Know when to pass on an Affiliate offer

3 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on June 18, 2009 in Affiliate Tips

If you are signed up for even 1 affiliate network you know you get bombarded with emails asking you to push offers etc.. The key is knowing when to try out offers and when to pass on an affiliate offer. What got me thinking directly about this is the show pitchmen on Discovery channel. They look at hundreds if not thousands of products and only push a handfull of them. But only after weeding thru them I would guess they get 100’s of products they want to push and they like but then they do more testing, talking with friends, and even getting random people to try it out and get feedback. Many times a product they love the feedback is horrible. I know I hear you know I don’t want to ask your friends to signup for affiliate offers but honestly you should and if it is that shaddy of an offer should you really be promoting it . I have tried this out and it works, and helps me narrow down offers. Ask you wife or significant other, ask family or friends, you will be surprised how helpfull their information will be. Also You should test out the offer signup for it, Many times i will find glitches or bottlenecks in an offer that i know will cut conversions down, i bring these up to the affiliate networks and many times they make the changes. Next look at marketability is the offer far enough reaching to garner a large audience or is it to targetted? When i say large you should be looking at something that has enough volume to atleast make you 500 to 1000 a day profit. Lastly don’t be afraid to pass on an offer, cause if you spread yourself to thin on several offers then what do you have to show for it, sometimes it may be some profit but sometimes it may be loses. Know when to cut and run .

Take a Break

2 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on June 16, 2009 in Affiliate Tips

No really just do what the post says take a break. Every affiliate needs to take a step back and take a break from affiliate marketing. Your break may be as simple as taking an hour off or taking a month off it is different for everyone. So why are you still reading my post go take a break as i have found some of my best affiliate ideas didn’t come to mind when i was in front of my PC but just relaxing or even talking with friends. So go take a break but remember to check back as i will be announcing a contest soon that I will be giving away some Affiliate summit East (NYC) tickets.

Trying to Rule Every Affiliate Niche?

2 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on June 10, 2009 in Affiliate Tips

I see sooo many affiliates get gung ho and try to rule every affiliate niche but in the end they flop. Here are a few reason why you shouldn’t try to rule every affiliate niche.

1. You never become all you can be in one niche and are only mediocre at several.
2. You have so man campaigns going trying to narrow things down becomes a pain.
3. You can’t stay focused to make a homerun on any of your campaigns.
4. You just keep having multiple failures.
5. You budget gets depleated before you get any real results.

I want to explain a little more about the things i have listed above. I am not saying only stick to one niche. What i am saying is become all you can be in 1 niche then move on to the next one. Don’t try to make a fortune on 20 offers at once make a small forturne (or a big one depending on the success) on one offer then move on to another. Rarely do i start off with an affiliate offer and out the shoot i am profiting (I have on occasion but i count that up to experience and a little luck.) Plan at first not to profit but use that data, try things, change wording or ads, change images you will be surprised what small changes make a big difference. BUT if you are focusing on 10 offers to be successfull and struggling try focusing on one you will find yourself much more successful at that one, then move on to others. So the answer is Yes you could rule every affiliate niche, just dont try to rule them all at the same time!

How Not to Encourage Affiliates to Promote your product – Affiliate Networks

9 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on June 2, 2009 in Affiliate Networks, Affiliate Tips

The title says it all i will be discussing Affiliate Networks and How Not to Encourage Affiliates to Promote your product. Many time i get emails from affiliate networks, companies directly that just make no sense and don’t encourage the affiliate to promote your product. So here are some tips to those people / Affiliate Networks of what not to do.

1. Don’t email your affiliates every other day with same offers or same useless information. Provide some good insight, provide a highlight of a good offer. An email stating here is top performing offers doesn’t cut it (when those same 10 offers are there week in week out).

2. Don’t Pester your affiliates asking why they aren’t running offers with you. While i agree with the email asking me hey i noticed you dropped revenue or hey i see you have promoted anything with us in a while and open dialogue. But don’t blast me email as say hey Acai is rocking right now you should be promoting it… DUH even my Grandma knows this… try to pull me back in with usefull information. Offer me a top payout or access to exclusive offer to get me going…

3. You Network only rehashes other offers. Meaning you don’t have any exclusives and i can find all your offers at better payouts elsewhere. This one kills me as i get pestered by new networks all the time… Signup we have best payout only to get there offers and they are half what i get now.

4. Ignore your affiliates. In affiliate marketing we move at 100 miles per hour daily… take the time to reach out to us, ask us how things are going and if there is anything you can do to help get some revenue going. IF i say no i am busy leave it at that… don’t contact me again the next day wait a week or two.

5. Do not send an email stating you haven’t been active lately with our program so we are going to cancel you unless you drive some revenue. While i understand cleaning house and getting read of dead weight affiliates. But maybe i am ramping up promotions and right before i blast it out i get dropped… this is poor in my opinion. Instead they should send out an email we are cleaning house and notice you haven’t done and revenue, do you plan to do any revenue with us soon? Is there anything we can do to help get revenue going? Not drive revenue or we will drop you. Give them reason to communicate back with you. As keeping my name and email on file can’t be bogging them down.

6. Don’t Work with your affiliates. So many networks just don’t wheel and deal and this business is all about wheeling and dealing. If i ask for a bump you better come back with SOMETHING even if its a nickel don’t tell me there is no room whatsoever.. to me that says you aren’t looking to build a relationship and aren’t willing to cut into your margins, I would rather you promote with a company that is willing to work.

7. Don’t Pay on time…. Yes this is sad but it happens all the time companies saying they are NEt 30 and i get paid net 60 etc.. while this doesn’t happen anymore as i don’t use them but pay when you say you are going to pay and if for some reason you are behind notify your affiliates and try to make it up to them fedex the check etc.. luckily most networks do Direct deposit now… but even then make sure those transfers are on time whether weekly. bi-weekly or monthly.

8. Don’t encourage affiliates. If you have an affiliate driving serious revenue don’t leave it up to just your rewards program or referal program.. Send them Tshirt, Macbook, flip video… something to show them they are improtant to the network. Some companies get this and some don’t. While affiliates work for the paper they bonuses or extra things are nice and VERY much appreciated.

How Not to Encourage Affiliates to Promote your product – Affiliate Networks. Hopefully companies and Networks will learn from this and in the end we all win!

Pay Per Click Affiliate ( PPC Affiliate )

2 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on June 1, 2009 in Affiliate Tips

So i want to take this time to go over some basics of being a Pay Per Click Affiliate. Basically when someone says they are a pay per click affiliate they are promoting offers via pay per click. This means they promote affiliate offers typically via Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.. and pay out advertising on a per click basis.
With the Pay per click model you have the ability to turn pay per click into pay per action profit. Lets take an example:

You want to promote a dating offer that pays out 3.50 per signup. So you start researching via Goodle Adwords Keyword Tool ( https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool ) I put in Dating and single women. as you can see both of these have HIGH competition meaning lots of people are bidding on these keywords. But try putting a city name infornt of dating or single women and you will notice the competition is less. Thus it will cost you less (of course there will be less volume) but you have any opportunity to test your PPC (Pay PEr click) skills. So now you have the keywordsm you create up an ad, and for simplification you direct link and lets say the average bid ends up being .35 per click So you would need 1 in 10 clicks to convert into a signup, this isn’t a bad ratio of course 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 would be better but 1 in 10 isn’t far fetched. But where you get into profit is when you convert lets say 1 in 8 convert into a lead. Since this is profittable you want to spend as much as you can so you build out more keywords and ads to grow this. Lets say you are able to keep your PPC at .35 and get 3000 clicks and your convert ratio is 1 in 8 still this equates to 375 leads ($1312.50) now you have spent $1050 so your profit is 262.50, 25% profit which is a great start.

But you don’t want to stop there. You want to improve your earnings so you should work on Ad variations to see what works to get your CPC down but keeps your conversion ration the same (1 in or it improves it. I usually put in 3 to 8 ads to start to get a good rotation and kill the ones that don’t work. Keeps trying untill you really feel you can’t improve much.

Also in my example you are direct linking to the offer, sometimes this is best but something your want to presell your visitors in those cases you want to create landing pages/sites to help prompt your users/ prepare them to signup or give them extra reason to signup. This is another area where you can make small changes that will make a big difference (i will talk about landing pages in another post).

In general this is being a Pay Per Click Affiliate (PPC Affiliate) you payout for advertising on a per click basis and convert it over to profit , this isn’t limited to just lead offers, this could work with click and sale offers also.

How to Respond to Failure (Part 2)

3 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on May 28, 2009 in Working Online

In the first post (How To Respond to Failure Part 1) I covered how failure needs to become an affiliate marketers friend. I went in to detail about how failure is a NECESSARY part of this business and it should not be feared, rather EXPECTED. Some would say why? Some live in a make believe land where all who are famous got to that position without hard work, disappointment, and failure. I do not, nor should you.

So why?

Failure is a friend because it CANNOT become an enemy. Yes, you don’t want to visit failure’s house hourly or daily, but if you aren’t visiting on occasion, you aren’t succeeding in business. When failure becomes an enemy, fear begins to establish a stronghold. Fearful and timid affiliate marketers quit at an astonishing rate, most before ever really becoming affiliate marketers in the first place. You simply cannot allow discouragement to set in when you are a one or two man operation (obviously most affiliate marketers are one man shows). When you are down and discouraged, who is there to pick you up?

Failure can hurt and often will hurt, but it only means you are getting closer to finding what will work. A real key here is to minimize the COST OF FAILURE. Obviously you can play it smart and have a failure cost you $100, or you can be over zealous (far from conservative) and foolish in your actions where a failure can then cost you $10,000. I like to fail small…then win big!

Be smart and manage your failures wisely. This will involve some planning, it will involve more research, but this is your business. Treat it like one. Allow every failure to shine its light on your path to a profiting campaign, business plan, or overall success.

Affiliate Marketing Business Model

5 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on May 26, 2009 in Affiliate Information

From time to time I get the question about Affiliate marketing as a Business model. So of course i give my opinion. My opinion is that it is one of the easy ways to start a business, you need little cash on hand (you could even start with none using free services squidoo, blogspot etc.. (although i don’t recommend it for long term)). Some comparisons of Affiliate Marketing Business and the so called standard business model.

Startup Cash:
Affiliate Marketing $0 to $5,000 (While you could startup with more you really should be able to make a go at affiliate marketing with 5K)
Standard Business $5,000 to $100,000 (or more)

Defining Customers and Target:
Affiliate Marketing – 1 day to 2 weeks choose the offer and your customer target is basically defined, plus some research on your end using free tools (Google Adwords, search engine trends, etc..)
Standard Business – up to 6 months or more as at time with a standard business to find and attract your customers and narrow down your real target audience.

Becomng profitable:
Affiliate Maketing – you can be profitable from day one but lets be a little more realistic that within a month or so you should be profitable, even if it is only like 1/2%.
Standard Business – Many standard business don’t plan on making a profit until the 2nd year!

As you can see from the information about starting a business with Affiliate Marketing is much faster paced and cheaper. Which is part of the reason i got into it. But as with any business if you aren’t determined to succeed and willing to fight even when things are going bad your business will fail. You must learn to adapt to new ways much quicker online than you would in standard business but thats part of the fun.

Don’t let your Affiliate Network hold you back.

4 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on May 21, 2009 in Affiliate Networks, Affiliate Tips

Many times i hear from affiliates asking about loyalty to affiliate networks and about getting the most bang for the buck. I have always felt this is a business, this isn’t a friendship so you go after the money. While I always give my top network the opportunity to keep me but if they aren’t the network with the offer direct i can get paid more elsewhere. Of course the ultimate solution is working directly with the merchant and making things work. I have even had affiliate managers try to make me feel bad for running the same offer else where, i just remind them its a business if they can match the payout or beat it i am back, usually i give them an opportunity to match or beat the payout before i jump ship. Just remember you do need to have connections with your affiliate networks and you need to build a relationship with them so you can gain access to exclusive or limited trial offers so there is a fine balance. But always keep in mind this is a business. There are tools out there, that can help you know what other affilaite networks are paying but those are the networks base pay, which ultimately doesn’t mean much as networks have anywhere from 5 to 50% margin to work with. With all that said Don’t let your Affiliate Network hold you back this is business.

How to Respond to Failure (Part 1)

2 People Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on May 20, 2009 in Working Online

In the affiliate marketing world, nevermind the current economic woes, we will all face failure. For some of you reading this first sentence, you will think, “Yeah, it seems like I am continually facing failures. It’d sure be nice to win one once in a while.”

For many of our readers new to affiliate marketing or internet marketing in general, you likely experience failures that at time seem devastating, even career altering. Please know that you aren’t alone and that even the ultra successful experience similar thoughts / feelings as long as they are still working and pressing forward. Whether young or old, if you are still aiming for new heights, trying new techniques, building out new campaigns, or testing new waters, you will fail…again and again and again.

If we keep this in mind, we will most certainly find it easier to face defeat, plan harder to prevent major catastrophes, and learn as much as we can each time we encounter failures so that the next time won’t be so bad. Notice,how I bolded two words in the last sentence…next time. This is so vital in everything; business and all of life for that matter.If it wasn’t the case, then there would be NO reason to have a word like perserverance in the dictionary. In order to succeed you must fai and in most cases you must fail hard and often. Failure is not an enemy but a refining friend to the one who perserveres.

In considering the above statements, ask yourself this question:

“Am I in business to succeed and provide a living for myself or my family? Or am I simply playing games and wasting time?

If you answer in honesty that this is your chosen field of work and you are in it to make a living, then by all means, consider failure a friend. How easy it is for us to become jealous seeing those around us experience great victories and triumphs in the business world. Don’t deceive yourself however and think they had it easy or that they just win, win, win all the time. They too experienced many a dark hour and many a frustrating (money losing) day.

I hear people all the time say, “I want to be like ____________.” or “I wish I could do what ___________ can do.”

First of all, no you don’t. To get where PersonX is, you would have to do what they did to get there. You would have to SACRIFICE. You would have to face numerous failures and lose countless hours sleep. You would have to lose hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to get there. You sure you want that? Will you pay the price?

Secondly, I must point out that though some experience a lottery like success story, please understand how that is an EXCEPTION, not the general rule.

Consider the following quotes that fit well with this post:

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” Albert Einstein

“He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.” Samuel Smiles

“Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.“ John Keats

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.“ Thomas Edison

Affiliate Time Management

1 Person Speaking Their Mind - Put In Your Two Cents!

Posted on May 18, 2009 in Affiliate Tips

Everyone can use help in time management Especially affiliate marketers. I find myself being distracted by all kinds of things, TV, phone calls, IM messages, facebook, youtube, affiliate companies etc.. Here are some tips i use to help me hone in and really focus on those days i want to truely knock something out.

1. Close or put as away on all IM clients.

2. Unplug my phone (i have voicemail they can leave a message)

3. Don’t check email except every 4 hours that day. (and only reply to something if it is truely urgent)

4. Don’t browse the web. this includes facebook, youtube etc..

5. Don’t get sucked into looking thru the new offer in affiliate networks unless this is part of your task (finding new niche or offer to target) as i find i can spend 30 to hour easy checking out offers etc..

6. Don’t have the TV on.

7. Do have your task ready to go. If you need to do more research before you hit the ground running do that first in the research hunt its easy to get distracted or off on a tangent.

8. Do have plenty of drinks/snacks on hand.

9. Do have an action plan of what your goal is and how long it should take. (Creating ad groups, keywords, ads, landing page/site design, site content)

10. Do have fun doing it. Nothing worse than working on something you hate. which is why i love affiliate marketing go after what you have a passion for and make money at it.

you have a tip? leave a comment.

« Go Back — More Affiliate Information »

Know when to pass on an Affiliate offer

Take a Break

Trying to Rule Every Affiliate Niche?

How Not to Encourage Affiliates to Promote your product – Affiliate Networks

Pay Per Click Affiliate ( PPC Affiliate )

How to Respond to Failure (Part 2)

Affiliate Marketing Business Model

Don’t let your Affiliate Network hold you back.

How to Respond to Failure (Part 1)

Affiliate Time Management

Subscribe

Add to Reader

Popular Posts

Categories

Sites I Read

Archives