2009 | Finch Sells

Christmas Can Kiss My Balls & Other Affiliate Tips

Dec 16 2009

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.

The Challenges Of Full Time Affiliate Marketing

Dec 09 2009

Here comes another entry to my Affiliate Marketing Lifestyle series. Or as PPC.bz’s barman so elegantly put it:

“Dear Diary,

BAaaaaAAAaaaaaAaaaaahhhh!”

I would save myself from the reputation as the emo voice of affiliate marketing, but I think this is something that doesn’t really get spoken about enough. The number of part time affiliates far outweighs the number of us monkey riding this industry for a day job. I get the chance to speak to a lot of relatively new affiliates. Many have aspirations to jack in their 9-5’s and they want to know the best way to get there fast.

I find myself juggling between the advice of “fight for your dreams” and “you fucking retard, get back on the checkout desk, you’re gonna starve”.

I’ve said over and over again that a career in affiliate marketing is just that – a career. It’s not some casual job description you pin on your badge while sunbathing in the Caribbean. Your lifestyle will change completely in those first few months that you decide to go it alone.

Many affiliates forget that for whatever success they’ve been having with one hot shot campaign, it doesn’t come close to the guarantee of a monthly pay cheque. No matter how insignificant your work wages may seem in comparison, they are guaranteed.

When I first started making significant money with CPA marketing, you would find me sitting in coffee shops with a scrapbook. I’d sit there calculating how much cash I’d have earned by Month X and Month Y if I continued earning X ammount per day. This is the single most dangerous thing you can do as a part-time affiliate – especially if those numbers are pinned on a small handful of volatile campaigns.

You only have to look at the recent Google account bannings to see how a money spinning regime can collapse overnight. I’ve rattled on about diversifying for months now. If you’re serious about doing affiliate marketing full-time, you should be comfortable moving in to any niche and working with any traffic source.

People ask me how much money I think they should be making before they give up their day jobs. Firstly, how the fuck should I know? And secondly, basing your career decisions on current earnings is like deciding to climb K2 because you fancy a workout. You’re going to run in to the unexpected, you absolute psychopath.

I know this because I’ve made some pretty drastic decisons with my own career. I quit my day job having branched out in to only two traffic sources, and a handful of offers. By all accounts, I should be slapping myself with naive disgust right about now. I’m not because I had the initiative to learn quickly when I saw the danger signs.

If you’re going to move in to this industry full-time, here are the immediate challenges you face.

Managing your time – What is the point in going full-time if you’re simply going to wake up at 11am and watch your stats all day? You should have just stayed in the day job and enjoyed your temporary riches with the security of a guaranteed pay cheque to underline it. Hell, if you’re doing that, you CAN afford to splash out on the luxuries in life.

This is a challenge for affiliates both experienced and new. Assuming you saw your success as a part-time affiliate, you’ve probably become accustomed to the idea of seeing a return on a few hours of work. It’s not so easy to motivate yourself when you know that riches are such a beautiful sight to watch when they’re flowing like gold from a tap. Unfortunately, for all of the three hours it took you to setup that initial jackpot campaign – you could spend the rest of your lifetime trying to find the next one.

If you expect to be able to turn on profit like a tap, you’re digging your own grave.

Instead of being entranced by the money I saw beginning to flow when I first hit success, I chose to remember the many hours and desperate times where shit hadn’t gone to plan. As hard as it may be, you have to turn your back on the allure of whatever riches you’re earning and get back to work. Otherwise when the tap runs out, you’re back to square one.

Social sacrifice – Do you really understand the true involvement of running your own business? If you’re managing your time correctly, you are going to be busy. If you don’t feel that you’re busy, you’re probably not doing enough to stay ahead of the pack.

Nothing prepared me for the personal burden of becoming entirely responsible for my own finances. I used to be socializing at every opportunity. Down the pub on Monday, drunk in a club on Tuesday and travelling out of town by Friday.

These days, a night out rarely passes me by where business is not somewhere close to the forefront of my thoughts. Some would see that as a prison. I’m passionate about what I do though and working has always been an enjoyable experience.

Whatever social gain you think you’re going to find by quitting your day job, rest assured that it will be neutralized by the sheer weight of responsibility that comes with slinging shit full-time.

Staying positive through hardships – I’ll be the first to admit that when I worked for other companies, I was never shy of a bitch or moan. If something went wrong that I was personally accountable for, I could play pin the blame and deflect attention from my own failures.

The biggest challenge for me over this last year has been embracing a new attitude. You simply have to be prepared to smile at the shit that gets thrown in your face. It happens every day. Every morning I open my email and instead of forwarding various tasks to my colleagues like I used to, I add them to my own to-do list. There are constant tests of your character. It may be an email that your Adwords account has been suspended, that an offer has been pulled, that your server was down for a few hours last night.

You can’t nonchallently forward these issues on to your boss. You ARE your boss. And your pay cheque will be the one taking the hit if you don’t stay on top of them.

There have been nights in recent memory where I’ve been sat at my desk, eyes aching, wondering just how I can turn a campaign around or get back on track. A part time affiliate would probably think “eh, was good while it lasted”, and that’s exactly where you have to stay strong. The industry is so volatile that if you stick to what you know you do well, it won’t be long before you see a return on it. Just be prepared to lose money and take a battering to your confidence in the process. It can be a lonely struggle.

I’ve already written several posts about how you should be investing for the future. It’s the single most important thing you can be doing to alleviate some of the stress. Short term fast burning affiliate campaigns are a recipe for long term unrest if you’re not moving methodically towards a more sustainable business.

Dating CPA vs. Dating CPS

Dec 02 2009

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that dating offers are hot shit in affiliate marketing.

The dating niche is one of the few markets that we can all trust to still be here in a few years time. There will forever be a demand for matchmaking websites. Some dude will always be looking to improve his sorry excuse of a love life from the comfort of his stained bed sheets. And even if Facebook takes over the world, we’ll still have Zoosk. So you better get used to “Want A Girlfriend? It’s FREE!”.

Dating has become such an integral cornerstone of CPA marketing that we sometimes forget to test new business models. If you’re one of the guys who combs a network for the first $5 free profile submission going, you’re probably missing out on some ripe marketing opportunities.

Most affiliates assume that the CPA model will always pay better than a CPS offer. Is that the case? Well, have you tried it for yourself? Then you probably should. For all the expert advice of split testing ad copies, it seems pretty ridiculous that an affiliate could forget to split test lead/sale.

It was only recently that I took a few hours out of my day to do a little market research. I stumbled across a UK based dating network called EasyDate.

Two offers that I regularly see flouted on Facebook – Be Naughty and Date The UK – are both listed on EasyDate. The only difference is that the street payout for both is a whooping Â£4.50. For the trans-atlantic amongst us, that’s approximately $7.50/lead.

I’ve scoured most networks for these offers and the street payout is normally between $5-$5.50. Even with a bump you’re not going to get close to $7.50/lead. So what’s the catch?

The quality of your traffic, my friend. EasyDate is a performance based network, which is enough to send the alarm bells ringing for the majority of dating affiliates – myself included.

pay-per-lead

What the flashy screencap above demonstrates is the margin that the advertiser is looking to deal with in terms of leads to sales.

To receive the maximum lead payout of Â£4.50, you need to be averaging 15% for your lead-sale conversion rate. Even if you have no burning desire to test this, it makes for pretty interesting reading. On most CPA affiliate networks, we never get to see the invisible “quality score” that tells an advertiser whether our traffic is converting. But if you’ve ever had an email stating that you need to improve the quality of your traffic, this is why. Your leads aren’t backing out in the sales department.

Most affiliates will look at the chart above and think, “Damn, I’ll carry on sending my junk traffic ’til I’m kicked off the offer, cheers for coming”. That’s fair enough. It gets a bit more interesting when you look at the CPS program though.

pay-per-sale

Â£25 for a sale? That’s $45 for a dating subscription, no scratchy payout by anybody’s standards.

The downside to promoting a sale based offer is the lack of visible progress unless you start converting. There’s little way of knowing if your traffic is producing a lead or simply closing the window to head elsewhere. You could be making $40 for leads that never subscribed to the full program – instead of $0 for zero sales. But you’ll never know if you’re only being paid by the sale.

This got me thinking. Well, what if I could continue to send my traffic to a lead-based offer, and somehow seperate the premium converting traffic and funnel it through to the Â£25 payout instead?

If you could just know in advance which leads are most likely to become sales, you could filter them from the trail and send them to the CPS link. Besides collecting your usual payouts for the leads, you’d receive the occasional Â£25 sale. It has the potential to blast your ROI to much higher ground. We already know that the advertiser is happy to give you the maximum payout if you can hang on at a 15% lead-to-sale ratio. This tells us a little about the expected conversion rates – particularly when we look at the payouts a network will offer.

The problem is seperating that traffic and picking out the users who are obviously willing to spend for a shag. To do this, you need to understand the true essence of delivering quality leads. You need to understand which segment of the market are buyers, and which are merely tryers. In dating terms, you need to seperate the desperate from the really desperate.

I’d also like to point out that I’m not suggesting you hijack your own quality score by sending the best leads to Offer X and sabotaging Offer Y with junk traffic.

It simply makes sense that if you have somebody reaching your landing page by the search term “cheapest dating site”, you’re looking at a potential sale. Why send them through the lead offer when you could do a little PHP link switching and funnel them to the CPS offer instead? Sure, you will lose some leads. But it makes a lot more sense than setting up a CPS campaign and then sending a bunch of clicks from “free” infested search terms.

It’s much easier to implement this form of traffic control when you’re promoting via PPC. If you have access to the search term, you can make a sensible guess at whether the user is a buyer or a tryer. The presence of “free” in the search term should be an immediate trigger to send them to the CPA offer. In fact, you shouldn’t even be using “free” in your ad copies. That’s going to fuck up your quality score regardless of anything else.

Beyond simply analyzing the search terms, I can think of one or two methods of filtering potential buyers by simply getting cheeky with your landing page. You could even resort to having two links on the same page if you’re clever about it.

Whatever you choose to do, moving in to Dating CPS offers is always going to be a gamble. I’d recommend getting in touch with your affiliate manager. You know those emails you get sent every now and then about low quality traffic? It works in reverse. Get your AM to ask the advertiser how your traffic is performing. If they’re happy with the ratios, it’s a good sign that you could be lining your pockets with some extra money by opening the floodgates on a little CPS.

If you know that you have quality traffic, you’re selling yourself short on those $4.50 payouts.

I highly recommend you head on over to EasyDate if you’re working in the UK dating market. They have pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale, and a hybrid model where you get paid for both. Maybe your best option is to stick with what’s already working. It doesn’t make sense to ignore what’s out there though. Go figure it out for yourself.