General Affiliate Marketing | Finch Sells

Will You Really Earn More Money In 2012?

Jan 03 2012

One of the most predictable New Year’s Resolutions for an Affiliate Marketer goes like this:

“I will learn how to control my time. I will defeat procrastination. 2012 better watch out ’cause I’m coming to kick its arse…”

The statement of intent is admirable, but far too many of us fail to learn from mistakes of the previous twelve months. Do we expect them to just disappear? Irrationally, yes we do. We wait for a new dawn, pretend that we’re all the wiser, and then plunge head-first in to the same mistakes yet again.

I would guess that at least half of the people reading this blog woke up on January 1st with the desire to procrastinate less. We see it as the great barrier to achievement. “Well, if I could only bring my mind to focus on all the plans I’ve set for myself, I’d be as rich as my whiteboard says.”

Procrastination is a buzz term that bloggers love to blog about, writers love to write about and speakers love to speak about. It’s a universal phenomenon. To beat procrastination is to pin jelly to a wall. Just when you think you’ve cleared your head of all the distractions and white noise, along comes another unforeseen circumstance to obliterate your carefully laid plans. We end up feeling sorry for ourselves. No matter how hard we search for solutions, we still fall in to the same black hole lapses of productivity.

If you don’t challenge yourself to tackle the problem at its source, you might as well pencil in ‘beating procrastination’ as your annual challenge for 2013, 2014, and every subsequent year for the rest of your life.

So what is the source of procrastination? Ultimately, it’s the failure to foresee your own weaknesses. It’s not a lack of application, or desire, or ambition. Procrastination is simply what happens when you plan a future without addressing the fragility of the decision-making by your future self.

We can all assess procrastination logically in moments like these where we’re reading the obvious in black and white. Yes, we know it’s bad. Yes, we know it’s a hindrance. And yes, we’re all going to make an extra effort to conquer the problem. It’s natural to feel vaccinated against procrastination while you’re reading about it. Unfortunately, there is no vaccination. Just sensible planning.

To reduce the procrastination struggle, you need to make contingency plans for your future self; a much weaker feebler-minded self that has long forgotten your ambitions, and wishes only to cave in to short term satisfaction. Pretending that this alter-ego doesn’t exist is the fastest way to guarantee failure.

A naive New Year’s Resolution is to vow not to spend hours checking Facebook every day, using the thought of all the extra work you’d get done as an incentive.

A realistic New Year’s Resolution is to vow not to spend hours checking Facebook every day, and then LeechBlock the motherfucker so that its physically inaccessible between 9am and 8pm.

The difference between these resolutions is that one is driven by an idealistic hope that temptation will diminish given the right incentive. Much wiser than such hope, is a contingency plan for your weaker future self. Procrastination is just a term we give to the many temptations that control our short term decisions. Temptation is here to stay, and so is our habit of caving in to it like victims of a venus flytrap – unless we learn to tackle the temptation in advance.

Procrastination is not like smoking. It’s not a dirty habit that we can overcome with the right incentive. One day, even the most ardent nicotine fiend may find that cigarettes just don’t hold the same appeal. Such success stories prove that beating an addiction is painful but possible. Beating procrastination is not. It would require evolutionary re-programming that probably won’t be possible in our lifetimes. We are hardwired to cave in to short term temptation much more willingly than we will hold out for long term satisfaction. And that’s why you find yourself balls deep on Facebook when you should be hard at work.

If we can’t eliminate procrastination, what can we do? We can prepare for the temptations that have fucked us in the past. We can’t remove temptation, but we can control behaviour by putting our future selves on a metaphorical leash.

Here are some examples of steps an affiliate marketer can take to become more productive:

1. Pick a new traffic source, any new traffic source, and deposit $1000 immediately. The simple act of committing money to a project will do more for your ‘scaling’ than any amount of scribbling in a notepad.

2. Use LeechBlock to physically remove access to time wasting sites. Don’t just hope that you won’t waste your time. Physically stop your future self! There will be moments in the day where your attention is slipping and that future self sees no harm in a quick 5 minute session on Facebook. Make it impossible.

3. Find a business partner with a superior motive. Once upon a time, I built websites thinking the carrot of money in the future would inspire me to see them through to completion. I soon realised that this carrot would disintegrate when a better idea came along. Naturally, your future self has a bias towards ideas born in the present. If you want to really nail a big project, take on a business partner who is even more motivated than yourself. (Hint: Somebody who gives a damn about the niche.) Use their energy and passion to maintain your spark for projects when the honeymoon period (aka. the domain registration and WordPress installation) wears off. Let them know that part of their job is to kick your arse in to action.

4. Form your own mastermind group and set a daily recap. Sharing knowledge with other affiliates is one of the fastest ways to progress. I recommend kickstarting 2012 by forming a small mastermind group with 2 or 3 other marketers in the same position. Make sure there’s a group discussion at the end of each day. Use it to share your progress. Nobody wants to be the worst performer in the group, so use that competitive pride as inspiration to get a bloody move on.

5. Announce products before they’re ready to be launched. If you run a blog, or any kind of community, and still haven’t ticked off that 2012 must-do of releasing your own product, why not create a sense of urgency? Announce it in advance, tell everybody the launch date, and let your followers hold you accountable. Even better, promise 50% off if you fail to deliver it on time.

I hope everybody is optimistic and determined to make 2012 their best year yet, no matter how depressing my contrarian approach may seem. Never be afraid of making a fresh start and setting tough targets. Just don’t be so foolish as to make the same mistakes again.

Recommended This Week

Make sure you grab a copy of Premium Posts Volume 3. Featuring over 75 pages of tips and techniques to help you dominate the dating niche, Volume 3 should give your campaigns a nice boost for 2012. Download a copy here.
If you’re working in the dating market, check out Adsimilis. Definitely one of the better networks with a wide range of dating offers, all on high payouts, including lots of stuff in Europe and South America. I think you’ll like them.
If you’re a new reader, please add me to your RSS. Also follow me on Twitter. Thanks for reading. Happy Motherfuckin’ 2012.

How To Sell 7 CPA Offers On 1 Landing Page

Dec 28 2011

Three years ago, when I was still coming to terms with the good, the bad and the ugly in our industry, I had a brainsurge. I saw a campaign opportunity that would take upselling to the next level. It was perhaps the lowest I’ve stooped as an affiliate marketer, which coincided quite predictably with the best ROI I’ve seen to date.

The theme was simple.

I was to design a New Year’s Resolution flog. An epic landing page linking the most cited resolutions to some simple crazy tips, and a juicy affiliate offer that would cash in on each desire.

“Find out how I achieved these seven CRAZY New Years Resolutions in 2009…”

Written, of course, from the perspective of a frighteningly ordinary (and now incredibly successful) Every Joe Average. The flog took the seven most obvious New Year’s Resolutions and wove them in to a story of remarkable achievement. My character had been down on his luck at the end of 2008. He decided to turn his life around.

To do so, he set not one but seven New Year’s Resolutions.

1. To lose weight
2. To improve his income
3. To find love
4. To improve fitness
5. To quit smoking
6. To quit drinking
7. To learn something new

The flog explained how with the help of a few unusual tips (the more unusual the better, trust me) – and some relatively unknown products – he succeeded in making the last year the best of his life… the launch pad to enormous success. His resolution this year is to share the success story; to reveal to a select few the secret products that helped him, and of course, to spread a little festive cheer.

The beauty of New Year’s Resolutions is self-explanatory. They read like a list of bestselling affiliate offers. I didn’t find it difficult to match any of the resolutions to a suitable affiliate offer. If you’re wondering, ‘learn something new’ was crowbarred in to a pitch for the various Rocket Language packs on ClickWank.

I rarely speak too highly of ClickWank, but if there’s ever a time to push one of their links, it’s on the sixth upsell. Just don’t make a habit of it.

With a little tinkering, what I had on my hands was the grandaddy of all flogs – albeit one that would be profitable for only a short period of time. Pretty much all New Year’s Resolution traffic was fair game, since 90% of the users were going to associate themselves with at least one of the resolutions. It was the making of my wettest dreams, and the ROI was insane.

As the months have passed, I’ve become much more conservative; in all walks of life, but particularly where risque moneymaking schemes like this are concerned. I don’t wish to take the moral high ground – affiliates can choose to focus their businesses where they see fit. It’s none of my business. But I don’t plan to roll out a 2011 take on the New Year’s Resolution flog, which is why I’m happy to post about it.

I’m sure somebody reading this now will run wild with such a campaign on the Adsonars and Pulse360s of the world. But it doesn’t have to be scandalous. You don’t have to sling 7 different fragrances of the same bullshit in scumbag flogging style. You can use the New Year’s Resolution angle to improve just about any sales funnel.

Now is the perfect time to give your landing pages a face-lift with some hard selling copy; the type that appeals to the resolution setting nature of your users. It’s not hard to see how dating can be assaulted from a ‘make this a better year’ angle. The same for weight loss, bizopps and especially those offers related to going back to school.

I’ve always seen January 1st goal-setting as an exercise for the fickle minded. But from a marketing perspective, it’s a priceless window of opportunity. When else do you have large swaths of the population convincing themselves that it’s time to change? They’re doing half of our job for us!

Christ, it’s the only time in the year where the masses are searching for the shit we spend half our working hours trying to convince them they need!

Don’t miss out on the New Year’s Resolution madness. There’ll be plenty more opportunities to make your money, but rarely will they arrive gift-wrapped with a bow tie. This is the time to bank your Christmas bonus, seal the summer holiday and start 2012 with a bang.

Recommended This Week

Make sure you grab a copy of Premium Posts Volume 3. Featuring over 75 pages of tips and techniques to help you dominate the dating niche, Volume 3 should give your campaigns a nice boost for 2012. Download a copy here.
I hope you all had an awesome Christmas. If I don’t post before the New Year (very likely given my unread emails), have an awesome blowout to 2011. And a profitable non-Apocalyptic 2012.
If you’re a new reader, please add me to your RSS. Also follow me on Twitter. Thanks for reading.

1 Criminally Effective Way To Make Money Over Christmas

Nov 08 2011

There’s something very Christmassy about the first few days in November, don’t you think?

It’s that time of the year when Tesco wheels out the chocolate selection boxes, and Boots starts charging £3 extra to cram the most disappointing products in to the most appealing shaped packaging. You know, the kind that looks ‘appropriate’ under a Christmas tree?

We both realise you could have saved money buying your victim’s Lynx and shower gel from the Pound Shop. But no, in the spirit of Christmas, you chose to fuck yourself in the wallet by spending more for the same shit in a ‘gift box’.

Boots Gift Boxes

Maybe it’s because there isn’t a productive human being on the planet who enjoys wrapping awkwardly shaped presents.

It’s obvious that squares and rectangles are the way forward, guys. Anything too circular, or too pointy, and I end up celotaping myself to the mantlepiece, or punching holes in the wrapping like some kind of angry bull.

Selection boxes are an even bigger piss-take.

Christmas Selection Box

But they are, without any shadow of a doubt, the perfect present for that distant fourth cousin you only see once a year. The selection box says “Hey, I didn’t have to buy you this shit. I could have picked up four Curly Wurlies for the price of two on Tesco Special Offer and given them to you in a tramp’s paper bag. But no, I bought you a present. Do you know how you can tell that it’s a present? Because it’s in a fucking box. Take it.”

When I cool down to assess the situation logically, I can’t help but tip my hat to the effectiveness of it all. Selection boxes and gift sets are the perfect way to boost sales during a time where consumers are extremely conscious of their purchases.

In that moment of shopfloor gift hunting madness, I would never dream of picking out a can of deodorant and then some shower gel from a different aisle, with the intention of wrapping them together and passing it off as a gift. The idea of unwrapping a single can of Lynx is actually bordering on the offensive.

But package them together in a festive boxset and it’s as if by magic, Boots has made the can and bottle infinitely more appealing. How does that work? When you strip away the cardboard, what you have left is a tour de force in product re-positioning.

Desperation breeds opportunity… for scumbags like us

I know lots of people start their festive shopping early (I believe they’re called females), but I am personally the kind of guy who can be found sweating his tits off at 8.59am on Christmas Eve, desperately mapping his way around the town center and preparing to pillage whatever’s left for goods that can be passed off as gifts.

It’s a habit of mine that plays in to the hands of retailers and their tendency to box the living crap out of everything. The high pressure environment – there’s no escaping the hoards of other husbands, fathers and boyfriends suffering last minute meltdown – makes us highly suggestible to marketing that appears to solve our problems.

The examples above are perfect illustrations of how and why consumers will pay more – and will hand over their money faster – when you solve a legitimate problem for them.

Desperation is an interesting force for marketers to exploit. But what really should be taken from the gift packaging craze is that, sometimes, it’s not the product you’re selling, but the solution you’re offering that counts.

If you’re wondering how to boost sales and leads in the run up to December 25th, here’s a simple tip. Take whatever you’re selling, charge a little extra, and offer a re-packaged version that is suitable to be given away as a gift. Whack it on your homepage, ‘drop shadow’ it with tinsel and scream to anybody who will listen… “The Perfect Festive Gift, now comes in a square box…”

You’ll often find that your price is totally irrelevant at this point. You could charge a thousand bullions of gold and some red-faced panting husband will still take you up on the offer. Such is the power that Christmas exerts on us mortal souls.

So… will I listen to my own concerns and start shopping earlier in 2011? Of course I fucking won’t.

I make the same mistake every year.

In the same way that I’ll regret paying £69.95 plus £10 delivery for a sheet of plastic that works as a Halloween outfit, you will find me scouring Westfields on December 24th wishing I’d listened to these words.

Recommended This Week

For those of you who advertise on Facebook, Premium Posts Volume 2 is the perfect Christmas gift to give yourself. I’ve been wearing a fake white beard while merrily packing all my favourite tips and techniques in to one handy resource. It’s 71 pages of full of insight I would never give away for free. So you should buy it, yeah?
For those who need more hands-on info, check out the Stack That Money Forum. It offers coaching from two of the best CPA bloggers in the biz, Mr Green and Mr Stackthatmoney. You’ll find a bunch of follow along case studies and some very generous knowledge dumps which you’d have to be an absolute muppet not to take value from. More info here.
If you’re a new reader, please add me to your RSS. Also follow me on Twitter. Thanks for reading.