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Open Ads - Open Source Ad Inventory Management
The Big List of Affiliate Marketing Events
Secret To Get On The First Page Of Google

Having worked with a large number of CPA networks, I’ve started to compile a list of the qualities that I look for in a ‘great’ affiliate manager. So far, I have one AM that I would say falls into this category. Since your AM is your link to the inside work of the CPA networks, you have to build up that relationship so that there is mutual understanding that you’re helping each other.

1. Understand the in’s and out’s of affiliate marketing and the different ways that affiliates drive traffic - SEO, media buys, PPC, social marketing, etc. I’m not sure how many AM’s have been doing affiliate marketing themselves before. It’s rare to find one that truly understands the nitty-gritty stuff from the affiliate’s perspective rather than just the generalities. For example, rather than telling PPC affiliates, “yeah, you can try to run it on the content network” I want to hear more concrete stuff like “this works well with a particular age group, gender, income level, etc. and here’s how you might think about targeting your ads.”

2. Keep up with the affiliates even if they are new to the network. Some affiliates you have today will become the super and uber affiliates of tomorrow. So don’t neglect the affiliates who are new to your network. Some might be new but they are not inexperienced. Why do I join other networks? I look for exclusive offers and other related offers to what’s already working well for me. So please don’t assume that because I’m new to your network that I’m inexperienced or that I don’t know what I’m doing.

3. Remember that it’s a two-way street. If you work hard for the affiliates, the affiliates will work hard for you. It doesn’t take much to check in through phone calls or emails to see what the affiliates may need to get to the next level. I often find that I’m reaching out more to the AM’s than they are to me.

4. Know your affiliates. Learn about what their strengths are, which verticals they are performing well in and keep on top of the new offers and opportunities to let them know what else they can promote. Don’t be afraid to challenge your affiliates to reach a higher goal. Inform your affiliates quickly if an offer is being suspended. Know that some PPC affiliates are spending hundreds if not thousands per day on an offer so not knowing that an offer is being stopped can be really costly.

5. Giving you top payouts. A good affiliate manager is willing to offer you a higher payout to help you become profitable - even from the start, even when you aren’t pushing high volumes… yet. If you can’t be generous with payouts, your affiliate is going to shop around to the next network that has the same offer at a higher payout.

Here are what some other affiliate bloggers have to say about this topic.

MoneyBites values availability, followup, honesty, payouts and personality.

Zac Johnson has a good tip about asking your friends who are already a part of the network to recommend an affiliate manager.

Paul over at UberAffiliate has the opposite problem of AM’s who are too pushy in trying to get him to try new offers. I guess that happens when word gets around that you’re a 6-figure per month affiliate.

So how well do you know your affiliate manager and how can you cultivate a better relationship? If you’re an affiliate manager, how can you help your affiliates and challenge them to reach the next level?

Technorati Tags: affiliate managers, CPA networks

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I met up with Ian and some other people today to chat about affiliate marketing. Among other things, we talked about social media marketing, PPC, datafeeds, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was great to be able to meet in person some of the people behind the blogs that I visit like Ad Hustler. If you would like to join us for the next meetup, go to MeetUp202 and sign up for the NJ group.

If I met you today, please drop me a comment here so that I’ll remember your name.

Technorati Tags: Ianteract, NJ Meetup

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If you are doing PPC or driving web traffic to CPA offers, then you’re probably part of a few CPA networks. Once you’ve joined more than 3 or so networks, it starts to get time consuming going through the offers on the individual networks. Sometimes you need to search for an offer across different networks to compare the payout or you need to quickly search through a broad niche to see what offers are there that you can run.

Here’s where Offer Vault comes in. It’s a free site but you do have to register by providing your name and email address. There is paid upsell once you register but if you’re not interested, you can just skip it. Once inside, you’ll get to search through the offers across a large number of different CPA and more traditional affiliate networks like CJ. Altogether I counted 30 different networks that are listed.

You can search by keyword and compare similar offers from different networks. Another thing I like is you can also view ALL the offers on one network - even networks that you’re not already a part of. So if you see something that you like to run, you can either a) apply and join the network or b) call up your AM and ask them for a payout bump if that other network is paying more for the offer.

Once your results are displayed, you can sort through them according to the payout or category for easier selection of the relevant offers.

Here’s an example when I did a search for “auto insurance”. There were 298 results returned.

They also have a Google Toolbar plugin that you can install. I’m guessing that it allows you to search through offers without actually going to the OfferVault site.

There is also a forum associated with the site but it doesn’t look like there’s a whole lot of activity in there at the moment.

You can apply to the different CPA networks within the OfferVault interface, but you will be joining under their affiliate link and making them money. Nothing wrong with that, I’d just like to point it out so that you’re aware of it. (You didn’t think that everything is free, did you?)

It isn’t clear to me how often the data is being updated. When I went in there, it showed the last update to be November 7th and today’s the 11th, so the data is at least a few days old. But if things are updated at least weekly, then I think that’s all right.

So check out OfferVault if you are running CPA offers. It will save you some time.

(Note: Even though this is a sponsored post, my goal is to give an honest review of the site.)

Technorati Tags: OfferVault, CPA networks, CPA offers

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I attended the exhibits over at AdTech NY and talked to a lot of companies in the media buying and CPA space. There were 3 levels of exhibits since they couldn’t fit everything on one floor. Space was a bit tight and it felt like a sauna in there. I noticed that next year, they will move to the Javits Convention center which should be a better choice. Given the existing layout, it was a bit difficult to navigate and I’m sure it would be easy to miss a lot of booths.

There were a lot of CPA networks there, some of which I am already a part of and others which I have not joined before.

Basically, my goals for attending were to talk to some of the companies/affiliate managers and introduce myself and to find new opportunities and partnerships. It’s always good to meet face to face whenever you have the chance, even if you talk to your affiliate manager frequently on the phone. There’s just no substituting the actual face-to-face meeting.

As a result of attending AdTech, I have added a few CPA networks to my current list.

1. Hydra
2. Max Bounty

I also spoke to folks from networks that I am already a part of such as CX Digital, NeverBlue, Azoogle, Market Leverage and Affiliate.com (formerly CPA Empire).

So does anyone else think there are too many CPA networks out there? I foresee some consolidation in this space within the next year or two.

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Do you have business strategies or just tactics?

The difference between them is that strategies are broad categories of areas where you can grow your business whereas tactics are the ways you implement those strategies.

If you only have tactics, it’s time you sit down and think about strategies.

Here’s the reason why.

If you only have tactics, you are merely jumping from one money-making tactic to the next, sort of like the flavor of the day. This is one way to guarantee that your success will be mediocre.

However, if you have strategies in place, then you can evaluate those tactics and see where each one fits into your particular strategy. This way, you’ll have a focused plan of attack and the likelihood of success will be greater.

For instance, email marketing or list building is a strategy. Tactics would be the ways you go about implementing your strategy, for instance, co-registration, joint ventures, giving away free PDF reports, PPC, etc.

Here are a few other different strategies to grow your business:

1. Website development: building sites to promote your own product or affiliate products. This would include SEO as well.

2. PPC: This can be a strategy in itself. Some people focus their entire business on mastering pay per click advertising and using it as a tool to generate affiliate income.

3. Blogging: There are folks who are making a nice living just from the income off their blogs. Most of them blog full-time.

4. Coaching: You can build a coaching business in your area of expertise.

It doesn’t matter if you own a large corporation with thousands of employees or a small home business. Whatever your business strategy, the important thing is to keep up to date with the latest tactics which you can use to implement your strategy.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing strategies, business strategies

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One of the main assets of your business if you are online is your website. Many internet marketers I know have a portfolio of sites which may cover different niches. The question to ask when you decide to enter a market is whether you should develop the site or buy an existing site.

The answer to that question depends on whether you have the capital to acquire an established site. Of course, if you don’t have the money to buy a site, then it’s best to learn how to develop a site from scratch.

But let’s assume that you do have the money to buy a website, then you have to consider the pros and cons of doing so.

The pros:

1. Established sites are already indexed in the search engines. Unless a site has been banned (an easy way to check is to do a site:domain.com query), you don’t have to wait till the search engines fully index your site.

2. Organic traffic. As a consequence of the site being already indexed, you will also get organic traffic from search engine queries.

3. Aged domains. Google seems to put some weight into the age of the domain when calculating the ranking for the search engine results.

4. Proven revenue stream. The more expensive sites that are put up for sale usually have an established record of the monthly revenue the site generates. This could be from ads, product sales, membership fees, etc. If you buy such a site, then you have an idea of how much the site will bring in and can project what you need to do to grow the site’s revenues.

The cons:

1. Different content management system (CMS). The site you acquire may be using a different CMS to manage the site. Unless you’re familiar with the CMS, there may be a learning curve.

2. Difficult valuation process. You need to do your homework before you buy any site. This will involve verifying all the stats and revenue numbers provided by the seller. For higher priced sites, you may need an attorney to help you.

I’m sure you can think of more pros and cons but I just wanted to throw these out there as something to think about.

If you’re serious about buying and selling websites, I highly recommend that you check out this course by Max Davis. I’ve gone through this course myself and I can vouch for the quality of the material. You’ll get videos as well as written course notes. The course covers all aspects of buying and selling websites including how to research sites for purchase, financing, how to negotiate, ways to protect yourself legally, where to sell your sites, etc.

Max has sold sites for over $500,000 (for a single site) before, so you will be learning from someone who has gone through the process many times before.

Having gone through the videos, I can say that much of the material you’ll find in there will not be stuff that’s been floating around the IM forums or sold as ebooks. This is the graduate level course in buying and selling websites. Go check out the videos that are on the site too.

If this is an area that interests you, definitely check it out.

Technorati Tags: buying websites, selling websites

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If you need to create header graphics for your XSitePro site, your BANS store or any website for that matter, you can now use XHeader. The best part is that XHeader is completely free!

There are a lot of template header graphics from different categories that are already preloaded into the software so you have a lot to work with. But you can also use your own graphics. This is a great alternative to hiring someone to design a header for you.

I think that the header that’s on the XHeader website is not very appealing; they could have done a better job with it. But don’t let that discourage you from trying out this software. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

So now you won’t have an excuse not to have a nice website header.

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