2012 | Finch Sells

Find The Bright Spots of Your Business

Mar 14 2012

I’ve just finished reading Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, and there’s one point in particular that resonated with me throughout.

If a task is too daunting, or your goals too distant, search for the bright spots and focus on what’s already working.

This is a simple but powerful concept of great significance to Internet Marketers. We are notorious multi-taskers. Our greatest fault is traditionally that we spread ourselves too thin and don’t see projects through to their conclusions.

Think of an SEO project as an example. In your head, you have a starting point – it might be the Google Keyword planner, or an exciting new niche you’ve heard about. And similarly, you have a final destination – typically a highly trafficked, super profitable web property that earns money while you sleep.

The hard part is travelling the road that connects those two destinations. More specifically, it’s the feeling of “What in the hell am I supposed to do now that I’ve launched this shit and I’m sick to death of it?”

Somewhere between defining our vision, and reaping the rewards of its fruition, we face problems; twists and turns that deter us from completing the project. The middle part – the long open road – is always the hardest.

To use the SEO project example, our open road might involve endless backlink building, content creation and keyword tracking. Much of this is laced with dead-ends and hours spent unproductively. The only way to finish these projects, to realise our vision, is to keep searching for the bright spots.

Ask yourself, “What is working? How can I build on it?”

Maybe one of the pages on your site is whoring the majority of the traffic. In which case, can you isolate the variables that are fuelling its popularity? Is it being shared socially? Why is it being shared socially? How can you create more content that ticks the same boxes?

This flexible mindset of learning on the road is vital if you’re going to connect your launch foundations with the end vision of a prosperous money machine.

A fixed mindset rarely ever works in business, and certainly not where SEO is concerned. We are much more successful when we pinpoint the areas that are bringing us the most success, and adapt our work going forward.

This is a fault that has troubled me no end in the past. I have a habit of being too concrete with my processes, and not allowing user feedback or valuable data to manifest itself and shape a more productive strategy going forward. I’m a pretty stubborn bastard, and it’s probably cost me a lot of money.

Switch certainly struck a chord with my stubborn side. I’ve started to re-evaluate my career objectives and match them up to the bright spots of my current business model. It’s resulted in me culling two entire dedicated servers and dropping about 20 domains, but I’m pretty sure I’ve made the right decision going forward.

If you feel like your wheels are spinning in the tracks, and you can’t seem to inch closer to your defining vision, the easiest and most damaging attitude is to focus at what you’re doing wrong. It’s much more productive to find the bright spots and use them as a guiding light. Hinge your business around what’s already working. Focus on your strengths.

I really enjoyed the first half of Switch. It packs in a lot of useful actionable advice that I haven’t read in any other change bible (and I’ve read my fair share). The book loses its focus around the halfway point and descends in to more of a tribute towards the authors’ favourite social psychologists, which might go unnoticed and appreciated by some, but for others will feel like a Robert Cialdini overdose. Still, a recommended read.

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Why Your Campaigns Die In 36 Hours Or Less

Mar 13 2012

What’s the difference between a campaign that prospers for months, and a campaign that crashes and burns in 36 hours? It’s normally a source of renewable traffic.

A renewable traffic source can be trusted to produce leads and sales consistently on auto-pilot. It’s like the wind turbine of affiliate marketing. Slow, ugly, and certainly not glamorous, but future-proof.

There aren’t many wind turbines left in affiliate marketing.

Google AdWords remains – perhaps the greatest renewable traffic source of them all – but it’s out of bounds for most CPA marketers. If we are to drag fresh eyeballs to our affiliate campaigns via Google, we typically have to engage in SEO warfare.

AdWords arbitrage was the perfect example of renewable traffic. A campaign could be launched on Day 1, optimised by Day 2, and still be profitable on Day 365. A good day’s work went a very long way on Google, and it still does, just not for the majority of scumbags like us.

The current slew of popular advertising platforms – think Facebook and Plentyoffish – are quite the opposite of future-proof turbines. You can make good money, but in doing so you’ll often feel like Guybrush Threepwood, sprinting from the hounds, having just pillaged a barrel of limited-supply oil.

Profit exists, but it’s usually achieved with smash-and-grab marketing.

Facebook and Plentyoffish, in the literal sense, are renewable traffic sources. Each site is growing at a rapid rate, and with that growth comes new users to advertise to. However, reaching them is not always easy. Perhaps more importantly, affiliates don’t seem to care about finding those fresh eyeballs.

They focus on monetizing the traffic source, without factoring in the supply of new traffic, which inevitably leads to questions like…

“Why do my campaigns fizzle out so quickly?”
“I was profitable for 2 days… and then the ROI nose-dived. What happened?”

Sustainability is achievable with careful planning. It just requires that you launch campaigns with a plan for Day 10, not just Day 1.

Smash-and-grab marketing is fine, but don’t fool yourself in to thinking your big break will come when you start making $500/day for all of about 36 hours.

Let’s take Plentyoffish as an example.

Why do Plentyoffish campaigns crash and burn so rapidly?

It’s normally because affiliates sacrifice volume for super targeted campaigns, or because they go broad without having a plan for keeping the campaign fresh.

Example:

What’s wrong with the long-term potential of a campaign that has 3 banners and targeting like this?

There’s one big problem: inevitable banner blindness.

Where is the new supply of traffic? Targeting all users under 600 logins will only be effective if you introduce a staggered approach to your creatives, which is something that I wrote about extensively in Premium Posts Volume 1.

Run this shit for more than 48 hours and what’s going to happen? Maybe you’ll score a profit in the first 24 hours (if you’re lucky), but sooner or later, users are going to grow sick of the same banners.

There’s also the microscopic nature of the campaign. Plentyoffish is a big traffic source, but it’s not that big. The slew of new Jewish females aged 25-35 can’t possibly keep up with the rush of new advertisers looking to make money from them. To have any hope of profiting over the long term, you need to have a structured campaign.

Here’s how you might sustain the example above with minimal ROI degradation:

Day 1:

Active Banners: A, B and C.

Day 2:

Active Banners: A, B and C.

Day 3:

Active Banners: D, E and F.

Day 4:

Active Banners: D, E and F.

You have four variations of the same campaign, each targeting different mini-demographics, or using new banners to keep the campaign fresh. You will lose volume, but you’ll gain stability and a cycle of profitability that lasts much longer.

Alternatively, you can focus your campaigns on targeting only the the newest members, so the ads should always stay fresh.

To do this, simply set your login count to below 50 and your ads will be reserved for the new fish.

This is how you turn limited reserves of traffic in to renewable traffic. Instead of pillaging a barrel of oil from a limited reservoir, you’re building a boring wind turbine – letting it accumulate profit over time – and moving on to the next one.

Note for Plentyoffish affiliates: You should also check out this post on how to tackle unstable conversion rates.

What about other traffic sources?

Facebook campaigns can be broken in to Group of States A and Group of States B.

Instead of targeting by country, you select 25 states in each campaign and rotate them through alternate days. You can then duplicate your 6 best ads so that half show on Day 1, and the others on Day 2. Mix and match as you go forward. You should see a dramatic reduction in the wear and tear on your CTR.

When advertising via PPV, the frequency cap is similarly important. I set it as low as possible, to the point where a user might only see an advert once every 4 weeks. This can deep-throat the hell out of the volume, but it’s worth it for stability. My hairline thanks me, and yours should too.

Eh, only kidding. I’m going bald.

Focusing your efforts on renewable traffic sources is the best way to avoid Monday mornings where last week’s work is staring at you from the bottom of the trash can. There’s nothing I find more de-motivating than busting my arse on campaigns that have a shelf life of 2 days.

Unless those days are generating floods of traffic and majestic profit, they are days wasted. It’s not worth breaking your back to get a campaign profitable if the foundations are likely to be torn up overnight. It’s fucking sandcastle economics. Why bother?

Recommended This Week

Want to read some of my more candid insight on how to build profitable affiliate campaigns? You be needing some Premium Posts, mon ami. There’s about 300 pages of crap that can actually make a difference to your success in this industry. Check them out here.
Any Facebook advertisers still out there? Check out Lots of Ads. Spy on the best performing ads in international markets, save money on your translations and learn from affiliates who are already making money (or perhaps wasting it recklessly?). The tool now supports 21 countries, which should be plenty to keep you busy.
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7 Unexpected Benefits of Being a Blogger

Mar 07 2012

Blogging has an awesome upside. There are many advantages, and not all of them revolve around making money.

If you’ve ever dabbled with the idea of launching your own blog, here are 7 unexpected benefits that might tip you towards your first post.

1. A Good Blog Makes Money

Okay, that’s get it out of the way, shall we? There’s no denying that one of the greatest benefits of running a successful blog is the money that it brings.

There are many ways to generate money. You can sell banner space, sling affiliate products, or use them as battlegrounds to take over the blogosphere with your own shady product creations. Many writers use their online reputations to pick up consulting gigs.

The money should never be your number one reason for starting a blog. But I also don’t buy the overused line that “I write to help others“. That’s bullshit. Every blogger has his own agenda, and it is usually either commercial or ego related. In my case, it’s a bit of both.

2. Free Shit is Nice

My girlfriend and I are both writers. She is a fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogger. I’m an affiliate marketing blogger. Guess who gets the better free shit? I’ll give you a clue. If you think it’s me, you need your head examined.

Over the last 18 months, my girlfriend has blagged an absolutely huge raid of freebies. She gets sent products every week. We’ve also enjoyed free holidays, free hotels, free Michelin starred dinners and a whole lot more.

My favourite freebie was an expenses-paid trip to an absolutely luscious hotel called The Library in Koh Samui. Imagine waking up to this in the morning…

…and knowing that you got it because you splurged some opinions on a WordPress once upon a time.

So what freebies do I receive as a blogger in the Internet Marketing space? Well, other than the occasional trip to visit a network, and the ‘thank you’ Christmas presents, the biggest perks are the free access to paid services and products.

It’s not five star hotel material, but I’ve saved thousands of pounds with free copies of products that have come in very useful for my business. Popular forums like Stack That Money and Aff Playbook have unleashed a wealth of information that has been both profitable and practical to my business. And of course, it tastes even sweeter when it’s free.

I regularly get blitzed with software and tools before they go public. Not that I end up reviewing many products, but I simply wouldn’t receive them if I hadn’t established a blog.

I’ve learnt that free shit is good, which is why my next blog will probably be called FinchTravels.

3. Preferential Treatment

In affiliate marketing, having a blog isn’t just the trademark of a huge ego. It’s a valuable device for getting preferential treatment, and for deterring shady companies from screwing you over.

Many affiliate networks will have no problem in stiffing a loud-mouthed publisher who doesn’t follow their guidelines to a tee. But if you have an influential blog, those same networks will always think twice before messing with you.

I’ve heard many horror stories of new affiliates getting rough treatment that simply wouldn’t happen if they had a platform to voice their grievances. It’s deterrence, and no more. I’ve never directed a complaint at a company over my blog, and that’s probably because they bend over backwards to make sure I don’t have a reason to.

The downside to having an influential blog is the enormous amount of sucking up that comes your way. Internet Marketing harbours a lot of fake individuals, and if you have a platform where they can promote their message, you’ll find the urchins congregating around your inbox like flies to a turd.

4. Stay Social in an Unsocial World

My industry is not the sort where your day ends at 5pm, and you can hit the town to wash away your weekly sins with seven pints and a Jägerbomb.

The opportunity to wade through London’s bars and clubs doesn’t present itself very often now that I work at home in the suburbs. Since I quit the day job, my social life has become something that requires effort. It demands jumping on a train and heading in the opposite direction to the hoards commuting home wearing disconsolate frowns.

So how does blogging come in to this? Well, firstly, I wouldn’t call blogging a form of socialising. As I look around me, I’m accompanied by a Maltipom and a bunch of sausage roll wrappers.

Social, my arse…

But what blogging does offer is an opportunity to express yourself explicitly.

When I blog, it’s like a tsunami outpouring of whatever is frustrating me on a given day. Occasionally, people will leave comments telling me I’m a closet genius, although more often they’ll compare me to a complete dumbarse. Hey, whatever, that’s okay.

Simply expressing myself and reading the comments has a therapeutic appeal. It opens the walls of my home office and assures me that there are other people out there facing the same challenges.

If you’re working a lonely job – like Internet Marketing, or coding, or anything that happens to be remote – running a blog can help you connect to your peers. It takes away the illusion of isolation.

If Jack Nicholson had a blog in The Shining, maybe he’d have kept his shit together.

5. Lend Authority to Other Projects

Assuming you’re building a blog that is just as focused on you as the brand, as it is on the subject matter, there’s enormous potential to use it to lend authority to other projects you may be working on.

Launching a new website from scratch is a tiresome struggle on many fronts. There’s the SEO, the initial word of mouth, the seeding of fan pages. Christ, the process can suck the giblets out of even the most patient of souls.

Having a blog to lend authority to your new projects is an excellent headstart. It’s like a piggyback over the first few weeks of trauma, tantrums and ball-ache.

I actively cross-promote my projects, and if I ever want to give a new site a boost, I can generally drop a link to lend some authority. This works both in the eyes of interested readers, and the Google juggernaut.

Blogging gets a bad name for relying too heavily on mindless self-promotion, which is probably justified. But mindless self-promotion rocks when you can get away with it. Why the hell not? Nobody has to read your drivel. Most just choose to anyway.

6. Getting a Job is Much Easier

How many people spend 20 years traipsing through education only to find ‘the dream job’ is still out of reach once they’ve graduated?

I posted several months ago that the blog is becoming the new degree.

Anybody can write a résumé, but the résumé shines only a tiny spotlight on an individual’s talent. It doesn’t reveal much, and it will always be weighted relatively against the next submission in the pile, which is often as thick as a J.K Rowling brainfart.

I advocate blogs as a great starting point for expanding your career opportunities. They reveal far more about your understanding of a subject than an introspective résumé ever could.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t list your qualifications and achievements somewhere on the site. If you have them, anyway. I’m a high school dropout, and school is something I try not to talk about.

The beauty of a blog is that you will be judged by the thoughts, arguments and knowledge you put forward. Every comment, every subscriber and every reader is a testament of your influence – even if they don’t agree with you.

Blogging is a way of proving your worth that doesn’t cost a penny.

Unfortunately, if your dream job involves rising through the football ranks or becoming a world renowned brain surgeon, you should probably look elsewhere. If somebody is operating on my skull, I want to know that they’ve been to university and paid their dues, not that they’ve dabbled with some WordPress widgets in their basement.

7. I Would Explode if I Didn’t Have One

Writing is a creative outlet. It’s a scientifically accepted mood improver.

Ever since I was 16, I’ve kept some form of journal or blog to document my various moments of insanity over the last eight years.

The vast majority of those outpourings I cannot look back on with anything other than disgust and a beetroot face. I find it impossible to read my own writing, even on subjects as notoriously heartless and cold as affiliate marketing.

Regardless, writing has a therapeutic quality to me. Just by putting in to words whatever I’m feeling; professional, personally, even politically; I can isolate the mood swings and stay focused on my actual goals.

It’s a tough process to explain to anybody who doesn’t share the feeling. I’m sure many readers will treat the idea of therapeutic writing with looks of disdain. Writing is certainly not a universal passion.

Nonetheless, I would explode if I didn’t blog. It’s probably the biggest benefit of them all. Making money, expressing myself, and not exploding. The only incentives I need.

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