MelvinBlog

A blog that chronicles my journey on online marketing, blogging, social media, technology and life.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing in Blogs

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It’s been quite a long time since I wrote something on a topic that is my favorite, talking about affiliate marketing. It happened so because of me acquiring and managing AffiliateHat.com and transferring all of affiliate marketing related stuffs to that blog and focusing more on general marketing and blogging tips here in this blog. But anyway today I would like to talk about a simple affiliate marketing topic w/c is about promoting offers in blogs.

Most people make the mistake of thinking affiliate marketing in blogs is just like affiliate marketing as a whole. Totally false. In promoting in blogs, you are more toned down, laid back and careful. When you use a blog, in most cases a make money online blog, you risk your reputation, unlike in the traditional, landing page–pay per click combination wherein people would not even know (or care) your true name and personality.

Another is when promoting outside the blog, the tactic tends to be more of hardselling whereas in blog, you’d more likely have to be transparent and honest to your readers.

Last year I made a post about why some bloggers make so much w/affiliate referrals and I got a lot of responses about it. The truth is, your conversion rate would depend on how reputed you are in your industry. I see a lot of big bloggers promoting shit products and I doubt that they don’t make any money with it. Why? Because they are famous!

Another big factor is how you write your reviews. Obviously, the only good way to promote something in your blog is through product reviews. Again most people do wrong with it by stuffing their readers too much to buy the product, making it obvious that they are being biased. What happens then is that readers get annoyed and leave.

You see, things are about different when you do use your blog as a marketing tool for affiliate offers.  If you are looking out to use your blog as a tool for affiliate promotions, make sure you’re not doing it wrong, or maybe you should rethink of the strategies that you would use. Remember, it takes a  lot of time to build a reputation online. But it only takes a while for you to completely ruin it.

Promoting Email Submits? Don’t!

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affiliate fraud Pictures, Images and Photos

When every newcomer enters the world of affiliate marketing, he’s normally advised to try out the low-risk email submit types of offers. Why not, I mean email submits are pretty easy to convert. All you need to get a lead is an email of a customer. Also you don’t need to compete for those very high keyword competing keywords Promoting email submits ‘could’ really be the way to start for newbies.

Anyway here in this blog I have written some email submit walkthroughs that I have done (which has become outdated already). The last successful email submit campaign I had was last year when I heavily promoted the Obama vs. McCain thing. The campaign nearly brought me $20+ for almost 1 1/2 straight months and I was promoting them through Copeac.

Just to let you guys know email submits work this way. The merchant  ‘is ‘said’ to pay affiliates (us) $1+ for every email submit lead. The truth behind the offer is that when someone enters his email, he is then presented to 20+ more incentivized offers which the merchant runs as an affiliate as well. Affiliates get scrubbed when the certain customer enters his email but never completed 6-7 more offers (both paid and free offers). On some shitty email submits offers, they even demand 15-20 offers to be completed before they even get you the $1.50 per lead! Sucks? Yes it does!

For the customer’s side (our lead) here is how it goes.  So what is going to happen about that “free” something on email submit? Well as I’ve said they’d be entered into a larger plethora of offers in which in order to get that freebie, they have to complete those. To be able to complete, they have to purchase something and again in the end, it’s like they just paid  that free stuff.

Convert2Media founder Ruck told me in their IRC channel that these types of offers are something that they don’t have control at. So the best thing they did is just to eliminate all email and zip submit offers. If you look around the other affiliate networks, Copeac has taken down all of them as well, Market Leverage on the other hand has lessened theirs. It seems like the once mighty and in-demand type of offer has rapidly plunged down.

So to end this one is it still worth promoting email and zip submit offers? Hmmm, partly? Well if you could go for other higher converting offers that don’t scrub your balls that much then why not just go for them instead? I would very much love to hear your opinion about it

Site Flipping Or Affiliate Marketing

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A lot of people in the blogging community usually want to learn either how to make money with affiliate marketing or how to start earning through flipping websites/blogs. Although its not your usual mano-a mano type of matchup, it still makes sense to tackle both.  So today I thought its interesting to tackle both and get your opinion about it.

Affiliate Marketing

Everyone in the building knows how much I love affiliate marketing. Not because I  make hundreds to thousands (most of the times, I’m even losing more than profiting 🙂 ), but because I just enjoy the whole process. I love the landing page thing, the PPC manipulation marketing stuff and the affiliate promotion overall. Although I haven’t been active with affiliate marketing this year (because of college), its still something I see myself doing in the future.

I’m not going to detail how aff.marketing works but basically its like promoting an offer and getting paid for driving leads/sales. Most affiliate marketing asshoes in the industry can be found on the bloody wickedfire forum and some of them are making five figures from affiliate marketing. If done properly, I can say affiliate marketing is the one and only business model that can go on autopilot (yes, money while sleeping!)

Site Flipping

Site flipping is something I haven’t done. Although through the years we’ve sold some really good websites, we really never considered it as site flipping. Flipping Blog and websites is easier than affiliate marketing in my opinion but the niche is as saturated as the latter. Some people really do good in it, and some people are happy to do it as a hobby.

What is site flipping? It’s simple as making a website or blog and then selling it. The idea here is creating a unique something and convincing the marketplace that, that “something” has a high potential and could yield income if marketed properly. Although, its not as automated as affiliate marketing, flipping people websites is a lot easier to do than the former. Another fact is that there is low risk and low cost in it. If the site doesn’t sell, you still have a lot of options with it.

Your Choice?

For the first time in this blog I will hold a poll. And its a poll about the two stuffs discussed above. What do you think is better overall? Affiliate Marketing Or Buying (or creating) And Selling Websites? Or maybe you can share your thoughts and add something to what has been discussed.

I Just Hate Affiliate Marketing Sometimes

I Just Hate Affiliate Marketing Sometimes

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I was taking the exams pretty much this whole week and had almost never had any look at internet-marketing related stuffs. All I have been doing is researching for something and finding tutorials so I can understand Math more. Anyways I forgot a facebook campaign I was running and I am surprised when I saw the cost increasing to (click for larger):

facebook campaign

Anyway I was promoting an offer about IQ quizzes (my obsession these days) and have sent about $850+ worth of leads. Not bad considering I just test-drove that offer while practicing in Facebook.

How bout you, wht do you doin’ these days?

Thinking Outside The Goddamn Box

Thinking Outside The Goddamn Box

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So a few days ago I was hanging out with the wickedfire guys on their forum and basically I just asked them every annoying questions you could ever think of.

Anyway I asked them some questions with regards to some dating offers on Copeac on whether they do convert well or what. And fortunately a lot of people give their piece of shiet!

So I promoted an exclusive offer there named “Spicy or Sweet” and well after some days of split testing here’s what I got:

spicysweet

It isn’t really that big of an amount but I felt its awesome. The expenses on Google Adwords aren’t really that big considering dating is a saturated niche. I also used Facebook with it using the free credit I received and although its harder to get your ads approved, it worths it when you start getting it right. So I know you’d ask how did I do it? Well first and foremost I do have a landing page. Most people promoting dating offers do direct linking which definitely adds up to the cost. Another is I targeted long tail keywords and seriously this one is the harder part of it.

The last thing is that I promoted the offer outside US. I don’t know but I feel that if you run an offer in other countries it is easier to convert. Fortunately the offer accepts traffic from New Zealand, Australia, and United Kingdom and upon studying their trends, I knew I can make some bigs with this! Still got to push my ass up!

*****Secret Entry Alert*******

Like what I have said in my contest, I would be revealing secret entries that would definitely add some points. This entry costs 5 points! Basically its a twitter entry and all you have to do is tweet this:

“Just entered to win over $700 in prizes. Just follow @melvinblog and retweet http://xr.com/melvinblogcontest”

How to Ask for Payout Bumps

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Payout bump is simply an increase in a payout for a certain offer in an affiliate network. It’s usually a 5 to 10% increase, say for example I am promoting a certain ringtone offer that pays $15 per lead. Because I am generating huge traffic to that offer, I tell my affiliate manager to increase my $15 per lead and after some talk he then upped my payout to $16.5 per lead. A lot of affiliates are getting these bumps, super affiliates, medium and small affiliates. Of course when you’re just starting and you have never driven them a lead and you ask for higher payouts then chances are you’d be ignored. Since 95% of affiliates are “dead affiliates”, only few can manage to get these bumps.

Did I say few? Maybe I can restate myself. 🙂 Actually bumps are applicable to any type of offer, yes even email and zip submits. Most people are not even thinking of asking because they always think what they are making is small. That’s wrong! Actually, you don’t really need to produce a high number of sales/leads a day to increase your payout. Last year, there was an offer I was just making a small $5 proft a day and when I asked my manager to increase the payout, I was surprised that he just sealed the deal immediately. It’s really easy to have an increased payout and I’ll show you why:

  1. They expect you to do that – That is actually so true! Most merchants that have offers with affiliate networks are always hoping to fish a super affiliate. And even before someone asks for a bump, they already have prices in front of them in case someone asks for it. Remember the merchants nevertheless just want the exposure and they understand that in order to get more, they have to pay more.
  2. Saturated market – if you look on offers within an affiliate network what you would notice is that there is a lot of offers within the same niche. With that being said, these merchants understand that in order to stand out they have to make themselves look more lucrative to the affiliates. I mentioned earlier that there was a certain offer that I was just making a small profit yet I still manage to get a pay out bump. Why is that so?  It’s simply because that offer has a lot of similarities with other offers.  they understand they have to stand out. They know that if they would turn you down, you would go elsewhere and they don’t want that. The point here is that you’re giving them no option. Take it or leave it.
  3. Affiliate managers wants you to become super affiliate – this is very true.  Most people don’t really see the value of affiliate managers.  What these affiliate managers want is for us to become super affiliate because they know they would just benefit if we are benefiting from them. They give us the best tips, best offers because they want us to work harder and earn more.

So how do you ask for increase?  The thing is it really varies and it depends on how people do it.  But I think it’s interesting to let you know how I do it. Here’s is exactly the message I keep on using everytime I email my affiliate manager. 🙂

Hi, I think I’m driving nice traffic to this offer and I have been doing it consistently for almost 2 weeks now. Basically I want more profit and I would like to ask for  an increase in payout. Let me know what you think. Thanks

So you see, it’s really easy. Most people say it more unhumble, but again if you’re just small and medium affiliate, just remember to be super polite. You know what I mean. 🙂

Taking Advantage Of Startup Stuffs

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Most marketers usually take advantage of stuffs that are startup or unpopular at first, and then make big profits out of it. And I know that well because I have done that a lot of times. In affiliate marketing or whatever, when there’s a new and untested offer that is up, I usually take advantage of it and even “abuse” it as possible. Now I know that its either it could make you quick cash or it can do you trouble but what I do mean by saying “abuse” is to pawn it as quickly as you can before it gets saturated. Marketers are all common for being quick so maybe a day or 2, an offer would all of a sudden be saturated.

So know you’re asking, how can I take advantage of an offer then? or how will I know what to take advantage? Unfortunately I don’t know the answer. 🙁 For me its more of an instinct and bit of luck at my side. Basically, most people spend their time in front of the computer so my advice is to just be productive with spending your time. I mean, do researches, take a look at the newest offer and etc. So know I am gonna share w/you some of my experiences  quickly making a buck w/a non saturated stuff (of course it becomes saturated then after some time)

  • Performancing Ads – Well its not really me but a good friend of mine who told me to let him anonymous. When Performancing Ads has just started, they are basically paying $10 per referral. That friend is actually a part of SplashPressMedia which happens to have connection w/performancing so he had the inside details and he pretty knew the $10 referral before everyone else did.  What happened then? At the end of one week he made $1300 of affiliate commission from Performancing. Pretty quick huh! Now its impossible to duplicate that because PerfAds has changed their affiliate program terms.
  • Clickbooth Select Campaign – Now I don’t know if I am gonna be hunted by doing it but what I know is I do it legitimately. So Clickbooth is an affiliate program that pays $10 per signup and 2% lifetime ref commission (I’m talking Clickbooth’s own affiliate program). Before the Wickedfire-Clickbooth dispute I was already promoting it like mad man. The result is $400 on one month just by promoting them. 🙂 After a year, my affiliate manager told me they have just removed it because some affiliates are abusing it. 😉
  • Dating Offers – Most of the offers I promote before are offers related to dating and more or less there is always a startup dating offer that usually accepts traffic from any part of the world. I just contacted my friends and asked to sign for this offer under my ref. Of course here in my country 85% are interested with dating sites so its another quick buck for me. It’s not really incentivizing but its just I gave them members I know are willing to stay. A month after I had a chat w/the merchant and they told me they have reduced the traffic to US only. And of course they’re too late because I already did my thing.

So those are the stuffs. Again it’s kinda risky because some are notorious for scrubbing leads and so on. But my advice is, if you do it legitimately and nothing against their terms then at the end of the day you’re still the winner