So now that you’re burned out and made a few bucks off of Valentine’s offers, start thinking income tax season. Pretty soon these income tax offers will roll out and stay popular through April 14th. My favorite networks always have at least one tax offer, so be sure to check them out and snag those offers ASAP. The sooner you get them, the more momentum you can gain on others trying to make their way in because they missed the boat..
offer tip: Tax Season
February 15th, 2009*question** Frequency Capping
February 9th, 2009“I’m a novice affiliate, and just starting to earn some extra income with it. I’ve noticed features on my traffic networks that I’m interested in testing out, starting with Frequency Caps. I thought I would get your opinion on them before I test. What should I expect?”
-Antonio
Frequency caps are interesting. For those of you who don’t know, a frequency cap is the amount of times a single user will see an ad in a day. So a 1/24 frequency cap means that the user will only see that ad 1 time per every 24 hours.
Depending on your targeting lists, the offer, and the payout, you can increase or decrease frequency caps to optimize your campaign and make it more successful. If a user is overloaded with a certain type of offer that they’ll eventually respond to, sometimes decreasing your frequency cap to say 1/48 can make your campaign perform better. Since the user isn’t bombarded with the ad so much, they’re more likely to respond to the ad when they do see it.
On the other side of the fence, there are offers people look for and need, and it’s OK to bombard them with an ad. If they’re looking for a job, and you’re running a Careerbuilder offer running keywords like “find a new job”, “jobs in california“, etc. then for offers like that I’d increase my frequency cap to 2/24 since the keywords are so targeted and the nature of the ad is appropriate for increased frequency caps.
Try playing around with them, but only after you put some thought into the offer itself and how users will behave and respond to those settings.
Can You Really Make Money Spying on Keywords?
February 5th, 2009I just read an eye-opening report called “The PPC Spytool Conspiracy” by a guy named Mark Roth.
I had never heard of Mark before, but this report is bound to get some people’s attention, as he claims to expose the truth behind the spying tools that have come out recently like Undercover Profits and Google Cash Detective.
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much because I see A LOT of phony ideas, tools, and scams out there but then I found out that Mark has quietly become a PPC super affiliate in just two years. He even broke the $1 million dollar mark in his first year online. I started listening after seeing the certificate Google sent him when he got his 1 millionth lead with Google AdWords… that has to get your attention.
I sat down to read the thing through and I was stunned at the content Mark is giving away for FREE in this 30+ page report.
It seems that Mark just wants to set the record straight once and for all about spying tools… what they can do, what their limits are, and how they can cost you big time if you don’t know what you’re doing. And he also offers you a solution as to how to intelligently use this information to make more money as an affiliate marketer.
The report would have been great if he stopped there,but he provided some of his secrets to attaining PPC super affiliate status that really blew me away. Here is a guy who’s not trying to come off as a guru, he’s just talking from experience about how he mastered the PPC game. I highly suggest downloading your copy while he is still revealing these secrets for free: http://www.affiliateradar.com/report-arid-310.htm
Also – There is a lot of controversy surrounding spying tools, so I would seriously hurry to get your hands on this before it’s takrn down: http://www.affiliateradar.com/report-arid-310.htm
*question* Choosing Offers
February 3rd, 2009“What is your best advice for choosing offers that actually work?”
-Stacey K.
This is my guide for choosing offers:
1) I look at how good the offer looks. If it looks good and it’s something that would catch my eye and I would respond to, then the offer catches my attention.
2) I look for how many fields it has (if its a pay per lead offer). If it’s asking for name and email and pays out $10, I like it. If it’s asking for full name, address, phone number, and email, and payout out $2, then I definitely don’t touch it.
3) I compare the offer against other similar offers. Does it pay out more or less? If less, then does it have the same amount of steps a user has to go through before I get paid or more? If less, then I look deeper.
4) If it’s going to my user base for media I’m purchasing, then I don’t accept the offer because I’ll end up spending more money to replenish the user base at a later date.
5) Are other affiliates and advertisers likely to be running the same exact offer? If I think so, then the offer is saturated, and most likely not likely to perform due to user fatigue of that offer. So super popular offers are like a double edged sword: good to run because you know they convert, or bad because by the time you find out, the offer is saturated in the network and you lose money trying to make it convert because the users on the network are seeing the ad 100 times a day.
offer tip: Valentine's Day
February 1st, 2009Hey guys, here’s a quick tip: Valentine’s Day is coming up. Flower offers, valentines gifts, etc are going to be the hottest offers for the next couple weeks and they usually pay pretty well and convert just as well.
Pick one up and let me know how you do.
*question* Contextual Networks & PopUp Blockers
January 27th, 2009“Hi Jim. I use all of the usual suspects for contextual popup traffic like Zango, Mediatraffic, Trafficvance, and a couple others. I’m paying per-popup like everyone else, but I always wonder am I paying for popups that are blocked by popup blockers.”
-Peter N.
Well, I can’t tell you for certain that you are or aren’t paying for blocked ads, but I’m pretty sure you’re not. Those companies make money per impression, so they do everything they can to serve those targeted ads normally. They serve those ads in new browser windows, which no popup blocker intercepts because users navigating the internet wouldn’t be able to fully function if new browser windows couldn’t open. I wouldn’t worry about it. I’d spend more time on finding new offers and networks to work with rather than contemplate on the pennies you might be losing from blocked ads.
*question* Commission Junction & LinkShare
January 21st, 2009“I’ve been told that commision junction and linkshare are good networks and they have good offers…I’ve never had any luck with them. What do YOU think?”
-Chris G.
I’ve never been a big fan of Commission Junction (CJ) or Linkshare and I’ll tell you why.
I have many friends all over affiliate and online marketing, and I’ve never known anyone to do well off them. I’ve heard they have issues with “compliance”, payment, and poor customer service. I also believe that since these offers are retail and generally from higher-priced products (vs. a free sign up offer) that they tend to convert waaaay less than affiliate network offers. So with low converting offers, poor service, and all of the issues I’ve mentioned – coupled with the fact that I’ve been at this for years and not known anyone to get rich off CJ or Linkshare, I wouldn’t recommend them.
I’d stick with network offers, especially if you’re a novice affiliate marketer. Check out my preferred networks to the right and their offers. I know they’ll make you more money.
*question* Converting Offers & Strategizing
January 14th, 2009“How much money should I invest to see if an offer converts?”
-Jackie T.
This can be a very intricate question, depending on what category the offer falls into, payout, offer history, etc. But I have an easy formula that served me well when I began running affiliate offers, and I still to this day stick to when testing offers:
Take the offer’s bounty (CPA) and double it and that’s your testing budget. If it’s a $10 offer, I’ll spend $20 to try and make it convert. If it converts at $20, I’m comfortable enough in my optimization skills to know I can optimize that down to $7 or so and earn my margin. If I have to spend any more than double my payout to make it work, it’s just not that worth it to me.
At the end of the day there are plenty of ways to structure new offer testing. But if you have 10 new offers to test at the same time, this is the way I’d recommend setting things up.
Need High Paying Offers, Easy Reporting, and a Great AM?
January 7th, 2009I’ve had a couple people ask me what is my favorite affilaite network. While I haven’t worked with each and every network directly, my favorite so far is Hydra Media. Why?
1) Hydra has a great staff. Their affiliate managers are accessible, and have always been able to help me.
2) Hydra has great offers. Their offers perform especially well for search, contextual, incentivized, and email affilaites. If you’re using any of these forms of media to drive traffic, you want to check out Hydra Media. Normally they have the highest payout, too.
3) Hydra’s system is the BEST laid-out and user friendly system I’ve encountered yet. Granted, the organization could be a little better, but what they lack in organization they make up in simplicity. The layout and navigation is easily figured out with common sense, and I’ve never had to contact anyone because I couldn’t find an offer or couldn’t figure out the reporting system.
4) Hydra’s tracking system is user-friendly as well and the reports reflect this simplicity as well.
If you’ve only been working with one or two, or possibly a small handful of networks and not Hydra, I’d recommend you checking them out. Their link’s over to the right, and you can sign up from there and check out their offers, system, and reporting from there. See for yourself..
The Beginning
December 29th, 2008I’ve been in the internet advertising business for 3 years now. I’ve schmoozed with high-level CEOs, created ad networks, worked with development teams, bought and sold advertising, managed sales teams, worked with direct advertisers, and consulted for developing internet advertisers.
I know and love this business, and wouldn’t trade it for the world.
There’s plenty of people out there that claim to know the internet advertising world, but from my experience I’ve found that most of their knowledge is focused in one particular niche (e.g. PPC advertising and management). I’ve gotten my hands dirty with almost every business model I’ve encountered in this business. I’ve worked with the affiliate networks directly (on both sides of the business), I’ve worked with the advertisers directly and the ad networks. I’m a professional in this industry and I’ve created this blog to share some of that knowledge with you.
Do you have a question for me? If so, just ask! You might be suprised at the answer, and you just might increase your income as well.
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