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PPV-To-CPA Case Study Kicks Off February 7, 2010

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 9 comments

This is the first in a series of posts for a PPV/CPV (pay per view/cost per view) case study that I’m doing. You’re welcome to follow along and launch your own campaigns too.

With PPC networks increasingly bringing the hammer down on affiliate marketers marketing offers with thin affiliate sites, the past couple of months have seen affiliates jump from PPC to PPV and media buy campaigns. Particularly for newbie affiliates, it could be a case of jumping out of the pan and into the fire. Here’s a tip: it’s not the new traffic source that sucks, it’s probably your marketing strategy.

Compared to running ads on a search engine results (which can be considered a form of “permission marketing” because the user is specifically looking for information or products), ppv is considered a form of interruptive marketing. Unless your ad is a heckuva lot more interesting than whatever site or keyword they were headed to, they’re likely to skip or close down your window and go to wherever they were headed to.

PPV: Pathway to the Golden Land?

Do a search for “PPV Marketing” and you’ll find that PPV is discussed at newbie internet marketing forum, the Warrior Forum. Sounds like a mixed bag of results, with some of the forum members spending $100 and not seeing a single conversion, while other newbies have spent $10 and got some conversions. Still others have posted that they have spent $200 and are convinced that PPV “doesn’t work”.

Just because someone said that PPV is “easier” than PPC doesn’t mean everyone can expect a commission bonanza. Just like everything else, it’s the guys who’re running tests, tracking results, optimizing that are getting good results from this form of traffic. I know of marketers who’re using the TrafficVance network, which is considered by many to provide among the highest quality of leads totally bomb with their campaigns, so sometimes it’s the human, not the network that’s at fault.

What’s PPV?

Pay-Per-View (also known as Cost-Per-View) is advertising delivered primarily via pop-up (pops over the target website), interstitial pages (which appear in between the user’s original page and their destination/intended webpage), or pop-under (which are similar to pop-ups, except they appear under the intended webpage).

The ad pricing is based on a “per view” basis, meaning each time the ad is displayed (or “popped”), you’re charged the amount you bid, which can range from $0.005 to upwards of a dollar or more. The destination URL typically doesn’t appear in the popped window, so the user doesn’t know which website he’s seeing the ad from. Also, if you use low grade webhosting, and the server can’t serve up the ad fast enough (particularly if it’s a high traffic website you’re popping traffic over), the user might see a blank white page also known as a “white screen of death”, or even worse, an error message saying that your cheap webhosting account has exceeded it’s quota of server resources.

Which is the “best” form of pop-up to use?

Newbie PPV marketers should consider pop-ups if they’re getting into the game, as the best balance of marketing effectiveness and pricing. Interstitials may be more expensive, while pop-unders being cheaper will give poorer results unless you know what you’re doing.

Direct link or landing page?

If you’re starting out, you might like to go for low hanging fruit, and direct link to offer with landing pages that convert well. Go ask your affiliate manager (if they’re experienced) for tips, or check with other affiliates.

Even though direct linking might be arbitrage-based and not be as good as collecting an opt-in and building a long term asset, I feel that it’s a good starting point for new PPVers.

Direct linking works best with simple lead gen (CPA) offers. If you’ve a pay-per-sale product, using PPV will likely fail, particularly if you’re using a long form sales letter (as I’ve seen some merchants try to do with PPV traffic…) unless it’s something the lead is very interested in. Hosting your own landing pages are necessary to pre-sell some types of CPA offers, but we’ll kick off the study with direct linking.

Campaign Budgeting

Even though the minimum cost per view might be $0.005 at some networks, assuming you’re going to be rich beyond your wildest dreams on a budget of $10 is unrealistic. I’d suggest a budget of at least $100, so you can get your feet wet (be mentally ready to burn it all away while testing the system and getting used to campaigns).

A number of PPV marketers who’re generating 4- to 5-figure net profit days now burned through thousands of dollars when they were learning the ropes.

I’ll show a couple of techniques so you can control your cash outflow/expenditure and last a little longer in the game.

Offer Selection:

Although some would suggest starting with zip/email submit offers as a first campaign, I’d suggest you do your due diligence. Some of these regpath offers have a requirement to fill in page 4 or page 5, so don’t make the noob assumption you will automatically get paid on the page 1 completion. Some advertisers are known to scrub their submit leads pretty brutally, so if you know your affiliate manager pretty well, you can check with them.

I’m planning to go with the dating niche with this case study and use direct linking.

What do I need?

If you want to get started, here’s a list of resources I’ll be using:

I’ll continue to publish updates as the case study proceeds (one update, possibly two per week).

Popularity: 2%

Why Demographic and Behavioral Targeting Matters February 4, 2010

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 5 comments

In the early days of the WWW (ie: 1990-2000) what mattered was your ability to stuff your webpages with keyword rich text, in the hopes that the unsophisticated search engine bots would index common and obscure phrases and direct users to your pages when a user typed in an obscure Yoda-like “nano cheap”.

While search engines and high authority sites (ie media buy bait) still contribute the bulk of search engine traffic, the days of keyword-driven traffic will increasingly have to compete with the likes of demographically-driven and behavioral-targeted traffic.

What’s the difference between these types of traffic? Using the one and only jargon-ish phrase, imagine keyword-driven traffic as the “lose 10 pounds in a week”, “acai weight loss” and “tivo tcd649080 coupon code” queries that you might already be bidding on via PPC, PPV or other forms of contextual advertising.

But here’s the kicker, if you know that the primary characteristics of 73% of these buyers are:

(ie demographic data), wouldn’t it make your marketing much easier (and more profitable?).

Behavioral targeting takes it one step further by correlating specific behavior patterns and groups it together. For example, if said Tivo buyers were likely to own a Ford or Honda sedan, and 1 in 3 of them were likely to drive a hybrid Prius (even with dodgy accelerator pedal), wouldn’t that open up more source of traffic?

I have no idea how many CSIs (crime scene investigators) are there in the affiliate community, but if you see how their work involves taking micro bits of evidence and piecing it into a cohesive whole, isn’t that the same type of reverse engineering process affiliates are following, taking keywords, or demographic profiles and piecing them into a Tivo, e-cig or grants consumer?

Oh yeah, be sure to check out this month’s InternetMarketingCookbook.com demographic targeting update for more sniper-like marketing goodies.

Popularity: 2%

The Eagle Has Landed – Affiliate Summit West 2010 In Pics and Words Part 2 February 2, 2010

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 11 comments

Continuing on the people and companies I met up with at the recently concluded Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas, it was great to have met up with many people, some of whom I’ve known and talked regularly with for 2 years or more over skype and AIM.

Note: If you missed the first part, you can find it here: Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Pics and Words Part 1.

The Ryan Eagle vs Maxbounty drama

As Nickycakes mentions in his post summarizing some of the “drama” at ASW, I stepped into the meet market and heard that Maxbounty has a poster featuring a shady character that looked like Ryan Eagle (owner of the Eagle Web Assets CPA network). I wasn’t aware that the Eagleman was angry or shaking about the picture. I did follow him to the booth to have his picture taken.

Ryan Eagle

The Birdman with the Maxbounty Ad

As we were taking the picture and Ryan was laughing about it, it was funny to see one of Maxbounty’s owners JP Sauve who was (more…)

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Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Pictures and Words Part 1 January 29, 2010

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 11 comments

Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Vegas was a great event and well worth the 20+ hours it took to travel each way from my home in Singapore. It was great connecting with old friends and make new ones.

Rather than one megapost, I’ll do some Hiro Nakamura style timeshifting and jump between people and places and space it out over a few posts.

Enjoy the ride.

Note: If your place of work has a conservative attitude when it comes to pictures, you might like to read this post later.

Affiliate Summit has a reputation for great parties (in comparison to SEO and blogging and general marketing shows from what I hear).

This year did not disappoint.

CX Digital 1

With the painted girls from the CX Digital party. More on the drama at that party later.

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Day 0 (Saturday):

I got into McCurran Airport just before noon and headed to the Rio, the Affiliate Summit conference venue and where I’d be staying during the trip. I’m not sure if the economy has anything to do with it, but I was able to get into my room immediately, rather than have to wait till 4pm like in previous years.

I headed over to (more…)

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Affiliate Summit West 2010 Blog Coverage January 25, 2010

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 5 comments

As mentioned in my last post, I had a great time in Vegas, meeting up with old friends and making new ones.

I know sure if it’s a perceptual thing, but I seem to have met more media buying affiliates and international affiliates (especially from Israel) this time round.

The biggest shift for me in 2010 is putting more resources into my own projects and affiliate marketing, vs placing blogging/social media as a higher priority, so the roundup post is still to come.

What’s helping my productivity is capping the time I spend on twitter/reading blogs/forums at 10-15 minutes apiece.

In the meantime, Shawn and Missy have compiled the coverage from ASW at:

It looks like both posts might be duplicates, so clicking on either link will get you to the posts.

One thing I noticed is that with the absence of Outspoken Media’s Lisa Barone, there was also a corresponding lack of live blogging of the sessions, which would be useful for those who didn’t make the event, or even those of us who were there, but didn’t manage to attend some of the sessions (4 parallel tracks in each time slot).

In the meantime, it’s back to the grind…

Popularity: 4%

Post-Affiliate Summit West 2010 Business Building Tips January 24, 2010

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 7 comments

Affiliate Summit founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward put up another smashing show in Vegas this time round and a summary/wrap-up post will be coming up in the next couple of days, but first I want to go through some tips to make the trip pay off big time for you.

For the moment, forget writing a long blog post and instead focus on what’s important – leveraging from the contacts you  made in Las Vegas.

#1 Business growth plans – what’s your plan?: Aside from being a nice business tax write-off, what were your outcomes from Affiliate Summit? Go through the people you met, the cards you collected, the conversations you had. Work through the new networks/new traffic sources/joint projects that were discussed because 90% of the people out there are just blowing smoke out of their butt and will never take action. The ones that day will be laughing all the way to the bank.

So you need to shortlist who you’re going to follow up with. I like to keep my list to 5-7 possible projects and eventually cut it down to 2-3. If you listened to Charles “Dr Ngo” speak at the Meetup202/Bloosky party, you’d realize that focus/prioritization are key to building up a business.

#2 Screen intent/drive the conversation: Within a couple of interactions over instant messenger/email, you should have some idea how serious someone is about working with you. If it’s a backburner/throwaway project for them, you should move on. I’ve seen partners who’ve only put in 1-2 hours into a joint project, which eventually jettisons the project after 3-6 months. Save yourself the trouble, and identify a “losing campaign” early on and focus on the winners. Also, you need to have a clear idea of what you’re putting in to a project, what you want to get out of it. If you have no idea who’s driving the project, then you’re going to be the one who’s being driven.

#3 Give it your best shot: The most interesting projects/collaborations are those that have long term potential, especially if you invest in the business relationship (which might turn into a personal relationship). No one likes to have their time wasted and if you’re giving as good as you’re taking, it significantly increases the success rate of the project.

#4 Time decay: The longer you wait, the less likely you’re going to do anything and have a bunch of contacts you might’ve/could’ve done something with. Essentially you’re bottlenecking your own business if this happens. Ideally, within 24 hours is the sweet spot and shows that you’re serious about the business. You wouldn’t wait a week to convert a lead which probably has gone cold, so why do the same to potential partner.

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Yes, I eat my own dogfood. I wrote this after following up with the guys and companies I’m interested in working with.

Photos and wrapups will come later.

How about you?

Edit: One important step that I didn’t mention above and which is probably the most important is #5 Check their cred: It’s easy to jump into bed with anyone (whether in business or otherwise), but you should do your own “background checks” to see if they’re as good as they claim to be. The last thing you want to do is tether yourself to someone who’s learning the ropes on your dime…

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