Entries Tagged 'Affiliate Marketing' ↓

Have you ever dressed your website up as a giant carrot? Probably not. If you have, please let me know ASAP because I’d love to hear that story!

Occasionally you hear about unique marketing methods that work really well. Someone comes up with a brilliant idea, and implements it. Often these ideas are quite cheap, but just require you to be unusual, which a lot of people aren’t comfortable with.

A good example is a story I recently read where a guy dressed up as a giant carrot, and started going to events around Saint Paul, Minnesota. His business, the Crazy Carrot Juice Bar, got a huge amount of free advertising in the newspapers, radio and even on TV. He quickly grew the company to 5 stores with 65 employees, and then sold it to Jamba Juice, presumably making a bucketful in the process.

Here’s the best part: the suit cost him $73 to make.

Examples of this kind of marketing are all over the place - the question is, how can you, in your business, make an impact? Chances are there is a way you haven’t thought of to really get your business the public attention it needs to become profitable. As affiliate marketers, we’re typically confined to the internet (not always though - that’s a different topic), but how can we use these concepts to promote our products? Viral videos can make a big splash, and blog contest giveaways can be huge as well. There are lots of ideas out there - which one will you use?

The other day I decided to try promoting a new affiliate product, as I hadn’t done anything new that way in a while. So I picked one from CPA Empire, which had a good network EPC (Earnings per click), and paid per lead. I’ve had good success with lead based affiliate programs in the past. I like the fact that there’s a very low level of commitment required of the customer  - they don’t have to make a purchase decision right then and there, and I still get paid!

Initially, I went to Google, because Google has traditionally been a great place to get a campaign up and running in a jiffy. Unfortunately, with affiliate marketing you don’t always have control over the landing page. I went to the landing page to check it out and it was one of these one page wonders. It is a very simple page, nothing wrong with it from a user’s perspective; however Google’s crawler clearly thought it was lacking. So only 3 of the 40 keywords I wanted went live, and only after I put my minimum bid up to $1.00 / click. When I looked into it further with Google’s tools they told me the landing page sucked. Uh-huh. Already knew that.

So anyways, I let the thing run, and managed to get one lead that day. Unfortunately I spent nearly twice as much on Adwords as the value of the lead. The extremely interesting thing was that I actually got clicks on keywords that were classified by Google as Inactive. Has anyone else seen this? Is it some sort of fraud, or is Google actually letting me get those clicks for some reason? I thought that was extremely interesting.

So I recognized this wasn’t going anywhere, so I thought for a second, then realized if the landing page was the problem, from Google’s perspective, then maybe I should try it out on a different engine that didn’t care nearly as much as Google does about these things. So I fired up my trusty 7Search account and plugged in basically all the same information as went into my Google campaign, and turned it loose.

The immediate difference: I was paying approximately 14 cents per click for second and third place positions on 7Search, whereas I was paying $1.00 per click on Google just to get active. I knew from the start that at least I wouldn’t lose my shirt if nothing much happened, 14 cents a click is a lot more forgiving than $1.00.

So that has now run for about 3 days on 7Search, nothing spectacular, but I have got 97 clicks so far, at a total cost of $14. Out of that traffic, I’ve managed to generate two leads, at $10 a piece. So I’m actually showing a very modest profit. That’s encouraging. Better than a loss, but still nothing to throw a party for. Now I’ve got to figure out how to grow that so it does that regularly and consistently.

Anyways, I guess the lesson of the day is that you need to look at the landing page you’ve got and then go from there; if it doesn’t have much text on it, chances are strong Google isn’t going to like it, and you might want to try it on a different engine first.

I got an email today extolling the virtues of a new service from my web host, Powweb, called TargetClicks. (I’d like to preface this post by saying that I love Powweb as a web host - I’ve been with them for years and they’re really top notch). I’ve copied in the main bullets of the email here:

WHAT THE TARGETCLICKS TEAM CAN DO FOR YOU
TargetClicks ensures that when people perform Google, Yahoo! or MSN searches on keywords related to your site, an entry for your Web site will be listed next to their search results! All you have to do is …
1. Fill out your site information. TargetClicks will determine your competition, target region and optimal keywords.
2. Pay just $1.75 per click. TargetClicks takes care of ad placement for you and eats the cost, even if the lowest bid price is more expensive!
3. Review your performance. TargetClicks provides easy-to-read e-mail and online reports that track your progress.

Is anyone else chomping at the bit to get signed up? I saw $1.75 per click and nearly laughed out loud. Then my brain kicked in, and I started thinking about it. I realize they’re really targeting the people that have no clue about pay-per-click or internet marketing, and would just rather pay someone to know for them. That is fine, there are things that I don’t really care to know much about and would rather pay someone to do, such as fix my car for instance. Are you an ad mechanic? If you don’t like getting under the hood, perhaps a program like this fits your ticket.

Thing is, I do happen to know a thing or two about pay-per-click ads and the $1.75 seems pretty high. Apparently though, one gets coverage on up to 30 PPC networks, which is definitely a big time saver. My guess is their incentive to create a good campaign is the more they get costs down, the more they get to pocket. The other thing to keep in mind though is what kind of quality are they delivering? I could setup a campaign for $1.75 a click and send thousands of visitors through all day long; but how targeted are they? Seems to me the disadvantage of this setup is that there is no relation to profitability.

At the end of the day, this is what makes a successful affiliate marketer; being able to advertise and get a targeted customer ready to purchase for less than the value per action so he can pocket a profit. If you’re just sending traffic down the pipe for a set fee, there will never be any accountability on quality.

Just my two cents.

To succeed in business on the internet, you need to pick a niche and specialize. There simply isn’t a lot of room for more eBays and Amazons out there. There will always be a few of these uber-players in the game; ingowever the vast majority of successful businesses on the internet are specializing in a niche.

I’m going to assume that I don’t need to convince you of the merits of choosing a niche; it is one of the most talked about things in internet marketing. Instead, I wanted to focus on some concrete ways that you can go about identifying a market niche that is going to work for you. This process is well suited to those who are looking to develop a product of their own, though it will work equally well if you’re planning on building a site promoting affiliate products.

Researching a Market Niche

1. Brainstorm. Take a piece of paper and start writing any market idea that comes to mind. The conventional brainstorming wisdom applies - don’t discard any idea - just write it down! Even if you don’t think it is any good, write it down!

Think of your own hobbies or those of your friends. Think of a common problem in people’s lives - is there information out there, or a product, that can solve it? If you absolutely can’t think of anything, go to the public library or a good sized bookstore and have a look at their magazine section. Magazines represent topics people are interested in; topics that people are willing to pay money for more information on. Once you’ve got 25-30 topic ideas on paper you can move on to the next step.

2. Research Keywords. You don’t have to come up with an exhaustive and comprehensive list at this point of every keyword you’ll ever use in the niche. Rather, use this step to get a feel for the highest traffic keywords in your niche. Try to pick around 5. Go to SEOBook.com and use their free keyword tool. Type in what you think is the main keyword for the niche, and see what you can find out. There are likely other common variations or sub-niches you haven’t thought about.

3. Assess the Niche Potential. Ultimately, you want to be able to deeply penetrate your chosen niche. Go through your list and consider whether each niche has the potential for additional products. Would it be possible to create a home study course around it? A membership site? Something you could upsell your customers on after the initial product? How about a monthly newsletter? Is there sufficient depth that people are likely to pay for additional products? Is there a good selection of affiliate products available for that niche? Checkout the usual culprits for this: Clickbank, PayDotCom, CJ, LinkShare, etc. You might need to search around in your niche market to find some good products, then google those products + “affiliate” to see if there are affiliate programs available.

4. Understand the Niche. Now that you’ve hopefully narrowed down your list somewhat, take it to the library and see what kinds of magazines and books exist on your subject. What topics are they writing about? Are there sub-topics that have product potential? Keep your eyes open for complementary niches as well. Once you’ve developed a list of customers, people who have purchased your main product, you’ll want to be able to continue to use that list to sell your customers other related products in the future.

Another idea is to go to Amazon.com and type in your top 5 niche keywords from step 2. See what products come up. Amazon can show you a ton of useful information about your target niche. You can see what people thought of competing products (ie what they liked and disliked), as well as additional products that they purchased. Try to get a feel for the price points as well.

5. Check for a Community of Interest. Go to Google and type in your niche keywords and the word “forum” and see what comes up. Click on a bunch of the results. Are people talking about your niche market, or is it dead? If forums exist on the topic, check them out and see how many active users there are on the relevant threads. Try to get a feel for the topics they are discussing, and the level of participation. Take note of the best forums, as you’ll want to come back to these later on to participate and promote your own product.

Another idea is to go to blogsearch.google.com and search for your niche in there. See if blogs come up on the topic, if so, check them out for content and try to get a feel for their traffic volumes. Are people actively commenting on the posts? Identify the best forums and blogs, as you’ll want to come back to these later to participate and promote your own product. You can also look for article directories.

6. Check out the Competition. Run searches on the main keywords for your niche and see what paid ads come up on Google and Yahoo. What products are being promoted? What are they doing well that you can emulate, and what are they doing poorly that you can do better? Checkout the organic listings as well. Read their squeeze pages and sales letters. Do they have newsletters available? Sign up for them; see what they’re talking about. Keep your eyes open for products you could partner with in the future.

7. Don’t Slack Off! This might seem like a lot of work, and it is. Choosing a niche market is possibly the hardest part of the whole process, and arguably the most important. Put your head down and slog through it. Once you’re established later on you’ll be happy you did.

I’m on a TON of mailing lists. In fact, a while ago I setup a separate email address specifically for this purpose. I did this for a couple reasons: a) because I have actually purchased quite a few of the best affiliate marketing products, thus I’ve naturally become part of these lists, and b) because I like to see how other marketers do their thing. Every now and then examples come through my inbox of great sales letters, and I like to keep those for future reference. It becomes a sort of “best of the best” toolkit for an email / affiliate marketer.

Anyways, this post isn’t really about my toolkit - today I wanted to rant about the amazing number of underground, previously unknown, rejected by all, newly arrived on the scene gurus. You probably know the ones I mean. “Straight from the underground” and all this jazz - doesn’t anyone else look at this as being merely the default marketing tactic to use if you’ve got no experience on the affiliate product launch scene? Can’t these guys come up with something more original?

It’s a funny thing, marketing to marketers. On the one hand, we’re all supposed to see through the hype because this is our world, right? Wrong. Apparently we’re just as susceptible as the next person - perhaps more so! The very fact that affiliate marketing products are simply everywhere is testament to that fact. Not a day goes by that I don’t receive at least 30 affiliate offers in my inbox. Most are marketing related. My spidey sense has to be on DEFCON 1 all the time, or I could easily buy more of them than I have time in the day to implement all their tricks and tips! I’d be curious, if someone could omnisciently discover the truth, how many affiliate marketers have in fact spent more on affiliate marketing products than they’ve actually earned by using them! Maybe I’m wrong, but I imagine there are masses of people out there who have purchased tons of products and never actually implemented them to their potential.

It seems like everything has to have more hype than the last - each email is more spectacular, each conference has a more amazing lineup, each product launch has more amazing giveaways and bonuses, etc. The sad thing about marketing is you simply can’t sell anything by saying “Another product from X - please buy it.” We all subconsciously crave that hype, knowing that the product we just bought is better than all of its competitors, and knowing that we now have an advantage over our own competition because of it! We made the right choice! This is the ultimate product, and I should be proud for having purchased it!

Yay me!

I realize by posting this absolutely nothing is going to change, and in fact I’m working on a sales letter of my own right now, and no doubt it will contain some of this language. Fact is, that’s what works. It’s also what people expect to see. If they don’t, they somehow become suspicious. I’ve walked away from some perfectly good products because the sales letter didn’t “wow” me. Others do too.

However, this post will not be in vain if the next time you read an uber-hype sales letter you pause, for just a microsecond, remember this post, and consider your motivations. Then feel free to dive back and in hit “Buy Now!” as quickly as possible.

Heck, you didn’t expect me to say don’t buy it did you? It might be one of my offers you’re reading!

I was over at AskHowie.com and found a clip where he was talking about finding the correct triggers for your product. He gave an example of selling a weight loss product for kids. What are the triggers that would prompt a concerned parent to search for such a product? It could have been a doctor’s visit, a comment from another parent, a comment from the kid themself, or any number of other things.

By understanding the different events that would trigger a motivated buyer to start searching for your product, you can market to them much better. A “triggered” searcher is one who emotionally is ready to buy, right now. All you need to do is get your product in front of them and clinch the deal with some compelling copy that plays on that trigger.

Take the weight loss example again; if you identified a common trigger being a doctor’s visit, and you created an ad that was titled or included “Fed Up With Doctor’s Visits?” or something of the like; your searcher is more likely to identify with that ad because of their recent experience. Immediately they feel a connection with your ad because you’ve identified with their experience. They get the impression you understand what they’re going through.

Taking this beyond the ad, if you can exploit these triggers in the sales letter itself you can take this to a much higher level. Suppose a concerned parent got to your site by searching for “weight loss for kids,” and when they get there, they immediately see a leading statement related to doctor’s visits. Do you think they’re more likely to at least read the whole sales letter?

If you can get inside your target market’s minds, you will have a far higher success rate than simply taking the “if we market it they will come” approach.

PS: today I randomly discovered that 138 people per day search for the keyword phrase “excuses for being absent from work” and there are no Adwords campaigns running! I wonder if there’s potential here for a work from home product… then again perhaps its a bomb? Let me know if you try it out…

What is affiliate marketing, and why is it worth doing?

Simply put, affiliate marketing is a way of sharing revenue between a company and its affiliate based on performance measures. The affiliate is not employed by the company, but there is an agreement in place that allows them to promote the company’s products and to get rewarded for that in a specific way. Affiliate marketing is huge on the internet. The benefits are many, as we will see.

Let’s use an example that everyone is familiar with: Amazon.com. Now you might ask, why would a company as huge and successful as Amazon need or want an affiliate marketing program? Why would they want to share their revenue? Well plain and simple, it saves them a lot of work. Amazon has setup an arrangement whereby nearly anyone can sign up as an affiliate to promote their products. The affiliate is then given tools and specially coded hyperlinks which they use to promote products for sale on Amazon’s website. They drive traffic to Amazon.com, which hopefully converts into sales. If the affiliate refers someone who actually buys something, then Amazon will give the affiliate a set percentage of that sale.

What’s in it for them?

The benefit to Amazon is that they get a veritable army of affiliates promoting their products in all sorts of ways all over the internet. They end up with very good marketing coverage this way. You have to remember that in order to get advertising and links plastered all over the internet, in every nook and cranny, Amazon would have to spend a ton of money. Either they would outsource this lucrative contract to some large firm, or they would hire a whole bunch of advertising experts in-house. Instead, they are able to contract with affiliates who go out and advertise all over the place, and - here’s the best part - Amazon only pays when a sale is generated! Amazon can then go and confidently plan around the fact that their affiliate related marketing will cost them 4% of sales, or whatever the number is. None of this pay $100 million and I’m sure we’ll get some good coverage! They only pay for advertising that generates cold hard cash!

What’s in it for you?

So, sounds like a great deal for Amazon right? But is the affiliate marketer getting a bad deal? Not at all. So what makes this a good deal for the affiliate? Well there are a lot of people out there with websites, resources, and expertise to successfully market products; however they don’t have any products of their own! The affiliate arrangement puts a product in the hands of the marketers, without them having to deal with inventory, handle transactions, tech support, returns, suppliers, importing, shipping etc. The barriers to entry are negligible for an affiliate marketer, compared to the owner of the web store.

Marketers also benefit from having the guaranteed terms of a contract. They know exactly what they need to achieve to get a paycheck of X dollars. Affiliate marketers then create websites, pay-per-click ads, email campaigns, banner ads, social marketing campaigns and all kinds of other things in order to drive highly targeted traffic to Amazon.

Most affiliate programs have a sliding incentive scale of some sort. For instance, for the first $1000 of sales an affiliate refers within a given period, they might get 4%. For the next $1000 they might get 5%. In this way companies are able to reward for performance and the best affiliates will be even more motivated to continue on their promotion.

Affiliate marketing can work for nearly any kind of product out there on the internet right now. Think of it as a referral fee. Some of the products I promote don’t even involve sales; the client doesn’t actually purchase anything. In these cases the company pays for “leads,” that is, qualified people who fill out an application form. So all I need to do is get people to fill out the form, and I get paid! They don’t even have to spend a cent! Good deal for me right?

If you have a website, affiliate marketing is a great place to get your feet wet making money on the internet. Find an affiliate program for a product that is complementary to the interests of your site’s visitors, and promote it on your site. If you’re feeling more aggressive and you find a good product to promote, try paying for advertising on the internet! You’d be surprised how easy it can be to get going!

All the best in your ad.ventures!