Archive for the ‘Affiliate Marketing 2010’ Category

Why Successful Young Affiliates Grow Up Fast

I won’t lie. There’s something incredibly satisfying about sitting on the train and listening to some suited twat big himself up on a Blackberry, all the while knowing that you’ve got the capacity to earn more than him and you don’t even have to get out of bed to do it.

Living in London, I invariably find myself in bars full of yuppy tossers and “touch base” talking clowns who’ve let the Christmas bonus go too far to their heads. Affiliate marketing is still such a young industry and it’s very rare that we get the respect we deserve for the hours we put in. But this is probably because affiliate marketers generally represent a very young demographic of businessmen and entrepreneurs. The business studies curriculum hasn’t yet had to suggest that we exist.

I was reading in the comments to the last post that much of the arrogance and drama in affiliate marketing can be attributed to a young crowd with more money than it knows what to do with. While we’re blessed with great opportunities, we have to find the discipline to ensure that they lead to long term success. For many marketers in their early 20s, like me, this is one of the biggest hurdles you’re going to face.

I think it’s great that a young generation has broken out from the academic ranks and found a successful alternative to degrees and 9-5s. Let’s be honest. Most of us in this business are stubborn individuals who want to succeed or fail on our own merit. I never enjoyed working for anybody other than myself. I think most affiliates are the same.

Thanks to the Internet, we’ve got the perfect platform to show those skills in an arena where you can’t be discriminated against because you can’t be seen. Only the output of your creativity is there to be judged. That was the huge appeal of the industry for me. A learning curve that keeps on giving.

But at the same time, if you’re a part of this younger generation, you need to think long and hard about the practicalities of what you’re getting in to. I’ve seen so many affiliates making huge profits and somehow blowing it up the wall and staggering back to their day jobs within the year. To reap long term results, you have to learn to channel the positive energy of being young, creative, and web savvy – to overcome the challenges of sudden responsibility and dealing with money. You also need to stay humble.

Why humble? Who gives a fuck about humble when you’re stacking dollar bills to the sky?

There are affiliates out there who are quite happy to boast about their earnings, shove screenshots in your face, and build up a personal brand that suggests only following their every move will take you to the riches. While I occasionally drape this blog in the necessary arrogance that it requires for a cynical crowd to take notice, it’s never a good way to run your business.

One of the most important things you can be doing as a young affiliate – or simply just a young businessman – is to learn, learn, learn and learn. It doesn’t mean shit that you’re earning crazy figures today. The second you let the money go to your head and sap away your desire to become better at your craft, you’re flirting with disaster.

There is always somebody better than you, always somebody earning more. If you forget to carry yourself with a humble willingness to learn and to listen to what other people are doing, you will completely toast your long term prospects of surviving. Or certainly achieving what you might have done in this industry.

There’s times where I browse WickedFire and it completely blows my mind that such a collective bag of dicks could ever have the social or diplomatic know-how to sustain good relations with a single network – let alone the far reaching contacts necessary to run a proper business.

I know there’s a lot of “front”, and many people will talk shit simply because they’ve established a net vBulletin post count of 10,000 in the noughties where faceless web bashing has become the norm. But sometimes, people will judge you by the only face they can see. There’s a lot more to be gained by carrying yourself with respect and actually giving something back to the community rather than shitting on it.

I often get asked what it’s like to be working for myself so young. I always answer the same: incredibly stressful but always worthwhile. I’ve had to sacrifice a lot of the boozy shipwrecked Friday nights on the lash that I used to enjoy week in week out. Not because I feel financially restricted, but because I’m carrying the weight of my own expectations on my shoulders. And I expect a lot from myself. If I’d allowed my ego to dictate my life, I would have crashed and burned long before now.

One of the drawbacks of being part of this younger generation of web entrepreneurs is that some of us simply aren’t ready for it. Teaching yourself discipline, motivation and the ability to plan ahead is not always easy when your first taste of success is as simple as refreshing stats. So many of us enter the industry full-time starstruck on the back of initial success. It’s a good idea to remember where you came from, and how your success can be as fleeting as the time it takes you to fall. Don’t let your bank balance go to your head and don’t book a worldwide cruise on the back of a good month’s work.

Networking with other marketers and sharing your knowledge is probably the single most effective way of gaining experience as an affiliate. We all have our own successes and failures to talk about. I can always tell when I’m talking to a young egomaniac with his head up his own arse. And I never share anything useful with these people. If you act like a lone riding dick with a chip on your shoulder, people will treat you like one.

There aren’t many industries where you can be so successful in such a short space of time. I hate to say it, but just because you’re making money, that doesn’t mean you’re great at what you do. I think many young affiliates will drop out of the business as competition becomes more fierce and the road to riches becomes harder to negotiate. Those still standing will probably be the ones who haven’t spent all day living the jet-set affiliate lifestyle they took for granted and thought they’d always have.

So you’re young and rich. That’s a notorious recipe for ending up old and lazy. Working hard through the good times, staying humble around your peers, and helping others to succeed. These are all qualities that are likely to work in your favour at some point. The riches for young affiliates are mind boggling. But you’ve gotta grow up fast to enjoy them.

I’m An Affiliate Marketer, Get Me Out Of Here

How many of you have seen The Wire?

There’s a character called Stringer Bell who fronts a Baltimore drugs gang (Ask Cakes for details), and slowly becomes disillusioned with the shady shit he has to deal with on a day to day basis. In a bid to escape the wrong side of the law, he uses the gang’s drug money to invest in property and real estate. Ultimately it all goes wrong and he gets shotgunned down for his sins.

If you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about – or why – it’s because I’m feeling the strong urge to pull a Stringer Bell, leap out of this shady industry and throw my money at something that doesn’t make me blush when I explain the mechanics of how it produces profit.

Affiliate marketing is full of so much bullshit and unnecessary drama. You can do everything in your power to avoid the drama, but when networking is such an integral part of your business, the drama becomes a lurking fixture of your day. Staring in awe at a cyber shitstorm over nothing in particular. None of the time management tools in the world can fully isolate you from an industry which regurgitates endless shit like no other.

I’ve been thinking about how I can limit the negative aspects of affiliate marketing. How can I cut down on the bullshit and learn to see through the lies without wasting any more of my time than I need to?

It’s a very shady space to work in. Some of the things I see affiliates doing – some of the things I engage in myself – would certainly rank low on the list of “topics to discuss with the grandparents over Sunday roast”. You can say that it’s a dog eat dog world. But one look at WickedFire and I’d change that to “dog eats dog while cheered on by pack of starving wolves”.

You people love drama. And as a guy who blogs to the exact crowd that love it most, I would be a colossal hypocrite to sit here raising a white flag and begging for mercy.

Instead I’m thinking about how I can adapt a business model that allows me to sleep easier at night. Most of us who’ve been doing this for any length of time appreciate that there’s a system in place. I haven’t promoted rebills for so long that I’ve convinced myself they’ve gone out of fashion. But even working with dating, gaming and a bunch of other CPA offers – I’m still riddled with the guilt that making money shouldn’t be this easy. So much of marketing is about creating false positives and selling a user what deep down you know they don’t really need.

I’ve made a personal effort to promote reputable offers and steer well clear of the continuity market. But it still bothers me that my working day involves tapping in to consumer weaknesses and surrounding myself in these negative energies. Negative energies? Yeah, I had a curry for dinner. I’m pretty fucking full of negative energies right now.

At the moment, it’s fine.

Affiliate marketing is an addictive circle to be working in. It can be so incredibly lucrative. I speak to guys who are millionaires in their early 20s and it’s all thanks to an industry that anybody can excel in if they have their fucking nuts screwed on.

But are you planning on doing this forever? Or do you have an exit strategy?

Last week, Nickycakes took a backlash from some of the WickedFire community for releasing a product that allegedly clashed with some of the rants he’d written in the past. I noticed a few posts mentioning how he obviously couldn’t be making as much money as he once did if he was willing to release a relatively low margin product in comparison.

This is such bullshit, I can barely believe I’m even writing about it. I’m not leaping to Cakes’ defense by any means. I’ve never met the guy and I’ve never tried his product. But are all affiliate marketers expected to live and die by the arbitrage game for the rest of their careers?

Whether Nick’s product blows or not, it’s pretty irrelevant. Escaping the “buy traffic to sell traffic” trap is something that I think any affiliate would be a mug to ignore. I don’t see how all of us can possibly get away with exploiting something that is this lucrative forever. Especially if affiliate marketing continues to grow at the same rapid rate.

I’ve been mulling over my own options and thinking about what I want to do. How can I use affiliate marketing as a launch pad to a stable long term business that reaches beyond basic CPA arbitrage? Well, I’ve been posting recently about building long term assets, and there’s a lot more to come there.

For me personally, I don’t plan on sticking in this industry for long. I’ve seen enough of affiliate marketing to know that while I’m enjoying it now as a 22 year old with no family of my own to support – I don’t want to be riding this horse for any longer than I need to be. I have my eye on property investment as an exit plan.

Make enough money as an affiliate to finance the kind of investments that would go beyond what the average 22 year old is capable of laying down. Every day is a constant drive to increase profits and give myself that flexibility sooner rather than later.

Do you have your own exit plan? You might be making money now, but how are you going to keep making money if the tap ever runs dry?

Taking Your Christmas Bonus Next Week?

Since I posted about potential Valentines Day campaigns, I’ve spoken to a few marketers and the consensus seems to be that although it would be nice to profit well on a Valentines Day campaign, it isn’t a long term recipe for success. So a lot of marketers don’t bother.

I think a couple of the people I spoke to were trying to schmooze me over having read the previous posts about focusing long term. There’s a difference between focusing all your profits on the short term, and understanding the consumer cycles that exist to be exploited.

“Why should I bother with a Valentines Day campaign when I can only get two weeks of profit out of it?”

It’s a fair question. But let’s say you DO make the effort to put together a profitable Valentines campaign. You may only get two weeks of hard profit from it now, but you’re also safe in the knowledge that you’ll have a campaign to roll out next year, and the year after…and so on. It’s a short term campaign that delivers long term results.

As affiliate marketers, we aren’t blessed with working for large companies that can hand out Christmas bonuses when December rolls around. We have to make our own bonuses.

If you were the manager of a high street store, would you neglect Christmas festivities on the basis that it’ll be January soon? No, you come up with a marketing strategy and you use it to take advantage of the current consumer mindset.

When people talk to me about building long term campaigns that can profit all year round, I don’t see that as a bad thing. I just see it as an opportunity lost. Valentines Day isn’t going to disappear from the calendar anytime soon.

Neither will Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving Day, New Years Day, Guy Fawkes Night…

You can choose to ignore every single one of these events on the principle that you’re happy with your stable campaigns and don’t want to rock the boat. Okay, but are you simply turning down the equivalent to your Christmas bonus?

If you were to turn each of those events above in to a profitable seasonal campaign – and they can be extremely profitable – you will have done a lot to boost long term profits. Why? Because we know that they’re going to roll around in 2011, 2012…there’s no expiry date in sight. High street shops and online retailers know this. They adapt to whatever current event is being pushed on the consumer and they increase their sales accordingly.

I’m not only talking about seasonal campaigns. Most of us have had a profitable short term cash cow on Facebook at some point. You know? The kind’ve campaign that delivers three straight days of super high profits and then nosedives in to a loss. Is this sort of campaign worth ignoring?

I don’t think so personally. I like these campaigns because I can slam the Pause button, leave it for a month, then cream another couple of days of profit. It might be a short term coup. But it’s a long term option to have. The more of these campaigns you can have at your disposal, the larger your reach becomes and the more flexible you are.

I’ve made a big song and dance about focusing your efforts on the long term, and I don’t back down from that at all. But it genuinely surprises me how many marketers are happy to neglect seasonal opportunities. Tapping in to the current consumer mindset is vital. Just as it’s important to be able to produce consistent stable profits, it’s also important to predict those consumer cycles. You don’t think an actual marketing agency would let you ignore them, do you?

I remember reading a post recently about focusing efforts in to one niche and adopting tunnel vision to stick with it until it succeeds. While this can work, I don’t see it as a sensible decision unless you’re getting closer to owning a product, or at least having a long term asset in that niche. If you’re simply doing CPA lead generation, you NEED to be aware of what’s happening around you. Especially if you’re working at the volatile end of the market where products can disappear overnight.

My job is made easy when I’m selling what a consumer is actively looking to buy. If there’s one thing that definitely isn’t a short term gamble, it’s that Valentines Day will be just as culturally significant in 2011 as it is 2010.

So are you going to adjust to the seasons? Or carry the same message all year round?

Vegas Is For Gambling, Vegas Isn’t For Marketing

So how did you guys enjoy Vegas?

I’ve been stalking various photos from ASW and I can’t say I’m not jealous. If I’d made the trip myself, I’d have definitely shagged something. For a single guy in his early 20s, the lure of bringing scandal to Sin City was almost enough to place my balls on a last minute flight to the strip. But alas, I’ve been busy elsewhere.

I’ve seen a lot written about the state of the rebill market. Particularly now that industry peoples have stuffed their faces discussing the topic over four course meals sponsored by every network under the sun. Things are changing, times are getting rough, yeah…we’ve all heard the drama. It’s like Kevin Hoeffer died or something.

It’s true.

Affiliate marketers have stopped making money. The game is over. Lives are ruined. We don’t know how to exist in a world where $40 street payouts and idiot:8 conversion rates are a thing of the past.

But it’s okay. I’ve got a post that can do all that.

It’s called “develop some actual assets and don’t let your paid traffic go to waste you stupid fuck”

The problem with rebills has always been the stability of the offers. A campaign that converts with a towering ROI can hit an iceberg in the night and sink before you’ve had time to wake from your fantasy. This is what happens when you buy traffic with the purpose of using it once.

I’m guessing many of you sat around the tables in Vegas and gambled away your money. It’s all about risk, right? What are your chances of success compared to your chances of failure? When you place yourself in a win or bust situation, you sometimes end up going bust.

When you buy advertising on Adwords and send a click to an offer…what are you doing? You’re taking a calculated risk. You’re anticipating that you can score a conversion to give you immediate reward. Just like many of you probably did last weekend, it’s just as possible to go bust.

So what the sensible marketers are doing is downsizing that risk. The chances of scoring a conversion are not great when you look at the state of the current rebill market. So don’t throw everything you have at crazy batshit affiliate arbitrage. Conversion rates are guaranteed to drop over the coming months, but you know what will stay the same? The percentage of users opting in to email lists. No Visa or Mastercard bullshit is going to affect the likelihood of Average Joe agreeing to hand over his email address.

Once you have that email address, you’re no longer playing the game of rolling a dice and pissing your pants for the right outcome. You can still tempt the user with an offer, but if they don’t convert – you’ve still got them on your books. You can hit them again, and again, and again.

You might not see email addresses as business assets, but if you don’t collect them – what are you doing? You’re constantly chasing the invisible margins between profit and loss. There are some niches where the arbitrage affiliate simply can’t compete with other advertisers. That’s because the arbitrage affiliate only has eyes for the one conversion, and can’t stand the thought of a loss that might take months to reverse. This is all wrong wrong wrong.

And you probably know it’s wrong, you just can’t resist January’s pay cheque.

When you build an email list, you’re taking a large slice of the risk out of your investments. Assuming you’re not a total Warrior tard. The kind who struggles to get email opt-ins without autoresponding naked pics of his 14 year old daughter as an incentive (take one look at those avatars and tell me it doesn’t happen).

Maybe it’s time you looked at your EPCs in a different way. Emails Per Click.

The great thing about becoming an emailing affiliate is that it takes away a lot of the pain that people associate to getting the scrub or shave treatment. If you’re building a list over time and get to the point where you have thousands of opt-ins, you only need to know what’s hot now. Does it matter to you that an offer is only going to be around for a week? No because when you drop that email, the large majority of recipients are going to be clicking on the hottest offer and maximizing your chances of producing the best ROI. If it doesn’t work out? Well, that’s too bad but you haven’t blown out like a bad night on the Vegas strip. You still have your data and you still have another chance to use it.

I will say that some offers are not suited for targeting with email traffic. People aren’t stupid. If you drop rebills that are attracting huge mainstream criticism, you’re probably going to pay the price. Unsatisfied customers will report you and your list will hit the skids quick. It’s important to offer genuine value. And that right there is probably the single biggest turn off for so many affiliates. Genuine value? But that takes, like, time and everything?! Yeah, it does. You’re running a business, right? Maybe consider hiring somebody to play with your balls for the nine hours that you’ll be obliged to waste doing real work. It might stop you becoming a case study of the affiliate marketing 2010 “back to my day job” brigade.

There are a couple of services you can use to make list building a simple and pain-free process. I would personally recommend Aweber (Yes, it’s an affiliate link, and yes if you’ve got any respect for my work, you’ll use it, bitch). I know a lot of top affiliates practically swear by Aweber and it really is a fantastic service.

This has been a basic poke in the tits towards considering the value of the traffic you’re buying. In the next post I’ll sum up some of the best techniques and cheap tactics for building a list.

EDIT: There seemed to be a bit of confusion over whether I was actually in Vegas for ASW. Some dude messaged me saying that it was cool to speak to me. I don’t know whether I have a double (apparently I do and she’s AdHustler’s AM), but I definitely was not in Vegas. I will be in New York for ASE though.

Building Long Term Assets In A Short Term Industry

This is going to be the first in a series of posts about long term business development for affiliates. One of my biggest regrets of 2009 was that I spent 8 months working for myself and didn’t come close to developing the number of fixed assets that I should have done. Too much of my energy was spent playing with fire on campaigns that were raking in the money one minute and draining my wallet the next. This year is different. I’m not thinking “how can I make more money than I know how to spend?” I’m thinking long term stability.

Yeah, if you’re wondering, I’m wearing slippers and smoking a pipe while I write this. Next stop: feeble retirement. But it reflects how I feel about the business right now. I’m not interested in banking astronomical profits just so that I can go on WickedFire and be a dick posting about it (like the majority of members over there, sorry but you’re lame). Money isn’t my incentive this year. I worked my arse off through 2009, made a lot of cash, and you know what happened? I never got chance to enjoy any of it. I want to live in comfort, not chained to my dedicated server incase a small wind knocks it offline and motherfucks my media buy.

2010 is going to be all about working smart.

It’s interesting how when I broke in to affiliate marketing, the niche that set me on the road to riches was the Google bizopp. And yet one year on, the goalposts have shifted so far that I’ve returned to where I started in terms of how I value my work.

When I quit my day job, it was in disbelief that so much money could be made through such a simple process. Set up a landing page, plug in some keywords, and line your pockets with money. I’d lost interest in the kinda “small fish” web projects that I’d spent my previous career undertaking. Instead of developing long term assets that would stand the test of time, I was happy to tear through more .info domains than you could fit in your economy shared hosting plan.

One year on, I’ve grown tired of living on the volatile edge. I gave up rebills a long time ago. But even now, I’m still shifting my campaigns to more long term geared strategies.

You should know how it is. A part time affiliate marketer can afford to tap in to whatever’s hot or converting at the time. Those of us doing this shit as a full time career need to move forward with slightly broader mindsets. To live comfortably, we need to develop long term assets. Or face the hair receeding bitch that comes with the pressure of producing profitable CPA campaigns week on end. I’m not joking. If I had to live 2009 several times over, I’d be bald by the time of London Olympics. There’s times where I feel myself physically molting at my desk.

When I look at the affiliate marketing landscape in 2010, I see a lot of opportunity. But I also see a lot of challenges on the horizon. Especially for those who deal in short term crash and burn arbritage and nothing else. Not to say the ballers are going to fall by the wayside, because they won’t. But the time is now to build some long term assets. Something that an Adwords slap or an offer outage can’t touch.

What are your options? Well, that’s what I’m going to bring myself to type shit about over the next few posts. But to give a basic overview:

Developing an email list: You’ve heard it over and over again. But have you actually bothered to take action? Building an email list is one of the single most effective methods of adding value to the traffic that you’re purchasing. Instead of popping a lead once, why not keep the prospect and hit them with several offers over time? Most affiliates shy away from this route because it involves sacrificing some of the immediate ROI. I’m aware of this so I’m going to outline a method of building an email list and scaling it to thousands of opt-ins without spending a single penny. It’s surprisingly easy.

Building an authority site: If you spend forever digesting the clusterfuck of information on how to get your site ranked using SEO – well, good for you. I personally hate SEO with a passion. The only time I get any kind of thrill out of SEO is when my ninja optimization skills take me to the top of the SERP for terms such as:

Shag my wife
Kiss my balls

…and various finch birdspotting phrases.

This blog receives a lowly 3% of it’s traffic from the search engines. I don’t like spending any more time than I need to optimizing for Google when The Big G could flick a switch and erase me from the search engines completely. So, I take that attitude in to every affiliate site that I develop. Yes, it’s nice to reap free traffic. But the intention should always be to establish an authority, an identity.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not impossible to blend in to a niche as an “expert talker” while pushing your own sordid commission driven agenda. Just look at John Chow. I believe a good brand is worth a lot more than a first page search ranking. But to migrate in to new niches and build long term assets, you’ve got to know your market and know your audience. It’s why I portray myself as such a cynical bastard on here.

Be first on the scene. I can’t remember where I heard it, but it’s definitely true. You don’t always have to be the best, or the funniest, or the cleverest with your marketing message. Sometimes, just being the first can be the only competitive advantage you need.

I guess I’ve learned from my year in affiliate marketing – having originally made money by recycling campaigns that were everywhere – the innovators will always find a way to get paid. If you can seize opportunity and be the first to jump on an offer or a new demand, you will make money. It’s as simple as that.

The main difference between my mindset now to how it was when I started is that I’m not looking for a fleeting campaign in today’s hottest niche. I’m looking for a long term investment in tomorrow’s new craze. I believe that’s what separates entrepreneurs on the web from those who are always chasing the seeds of what successful affiliates have already built.

Affiliates Have No Ethics? PEOPLE Have No Ethics

As we exit 2009 and enter a new decade, I thought I’d get all deep and philosophical about the universe. Or at least, the part of it revolving around affiliate marketing.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of this year, it’s that people – consumers – have the tendency to be unspeakably stupid. There are no bounds or limits to the shit that people will buy if you put it in front of them.

And more importantly, I’ve learned that there’s no limit to the shit that we – as marketers – will try to sell.

If ever there was an offer that summed up the scandalous nature of this industry, it’s coming right at you.

When I logged in to Copeac this morning and saw this page, I didn’t really know whether to laugh or cry. It sums up why we are the pimple on the arse of online marketing. Why no blushing or moral dignity will get in the way of a $32 conversion.

First of all, if you ARE a lonely cheating wife – why in God’s name would you be so resoundingly stupid to sign up on a dating website that markets you as a cheating hussy with a cock fetish?

Secondly, I wouldn’t want to be that smiling model on the homepage. I hope she got a big fee.

And thirdly, how many affiliates are actually that short on moral fiber that they’ll take an offer like this and promote it to married men?

I don’t feel particularly comfortable pushing a dating site that encourages guys to register on the off chance that they’ll get to skirmish with some poor fucker’s scheming missus. There are some lines drawn in the sand that you would truly have to be a money-driven soulless asshole to cross. And no, I’m not trying to sell the industry down the river (Dennis Yu already sold it), because we’re all as bad as each other.

I look at the page and think to myself…

This is simply matchmaking for like-minded individuals. You have guys who are so shallow that they’d make an effort to hunt down a taken woman for sex. And then you’ve got the wives who are clearly so dutty that they’ll become members on a niche dating site where they’re pursued like fetish ornaments with legs on.

So yes, if 2009 has taught me anything, it’s that you should leave your expectations of human nature at the door when dealing with online marketing. The world is full of retards, vanity and international retards.

Seeing how this will be the last post of the decade (I bet you were hoping I’d say that 9 years ago), I’d like to thank readers for actually taking the time out of their day to read my stuff. This blog has grown from non-existence at the start of 2009, to becoming, if I’m not mistaken, hot fucking shit.

In all seriousness, I’m pretty surprised at how things have gone.

Stick around for 2010. I would like to monetize you all eventually I’ve got some other stuff to say.

Happy New Year, stay safe, get trashed.

But obviously not so trashed that moving billboards make you sick.

Stop Thinking Short Term, You Stupid Fuck

I apologize for the inevitable tantrum that’s about to unravel. If you’d spent the last several days battling with Linux viruses and Chinese fucktard organizations, you’d be equally pissed off and ready to go all Scrooge on the world.

This is something that has been grating at me for a while now. It’s quite common that I’ll be emailed a simple question like, “Have you tried pushing acai on Facebook?”

Yes, I have. And yes, I stopped.

Not so long ago, I was talking to an affiliate manager of a network that will go unnamed. I was told that Offer X in the acai niche would sell really well if I cloaked it and ran it through Facebook. I’m not stupid enough to do something like this personally. I have actual campaigns that are profitable on Facebook which I would rather not lose. More to the point, I believe in the theory that you’d be an absolute retard to burn all your bridges to chase a few extra dollars of profit.

What really concerned me was the idea that affiliate managers are actually pushing this advice on their publishers. Are you out of your fucking minds?

It’s easy for a network to sit there and tell a publisher to go compromising a personal account by selling a prohibited product through Traffic Source X. But it shows a massive lack of respect to the naive affiliate who’s trying to earn an honest wage. What happens when the affiliate gets shut down? Sure, there’s some personal responsibility attached. But I’d be tempted, knowing what I know, to tell any affiliate manager who pushes advice like that on me to go fuck himself. Which is, ironically enough, exactly what I did.

What I’m trying to say here, is that if you’re a hard working affiliate, you need to look out for yourself and take what a network throws at you with a pinch of salt.

I’m forever opening my inbox to see messages that read like this:

“Well, why don’t you try Offer X. It’s really taking off and seeing big volume right now.”

Network wide volume means jack shit to me. Profitability is all I care about. I couldn’t honestly care less if an offer is blowing up and seeing thousands of leads per day. I would much rather push through one lead that gives me a return on investment that I’m happy with. This is where networks will try to fuck you over and fill your inbox with false promise.

But, hey, you can’t hate on the networks for doing their jobs. The more experienced you get at this game, you better you become at being your own judge of an offer’s viability.

What really gets on my tits is the outrageous attitude from certain affiliate managers who believe that because they’ve been placing your pixels for five minutes, they somehow know what’s good for the long term success of your business. Telling an affiliate to go and try acai on Facebook is no better than Google turning around and saying “Thanks for the money, now go rot in a hole somewhere.”

Or “We appreciate your leads…while they lasted.”

“Teehee, motherfucker. This is the sound of us banking on your banned and blacklisted ass. Refer us to friends though, right?”

Before you ask, no I haven’t been banned from Facebook. But I’ve heard a lot of stories from people who’ve suffered that fate. Much of the blame must rest on the publisher. I’m not for a moment suggesting that a network is responsible for an affiliate going out and breaking the terms and conditions of a traffic source. This is more of a rant against stupidity.

Let’s say you decide to push acai on Facebook.

It’s profitable and there’s big money to be made there. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to read that much. With some simple targeting, a cloaking redirect and a slice of luck – you can probably ride the fat loss waves well in to 2010 making some good bank. But there is your problem.

You might not make it in to 2011 with Facebook account in tact.

We’ve seen the backlash from Google and we’re seeing a similar backlash from Facebook. It’s possible to get a new account after being banned, but it’s about as pleasurable a process to follow as a gentle fist up the jacksy.

You can enjoy a few great months of addictive profit and life changing ROIs, but when the screws come unhinged, you’re left without a Plan B. And whatever Plan B you might have had is going to be severely compromised by the fact that Traffic Source X now has you blacklisted and wants nothing to do with your business.

Is that the way forward for an affiliate marketer?

Some of you are crazy sons of bitches who will simply ditch the wife, change your birth name, move to Alaska and open up a new advertising account. Whatever puts the notes in your pocket, right? That’s one way to do it, I guess. But you’re going to be forever searching for loopholes while I would rather be kicking back on a sunbed and enjoying a legitimate long term business growth.

Here’s the greatest catch of affiliate marketing. You don’t have to be clever to make money. Any affiliate with balls the size of Texas can bend the truth far enough that it lines his pockets with the dollars he craves. But at some point – today, tomorrow, maybe next year – you’re going to have to deal with the hand you’ve been dealt.

I’ve spoken to some truly shady black hat Internet marketers in my time. Not just affiliates, but “entrepreneurs” who will completely reinvent the rulebook of what’s acceptable if it’s financially suitable to them. You know what nearly all of these guys have in common? They all WISH they could have the same success on the straight and narrow.

Many of them are incredibly smart and more than capable of carving a long term business. But they get blinded by the short term riches and choose paths that I’m sure, in many cases, will eventually come back to haunt them.

You can base your business decisions on what will line your pockets today (slinging acai on Facebook, pummeling bizopp on Google)…or you can keep a level head and try not to burn all of your bridges in a few short months.

When you come back down to earth and realize that affiliate marketing is a full time career and a full time responsibility, it’s probably going to dawn on you.

You’ve got work to do.

Christmas Can Kiss My Balls & Other Affiliate Tips

So, Christmas.

I feel like I should be showering my blog in tinsel, crooning festivities, and embedding an MP3 of Jingle Bells in to this post. You know, just to lose subscribers. Every single advertisement on television is littered in reindeers, snowmen, poxy smiling children and mince fucking pies. I don’t consider myself a Scrooge, but I’m about ready to shove a Christmas tree up somebody’s arse. Instead of allowing a December depression to get the better of me, I’ve been channeling my energies in to working hard (and drinking harder).

On the subject of tinsel, though, here’s a quick Facebook tip for you.

Take whatever it is that you’re advertising. Create a 5 pixel “tinsel” border. Crowbar a reference to Christmas in to your ad text. Enjoy a better CTR.

Just don’t target it to 21 year old male Londoners with “moody bastard” in the keyword targeting. That shit will get X’d and X’d hard. I’m ready and waiting.

I could sit here and write fairytales about how affiliate marketing becomes such a walk in the park over the Christmas period. In reality, I’d be talking out of my arse. This is the first December I’ve spent as a full-time affiliate. I do not have a clue how the market will vary. I am adjusting to the unknown just as everybody else has to – no smart head can buy experience.

You can’t dispute the obvious, though. There are a number of reasons why affiliates should be working extra hard through December. The sheer amount of money being spent online should be reason enough. But you can also factor in demand for plenty of other niches.

I love working the dating niche and I’ve seen good conversions through the month so far. You have to keep an open mind to how your market is going to respond through the different seasons. My first instinct was to liken my own situation to the market.

I thought to myself: “Christmas is coming, what’s the last thing a guy needs right now?”

The answer was obvious.

“A girlfriend to buy presents for.”

I’ve made no secret of the fact that December to March is off-season for dating in Finch’s world. I don’t enjoy commitment over the festive period. Partly because I’m a no strings kinda guy and partly because it’s fucking expensive. After Valentines Day has passed, I mysteriously append “and looking” to my vibes on the dancefloor. Although a fat chance of success those give me…

I was on the verge of taking this attitude in to my marketing exploits, assuming that dating would decline as a niche over winter. But then it dawned on me that the rest of the world actually has some feelings.

Dating remains a strong niche, but there are other products that are really starting to take off, seeing some of their best performing weeks. I don’t put it down to Christmas. I see it as a knock on effect of the marketer’s wet dream otherwise known as a New Years Resolution.

Basically, people who make New Years Resolutions are fucking retards. Why would you need to wait for a new year to start working towards your goals? If you really want to shed the flab from your gut, you’d stop shoving your face with calories at every waking hour. I pity those who can only muster the strength to face up to a challenge when the date reads January the 1st. It’s a sign of great weakness.

But judgments aside, people WILL make rash unusual decisions to splash the cash if they see a product that coincides with their fantasy vision of “Me in 2010″. Whether it’s an acai diet trial to lose weight, a bizopp to get a new job – or even a language learning course. Yes, there are people out there who see that it’s January and think holy shit I better learn Spanish.

As smaxor suggested in his post Explosive Formula for Affiliate Marketing in the New Year, it’s quite convenient for an affiliate marketer that New Years Resolutions reel off like a “what’s hot” of the CPA world.

People will want to lose weight (“I’ll just devour these saturated fats for 2 more weeks and then it’s definitely over”), just like they’ll want to find a business opportunity to avoid getting another year older without getting any closer to that American dream. The good news if you’re working the continuity product market is that it doesn’t make shit all difference to you if they give in to their cravings on January 7th or January 8th. By then the lead is a signed and sealed deal.

The time is now to cash in. I’ve stressed several times the importance of creating an urgency in the consumer’s mind. Normally we have to create this urgency with our own persuasive sales copy. Things are a little different over New Year because people are conciously looking for ways that they can change themselves. There’s a sense of desperation about a New Years Resolution. It’s a moment of strength sandwiched by a year of disinterest in making those changes.

If you decide to put your feet up and party away the rest of 2009, you’re going to be caught cold. There is serious money to be made over the coming weeks – just as there always is. The only difference is you’ve been given a priceless headstart. You KNOW that people are about to attempt lifestyle changes, and you’ve got access to many of the products they’d bend over backwards to try. Get your Christmas grind on and forget about living by some shitty resolution to take action in 2010. That’s the mindset of the weak.

The successful affiliates decided to take action yesterday, not tomorrow, so you’re already playing catch up if you’re delaying what needs to be done until 2010. I’m taking minimal time off for Christmas this year. I’ve never been so busy in my life and I intend to stay that way until I’ve achieved my goals.

For what it’s worth, I’m not actually as bitter at the world as I portray myself to be.

Have a fantastic Crimbo. Stay safe, keep reading my shit, and tap me up in March if you’re sexy.

Rebills I’d Like To See In 2010

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll have noticed that ripping in to rebills is one of my favourite subject matters. I’ve got a love/hate thing going on with the rebill. I loved the fact that while I was promoting them, I was banking left right and center. And I hated the fact that I was contributing to some of the lowest customer satisfaction numbers in the world.

I’ve said over and over again that the rebill needs to change to survive. Not just the essence of the deal itself, but the entire promotion that we as affiliates use to sell them.

It’s over three months since I last pushed a mainstream CPA rebill. While I took a big hit when I decided to stop slinging them, I’ve stabilized my business with offers that I’m not too guilty to talk about when somebody asks me “so what do you actually sell for a living?”. We’ve all gotta have values as affiliates. I made a fortune without stopping to consider mine, and now I’m backtracking to make sure I do things in a way that isn’t going to end in a lawsuit.

That said, I’m thinking of dipping back in to the rebill market. I miss the sweet ca-ching of another $35 being credited to my account when I refresh the page. I don’t want to touch another Google bizopp. And I’m definitely not slinging an acai berry supplement having actually bought a bottle of the damn thing from Marks & Spencers the other day. What was I thinking? I’ve been doing this shit so long, I’ve sabotaged my own shopping habits.

It was an acai berry smoothie, if you’re wondering. No need for weight loss here. I’m a lean mean commission machine.

So, I’ve been signing up to various obscure networks in the hope that I’d find an exclusive offer. Something that inspires me to crack open Adwords. The trouble is, a lot of the offers that I’d like to promote…don’t exist.

I’ve spoken to a couple of networks about pitching a variety of new products to the advertisers. This is an open plea to any advertiser who happens to be reading. The offers I’d like to see…

The “give up smoking” rebill

I can’t believe there’s no sign of this on any of the major networks. If you asked the UK smoking population to name one habit they’d love to kick, it’s probably going to be the smoking. There’s a HUGE demand for giving up cigarettes and as we all know, a rebill works best when it appeals to the desperate nature of a poor helpless mope with nowhere else to turn.

The concept it simple. If a $39.95 monthly rebill doesn’t shock you in to kicking the habit, the $19.95 upsell certainly will. If you don’t kick that habit within 15 days, we’re gonna rebill your ass so hard that you’ll be puffing sweet nicotine forgiveness for the rest of your life.

In all seriousness, why isn’t there an offer? I can think of a million keywords that would convert. I’m practically salivating when I think of all those dating websites that list “smoker/non smoker” as an option.

Just imagine the upsells. If you’ve got somebody who wants to give up smoking, it’s likely that they want to live a healthier life. They probably want to restore some youth along the way, right? Christ, I bet that ass is ridden in cellulite.

A little persuasive “offer-shotgunning” (that’s a double barrel hit), and you could have this desperate mope eating supplements for breakfast. My ethics are escaping me fast here. But you get the idea. I’m not suggesting for an instant that we, the affiliate marketing masses, would resort to such mindless aggressive marketing – but it’s easy to see how this niche market could be jacked up and turned in to a multi-billion sunlounger fetcher for some deep pocketed son of a bitch advertiser.

Quality products delivered by quality advertisers

Now, about those ethics. I honestly do believe that most rebills are a joke. Consumers have every right to feel ripped off by some of the products that I see shoved in to my weekly newsletter.

I don’t have a problem with the weight loss vertical, or colon cleansing, or skincare – or any of them. But what the industry needs is a bunch of advertisers with products that deliver the goods. Or more importantly, products that justify their monthly rebilling structure. We have some of the best marketers in the business making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just imagine how well they’d perform if you gave them something to work with.

The Google bizopp is a prime example of a product that has no rebill value. Have you looked at the inside of these “cash kits”? I have. Pretty much everything that you see on day one, is what you will see when the merchant processes your next charge.

Likewise, I don’t think a Google bizopp is the end of the world. As a concept, it’s perfectly legit. People really DO make money on Google. But if you’re going to sling a rebill without the General Attorney baying for your bacon, you need to justify that recurring charge somehow. Give the product some accumulating monthly value. Even if it’s just staggered delivery of the existing content. Anything.

I’d be happy to accept a $15 payout on an offer that doesn’t generate a firestorm of bad press and converts better as a result.

This is all nice to talk about. But the reality is that too many people are filling their pockets with money for there to be the significant changes that would be required. Unless, of course, drastic legal action says otherwise.

Tutoring style rebills

I’d love to see some rebills that aren’t designed to cater for a) the dumb, b) the vain or c) Middle Class America.

Let’s be honest. The last time you sat down to do a character assessment of the target market for your newest rebill – did you really branch beyond those characteristics? Yet the problem with appealing to these people is that they also happen to be some of the most indecisive motherfuckers walking the land. They want to lose weight one day, and they’re stuffing their faces the next.

I’d like to see some rebills designed for people who are genuinely committed to a cause. Take learning guitar for example. A lot of people out there are looking to learn an instrument and they’d probably pay for lessons to do so, in fact I know they do. One of my friends charges £25/hour to teach guitar. He books them in for a lesson every week.

If an advertiser could structure a good online program, providing additional content every month, you’d have a rebill that was perfectly justifiable and maybe just maybe I’d feel like less of an asshole when I went to sleep at night.

What about learning a language? A self help program that “slowburns” over time? There are so many concepts that would sell, that don’t have to be about popping pills and posting links online. These are markets that while profitable in 2009, will ultimately, in my opinion, be found out over time.