Finch's Tedious Rants | Finch Sells

ZeroPark Does Not Want Clean Ad Spend

Oct 20 2015

I have had hundreds of campaigns rejected over the years; many quite rightly.

Today marks the first time I have had a campaign rejected for the reason:

“No monetisation”

Yes, ZeroPark rejected a campaign because I had made no attempt to monetise the traffic that I was buying.

There was a good reason for this lack of monetisation on my part.

The site in question was an online magazine — not an affiliate website — and I launched it three days ago.

Naturally, I contacted support, thinking it should be pretty easy to resolve.

I was pushed to provide more information:

Hi,
please let us know how you plan to monetize the visits you send to this landing page.
Best,

To which I reply…

I have no plans to monetise the traffic.
I launched the site three days ago.
I wanted to test xxx related keywords to see if these users would stick around and engage with the site, hence the Google analytics in my tracking code.

Sounds pretty reasonable, right?

No plans to monetise the site, but wanting to test ZeroPark traffic to see if its users would engage with the website.

Sounds like normal brand advertising to me.

Not so…

“Hi,
such a campaign will not be approved on our network.
If there is no monetization whatsoever then it makes absolutely no sense to send visitors to a website.
Best regards,”

Now, call me a cynic, but is this not the most retarded ad policy in the history of self-serve advertising?

I’m not allowed to buy advertising on ZeroPark, for a completely legitimate white-hat website with no tracking link… because ZeroPark is concerned that I won’t make money from it.

Take a bow, lads.

Take a bow indeed.

A shit experience, with a platform I like, backed up by some astounding logic that I will never forget as long as I am buying advertising:

If there is no monetization whatsoever then it makes absolutely no sense to send visitors to a website.

UPDATE:

ZeroPark have since contacted me to explain their reasoning behind the ad rejection:

Links pointing at innocuous pages are a common footprint of cloakers and unscrupulous advertisers spreading malware — of which there is no shortage.

An affiliate announcing that he has no plans to monetise a campaign is likely to trigger a red flag. And, it appears, in this case it triggered many.

ZP accepted that the campaign should have been approved, and that the back-and-forth emailing shouldn’t have escalated as it did.

For my part, I regret blowing my gasket in public.

If there’s something we can all learn from this moment, it’s that “it makes absolutely no sense to send visitors to a website“.

(I want that on a t-shirt.)

How 1 Weird Table Keeps Me Motivated in the Morning

May 20 2015

Affiliates have a daily scorecard.

“Profit per day.”

There are many ways you can track your progress in this industry.

The one method that doesn’t lie is profit taken.

The problem with measuring profit per day is that it exposes your morning ritual to one of two negative emotions:

Complacency and impatience.

A good day can breed complacency.

A bad day can breed impatience.

Either emotion can have a ruinous effect on your decision making.

And that’s why we should look beyond daily performance metrics if we want to stay motivated.

One of the methods I use involves gamification and an imaginary league table.

Hold on tight. This could get a little geeky.

‘League of Affiliates’

At the start of every month, I create an imaginary league table of twenty affiliates and how much they will have earned by the end of the month.

I set prizes for finishing at the top.

Here is how the table might look for an intermediate, mid-level affiliate:

Make sure that first place is attainable, and not so far detached from your current affiliate level that it triggers a nose bleed to look at.

In this example, $30,000 profit represents ‘the perfect month’.

What I like to do is tie 1st place to a big reward.

Something that I really, really want, or somewhere that I’d really like to go.

It could be a dream holiday; a big purchase; the proverbial jackpot that keeps you ticking.

If you have debts, it could be ‘Pay down Credit Card X‘ or ‘Wipe X% off the mortgage‘.

The idea being that if in 30 days time you have equalled or bettered the John Doe affiliate in 1st place, you get to treat yourself.

And not feel guilty about it.

I also create rewards for positions 2-4.

These positions should represent very good performance relative to what you would normally expect.

The rewards might range from a fancy week-long holiday in second place, to dinner at a top restaurant in fourth place.

For beginner affiliates, lower targets and smaller rewards will suffice.

(If you really want to be ironic, you can set a 5th place reward as a trip to the underbelly of Europe on Thursday night — and a Liverpool shirt. That’ll fucking teach you for getting complacent.)

In one of my own recent tables, I rewarded a ‘top four’ finish with the laser eye surgery I’ve been wanting for five years.

It was a real incentive to keep pushing myself for 30 days.

At the bottom end of the table is your absolute minimum income target. Set it in 17th place — just above the relegation zone.

No rewards for surviving relegation, or for doing a Stoke.

(‘Stoke’ is what I call my pub quiz team in Bangkok, btw. Or it was until last week — when we became QPR.)

If you succeed in getting yourself relegated, I’m not sure of the best action.

Perhaps a fist in the balls and a change of niche.

How does this improve my motivation?

Next to my table in Excel I have a running tally of my total profit in the current month. This is divided by the number of days in the month so far.

I take my average profit per day, times it by 30, and the table will tell me what position I’m in… and what rewards (if any) I have to look forward to.

Every day is another chance to improve my position in the table.

Sound fucking crazy yet?

Probably.

I hope so.

This form of gamification may seem obscene to some, but I get valuable motivation from it as a form of data/progress visualisation.

Without a running monthly tally, it’s tempting to ‘write off’ bad days, or reward yourself prematurely after one good day.

Most importantly, the table is directly tied to your goals.

I reset mine every month.

I set new rewards that I have to earn.

Visual representation of your performance is better than merely writing what you earned yesterday on a post-it note, soon to be buried by tomorrow’s avalanche of data.

It’s so easy to become obsessed with the last 24 hours… or the next 24 hours.

But a month is a loooooong time in affiliate marketing.

Use that knowledge to deflect any impatience or complacency that might be creeping in to your morning ritual.

Monthly targets
+
Imaginary competition
+
Real-time ‘keeping score’
+
Rewards you actually want
=
A healthy fire under the arse.

What unusual ways do you have to stay motivated?

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK:

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The Premium Posts 2015 Edition is sponsored by Adsimilis. You know all about Adsims, right? They are one of the best CPA networks in the business. If you run any kind of mobile, dating or sweepstakes… then sign up an affiliate account, ca-ching.

P.S. You can read 40 pages of Premium Posts 2015 for FREE by opting in to my monthly newsletter below:

Dear Affiliate, Are You Made Out of Sheep?

May 15 2015

Are you an expendable affiliate?

Or a great affiliate?

Only two steps separate you from the best, or the worst:

Step 1: Deliver more revenue than you take in commission.
Step 2: Generate this commission at a profit.

An affiliate offers no value if he neglects Step 1.

His business goes broke if he neglects Step 2.

Every day, hundreds of new affiliates conspire to cheat this founding principle of performance marketing.

And every day, they fail.

Like a herd of hopeless sheep.

If you want to become an indispensable affiliate, there’s one thing you need to understand.

The Value Chain

Affiliates who are capable of delivering paying customers, whilst sustaining their own margins, are a dying breed.

Seriously, newbies…

The numbers are against you.

The majority of affiliates fail to turn any profit on the leads they generate.

They lose money.

A small percentage go on to turn some profit — for themselves.

(Their paymasters are unable to translate those leads in to sales, so the affiliate is cast aside and banned from sending any more. Forever the bridesmaid.)

A tiny percentage of affiliates succeed in producing profit for both parties.

They are the affiliates who understand the Value Chain.

This post is to explain how you can become one of the lucky guys.

The Problem with Optimising For Leads

There are three main models you can use to make money.

PPL — Get paid per lead delivered.
PPS — Get paid per sale delivered.
Revshare — Get a percentage of the customer’s lifetime spend.

By far the most popular model is PPL (pay-per-lead).

Why?

It’s simple.

And easier to optimise.

Leads are faster and cheaper to attract than paying customers.

Breaking the long list of 0s from Conversions adds some signal to your data.

Unfortunately, this signal is what leads so many affiliates astray.

A lead is only ever worth $0.00 — unless it becomes a sale.

Optimising… for LOLs?

What do you see?

You see your total revenue generated for the day, and hopefully some profit.

If you are promoting PPL offers, this information is purely theoretical.

But that’s not how most of us treat it.

We treat conversion events as gospel.

They are not merely ‘leads’ to us.

They are hefty transactions where value was added, our methods were vindicated, and everybody got a little richer.

Except that’s rarely what happens.

And too often our leads are about as valuable as a fart in the Hadron Collider.

The truth is…

A business model focused on optimising for leads will only last as long as you can find new suckers to sell them to.

“But Finch! A birdie told me my lead quality is awesome! The advertiser wants more leads!”

Whilst this is great, uplifting news for any affiliate to hear — it shouldn’t be such a surprise.

It certainly shouldn’t be the Email of Reckoning that it is for so many.

You should know exactly how many sales you are delivering.

Because it should be the only campaign variable that makes a difference to every single decision you make.

You have to measure sales.

(I’m afraid this may appear comical advice to anybody but affiliate marketers and Silicon Valley.)

Sales has to be the primary metric that governs how you optimise your campaigns.

That banner with the insane CTR and twice as many leads as your next best creative?

It could be horse shit.

If it doesn’t lead to sales, it’s even worse.

That placement where you’re pausing after 24 hours at a -50% loss?

It could be gold.

A lead priced at $2 might actually be worth $XXX — if it produces a sale.

Most affiliates swear by their data, without asking:

“HOW FUCKING USEFUL IS THE DATA?”

If that data reveals thousands of conversions with a lifetime value of $0.00, and no way of tracking the sales, then you have to question what exactly you are truly ‘optimising’.

(Because it sounds like choosing whether you want to face left or right, whilst buried firmly in the recess of your own dark arsehole.)

Let me ask you:

Are you busy optimising your landing page for more leads — instead of better leads?
Are you obsessed with attracting a higher CTR to your banner — instead of more paying customers?
Do you cull placements because they have a higher cost-per-lead, regardless of any sales they might produce?

If you answered YES:

How will you ever know that your To Do list is actually worth doing?

Let’s go back to basics.

Step 1: Deliver more revenue than you take in commission.

You can’t measure an increase in revenue if your currency is the theoretical value of a lead.

I’m stating the obvious, but acting on this can have a profound effect on your bottom line.

If nothing else, you will escape the herd.

The irony is that Step 2 — Generate this commission at a profit — will become a lot clearer once you start measuring the correct data.

And so will the sense of control you have over your work.

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK:

In case you missed it, my brand new 2015 edition of Premium Posts is available now. Need a recipe for affiliate success in 2015? You won’t find a single resource that covers as much ground as this. 375 pages of my very best tips and strategies.

The Premium Posts 2015 Edition is sponsored by Adsimilis. You know all about Adsims, right? They are one of the best CPA networks in the business. If you run any kind of mobile, dating or sweepstakes… then sign up an affiliate account, ca-ching.

P.S. You can read 40 pages of Premium Posts 2015 for FREE by opting in to my monthly newsletter below: