Blog

Posted on

Never Too Young to Start

The affiliate marketing industry has a number of parent/child teams working together, such as Greg Rice and Greg Rice Jr.; Andy Rodriguez and Andy Rodriguez Jr.; and Deborah Carney and Liz Fogg-Ababon. In recent years I have become more involved in working with my father, Bill Swartwout, in what is now our company.

Bill started planting the seed for my love of working in the Internet industry when I was a young teen, when he first got on the Web. I’m currently working on instilling a passion for technology with my three-year-old daughter, who has known how to find the browser on my iPhone so that she could see the sports page icon, since she was just 18 months old.

Now, at just three, she manipulates her two pages of apps on my iPhone like a pro. It just goes to show, it’s never too young to start teaching your child how to use technology, or to get them interested in our industry, for that matter.

In addition to affiliate marketing, my other job has been an elementary school teacher. It has been my experience that not every student is fond of working on a computer. As I have surveyed my student’s families to find out what kind of technology they have available in their homes, the students with no interest in computers often do not have access to them at home.

Kids need to have a foundation in computers, as proficiency has become essential in education and the workplace. . Today’s children will not have much choice but to learn to use computers as we are engulfed in a computer-centric society. As a teacher, I do whatever I can to introduce the use of computers into my students lives through daily lessons, kick-starting their computer literacy skills – and they love it!

As a mother, I am sure to include my daughter in learning to work whatever piece of technology I happen to be using whenever she is nearby.

That said, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it is never too early to encourage an interest in affiliate marketing. My three-year-old certainly doesn’t know how to do what I do as President and Affiliate Manager. But she does know that “Mommy works on the computer a lot,” Mommy works with these things called “checks that have cool pictures” on them, “Mommy types a lot,” and that Mommy has fun with her work. She even loves to wear Mommy’s company hats and ID badges from past Affiliate Summits saying that she’s going to work with Mommy one day.

Jill, affiliate manager of www.GirlyChecks.com, is president of the “parent” Beaches and Towns Network, Inc.

Posted on

Are Gurus Sabotaging New Affiliates?

Many Gurus have mastered the art of persuasion and have utilized it to their advantage. This in many instances ends up being to the detriment of many newbie affiliates. Though an effective technique used to tap into the desire of the new comer with promises to fulfill their greatest desires in the shortest possible time. This works for two reasons, a guru is perceived as an expert in his field and is therefore trusted. Hence whatever he or she says is taken as achievable. This gives a reassuring feeling to the new learner who desires understanding.

This then raises the question, is it solely the gurus fault or does the newbie have a part to play in the whole dynamics of the sabotage theory? This scenario mimics that of one attempting to perform a single handed clap (as in using one hand to clap). Both parties are required to participate in order to bring about  a response, whether good or not so good.  This applies in a broader context as well, not just for online affiliates. A day to day comparison could be drawn from an elderly person becoming the target of a break in. They become a target only after it has been ascertained that they have multiple weak spots that can be capitalized on.

So how can newbie affiliates combat this onslaught in their state of vulnerability? Let’s look at the illustration earlier I used with the elderly person. Even if the person lives alone but their home is burglar alarmed and has family stopping by on a regular basis. This individual is less likely to be targeted, as the likelihood of  getting caught is higher. Not to say all gurus are dishonest, but being able to differentiate between those who are truly qualified from those that are only seeking to make a quick buck at your expense is important.

It then becomes our responsibility to protect ourselves by making ourselves less vulnerable. In order to do this the newbie needs to be clear about what he or she is trying to achieve. Avoid the temptation to rush in and first sign up for free information to get a feel of the value they offer. This will help to determine if their product is worth the purchase. Look up reviews on the product and get a feel of what users have said about it. This technique has saved me what would have been regretful purchases and time wasted that would only have served as a distraction. The whole point of this is by becoming more responsible and taking control more it will force the gurus to raise their standard in the level of information that they share.

Starting off as a newbie affiliate is both exciting as well as nerve wracking. The truth is it’s like anything new that you try for the first time. A good indicator of how well you will end up doing is determined in the way it all begins. There are those who just rush in without first finding out what to do which usually ends up in tears. There are others who are a bit more cautious and first ask questions from the more experienced affiliates. This gives them a better starting point and a better chance of getting results.

Tip#1. Do Not Rush into it – Too many newbie affiliates end up rushing in without really knowing what to do, resulting in them running around in circles, like a dog chasing his own tail. Eventually it becomes too much and they give up.

Tip#2. Take the Time to Learn How to Successfully Promote Products – There is no single way to promote products and services. This is a personal decision that depends on your ability and your start up budget. Be sure to determine what these are before starting.

Tip#3. Select one method you feel you understand – There are various methods out there that can be used to as promotion vehicles. It is crucial to have an understanding of how they work and how users interact with them as a means of getting the very best out of it.

Tip#4. Stay Focused – To avoid detraction it is best to have a plan put together. This makes it less likely for you to end up working without seeing any results. It is then that you become demotivated and give up.

Tip#5. Put together a plan based on your finance and ability – decide your approach and jot it all down on a notepad as you go along. Keep referring to the notepad to know what your next step will be and to correct steps that went pear shaped.

Tip#6. Implement Through Trial and Error – Write down the process as you go along this will enable you to refer back to what you did and help you quickly identify what is working from what isn’t.

Tip#7. Evaluate and Improve – Tip#6 will make this part of the process much easier. Being able to quickly throw out what doesn’t work will help you to focus and improve what is working. Once you have a satisfactory conversion rate all you have to do is repeat the process with more accuracy.

Using these simple tips will provide a basis from which to launch off. Having clarity to the process and what it entails eliminates the illusion of a get rich quick mentality and enables you to focus on putting in the work necessary to achieve the results you desire.

Sponsored by Deadbeat Super Affiliate

Posted on

How to Make the Best EDU & Grant AutoResponder

If you’ve never tried the EDU revenue stream, I’m about to teach you a proven and successful way to use the EDU and grant programs from several aff networks to promote the best EDU programs that they have.  I know people who use these techniques and do over $20,000 worth of leads a day and significant profits – because it is easy and there are many traffic sources to support it. What I am going to teach affiliates here is what people include in their $10,000 courses – and frankly, none of them even get it right, or have really good examples. Because I am a nice guy and too lazy to make my own DVD set, here’s all the info you need for free.

STEP #1) Great Landing Page. First of all, you are going to want to make a very good site that will be a landing page for Grants & EDU. One landing page that works really well is below, which is fileyourgrants.com. This is a great example of what can be done. It gets people in the door, get’s them to sign up – and using the grant system is much less competitive than many other edu keywords. Not to say that you wouldn’t want to use edu keywords that actually back out.

This is just a good example – it has a great logo, has a good call to action “Need Help? Don’t Miss out on Grant Money”. The really great part is the “FILL OUT THE FORM BELOW” with the Treasury Check. I would NOT recommend using the treasury check, because of the legal issues regarding this – so might want to check with your attorney. However in general using any logos or anything that represents the government is misleading and possibly illegal. Color wise, this is perfect – blue is the color of authority, which makes people more likely to believe what you are telling the, and red is the call to action. I also really love the reasons part on the bottom, really gets people who might not automaticaly fill it back to reconsider.

Here’s another awesome grant page

Click to expand image

STEP #2) GREAT AUTORESPONDER. Next you will want to make sure to have an auto responder.  I recommend AWeber – if you sign up using this link you will get $1.00 trial to test this out. The auto responder is enormously important in creating programs that work, because it allows you to immediately respond to people who are interested, engage them and get them more involved. I think a great deal of the industry reccomends them, but if you know of something better, please tell me.

The idea of this is to get people to sign up immediately for more information about Grants and Educational programs, send them an offer and then use that data to continually send them product offers over the period of several weeks. The auto responder is a MUST for this (and many other programs that I am going to teach you)

STEP #3) REDIRECT AFTER SIGNUP. After they signup for the program, you will want to immediately redirect them to a page that talks about another similar offer or just redirect them IMMEDIATELY to that offer. There are two possible offers that you can do this for, here are the two offers.

  1. MonetizeIt Promotion #5249 Program Advisor orRevenueStreet offer #274
  2. Envyus Media. #582 Education and Career Center – Gov Grants

I recommend highly that you redirect after the signup DIRECTLY to one of those pages.

STEP #4) SEND AN ACTUAL GUIDE. In the actual auto send them PDF guide to grants and resources about grants, we will talk more about this PDF further on  You will want to send them an email with this guide, a good example is

Welcome to the “YOURSITENAME HERE” – you have made a great decision in applying for grant funding, and we congratulate you for taking the first step. The Government is helping many people like you right now by giving out Government grants that can be used for school, business expenses and other person obligations and expenses. Don’t waste your time and learn more:

STEP 1: Download out Grant Approval Guide (link to a PDF on your site)
STEP 2: See if you qualify for grants on one of the top sites about grants, you  can be awarded for:

  • Federal Grant Programs
  • Pell Grants
  • Need Based Grants
  • Minority Grants
  • Disabled Student Grants
  • Graduate and Doctoral Grants

SEE IF YOU QUALIFY

In this case,link to the EnvyUSMedia 582 Offer in the PDF, or find another one.

Back to the the PDF that you send: you will want to do some research and find how people can apply for grants, make a one page basic guide, you can find all the information on public sources. However, page #2 will be a listing of more offers for them to fill out. Include in that the Grant offer, with the same information as above.

Also push at the end EDU offers by saying things like “If you are looking to go abck to College with your grant, look over these online schools.” Similarly, you may want to end with a good cash advance offer or credit card reduction offer.

This guide will get you a significant amount of the money to be made from your autoresponder. However, over the next few weeks you will want to send them more text messages reminding them of these offers, where to look up grants and other free opportunities for them.

Where can you get the traffic? Almost anywhere, but I highly recommend using 7Search (if you use this link they will match your first deposit). 7Search has tons of keywords that are very useful for this, including cheap grant and government grant keywords. Look at the keyword “College” seems pretty amazing actually.

STEP #5: Send other EDU, Grant and Work from Home offers.
Over the next few weeks, you need to really to send a lot of great EDU and similar offers. I recommend MonetizeIt for most of these offers, because they have a large selection of high paying EDU offers, and you can mix and match them. The real good news here is that just because your subscribers sign up for one, doesn’t mean you can get them back on another. Mix and match the offers.

Here again are the three networks and products you need to sign up for to make this work

1) MonetizeIt
2) EnvyusMedia
3) Revenue Street
4) AWeber
5) 7Search



Posted on

How to Make Every Monday "Cyber Monday" at 7Search

It’s the New Guy again, back with some insight from the PPC front. Obviously, we are in the middle of the peak shopping season most advertisers efforts are concentrated on grabbing customer’s attention with bargains, free shipping, and all the bells and whistles. The day that gets the most attention is Cyber Monday. Think Black Friday but on every laptop and PC in half the nation.

This year’s sales were over a billion dollars in 24 hours. Many of our advertisers did very well. But how can you get those results on a weekly basis? How can you improve your pay-per-click campaign so that your investment of time and money will pay off all year long?

Lately, I have spoken with several advertisers who have inquired about improving the return on their marketing investment. They want to know how to make their campaign a success. I, unfortunately, can not offer a guaranteed formula for instant pay-per-click success. I can only reinforce the basics of what’s necessary to build a profitable search engine marketing strategy over time. There are certain principles that remain constant no matter the product or service being promoted.

These are some of the fundamentals that I have found to be useful across all categories and verticals:

  1. Bid Competitively: Take a look at where you are placed amongst your competitor’s bids. Are you ranked in the top 3, or the top 5? 7Search.com advertisers will see red flags displayed next to keywords that are receiving poor visibility. In order to be effective, your ad should be visible to as many web surfers as possible. Being displayed amongst other top ranking ads helps immensely. Bidding at least $0.05 will ensure that your ad receives traffic from our affiliate network. 7search constitutes about 20% of our traffic, whereas the remaining 80% comes from our affiliates. Competitive bidding offers you visibility, but you still want to examine your keywords and the results they bring.
  2. Keyword Reports: Under the “Reports” tab, 7Search members will find several great data reporting tools available to them. Running one of the available reports gives you a breakdown of the amount of clicks, impressions, conversions, and overall costs associated with your ad campaigns. The keyword report tells you exactly which keywords are receiving clicks, and shows you the searched phrase that was connected to your keyword. You can use this information to discover what searchers are looking for. You can then cater your site to what is being searched, or find irrelevant keywords to be used in our next area of discussion.
  3. Negative Keywords: These are invaluable because they can save you money! The purpose of adding words to this list is to make sure your ad only receives clicks from relevant searches. For example, if you have a site that sells baby blankets, and you choose “baby” as a keyword, you will receive searches for “Justin Bieber ‘Baby’ lyrics,” to “adult baby costumes.” Adding terms to your NK list will help keep irrelevant searches such as these searches from reaching your site.
  4. Conversion Tracking Code: Adding the code to your website makes it so much easier for you and 7search to examine your results. We can see which keywords are converting, how often, as well as a detailed look into the quality of traffic your ad is receiving. This is also useful in isolating any sources of low-quality traffic.
  5. Using our MakeTop: Bidding competitively, perhaps over several campaigns, can be daunting. We have advertisers with HUNDREDS of campaigns. Instead of monitoring each campaign, and adjusting each keyword bid individually, use our automatic MakeTop. MakeTop is a bid adjustment tool that will set your bids at EITHER first position or a maximum bid amount selected. This allows you to move all your keywords to top position quickly, to increase your click through rate. You don’t have to worry about a bid going past your budget; pick a maximum bid you are comfortable with, and feel free to adjust as you go.

There are some other factors to consider about 7search, as well. We offer custom descriptions and URLs that can be attached to your keywords. These add an extra sales pitch, and an instant link to distinct landing pages, for your audience.

What is the quality of your site? Does it look like a professional, clearly laid out and interesting website? Is it easily navigated? Do you have a secure checkout page, keeping your customer’s personal information safe and secure? Think about what your average surfer will see and feel when they visit your site. Will they be impressed, and hopefully inspired to explore it further?

Taking time to evaluate your progress and activity through out the year will help during the slower periods, and keep you prepared during the busier seasons. Always consider your audience. What products are people talking about? What part of the year are you in? Evaluation and re-evaluating should be a part of your routine, so that every Monday can be a Cyber Monday.

Start a 7Search Campaign here.

Posted on

Paid Search Versus SEO – The Who, What, and Why

In the world of online advertising two formats reign supreme. Paid advertising, or PPC (Pay per Click) and Organic Optimization, or SEO (Search Engine Optimization), are the two most prevalent traffic generation methods. PPC and SEO have the same objective, which is to drive search engine traffic to your website. Both methods feature many attractive benefits and well as potential hurdles to advertising success.

The PPC advertising model allows businesses the opportunity to generate traffic and grow quickly via the internet. PPC as a medium offers many positives features, as well as some potential negatives to consider when getting started. Some of the positives include:

  • Usability – PPC is very easy to get started. Creating a campaign requires minimal “tech” knowledge.
  • Effectiveness – Paid advertising quickly increases the visibility of your business online. Its use can expose your online business to more potential clients in a shorter amount of time than traditional SEO.
  • Scalability – Your advertisements can be tweaked to allow you to reach a targeted clientele. These optimizations in geographic and/or demographic settings can, in turn, helps attract high quality leads
  • Speed – Campaigns can produce quick results/sales
  • Transparency – Unlike other traditional advertising mediums (i.e. Print, Television), PPC provides analytical data to help users gauge return on investment (ROI).

Some of the drawbacks to managing a PPC campaign include:

  • Time Dedication – Effectively optimizing a paid campaign can be very time consuming.
  • Lack of portability – Strategies that may work for your campaigns on larger engines may not translate successfully with a smaller ppc provider.
  • Risk – PPC advertising advertisers can lose a lot of money if they are not cautious with their bidding strategy. Numerous factors, such as traffic volume fluctuations, multiple traffic matching options, and new traffic partners, can all impact your ROI.
  • Cost – Popular keywords can be expensive to bid for, and if not properly optimized, can damage your budget.
  • Click Fraud – Click Fraud is a very real issue that can affect your campaign performance – especially with high volume search terms. It is important to your bottom line that your PPC provider offer features which help you identify and removes poor performing sources before they destroy your offers.

The major difference with SEO is that it requires the utilization of techniques to position your website to receive traffic from the non-sponsored organic (think FREE) listings whereas PPC exclusively utilizes sponsored (i.e. PAID) listing traffic. SEO can take a long time to show results – in fact it can take up to many months depending on the competitiveness of a keyword phrase. Also, SEO cannot be guaranteed, as changes to a search engines algorithm or requirements may result in lower positioning. For this reason many people choose to focus on PPC in the short term and leave the SEO as a long term strategy.

Ideally, a prosperous long term strategy using both PPC and SEO in conjunction will work best. PPC can drive quick traffic and provide increased web presence to your ads. This instant stream of traffic will allow you to ascertain which keywords convert into sales the best in short order. Then, with that knowledge, an SEO campaign can begin targeting only those keywords which convert into sales so that the users’ website appears organically for those phrases. No matter which version is used, optimization and management is essential to your campaign’s success

Brought to you by 7Search PPC

Posted on

Hydra rises from the ashes and Greg Bayer tells us how.

If you weren’t really paying attention the last 18 months, you probably didn’t hear about all the drama surrounding Hydra Media. If you did follow the soap opera drama, the company basically went belly-up after two of the founders left, founded another company and a war between all parties involved started. Hydra, despite being one of the big names in the industry, looked as if it was going to be a footnote in our industry. Then along came Adknowledge, the Missouri performance marketing company to rescue them. We wanted to know what was happening with the product, so we asked Greg Bayer, general manager of Adknowledge’s Affiliate Division what was going on, what to expect of Hydra and if we can trust them again.

What can you tell us that will make people feel comfortable with working with Hydra again as an affiliate network?

Adknowledge acquired Hydra in June 2010 for several key reasons. The acquisition allowed Adknowledge to move into the CPA space to complement its affiliate CPC offering. This includes an arsenal of new affiliates in Email as well as other distribution types like search, display, co-reg, etc. expanding our base of affiliates. Since the acquisition we’ve worked hard to make sure that our affiliate managers are properly cross-trained on both networks, and affiliates can access both CPC and CPA offers. Affiliates are paid by Adknowledge for both CPA and CPC revenue, and gain the benefit of the CPA network being closely integrated within one of the largest privately held ad networks. We’ve also been able to retain, and add to the great roster of affiliate marketers behind the Hydra product.

What does Hydra provide to affiliates that no other affiliate network provides?

– Top quality offers across hundreds of advertisers, including branded offers such as AT&T and Sears plus top direct response advertisers.

– Leveraging Adknowledge’s large advertiser base to bring forward even more attractive and top performing ads.

– Tested and vetted offers from across different areas of Adknowledge to ensure high success rates and competitive pricing.

– Best trained affiliate management team who can work with the affiliate to determine the best yield whether CPC or CPA.

What does Hydra provide to advertisers that no other affiliate network provides?

– Top quality e-mail affiliates plus broad distribution across search, display, social media, co-reg, etc.

– World class compliance team to screen and monitor affiliate activity creating a strong balance between high but controlled distribution.

– In-house full creative department ready to meet any needs the client may have.

– Top producing sales team that works closely with the advertisers to tailor campaigns that meet or exceed their expected ROI.

What is Hydra currently doing to prevent affiliate fraud? How are you keeping out the bad affiliates?
Adknowledge has a rigorous affiliate vetting procedure which analyzes more than a dozen data sources in deciding who should be admitted to the network, in addition to conducting personal interviews with applicants. We also have a large database of historical information on applicants as well as active and de-activated affiliates that allows us, in many cases, to identify the “bad affiliates” even when they try to pose as someone else, so that we are able to proactively screen out and protect the network against would-be fraudulent affiliates.

What major changes do you see with the performance marketing industry in 2011?

– Outlook for new categories Diversification into other categories, in particular those appealing to the Boomers/Senior sectors

– Further consolidation as some of the smaller networks combine together

– CPC and CPA blending together more. Revenue share networks like CJ, LinkShare, Google will continue to appeal to a very specific segment of affiliates.

If there was a solution that you could invent for performance marketers, what would it be?
The perfect e-mail deliverability tool which only sends top quality clicks. Advertisers would keep raising their bids and everyone would see the pool float higher!

Your parent company, Adknowledge is very much involved in incentivized marketing, what steps are being taken to ensure that incentivized marketing remains legit, and the traffic quality is good?
Audiences are shifting their time from traditional media sources like television to online games. The shift is rapid and dramatic and SuperRewards provides advertisers a way to reach this engaged audience. Advertisers receive a highly transparent offering in which they pay on a per action basis. There are a combination of internal systems (fraud control, throttling, machine fingerprinting) and external consulting (ensuring secure checkout processes, lead scrubbing) we provide to increase lead quality. Additionally, social games with virtual currency do not have cash out mechanisms; this single item has a huge impact on improving lead quality.

If you could move your office to anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Well, we just moved offices in December to combine the former Hydra team with the existing Adknowledge team in Westwood, LA and that’s about as good of a spot as any! Most of the rest of the affiliate team also recently moved into a new office space in NYC’s SOHO, also a great place to be. Then of course there’s our headquarters in KC where you can’t beat the BBQ and the Royals’ Kauffman Stadium. Although it would be great to have everyone in one place, travelling to these three spots are a nice change of scenery!

Posted on

CPA Detective Fights Affiliate Fraud

David Sendroff knows fraud. In his role as the Chief Information Officer of Spire Vision, a major education lead generation agency, he sees tons of networks and affiliates try to defraud his clients. As he himself points out, networks seemed to be ignoring the issues and just “collecting checks.” So he decided to make a system in-house that would detect this fraud and help improve the overall quality of the leads. Instead of keeping his secret private, David has launched CPA Detective, an innovative new company that provides an overall solution for fraud detection, and something everyone needs to look at. We decided to sit down with David and ask him a few questions about fraud and the industry.

Was there a specific incident that made you wake up and notice that affiliate fraud was a huge issue?
What I found to be interesting was that as specific fraudulent data sources coming from an affiliate or sub affiliate were eliminated from affiliate channels, the same fraudulent traffic patterns would later appear through an entirely different account. At that point, I created the CPA Detective fraud tracking service because I realized that fraudsters would stop at nothing and the only way to have a true impact was to protect advertisers at the source.

What do you think the most significant issue in affiliate fraud is right now?
Everyone doing legitimate business is impacted by fraud. For some advertisers, we’ve actually identified upwards of 20% of their traffic to be generated fraudulently.  They end up paying for leads that are irrelevant or have been recycled from other campaigns, which introduces inefficiencies to the system. Many advertisers have not been able to achieve the best ROI for their advertising dollar, so they do not realize the full potential of a well structured CPA campaign. Fraud detection corrects these inefficiencies by ensuring optimal lead quality so that legit publishers and networks are paid accordingly. Elimination of fraud will create more trust and transparency which will expand the number and types of advertisers who use performance marketing.

What is your opinion of the influx of CPA network companies that allow anyone to create a CPA network? What are the dangers?
The challenge is that the due diligence practices and preventative measures of many smaller networks are laxed because they lack resources. Affiliates opening their campaigns to these networks create a lot of vulnerability. Every extra link in a redirect reduces the transparency of the originating source, which introduces more fraud to the industry.

What is the most innovative or interesting method you’ve seen someone try to defraud an affiliate network?
It wouldn’t serve the industry for me to publicize all of the tactics. However, one of the most interesting tactics that I’ve seen was an affiliate using a distributed network of college students across the country to commit fraud by form filling leads. Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated in the way they infiltrate affiliate networks to generate leads. We have seen the tools for committing fraud become more widely available and the old-school fraud prevention tactics are becoming less useful.

Why are so many affiliate networks refusing to get on the wagon and actively combat fraud? Do you think that perhaps some networks are engaging in fraud themselves?
Many affiliate networks are looking at the bottom line revenue and see traffic quality being the responsibility of the advertiser to monitor. Even if they had tools to detect fraud, it’s easier for a network to collect a check and take action when notified. Many advertisers also do not have the proper solutions to combat fraud, so networks are able to ride the wave for a little while before it becomes obvious.

What are some steps that people can take, outside of using your product, to start the fraud prevention process?
Networks should look for inconsistencies between area code, address, and IP location or even the story during the initial call. Watch out for the bank routing or address switch. Fraudsters are able to purchase pre-approved affiliate network accounts for a nominal fee, which throws all of the due diligence out the door.

Beyond that, look for irregular patterns with the traffic once it has commenced. You can also stay informed and participate in Facebook discussions and forums – industrypace.com is a great starting point! :)

As an advertiser you need to carefully choose your partners! Do business with networks that are known for their intense affiliate screening and fraud prevention practices. Require affiliate networks to provide you with sub-affiliate values for each lead generated so that you can isolate bad data sources. The best thing that advertisers and networks can do to prevent fraud is to stop paying for it. Even the smallest payment will keep fraudsters coming back for more.

What specific feature does CPA Detective have that no other company has? What difference does this make for advertisers?
Fraudulent affiliates can cloak, mask, and manipulate every element of their traffic to try to cover their tracks, but we can still detect fraud with certainty. We are experts in affiliate marketing and have maintained a fraud intelligence database for years. Advertisers are able to leverage the power of our database which is comprised of fraud patterns from every case that we identify. We combine cutting-edge technology and sophisticated fraud tracking algorithms specifically for CPA advertisers along with a service element that is customized for each client so that we become a powerful extension of your compliance team.

Some other companies are trying to enter the game this year, what should people be wary of when shopping for a fraud solution?
There are various options when it comes to data validation, compliance, and fraud monitoring services. Click fraud detection services are mainly focused on clicks, but they are not well versed in CPA campaigns that attract all sorts of other games that fraudsters play. Data validation services verify that the lead information matches a known database, which is useful but oftentimes irrelevant to CPA campaigns and can easily be compromised by fraudsters. The data itself generally does not provide proof of fraud, it’s the mechanism by which the leads were submitted. Strictly automated fraud detection solutions that rely solely on technology are missing the human component, which is critical given the ever changing tactics. If you are in the CPA business, find a company that specializes in CPA fraud.

I’m delighted that someone is really taking on the issue of affiliate fraud. CPA Detective is a company to keep an eye on as affiliate fraud is a serious issue, and I’m amazed that CPA Detective is one of the only companies out there. – Pace

Posted on

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

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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
  3. 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!
  4. Dotza Coloring Pens’ At Peerfly 1108
  5. American Dolls are always huge: american doll http://amzn.to/auDztT
  6. Imaginext BIGFOOT the Monster’ by Fisher-Price http://amzn.to/aSmqaO
  7. Matchbox Stinky The Garbage Truck’ by Mattel http://amzn.to/9KdKLN
  8. 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.



Posted on

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.

Posted on

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

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Trimming the Tree with Performance Marketing

ADOTAS – For companies that are accelerating marketing efforts to make the most of the upcoming holiday season, it’s still not too late to initiate a performance marketing strategy. With the ability to literally add thousands of additional marketing staff to support your online presence practically overnight, affiliate programs can prove to be cost effective and revenue generating for advertisers and publishers alike.

For David’s Cookies, affiliates are key to boosting our company’s sales. Like many consumer-oriented businesses, the holiday season can represent the lion’s share of the company’s annual profits and David’s Cookies is no exception. In fact, in recent years we’ve seen our sales increase almost 700 percent in the last six weeks of the year. To sustain continued growth and expand our buying audience of individual consumers as well as corporate gift sales, we invested in a performance marketing program.

Through our affiliate program, David’s Cookies is able to quickly scale our team of online marketers to support the holiday season without requiring the traditional training, management or overhead associated with seasonal employees. Through the added army of online marketers, we can more easily be front-and-center delivering targeted offers at the right time to buyers. With the flexibility to test out marketing campaigns and evaluate program success in near real-time, we can also make adjustments immediately, which is especially important when every minute counts during the holiday shopping season.

What’s amazing? Affiliate programs are based on a pay-per-performance model. As a result, the profits are more immediately realized by the publishers which further incentivizes them to drive more traffic to our website. An additional benefit of our performance marketing program is the ease of building partnerships that are mutually beneficial to all parties in the network.

While there are many benefits to a performance marketing program, it’s not as simple as joining a network and waiting for the profits to roll in.

One of the first and most important decisions is to determine which performance marketing program, or programs, to join. While there doesn’t appear to be a shortage of options, determining the best program that most closely aligns with your business goals can be challenging. Since advertisers and publishers typically join between two to three different performance marketing networks, here are three questions you should ask yourself to assess which performance marketing network and program options are best for your business needs.

  1. What evaluation criteria does the performance marketing network use to determine who can join the network — when it comes to both advertisers and publishers?
  2. What is the cost to join the network? It’s true that you get what you pay for yet don’t let cost be your sole determining factor. A recent blog post on Affiliate Tip further underscores this point and outlines the dangers of low cost of entry/low return programs.
  3. What’s the process for getting new publishers and retailers up and running with a performance marketing program? While many organizations wisely steer away from introducing new marketing approaches during the busy holiday season the team at LinkShare promises that advertisers and publishers can be fully up and running with their performance marketing program within two weeks.

Once the performance marketing network has been selected, the advertiser, publisher and performance marketing provider equally share the responsibilities to manage and ensure the success of the program. From retailers, here are some tips for proactively addressing and avoiding three of the most common challenges that face new entrants when they join a performance marketing network.

1. Motivating publishers. Many publishers participate in several affiliate networks so how do you make sure that you remain top of mind? One way to do this is to carefully assess the costs associated with your company hiring additional holiday marketing staff through a traditional model versus the cost of temporarily increasing the revenue structure for publishers in a performance marketing network. Depending on the percentage of cost savings gained through a performance marketing program, an advertiser can redirect a portion of those costs to their affiliate publishers.

For David’s Cookies, by increasing the revenue share for publishers by a few percentage points for six weeks, we have seen sales increase by as much as 300 percent. Along with boosting revenue share, an online merchant can also consider providing additional bonuses as well as free quality merchandise. We’ve also found that generating special offers for strategic partners helps to strengthen the relationship, increase traffic and boost sales.

2. Ensuring quality content. It’s no secret that many people read online content and blogs because they provide information and insight that is consistently current, accurate and engaging. When there are hundreds or thousands of publishers promoting your company’s offerings, you want to be able to maintain some control over how and where your company appears online. This is yet another reason why it’s worthwhile to join a higher quality performance marketing network because they carefully evaluate publishers before they are accepted into the program and consistently evaluate their progress and activities.

3. Successfully executing a performance marketing strategy. Since nobody knows your business better than you do, the most successful performance marketing programs can’t happen without commitment from the advertiser. While the infrastructure may be in place to succeed in terms of joining a quality performance marketing network and having a widespread team of publishers promoting your products, without dedication from the advertiser, the program will not yield the highest possible results.

To make the most of your investment in a performance marketing program, it’s important to build a relationship with the account manager at the performance marketing network. Since the account managers are equally dedicated to your company’s success, they’re an important ally and resource. Going beyond providing an in-depth analysis of the program status, they can also generate ideas, help with market testing, provide strategy and make recommendations for tactical execution of plans to further cultivate your online presence and avoid potential missteps.

While end-of-year activities can be all encompassing, prioritize the relationship with your performance marketing account manager to make the most of the holiday season.

For David’s Cookies, participating in a performance marketing network has proven to be a valuable investment that helps drive revenue and brand awareness for our company. Since we joined the LinkShare network eight years ago, we have been able to grow our direct to consumer sales by double-digit percent increases each year.

Harris Beber is vice president of e-commerce for David’s Cookies.