function which allows Affiliate Marketers who are members of Offervault to view landing page previews for offers that show in the US, CA, UK, AU, regardless of where they reside in the world. For example, a US affiliate can now view landing page previews for Canadian offers and UK affiliates can now view landing page previews for US offers.

“Until now, the inability of affiliates to view landing pages from other countries was a major roadblock that hampered many affiliate marketers’ efforts to evaluate and promote offers from around the world. Now all Offervault members have this capability and can preview any of the 22,000+ offers listed in our system,” said Mark Roth, founder of Offervault. “We have plans to added several more countries in the near future including France, Italy and Brazil”

Offervault has acted as an aggregator of affiliate offers from top CPA networks and other affiliate networks since 2007. Committed to improving the overall industry, its breadth and depth of offers and its free training programs have been highly recognized by the industry. Offervault offers a free sign up process at its website for affiliates and others interested in the performance marketing industry.

2010-11-22

Offervault is Now the Exclusive Provider of CPA Offer Data to Tracking202's Offers202 Listing Service

As of November 1st, all CPA offers listed in Offers202 are supplied exclusively by Offervault. In addition to supplying offer data for searches directly on the Offers202 site, Offervault now feeds all sites dependant on the Offers202 feed including Affbuzz and Affilatepaying.

New York, NY (PRWEB) November 16, 2010

Offervault, the original and premier aggregator of CPA offer data from over 100 leading CPA networks, has solidified its leading position in the industry with this important partnership with Tracking202. The partnership provides Offervault listed networks with substantial additional distribution and exposure for their offers, with reach to Offers202 users and to the network of additional sites that Offers202 feeds via its real time data feed. Offervault data will soon be available to Prosper202 users as well when the next major update is released.

Networks wishing to be included in Offers202 must now be listed first in Offervault. Offervault will automatically feed the data to the additional sites.

“This has been in the works for a few months and we are very excited to have finalized this important partnership between our companies” said Mark Roth, founder of Offervault. Wes Mahler and I have served the same user base for the past several years so it is great to be working closely together on this partnership, he said. Roth stated that he is particularly excited to provide the new distribution to Offervault listed networks.

President of Tracking202, Nana Gilbert-Baffoe says “We feel that our users will benefit from this new agreement, because Offervault is fully dedicated to running and maintaining the most comprehensive offer search engine in the market. This will allow us to focus on our core competency of building exceptional tracking software for affiliates.”

Offervault, founded in July 2007 as the first aggregator of CPA offers has since grown to become the premier aggregator and hub for CPA networks and affiliates with over 100 networks, 30,000 offers and 40,000 registered members.

Offervault is free for affiliates and publishers. It enables them to quickly find top offers and compare payouts between networks. It also saves hours of time by helping publishers research niches, browse new offers that are updated daily, preview landing pages, receive optional email alerts for new offers based on their criteria and to sign up for new networks.

Offervault provides additional features including instant keyword and demographic data for each offer and weekly training webinars covering a vast array of internet marketing and affiliate marketing topics.

Affiliate and publishers can join free at http://offervault.com

Networks interested in getting listed should contact Mark Roth or submit an inquiry here

Contact:

Mark Roth
201-476-1204
info(at)offervault(dot)com

2010-11-222011-07-13

Top Performance Companies Announced: Results of 2010 Survey of Performance Marketing & Affiliate Networks.

The results of the 2010 Survey of Performance Marketing Companies are in. We had a wide variety of companies, tried not to leave any out. While some surveys have only included 10 or so answers, we had over 50 networks and companies to choose from, making the race very close. That being said, there was some clear winners and some surprising contenders in what is becoming a very crowded and competitive marketplace.

Q: . Which networks provide the the best customer service in your opinion?

Third Place: 10.8%: ClickBooth
John Lemp’s Mega Network ClickBooth is always named now as one of the top companies in the industry. Based on the DirectTrack platform, is is clearly the largest network that uses this platform. (Although, they have been test driving other platforms for a possible move) Customer service wise, they have a great professionally trained staff, many of them having been involved with the industry forever.

Second Place: 21.2% Neverblue
NeverBlue has become a monster in the industry, and its affiliate managers are the best. While Samantha Brachat is not the CEO of the company, she has become the face of the company in the marketplace and her team of Affiliate Managers has learned from her amazing skills.

First Place: 26.1% COPEAC
Just a few years ago, many of you never heard of COPEAC. However, Mike Krongel is not the owner of the company, but is the Chief Affiliate Manager, who personally handles many of the affiliate relationships himself.

Q: Which networks do you feel have the best selection of offers, in your opinion?

Third Place: Commission Junction 15.7%
Commission Junction still dominates the mind of most people of what “affiliate marketing” is, and because of that still many affiliates go to it to look over possible offers. If you are looking for an offer to match your website, it’s always a good place to start.

Second Place: 21.9% Neverblue
Again, Neverblue shows its huge influence in the marketplace and a great selection of offers. The staff at Neverblue is always pushing new offers to affiliates, looking for the next mega-affiliate.

First Place: 24.8% COPEAC
COPEAC has scored first place for offers probably because of the “if we don’t have it, we will find it” attitude they have. Affiliates know that the Krongels will always find an offer that fits them if they don’t already have it.

Q:Which networks do you feel are the most ethical in the way they conduct business?

Third Place: 11.9% ClickBooth
ClickBooth has managed to keep itself relatively clean, especially when faced with all the issues in the industry. While many companies out there that are similar jumped on certain bandwagon’s, the Clickbooth legal team kept Lemp safe.

Second Place: 21.9%.COPEAC
COPEAC is known to always stand up for its affiliates. Whenever there is an issue, they go to bat for affiliates often choosing to pay out affiliates even when they are not paid.

First Place: 22.3% Neverblue
With an excellent PR and marketing team, Neverblue has become the face of ethical marketing in the industry. They only beat out COPEAC a bit, but their reputation of ethical market is a keystone to their business.

Q. Which networks do you feel are the best network overall?

Third Place: 14% Commission Junction
Commission Junction will always be listed in surveys because they are Commission Junction. ‘Nuff Said.

Second Place: 20.1% Neverblue
A close second, Neverblue is always a major contender. With their own amazing interface, great customer service, Neverblue is definitely one of the best networks out there.

First Place: 22.1% COPEAC
Mike Krongel has a huge following in the industry and more importantly very loyal affiliates. While he doesn’t throw parties at the playboy mansion, his affiliates know that he makes it up with great payouts and customer service. COPEAC is definitely the new face of performance marketing: professional, honest with great customer service.

2010-11-19

CPA Offer Teacher

ADTECH New York has come and gone, and what did we learn this year? Same thing we learned every year: that there are more and more companies entering the space and thus there is more and more need for tools to help weed out the junk. Despite the huge influx of companies in the space, there is a huge growth in new offers in the market plus a continued interest in some oldies.

Peerfly has suddenly become the king of Netflix in the last several months, and is the main source for this still very popular offer. While it’s very hard to get approved to run Netflix, Peerfly founder and CEO Chad French tells me that there is always room for premium networks. Just in case you can’t be approved by Peerfly, there is always the Dandingo offer version of this, just a little bit cheaper.

For the UK space, there are some great Netflix competitors, including ILoveFilm. Always beautiful Samantha Brachat, the head of the Neverblue mega network tells me that this is becoming one of their most popular offers. There is even a Danish version of the offer! If you happen to have Aussie visitors, Azoogle… sorry, Epic Direct has the BigPond offer which distributes all the great American movies dubbed with really sexy Australian accents.

With the closing of SwipeAuctions, there is a huge need for other affiliate offers in the space. BidCactus is running strong on Ad Angler and PointClickTrack at the same prices. Another company that I hear converts really well is BidSauce which can be found at a really good price at ProfitKingsMedia or Affillion. All of these convert, and the penny auction space is still growing and huge, despite some issues with scammers out there promoting some really bad offers in the space. Stick with the good companies and you’ll be ok.

The dating scene is getting bigger and still more profitable. The reason behind this is simple: more and more people are getting on the internet and because of that they have less time to actually date. Similarly, the stigma regarding online dating has changed so it’s no longer considered weird to have an online dating account. Large dating sites like Match.com still dominate the space but there is a fast growing niche dating industry that can be quite profitable.

Yes, Granny is on the internet looking to get lucky at Senior People Meeting from Qwik Media. Similarly, if you like a little cushion, there is a wide variety of BBW dating services (that means Big Beautiful Women, for those who aren’t aficionados of the more rotund gals) including BBW Personals. If you looking to mix and match, SinglesNet also offers a really good BBW landing page, says Ryan Eagle of EWA.

If you looking for the long sale but to make a lot of money, there are the high cost of sale dating sites out there like Ashley Madison. Specifically for guys looking for the lonely stay at home mom or the really stressed secretary, Ashley Madison is a great offer offer at Neverblue or TractatusMedia. YeahCPA has an exclusive free trial version of this offer that seems interesting also. Of course, if you prefer out of the Country gals, there is always AnastasiaDate.com. Yes, the Russian gals are gorgeous but you’ll probably need the Babylon translation tool to have any idea what she is saying. If you are promoting that, why not also promote the STD Express tool, for all the at-home STD testing you could need. Just incase something does show up and you need to get rid of it, there is Wartrol, the at home genital wart removal tool. Seriously, they are real offers and they match perfectly.

2010-11-04

Myspace to Layout 50% of WorkForce

The News Corp owned Myspace social networking website could soon lay off as many as half of their employees, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Monday.

WSJ reporters Jessica E. Vascellaro and Russell Adams, citing sources familiar with the matter, say that the California-based website could be cutting between one-third and one-half of their 1,100 employees in what they refer to as a “dramatic downsizing of its business.” The cuts could even come before the end of the month, according to their sources.

“The restructuring is the latest step in Myspace’s intensifying turnaround effort,” Adams and Vascellaro said in their report. “The social network reduced its staff by nearly 30% last summer, laying-off hundreds of employees. But the cuts weren’t sufficient to contain costs, a person familiar with the matter said, who added the new cuts would be across the board.”

“Another person familiar with the matter said that, depending on the results of the restructuring, News Corp. may look for buyers for Myspace but there are no current talks over a sale,” the WSJ reporters added.

Myspace was acquired by News Corp, the parent company of Fox Television, for $580 million in 2005. Since then, they have been unable to keep up with social networking competitors, including the uber-popular Facebook.

In November of last year, Vascellaro and Adams say that Facebook attracted more than 150 million unique visitors in the US alone. Myspace’s traffic was slightly over one-third of that, and marked a 15% decrease from a year ago while Facebook enjoyed a 50% increase over that same time period.

According to Jemima Kiss of the Guardian, News Corp COO Chase Carey “signaled the beginning of the end for MySpace during an earnings call in October when he said the site’s losses were ‘not acceptable or sustainable’ … He also told the Reuters Global Media Summit in November: ‘There are opportunities here to do 20 things, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to do any of the 20. If there’s something there that makes sense you ought to think about it.'”

Brought to you by Redorbit.com. Find Technology News at RedOrbit.

2010-10-222011-07-12

Have we confused Affiliate Marketing with Get Rich Scams?

Regardless of what you personally think of all the guys who are trying to sell their newest program about how to make money on the internet, there is something to be said for those people who believe that it has nothing to do with affiliate marketing. Yes, some of their blogs are extremely popular, but then against so is Scientology and I wouldn’t recommend anyone join that unless they want to be scanned and probed anally by aliens. And honestly, I think many of the make money guys might do the same thing to you if it made them money. Come on guys, Affiliate and Performance marketing has nothing to do with “get rich” schemes.

I’ve probably with that statement pissed off 10 of the most popular bloggers on the internet. Yeah, some of them probably have something to do with affiliate marketing, but most of them are just trying to get as many people to sign up to their newsletter so they can promote their or some other guys DVD that claims that for $5,000 you can buy all the secrets to Affiliate Marketing. While more than a few of them have made money in the industry, most of them are just guys who made a few thousand dollars here and there and figure that they could make more money convincing idiots that they learned the secret to affiliate marketing and how to make money.

As a friend of mine Jon (the owner of wickedfire, and hopeful DWTS contestant) pointed out to me, most of these guys are just selling DVDs that teach basic thing that you can find on the internet. Honestly, I give them credit in being able to market these products, but I’m curious how ethical it is to charge someone $5k to teach them how to login to Google and add keywords. Many of the people who read these blogs are honestly desperate to learn about interactive marketing, and will believe anyone who tells them that a DVD will teach them the secret. Selling them this crap is really preying on them, especially in this economy.

There are some people who are real superstars in our industry and really know how to make money in the industry. These guys aren’t selling DVDs on how they made money, because they are often too busy to make money. I’ve personally made millions in this industry, owned a major display network, ran one of the largest affiliate networks in the world – because I’ve been doing it for ever. Frankly, I don’t have time right now to create a program and sell people my “secrets.” I’m too busy trying to figure out the next secret for myself.

2010-10-19

Chad French is Peerfly

As part of my mission to educate affiliates and the industry, I’m hoping to introduce other companies in the industry that are keeping it clean. By keeping it clean, I don’t mean wiping down your seat after watching porn in your private office. I mean trying to play by the rules and make a difference in the industry. I have taken an interest in the company Peerfly and Chad French, mainly because I’m digging the guy’s hairstyle and goatee.

That being said, here’s my brief but interesting interview.

How did you personally get into Affiliate Marketing?
I’ve been in different aspects of affiliate marketing since 1999 but I didn’t really start making good money in performance marketing until 2007 while I was in the incentive space. I started building PeerFly in the fall of 2008 and the rest is history.

What makes Peerfly unique and interesting?
a) We don’t have a huge overhead so our profit margins are extremely small which creates the largest payouts.
b) Our platform is unmatched and we’re always adding new features. Publishers can even request specific CUSTOM features for their account. We have API feeds for everything (offers, stats, earnings).
c) We have a lifetime 5% publisher referral program. We’ve had it since day one and will continue to encourage our publishers to refer others. In 2009 we paid out nearly $100k in referral earnings.
d) We’ll do just about anything to get your business including taking a negative margin to beat payouts on another network, giving monthly rewards, or helping you setup your campaign on the weekend at 3am.

What does Peerfly look for in its affiliates?
Nothing really in particular but we will deny publishers who don’t meet certain standards. We accept new affiliates to this industry but they need to at least know what affiliate marketing is and have some sort of goals in place.

What is the most common fraud you’ve found in the industry, and what steps does Peerfly take to combat that?
We’ve successfully stomped out most of the common fraud that may infiltrate other networks by utilizing several elements of technology and screening measures. However, fraud can still sneak in and cause problems. Sometimes just one bogus publisher can ruin our relationship with a client so we have become extra strict when it comes to compliance. Our biggest method for catching fraudulent signups is ID uploads. We have become pretty familiar with most state IDs/Passports in the US/Canada (and other countries) and can spot a fake quickly. We also have an internal scoring system that gives a publisher a score based on over 20 different cross reference checks with known publishers/known fraudulent IPs. In addition to that, we have a full time compliance team who watches incoming traffic like a hawk.

If you could have any wish, what tool would you like seen made for affiliates?
We’ve got a lot of tools already integrated into our platform and we have lots of ideas that we will slowly be adding over the next several months. The great thing about having a custom platform and a full time developer is that anything our affiliates wish to have, we can create for them. Some of the things we’re working on right now would be an instant search for our offer inventory and more controls and transparency for our clients (which can mean even better service for our publishers).

What ideally would you like to teach brands about affiliate marketing?
Before we really attempt to attract the big brands I’d rather us work out our kinks as an industry and grow into something more reputable. We need to be backed by an association who can weed out the scammy networks and also fight for us in Washington. Until that happens, brands are going to continue pouring their advertising dollars into more conventional methods. However – when we get to that point – I predict there will be a huge boom in our industry to the likes we’ve never seen. How are the big brands going to turn down the opportunity to extend their sales force by tens of thousands and only pay for results? I think this practice speaks for itself and is unlike anything else out there in terms of getting results and seeing the best ROI.

Who is the sexiest affiliate manager that you’ve met?
My wife! (although she is technically in accounting)

Peerfly can be found here.

2010-10-01

Getting the Most out of Offervault

For a long time I’ve used OfferVault. For the last year or so, while running Affiliate.com, I used it to check on competitors offers, to check and see if any of them were offering higher prices or worse, offering our offers without permission to the general public. Before then, even running a major comscore advertising network, OfferVault was (and is) the “go to” place for me to check on CPA deals that our $150M display network should run. I think that a lot of people aren’t getting the best out of OfferVault and I hope with my regular articles, I can show you where to focus, what offers are really hot and how to monetize them.

This week, I just want to talk a bit about some of the top offers being listed on offervault, and where to go from there. If you have suggestions on topics in the future, I am always reachable at pace@pacelattin.com and would love to get some ideas what you’d like to learn about, what you think is important.

It’s Halloween time, and if you didn’t know this, over half of the nation still hasn’t gotten its elves, witches or Snooki costumes. If the idea of dressing up as a retard from Jersey Shore interests you, the place to buy this is at BuyCostumes. Since they are so popular one of the top searches this month is BuyCostumes and that is lead by my friends at Azoogle with their $13.50 payout. Erhg, sorry, now known as EpicDirect. Many of the other networks are just piggybacking those offers. I would have linked to eFLOW network and their offer, but at the time of this writing, their link was down. For those who don’t know, BuyCostumes is a huge supporter of the affiliate marketing industry, and heavily involved with making this industry better, so I would 100% support them this season through Azoogle/Epic Direct.

In the Zip and Email Submit category, relative newcomer QwikMedia has taken stage with the “I like that Victoria’s Secret” offer and its Pepto-Bismol colored landing page. Qwik media has taken a well-known method of promotion, worked with some of the top companies for their back end, created a great landing page and has made something that converts better than any other zip and email submit right now in the space. Also, take a quick look at EWA’s QualityHealth offer, I understand its converting really well. If you are looking for a place to place this, some of the sub-tier search engines like 7Search actually have some good space for giftcard relevant keywords.

I’ve been told that Ringtone and Mobile offers are HOT again after several major players in the space have gone out of business or closed their doors. Flycell has taken a place in the market behind Sony Mobile aka Jamster, but is going strong in our space because of their new relationships with networks. AdCommunal, the Canadian Based organization and home of “Sir Owen”, has become one of the new homes of ringtone offers, especially with their new Flycell New Landing Page offer. This is actually one of the most popular offers right now on OfferVault and I’d recommend getting in touch with those folks soon.

Last of all, I want to talk about the Gold Offers out there. They are doing amazing for almost anyone, especially spammers…umm… sorry, the editor told me I need to call them “Permission based e-mailers.” These offers are huge right now because the price is gold is going through the roof and certain conservative celebrities are really pushing gold right now their radio and TV shows. The best converting Gold Offer is still through mega-network Neverblue at $50 CPA. From what I am told, this continues to be the best place to get this offer.

Before I forgot, If you didn’t know, there is a great function offervault has that no other company has instituted (I’ll have to ask, but I think they own the patent to the idea.” Their search agent allows you to choose keywords and thus campaigns and the send you notices when there are changes in those keywords. This is huge, can you imagine doing a campaign say for DirecTV for $15 only to find out later you could have got the same thing from Abacus Affiliates for $18?

2010-07-282011-07-28

George Avery Gets It, and so does GetAds.

George Avery used to be the right-hand man at Affiliate.com (the network formerly known as CPAEMPIRE) until a few years ago. Not soon after Affiliate’s parent company MediaBreakaway was hit, and then subsequently lost a multi-million dollar lawsuit from Myspace, he left the company along with half-a-dozen other employees to start GetAds, a direct competitor. Avery’s company took its own path, broke away from the “spamking” labels that could have followed them and became a major player in the industry seemingly overnight. He’s one of those guys that everyone likes, his way of doing business down to earth and because of that has earned the trust of his clients and affiliates. Also, as an ex-hockey player and hockey fanatic, he’s always willing to get down and dirty to protect his clients best interests. In the Denver area, when people ask about affiliate marketing, GetAds and George have become synonymous with the growing industry. He provides some real insight in this interview to compliance issues, how to run a company and how to do business in general.

GetAds has managed to stay out of trouble with no major lawsuits, no compliance actions. What are you doing to keep your company clean that other companies may not be doing?
At GetAds we have a very proactive approach to compliance. We monitor our traffic constantly to make sure that if a rogue affiliate is doing something against the Terms & Conditions of the offer, we are the ones to catch them first. You can’t rely on the Advertiser to monitor things, by the time it is flagged by them it is too late. Each of our Affiliate Managers is trained on what to look for and how to deal with fraud & illegitimate traffic. They are the front lines of our defense. It’s really just about staying educated about what is going on in the industry and keeping ahead of the frauders.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned in the industry? What can you pass on to others in the industry from this lesson?
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that networks live and die by their relationships. It doesn’t matter how great your offers are if nobody likes you. With so many competitors in the industry, affiliates can choose to run with whoever they like. That’s how we get them in the door, and then we keep them there with our offers & service.

What do you feel that GetAds provides to advertisers that other networks do not provide?
We are constantly telling advertisers how they can improve their offers. Whether it is landing page tweaks, little details in the path, or even suggesting a new traffic type, we tell them what they need to know to make more money. We have advertisers coming in to our office, meeting with us at shows for strategy sessions, and doing calls on a regular basis to make sure the entire process is flowing smoothly. When you work with us, you aren’t just setting the offer live on our network and leaving it there, you are getting the full package.

What do you feel that GetAds provides to publishers that other networks do not provide?
For publishers, we really get to know them. We want to have an intimate knowledge of their business and how they market offers. That allows us to bring in better offers and make better suggestions to them on how to increase their profits month after month. We are always talking to our publishers to find out what they want, what we are doing right, and what we need improvement on. It really boils down to the relationship. The stronger your relationship is with your network, the more money you will make in the long run.

What lessons have you learned from Hockey that you can apply to managing affiliates?
The number one thing is that it takes a team. Hockey is not an individual game, and neither is managing affiliates. You need people that are each good at one aspect of the business, and when you put them all together you get the full effect. You also need to be ready for anything and look at the game from all angles. You never know where the game winning shot is going to come from.

What do you look for in affiliates that helps you know they might be a good choice to approve?
We look for affiliates that are serious about their business, and are willing to be transparent in how they market. I’m not saying we need to know your landing pages, keywords, campaigns, etc., just that we need to know how offers are being marketed. We want affiliates that know the difference between Incent traffic and Non-Incent traffic. Basically, we want to work with anybody as long as they are serious about making money and they are willing to follow the rules.

I know you are familiar with DirectTrack, but what made you choose LinkTrust?
We worked with DirectTrack for years at CPA Empire (affiliate.com), but when we started GetAds we decided to go with LinkTrust. The number one reason is tracking. We just have less issues with tracking discrepancies on LinkTrust. Plus, they are a smaller company, like us. I like that I can call the CEO on the phone if we have issues and he will get them taken care of ASAP.

What changes do you expect in the next year for Performance / Affiliate Marketing?
It’s only going to get bigger. The projections for 2011 are something around $28 billion for the online ad industry, and affiliate marketing is going to be a large piece of that. I think we are going to see more networks shutting down and consolidating, much like we saw in 2010. Margins are slimmer, and a lot of people are being pushed out.

What products do you think would benefit from Performance Based marketing, and how would you bring them into the industry?
I think that any product in the world would benefit from performance based marketing. They key in bringing them into the industry is to make sure that the advertiser understands exactly what their goals are. They need to know exactly what a lead or sale is worth to them. They also have to have their back-end conversion funnel optimized so that they are ready for the traffic. Once they have those things in place, and if they have solid cash flow, we can bring their product to market.

What technology do you want to see created for the industry?
Anything that will help us prevent fraud and lower advertiser scrub rates as well as stopping other networks from scrubbing. Affiliates need to get paid for the work that they do in promoting offers. Nobody wins when there is fraud or scrubbing in the picture.

GetAds can be found here.

George Avery used to be the right-hand man at the Affiliate.com until a few years ago. Not soon after Affiliate’s parent company MediaBreakaway was hit, and then subsequently lost a multi-million dollar lawsuit from Myspace, he left the company along with half-a-dozen other employees to start GetAds, a direct competitor.Avery’s company took its own path, broke away from the “Spamking” labels that could have followed them and became a major player in the industry seemingly overnight. He’s one of those guys that everyone likes, his way of doing business down to earth and because of that has earned the trust of his clients and affiliates. In the Denver area, when people ask about affiliate marketing, GetAds and George have become synonymous with the growing industry.

2010-03-08

Article Marketing is Good For you

Want to have hundreds of engrossed visitors checking out your site on a daily basis, at no charge to you? If you say “yes”, then article marketing is the answer for you. Below are some advantages of article marketing that you should know about if you are yearning to get into it.

One of the remarkable benefits of article marketing is that you acquire an ability to pre-sell your products with ease. Articles that are informative in nature can also warm up your prospects about the product and give them enough info to help them reach a buying decision. Essentially, the article is not meant to be a sales pitch, but rather educating potential buyers of the items or the problem it will be able to solve. This can literally grow your sales because when your potential customer is in the buying mentality, which will make it simpler for you to make a sale. A lot of article marketers don’t utilize this strategy and hope to be overflowed with customers, when in reality they can use their articles to pre-sell their items and direct interested people to their website. The reason why pre-selling is extremely important these days is because people have become highly conscious about where they spend their money and high. To help people have better buying experiences and for them to make a calculated choice, informative articles can provide answers. The last thing; you should always strive to tone down your pre-selling so that you don’t end up converting your article to an advertisement.

Article marketing is a way to instantly connect with people all over the world who are potential customers. You are able to submit your articles to many online sites at the same time, thus reaching a wide audience quickly.

All Internet marketers realize the benefit of growing their rankings in the search engines. It’s one of the most excellent things that can occur to your website, period. Article marketing helps you out in this area by giving you an easy way to increase your page rank. The page ranking of your site definitely influences the type of ranking you will earn from your website in Google, which is presently the leader among search engines. When you radiate your articles online, they construct backlinks, and when you get pertinent backlinks, your page rank increases. Your page rang will have a better standing, as the number of quality backlinks you have increases. In addition, there are many article directories have excellent page rankings, meaning they will be allocating on to your site. Your page ranking is not only advantageous and held in high regard according to Google, but it is also a positive sign in front of your visitors. If you plan to sell your website someday, having a good standing page rank will allow you go ask a higher price. So there are tons of advantages for growing your page rank and article marketing can definitely help you with that.

Another noticeable perk of article marketing is that you’ll receive a usual flow of traffic from the search engines as well as the other websites that have published your articles. There are several marketers that are still receiving traffic from their old articles that were published quite some time ago. The explanation for this is the Internet has become a powerhouse of information that is perpetually being fed superior quality content. When your articles are a high caliber and provide relevant info to the reader, they don’t just receive a good ranking in the search engines but also get distributed in newsletter, ezines and websites that publish third party content. This just proves that your articles have an ability to direct new visitors to your site again and again, without having to spend money on them. It’s free traffic forever and the greatest thing is it’s highly targeted.

Make sure that your articles have your primary keywords in the body and as well as the title so that you’re able to rank for them. Search engine traffic can be the best kind of all, especially when you rank well for relevant keywords that get high traffic. The reason why it is easy to reach high positions in the search engines is because the directories that you publish them with are seen as authority sites, giving you an advantage. Many webmasters are constantly seeking content, and some of these will find your articles and re-publish them on their sites, giving you another source of traffic. So you will eventually be getting traffic from all over the internet, sometimes from sources you’ve never heard of.

Article marketing is also a great way to get exposure for the services you offer. There are a number of talented freelancers who strain to find opportunities via freelancing sites such as Elance, due to the heightened competition. However article marketing is an option that few freelancers practice with to promote their service. You can write and announce articles that explain the niche you’re targeting and then deliberately introduce your readers to the service you’re providing. This would make is so much easier for you to direct traffic and convince clients from every part of the web, instead of only depending on the big freelance portals.

Article marketing, then, is a proven method for getting you high quality traffic, and it’s completely free to use. It’s a method that, when done right, can bring you good results in a short time.

2010-03-03

Jeremy Shoemaker Information

Jeremy Schoemaker Bio

Jeremy Schoemaker, otherwise known as Shoemoney, is a somewhat legendary Internet marketer and blogger who is famous for, amongst other things, being extremely successful with the Google AdSense program. One of the most famous links on his website is an image of him holding an AdSense check for nearly $133,000 in 2005.

Detailed Overview

The beginnings of Jeremy Schoemaker’s online career began in 1995. He had graduated from high school and was working at a well-known national retailer when he was approached by someone looking to hire him to work for their newly created Internet service provider company. Because of his technical background, Jeremy found the job to be challenging and rewarding. Among the things he did were learning how to manage servers, build websites and develop security systems.

He remained in this position for a couple of years and then returned to college to complete his degree. It was during this time that he founded his first business which was centered around Apple Macintosh gaming. Quite by accident, he was contacted by a company that produced the games and they wanted to advertise on his website since it had become very popular. That is when Jeremy became aware of the true power of creating websites that people would want to visit and then monetize them with advertiser dollars.

However, in 2000, when the dot com bubble burst, Jeremy found himself struggling for income and at a new low point in his life. He was severely overweight, deep in debt and smoking over two packs of cigarettes a day. Around this time, he met his future wife who encouraged him to get back to what he knew how to do well, create websites that people want to visit. In 2003, he began doing just that and became incredibly successful with his ringtone community website that was the source of his infamous AdSense check. Around the same time, Jeremy made massive changes to his personal life which included losing over 200 pounds, quitting smoking and starting a family.

Leveraging on his success, in 2007 Jeremy founded another company known as AuctionAds. The idea behind AuctionAds was to serve ads that were running on eBay on contextually relevant websites. The idea was so successful that it was purchased within six months of its creation by a larger competitor.

Today, Jeremy spends much of his time on his main website and blog Shoemoney.com where he talks about his successes and failures in his online marketing career and also helps others achieve their own goals. Since his only career began in 2003, Jeremy has established himself as one of the most successful affiliate marketers in the world having earned millions of dollars in that time.

Reputation

Jeremy Schoemaker is one of the most well known and well respected Internet marketers in the world today. From his humble beginnings in 2003, Jeremy overcame significant odds to become one of the most successful super affiliates anywhere earning millions of dollars in that time. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and two children and continues to help other affiliate marketers grow their own businesses.

Domain “Whois”

The Whois information for a website lists the owner and their contact information. The Whois information for “Jeremy Schoemaker” is public which is generally a good thing. This indicates the owner of this site has nothing to hide.