Affiliate Marketing | Andrew Wee | Blogging | Affiliate Marketing | Social Traffic Generation

Convert2Media - The Affiliate Network That Cares July 2, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 4 comments

…Although it may not be in the way you are thinking.

One of the most frustrating experiences for affiliates is working with affiliate managers who don’t understand the affiliate industry.

With the turnover prevalent among affiliate managers in the industry, it’s not surprising to have an experienced affiliate manager be suddenly replaced by a brand spanking new affiliate manager who’s just a couple of weeks (or sometimes even months) in the job. I can’t vouch for the training that they’re received, although from the looks of things, I get worried when the affiliate rep has no clue what a SubID is, how a Postback function works, or what an “incent site” is.

If you find yourself assigned one of these managers, you could be in pretty big trouble. Especially if they’re nice (or at least trying to be).

You might have an affiliate manager who IMs you at the start of your day to ask how things are going, and maybe even tell you what they did after they got off work yesterday. In their minds they’re being friendly, or even “nice” to you.

It’s likely to be a deathtrap and probably fatal to your income and earnings, because they’re not helping you become a better (and more proftable) affiliate.

Real advice in my book comes in the form of tips or feedback about a feature you might not be aware of, or even recommending third party services that might be able to help you bring your campaigns to a new level.

In my past experience within and outside of internet marketing, the best advice I’ve received are from people who’re willing to give you the uncensored truth (which usually comes with a painful sting attached), but will ultimately help you become a better person (or affiliate).

It’s hard to find someone who epitomizes the approach than Convert2Media’s Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman.

ruck

Some will read his postings on the affiliate and internet marketing forums and think he’s a total jerk, who probably ought to keep his trap shut. He’s probably been responsible for (more…)

WhoIsAndrewWee.com Affiliate Challenge Contest Update June 30, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 2 comments

The launch of the WhoIsAndrewWee.com Affiliate Challenge a couple of weeks back has proven to be quite an attractive proposal for new and experienced affiliates.

With prizes like gift cards and mini laptops on the line, there’s been a long line of applicants to Market Leverage in order to participate in the contest. (Note: for this specific contest, you have to be Singapore-based in order to qualify).

vault

The sticking point has been getting approved - to date, there’s only 1 eligible contestant in the contest.

One of the “risks” in making this contest only for Singapore-based affiliates is that there might be zero participants in the contest - not because there’s no interest, but because international affiliates in general have to take number of additional steps in order to get their affiliate applications approved, compared to their US counterparts (a point I highlighted during my appearance on Missy Ward’s TheSpew Episode “The SpewGirls Go Global” ).

Here are a couple of tips to be successfully approved as an affiliate (more…)

Affiliate Marketing Tips 2: Researching Winning Niches and Offers June 27, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 2 comments

If you’ve read through the first part in this series “Affiliate Marketing Tips: The Industry and Getting Accepted“, you’re ready to look at the thousands of affiliate/CPA offers available and do your research on finding a winner.

“Everybody Knows” - Leonard Cohen

So everybody knows the high paying niches - payday loans, credit repair, weight loss, grant information, programs with a continuity/rebilling element to the customer (ie: the “Google” money making CPA offers). But just because you know an offer pays a larger upfront commission, doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to convert it into a winning campaign.

Just looking at the street (standard/baseline) payout doesn’t give you an idea of how well it will do, unless you have the offer conversion data.

Most affiliate networks will list their top offers, like Market Leverage does within their affiliate interface:

market leverage

Picking an offer based on the highest payout is probably one of the worst ways to pick an offer - because there’re many more variables that affect the success of any campaign.

You might also look at the EPC (earnings per 100 clicks), which is in the form of a dollar value. Eg: $0.50 EPC or you might see $50 EPC. That means out of every 100 clicks sent to the offer, the average commission generated is the amount you see.

Take note though, these figures aggregate commissions generated across the network - you’ll have earnings data from PPC marketers, emailers, SEO affiliates, social media affiliates aggregated into a single figure. To have EPC be more useful, you should ask your affiliate manager for the breakdown and look at the average EPC for the type of traffic you’re generating.

As you’re looking at different offers, you might like to shortlist at least 5 to 10 different offers to research.

Researching Your Niche

Although you might have a rough idea about what your niche is about (dating has something to do with people joining a dating service and the service provider pays you a commission for the lead), you should go a step further to look at the niches in greater detail.

Google News

One good place to start is Google News.

Google has an editorial review team that reviews news sources (including blogs) and includes them in the list of content providers for the Google News service. By checking out news coverage within the last 3 months (perferably within the last year), it’ll give you a sense of how well the niche is doing, and if it’s a niche with affiliate/CPA offers with a short lifespan, how long it’s been in the marketplace.

Google Trends is a way to graphically see how the niche/offer has been performing over a period of time.

For example:

college grants

For a niche like college grants/grant information, the peaks for search volume (more…)

Affiliate Marketing Tips: The Industry and Getting Accepted June 18, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 2 comments

This is the first in a series of educational post about getting started as an affiliate marketer. Whether you’re new to the industry or have some experience under your belt, you should get more tips and strategies to enhance and improve your campaigns.

getting started

What’s Affiliate Marketing and CPA Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a channel or method where advertisers (also known as merchants or product owners) recruit partners to help them:

Generate prospective customers OR
Pre-sell them on the idea of buying the product OR
Getting involved in the sales process themselves

Depending on the advertiser you’re working with, you might be known as an affiliate/affiliate marketer/partner/associate/reseller.

You might be paid on:

The number of prospects generated (lead generation) OR
The value of products bought (revenue share/pay-per-sale) OR
On an ongoing basis receiving regular payments as long as the customer continues the product/service. (continuity/rebilling/subscription)

CPA marketing or Cost-Per-Action marketing is primarily focused on the lead generation aspect of the business. You might receive a $30 payout on a $4.95 trial by the customer. The advertiser is able to recoup their commission payout to you by selling a premium product on the backend (as a product upgrade), or enrol the customer in a monthly subscription.

Hence, for many new affiliates, the CPA route (more…)

Win Prizes In The WhoIsAndrewWee.com Affiliate Challenge June 11, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 8 comments

Finding difficulty getting started as an affiliate marketer? WhoIsAndrewWee.com has partnered the Market Leverage affiliate network to host the first Affiliate Challenge, which will provide education to help you kickstart your campaigns and promises prizes for participants.

I’m happy to announce that after a period of discussion, Market Leverage is the proud sponsor of possibly the first affiliate competition specifically targeted at Singapore-based affiliates.

affiliate challenge

So if you’re new to the industry and want to get your foot in the door, do take action by participating in this contest.

Here’s the WhoIsAndrewWee.com Affiliate Challenge format:

The contest will be held over a period of 2 months (from 8 Jun - 7 Aug 2009)
You need to apply through this Market Leverage affiliate signup link to be eligible for the contest.
You need to be a new Market Leverage affiliate and based in Singapore to qualify for the contest. (future contests will be expanded to other geographical regions).
The contest will have 2 phases - one at the midway mark (8 Jun - 7 Jul), where prizes will be awarded to participants. And one for the contest duration (8 Jun - 7 Aug), another round of prizes will be awarded then. so you’ll have 2 sets of chances to win prizes.

One of the goals of this contest is to increase the number of active Singapore affiliate marketers, especially since Asia is a growing region.

There are 2 categories of prizes available:

Top Affiliates (determined by affiliate commissions generated)
Merit Prizes for affiliates who put in the most effort in promoting their campaigns (determined by the contest panel)

Here are the contest prizes:

Phase 1: Start to Mid-point (8 Jun - 7 Jul):

Top affiliate: $100 Market Leverage gift card
Merit prize: $75 Market Leverage gift card

Phase 2: Start to End (8 Jun - 7 Aug)

Top affiliate: HP Mini-Note or Asus EEE PC laptop
Merit prize: $150 Market Leverage gift card

Notes:

You need to be a new Market Leverage affiliate to qualify for the contest
Affiliates will need to provide official personal identification or business registration documents during their application and payments will be made out to the person or business entity used for the affiliate application
Only affiliates based in Singapore (or are from Singapore) are eligible for the contest
The judges decisions are final

There’ll be a series of contest updates and tips to promote your affiliate campaigns over the following weeks.

In the meantime, apply to be a Market Leverage affiliate now!

[To get your affiliate applications processed faster, you are welcome to drop me a note via the blog contact form, stating your name, email address used in the application, so they can be reviewed by the Market Leverage affiliate review team more promptly]

Can Affiliate Link Disclosure Go Too Far? June 4, 2009

Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , 2 comments

There’s a ruckus in the social marketing space with some analysts like Jeremiah Owyang talking about the repercussions (mostly negative) about embedding affiliate links in social media (Twitter for example), while internet marketers like Shawn Collins, Linda Buquet and Lisa Barone basically saying that going the additional step of labelling every affiliate link with a (aff) as being pretty silly/stupid. So what’re we supposed to take away from this? Can affiliate link disclosure go too far?

Brian Clark has also stepped in with the legal perspective on what’s kosher and what’s not, when it comes to “word of mouth marketing” AKA social media.

the scream

So taking a look at social media for a moment, the medium is very personality-based - we follow individuals (or maybe Britney Spears’ manager firing out tweets on her behalf), and hence there’s greater (more…)