Category: Marketing Madness

(Originally Written for ZacJohnson.com) After much thinking, I’ve decided to share some of the banner arbitrage techniques that allowed me to create some of the most successful performance based banner campaigns ever. For almost 60 weeks I had the same banners up on advertising networks, day after day making ridiculous amounts of money. During that period I bought probably over $24 million in banner campaigns in almost every single advertising network that exists with in many cases profit margin of anywhere between 40-50%. These campaigns consistently worked over and over again, while brand campaigns consistently cost me money when agencies didn’t pay their bills, paid late or underpaid. Here are how they worked, and how I believe they can continue to make anyone money for anyone involved in media buying.

1) Use as many creative versions possible.
Talking with many of the arbitragers out there, they tell me the same thing: they do really well at first and their profit margins drop extremely fast because their creative gets stale. Since they have found a “working” creative, they keep on using it over and over again – even after people steal it. This method of using the same exact creative causes faster and faster burn out and lowers your profit margin. Have many, many options, some of them with just slight changes. Move a graphic over, change the text color, use different photos.

2) Do heavy optimization based on numerous factors.
Each set of creative should be duplicated to optimize based on a variety of factors and be keyed to those factors. Of course you should optimize based on ROI, but you need also to target the banners to other things including geo-targeting, time of day, age groups and so on. The reasoning is that different people will be attracted to completely different creatives. If you are buying enough media, the ad networks will not charge you any more to do those targets than buying a general campaign that is RON, so this makes more sense and produces higher profits. Take a group of 100 creatives and set it to optimize for example only to people in NYC and you’ll find very fast which creatives have great response only to that region. Again, this technique produces higher profit because you are only serving to specific people, instead of just specific sites (which is the normal optimization procedure).

3) Do not be tempted to trade volume for profit.
Too many affiliates get greedy and want to make quick cash now, so they over-buy and lower their profit margins way too fast. Right now when I look over advertising networks, one thing I see is way too many campaigns that catch fire and a month later burn out. Networks that are experts at this game know that long term money is always a better friend.

4) Use “Video” Flash.
This is probably one of my most successful techniques and networks always asked me how I could afford to put video in my campaigns and pay the streaming charges. It was simple, I never actually used video but had very small clips compressed and actually placed into the flash file and repeated over and over again. For example, I would create a dating banner with a girl dancing in front of the camera, but it was only a few second clip repeated. You are looking for immediate reaction in a DR/Affiliate campaign, don’t forget. The user will see something and respond, so it doesn’t matter if it’s a real video, the perception that it’s a video is all that matters.

5) Change up the campaign/landing page you are sending the banner with unbranded creatives.
Some campaigns may not like this, but try to get permission from networks to not use their branded creatives and change where the banners are clicking to. The first reason behind this is that you will be able to find which campaign has a higher ROI and also as mentioned in #2 optimize even based on that. The other reason is to alleviate your risk. Many years ago I had a campaign with eAdvertising for a dating site that month after month they paid me on time, the dating client had no problem with the traffic – and suddenly I was stiffed for almost $200k because the client said the leads “weren’t converting.” We all know the issues. Luckily for me I was running that same campaign to the same advertiser on 4 other networks.

Remember, the idea in all the campaigns is to have as many people click on the banners as possible, get as many people to the landing pages of your advertisers. There are so many articles on landing pages optimization, so much on different tools to use but the easiest way to still make money is to get tons of people using these techniques to click on a banner, go to a website, fill out an offer, sign up for a product

Learn also about this Crazy Affiliate Marketing Technique

Pace Lattin

Exhibiting at a trade show can be costly, but for the world of me, I fail to understand what most companies are thinking when they bring a whole team or hire temporary “booth babes” but have absolutely no clue or a game plan what they want to accomplish. Without proper and effective training, some booth staffers may not realize how some inadvertent actions can impact an organizations reputation and potential business. Below is a Top 10 list to keep in mind before the next show.

Top 10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Exhibit at an Affiliate Marketing Conference

1 ) If you “ran out” of business cards on Day 1.  Time and time again I constantly hear, “Oh I am sorry, I ran out of business cards.” Really? You spend all this time and money and forget something so simple but critically important?

2 ) If the first words out of your mouth are, “Where are the parties tonight?”  While parties are a great venue to network and drum up some business, it should not be your sole motivation to attend.

3) If you find texting more exciting than the people waiting for you at your booth.  You can’t begin to imagine how many booths I visited at the Ad-tech and what % of the employees were on their phones texting. Forget the employees; I saw numerous C-level execs doing the same.

4 ) If you prefer talking on the phone while people are waiting for you at your booth.  See comments to bullet 3 above.

5 ) If you prefer eating while people are waiting for you at your booth.  We all get hungry while manning the booth – but schedule a time with your team where you get a break and go eat in a designated area.

6 ) If you prefer “passing” the card to someone not present to follow up.  This is a favorite of mine. I am at your booth, ready to give you some business but what do I hear, “email us at affiliateservices@mycompanydoesnthavethetimetotalknowandwearewaytoobusytexting.com and we will have one of our dedicated reps contact you.”

7 ) If you prefer talking to your neighbor more so then potential customers.  See point 3 above.

8 ) If you are late to your meeting appointment.  We have numerous meetings lined up at these shows and often times they run a bit longer than expects – and that is perfectly fine. But extend the courtesy of emailing, calling or texting the next appointment that you are running a bit late and let them know.

9 ) If you are more concerned about giving your pitch rather than taking the time to find out my needs.  Often times I hear companies ramble on and on about how great they are but not for a sec take a moment and ask what it is that I truly want.

10 ) If I know more about your company than YOU do.  This has to be my all time favorite. Most of the staffers have absolutely no clue what their company truly does, what their benefits are relative to their competition, how they can help me achieve my goals. If you are going to be at a booth – take the time to learn some basic concepts such as (I am sure they may be difficult for some of you): CPA, CPL, CPS, Affiliate Marketing, PPC, SEO, PPV, Co-reg, etc. See where I am going with this?

—–
Ricky Ahuja is the CEO of Affiliate Venture Group

ADOTAS – As a publicist working predominantly in the online advertising space, a good indication I get regarding what’s happening in the industry is from the new business prospects that come my way. First of all, good things are happening in the industry, based on the quantity of leads my peers and I are receiving. Beyond this, one trend that is clearly growing is affiliate marketing.

A decade ago, the affiliate marketing industry had a reputation of being the response-based, sales-driven, “non-creative” end of the online advertising world. But as more and more established brand marketers embrace affiliate marketing, the industry’s reputation (and share of the ad budget) has improved. Add to this all of the niche-based ad opportunities which social media and the blogosphere have provided for affiliate-based advertising – where affiliate-based ads for a fast moving consumer goods products make perfect sense on a Mommy blog – and you have an industry that is gaining strength.

And here are a few trends which are contributing to the growth of affiliate marketing:

1. The rise of social networking functionality like Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories, which enable an advertiser to sponsor a users ‘Like’ OR check-in, are basically turning all of us into affiliate marketers for the brands which choose to support. Couple that with the growth of Word-of-Mouth marketing, and we’re starting to experience a new and more personalized form affiliate marketing, not unlike one envisioned by Heather Locklear in this commercial for Faberge Organics commercial from the 1980s.

2. The increased acceptance of activity-based compensation, including revenue share deals and cost per action, has made it more acceptable to work with affiliate marketers who work almost exclusively with activity-based compensation.

3. Affiliate marketing is sometimes referred to as performance marketing. After 2009, who doesn’t want a campaign that can be monitored and measured on a performance basis (well, accept for the creative director)?

4. A final trend I’m seeing which is impacting affiliate marketing is re-targeting. With re-targeting all about converting shoppers who previously visited a website, arming affiliates with the ability to retarget was a logical conclusion. Today, companies like myThings (disclosure: myThings is a client) are bringing affiliate marketing to affiliate networks and their affiliates (publishers) and merchants (advertisers).

This isn’t the death of the 30-second TV commercial (or the Internet banner ad), but affiliate marketing tactics are going to be implemented more and more in online (and offline) advertising campaigns.

—–

Uriah Av-Ron works for Oasis PR and is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

In recent days, there has been a virtual maelstrom of outcry and heated opinions on Google’s recent algorithm “shift”. Nowhere else has this controversy manifested itself more than in the article marketing space.

In January, EzineArticles, the largest, and still most authoritative article directory online, cracked the coveted 100 most popular web sites in the world, serving 57 million unique visitors that month. Then, striking with the suddenness of a vicious lightning bolt, on Thursday, February 24, Chris Knight, CEO of EzineArticles, confirmed they lost 11.5% of their traffic and the following day, Friday, another 35% of their traffic vanished.

Later the same night, Chris made a blog post at EzineArticles saying that next month (March 2011, that is) their traffic may fall to half the levels it achieved in January.

What is going on? Does this sudden, swift, and dramatic decline signal the death knell for article marketers everywhere? Especially those that have come to rely on EZA primarily as the vehicle to deliver that laser targeted search engine traffic to their web sites?

Opinions are heated and varied. On EzineArticles’ blog, as of this writing, Chris’s post has garnered over 250 responses. Similar heated debates are popping up on the Warrior Forum, and, of course, AssociatePrograms.com’s own Brad Hauck discussed the duplicate content issue with respect to article directories such as EZA in the most recent newsletter.

After running an affiliate training service for almost 3 years that revolves around article marketing, and living and breathing the space, my answer to the questions posed above is both yes and no – that is, some article marketers are in for a rude awakening, while I smell opportunity for others.

Let me explain.

Chris Knight on his blog post mentioned various ways EZA intends to tighten up their rules even further. Here’s the crux of his argument: “We’ve been both quietly and publicly at war with a small percentage of our membership who aim to use our site to game the search engines with what we refer to as ‘article vomit’ or thinly-crafted software-spun articles.”

EZA will now spend more time on quality checks – format, grammar, spelling, and consistency – and has increased word counts to 400 words minimum for acceptance. Other possible actions include requiring articles submitted to them to be unique only to them (no longer allowing the same article to be submitted to various article directories), and more.

On Saturday, after I had time to read the various threads, Chris’s comments, EZA’s possible impending changes, I then performed a thorough review of the traffic being generated by members of my article marketing training service.

The good news is we, as a group, were not negatively impacted even though article marketing is the traffic source we most rely on to generate affiliate sales.

The real question is: Why?

The short answer is we keep things “legit” and “real.” It doesn’t matter if you’re in my training service or not. If you want to persevere and prosper with your online affiliate endeavors, I believe the same lessons will apply to you.

For example, from the outset, I have always advocated my members do the research for the industries and products we are promoting and learn to write the articles themselves under our guidance. Anyone in my service will vouch for the fact that I have always severely cautioned against using article spinners, and PLR services.

Well researched, authentic, meaty content
As a result, our members overwhelmingly produce well researched, meaty, authentic content in the niches we target, providing real value to people who come across those articles. In fact, one of the long standing perks of my service is that I personally review the first few articles students write to give them feedback on how to improve their writing – or point out things they are doing wrong.

As a corollary, because our articles tend to be highly informative, it’s with very rare exception that members of my service ever write articles under 400 words as well, thereby already protecting them from “sweeps” of thin content articles that EZA is already in the process of implementing.

Because I also foresaw some potential issues with duplicate content penalty, several months back I also initiated a preemptive protective action in my service to allow any member (new or longstanding) to obtain unique, original copy for their affiliate presell web site so that no two students would have duplicate content that appears on their sites.

In addition, about half of our members build their own presell web sites, and, as a whole, do a fantastic job of keeping their content original because it’s in alignment with the way we teach and do our article marketing – we don’t believe in or advocate derivative material. On this latest Google shift, I checked out some of their web sites and noticed their results were still strong, often claiming top rankings for desirable keywords.

Bad news for some affiliatesN
ow, the bad news. If you were the type of article marketer who was churning out hundreds, if not thousands, of short (250-300) word articles quickly, and using article spinners, and PLR services, your days are undoubtedly numbered. In fact, in the days ahead, it’s likely you’ll see most of your articles wiped clean out of EZA directory, if it hasn’t happened already.

However, if you target true evergreen products, do real research, and keep your content valuable, you’re actually going to find the latest changes to your benefit in the fullness of time. As the thin content article marketers get cleaned out, I strongly believe the result will be less competition for not only members of my service but legitimate article marketers everywhere.

In addition, EZA may also be reducing the number of Google AdSense ads they serve on pages of their site as well. If they do, this should translate into an even higher click-through for legitimate article marketers who stick it out because probably the biggest diverting factor from getting the readers over to your presell site was losing them to a Google AdSense ad served on EZA’s site itself. Of course, this is how EZA keeps their service free, but it’s still worth pointing out this potential upside to us article marketers beginning in the near future.

Recommended changes
Having said all of this, I am advocating certain changes to my members (and to all of you). First, I believe you should write only unique content for each article directory. If you write an article for EZA, that article should not be submitted to other article directories, and vice versa. EZA may or may not implement this rule, but I think you should be doing it anyway.

Moreover, whereas I used to think it was OK for someone to add articles they’ve written and own to their own web sites or blogs, I no longer advocate this. Perhaps I am being paranoid, but you never know just how far Google is going to go with the “duplicate content” thing. I suggest that members now keep their article marketing content unique and different from the content that they create on their blogs and/or presells.

Lastly, I think the days of “bum marketing” are coming to a close. “Bum marketers,” as near as I could tell, tended to focus on fad products. They did some quick, superficial research, blasted some article marketing to those fad products using thin content for a while, then rinsed and repeated the process for the next hot product of the month. Indeed, on EZA’s blog post on this issue, they mentioned that sweeps of certain areas have already happened, acai berry being one example they listed – and which also happens to represent a perfect example of a fad product.

Bum marketers, by their nature of constantly jumping around and promoting new things, never really develop deep knowledge in the niches on which they are writing. They also almost never use the products they are promoting, either, and this clearly shows in the content they create. By contrast, a significant portion of the members in my training service, through the knowledge they acquire, come to believe passionately in the products we promote and end up as consumers themselves, which, in turn, creates a genuine experience and furthers their knowledge, which manifests itself in their content.

In conclusion, life throws us all numerous challenges. It’s always how we react to circumstances, even if we cannot control them, that counts in the end. Of course, it’s always helpful to be keenly cognizant of potential issues before they crop up and nip them in the bud.

I believe one reason for our enduring success as an affiliate training service is because we have tried to anticipate potential issues before they have arisen, just as you must, and taken action accordingly. Of course, I’m also quite certain we’ll face issues in the future we had not anticipated, but our resolve will be to solve those problems when and if they arise.

The ability to adapt to change is one of the hallmarks of leading a successful and productive life, and in the Internet marketing space, change happens much quicker than it does in many other fields. If you expect to endure as an affiliate marketer for the long term, as I have for 9 years now on a full-time basis, you must always stick to creating content and promoting products worthy of longevity. Attempting to make the “fast buck” today may mean making no bucks later, whereas building a proper foundation, even if it’s a bit slower out of the gate, may mean a passive income that sets you free in the years ahead.

—–
Dan Ho is a super affiliate and the founder of AffiliateArticleWriters.com, a training service to build lifetime & passive income.

Amazing new Affiliate Tool Check it Out!

Most people understand by now that links have a very real influence on rankings in search engines. How it works and in which ways a link can influence your ranking is often unclear though, resulting in many myths. This link building 101 tries to explain the basics of link building and to refute some of the myths around it.

How does a link help your site?

A link to your site “helps” in four ways:

• It adds value to the “receiving page”, allowing it to improve its visibility in the search engines.
• It adds value to the entire receiving domain, allowing each page on that domain to improve its rank ever so slightly.
• The text of the link is an indication to the search engine of the topic of the website and more specifically the receiving page.
• People click on links, resulting in so called “direct traffic”.

The value of a link for the receiving page is determined in part by the topic of the page the link is on. A link from a page that has the same topic as the receiving page is of far more value than a link from a page about an entirely different topic.

On top of that, a link from within an article is worth way more than a link from a sidebar or a footer. Furthermore the more links there are on a page, the less each individual link is worth.

So what makes a good link?

Imagine, you’re working on a link building campaign and you get to choose where to place a link and what page to point it at. You’ll have to consider the following questions:

• How strong is the site / page that’s going to link out?
• Which receiving pages on my site make most sense as far as topic is concerned?
• Which page of this set of sensible pages would deliver the best ROI when it’s ranking?
• Which page is most sensible for the visitor of the linking page, clicking on the link?

The last question is often the one best to ask of yourself: link building delivers, if done well, better rankings and more direct traffic. You have to keep in mind though that in most cases those visitors coming to you directly from the other site will behave differently from people coming from the search engines. Say you get a link from a site aimed at elderly women, these people will behave drastically different from the diverse public you’ll get from the search engine when the page starts ranking. In your design of the page, you’ll have to account for both.

How strong a site and/or a page is, can be judged on several criteria, PageRank being one of them, though often not very accurate. MozRank is useful at times, but the most useful and sensible check often is the following: does the page that you want a link from, rank in the top 20, 30 or even 50 for terms related to the page you’d want it to link to? If the answer to that is yes, a link on that page is usually a good idea.

The anchor text

If you’ve decided which page you’re going to be linking to, the second question arises: which anchor text will you be using? The anchor text in itself influences two things:

• The anchor text indicates to the search engine what the topic might be of the page the link points at and it can therefor help that receiving page rank for that term. If you want to rank for “WordPress SEO”, you’d want to have links to that page with anchor texts like “WordPress SEO”, “SEO for WordPress”, etc.
• The anchor text also has an effect on how many people will be clicking on the link. While from the above bullet you might have gathered that “click here” is a horrible anchor text, as you probably don’t want to rank for it, it does tend to get clicked well and therefor gets you more visitors.

Of course, don’t overdo this. If all links, or a too large percentage of links to your site and / or page have the same anchor text, you’ll look like a spammer. So if you’re actively link building, vary your anchor text.

As you see, these are not trivial decisions, ones you have to make on a site by site and page by page basis. You don’t always have the luxury of controlling anchor text and to be honest, that’s a good thing; way too much sites out there would have a far over optimized “link profile” if they had such a level of control. Because you have to make these decisions on a site by sate basis, buying a “backlink package”, something still far too common these days, is often a wrong decision.

Are there any rules about links?

There are two kinds of rules that influence SEO and thus link building. First of all, there are the rules of the search engines, with Google having said most about links. Then there’s the law about advertising, these laws differ per country but especially within the EU they tend to have the same “ring”.

What Google says about links and link building

In their article on link schemes Google gives some examples of links that can influence your ranking negatively. This deals with both links to and from your site (f.i.: don’t link to spam sites). They’re most clear about paid links though: they’re a violation of their guidelines and can lead to a ban of your website.

This isn’t to say that such links would have an immediate negative effect. In fact, in the short term they might even boost your rankings, as quite often Google has to take manual action to discount those links, as not in all cases Google see whether a link has been paid for or not. But, especially keeping in mind the recent debacles with JC Penney and Overstock.com, both of whom have been penalized by Google and publicly scolded for their behavior by the press, this tactic is seldom worth while.

Google recently published an article on quality links on the Google Webmaster Blog, it’s worth reading to get their perspective.

The law about links

I’ve talked about the Dutch specifics in an article on Marketingfacts recently, which in trun goes back to an article on eConsultancy: if something is an ad, it has to be visibly (for the visitor) marked as such. A paid link could under these new rules be called an ad and would therefor have to be disclosed. I don’t see a court case just yet, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind.

Want to read more about link building?

Outside of this link building 101 a lot is being written about the topic and a large part of it is, excusez le mot, crap. Because of that I’d like to point you at some sources that I do consider worth while:

• Wiep.net
  The blog of my fellow countryman Wiep Knol, an amicable guy and great link builder.
• Eric Ward aka LinkMoses
  When I went to my first class in high school in ’94, this guy was already doing link building. His insights are therefor based on a treasure trove of experience.
• LinkSpiel by Debra Mastaler
  She has more of a wider marketing approach to link building and is therefor very usable for each and everyone

——

Joost de Valk is one of the formost Expert in Tweaking Website and Link Building 101

I commonly hear from affiliates the same thing: that they need better payouts and more importantly, why they aren’t getting a better payout. In this industry affiliates have become damn smart and with that a little more demanding than say 12 years ago when I started in this industry.  Let me tell you a little secret then that many affiliate networks don’t want you to know: despite all their complaining about how their margins are very little, most of them are not completely honest and they have a lot more room for payouts than they are telling you. With that in mind, and armed with some knowledge about what other networks are paying, plus the following tips, you can approach affiliate networks and increase your payouts.

1)      Ask for Tiered Pricing. Most of the newer software platforms such as Cake Marketing have the ability to price the leads or sales based on quantity made.  If your affiliate manager is not giving you the best price, then ask them what they can do for more leads per month IF you hit that goal. While this can be a little risky, it shows the affiliate manager that you are interested in being a partner, producing more, not just asking for more money.

2)      Find where the Network is getting the offer. If you haven’t figured out by now, many networks just get offers from other networks. While its great to use stuff like OfferVault (yes, a little plug here) to find better pricing, it doesn’t always mean that you can get a better price. If you can find where  your current affiliate network is getting their offer from, you can often approach the other network with wanting to run the offer. Use HttpWatch http://www.httpwatch.com/ for tracking the clicks and seeing where it goes – it will show you ever jump from your click on an advertisement, to what network it is going to and then to the end advertiser. One of the great methods about this technique is that you can often approach networks, tell them that you are running “so many” leads for another network that they work with, and it’s more likely that you’ll be accepted into that network.

3)      Tell your Affiliate Manager that you will rotate similar offers from another network into the mix (and do it!). If you haven’t learned already about rotating similar offers to find what works better, then you need to learn about this. It’s also a very, very effective method of making networks pay you more money, causing them to bid for your best traffic.  Also there is a factor where for whatever reason (well, there are actually lots of reason) sometimes offers don’t always consistently perform and rotating offers gives time for the “other” offer to refresh and perform better.  Frankly, it’s also a good “don’t put your eggs in one basket” method, for the “just incase” times when an affiliate network might have an “issue” about not paying.

4)      Offer to test other offers. Don’t be a one-hit wonder, ever. Ask your AMs what is doing well, and then tell them that you’ll start testing that offer if they raise the other one. If you are an emailer especially, this is a very particular and great strategy. Many AMs know what offers will work on your email list, but it makes sense that you want incentivize to try something new. Many times an AM will give in a little if you give a little back.

5)      Ask for a Bonus from their Advertiser. This is similar to tiered pricing, but a slightly different method. I have found that many advertisers, when questioned about if they will bonus certain affiliates who hit goals will actually jump on the opportunity. Ask your AM to ask the advertising side of their business to see if they’ll give you a $2,500 AX gift card (tax free!) if you do so many leads in a month. One great thing about this  is that there is no way for the Affiliate Network to take a “cut” from this.

6)      Ask Networks about their “Discrepancy Account.” It’s called by many other networks other names, but it exists in almost every single ad network and is probably one of the biggest secrets that affiliates don’t know about and that Affiliate Networks don’t want you to know about. You know when they tell you that you are getting paid a certain amount per sale or lead? That is based on their numbers and almost half of the time, campaigns on their system will underreport compared to their advertisers. Instead of crediting it to their affiliates, many of the networks will keep that money. Ask your AM if there are any unreported leads and if they can give you a boost from that account.

7)      Be Nice. Seriously. Affiliate Managers would rather deal with a nice guy than a jerk. While there are a few people out there who might take the abuse, you’d be amazed how many networks and managers would rather turn off your account than deal with a total putz.  Do things like add your AMs to Facebook, send them cards on their birthdays, and in general keep in touch. Don’t depend on conferences for the only time that you really engage the AMs! AMs spend their entire time in front of a computer, often only getting up once in a while to drink shitloads of diet-coke and then return for hours at a time.  Asking them about their life and offers will make you a friend and a business partner.

Written by Pace Lattin, originally published at ZacJohnson.com

Check out our Automatic Affiliate Traffic Software for Free