General Affiliate Marketing | Finch Sells

Offer A Quick Fix = Get A Quick Conversion

Aug 24 2010

Not too long ago, I wrote a post praising the brilliance of Ca$hvertising as a must-have book for all marketers. Hopefully a few of you have read it by now and can verify that I wasn’t bending you over in the name of an Amazon commission. That book really is the dog’s bollocks. And if you don’t have it, you should order it a-sap.

One of the many subjects that Ca$hvertising touches on is the importance of offering a quick fix in your advertising campaigns. I thought I’d make an effort to cover why this is so important, and warn you of how being a misleading little rascal can land you in a hot tub of shit.

By the very competitive nature of advertising, we’ve reached a tipping point. Consumers can find a mind-boggling number of reasons not to buy a product. One of those reasons is that a product simply doesn’t capture their imagination. It doesn’t promise a life changing impact overnight. The cold hard truth that losing weight can take months of blood, sweat and tears is often much less of a sales pitch than oh – I don’t know – lose half your body weight in 4 weeks.

To many affiliates, offering a quick fix is simple. Lie until you’re purple in the face and pretend you’re the fucking gingerbread man when the FTC comes calling. We only have to look as far as the acai berry craze to see how the promotion of a “quick fix” can get out of hand. Really bloody quickly.

It’s easy for me to sit here and rag on affiliates for lying with bold promises that are never going to come to fruition. But that’d make me a massive hypocrite. We all lie in our marketing efforts, and those of us who don’t simply forget to tell the truth.

If you’re going to learn anything from the acai berry gravy train, let it be that a quick fix will always prize that credit card out of the pocket. And there are techniques we can use that exploit this need for a quick fix, without getting our balls trapped in the crocodile jaws of [Insert General Attorney of Choice here]. You don’t have to sell your soul down the river.

It’s possible to build trust as an affiliate, and I’ve long stressed a personal desire to distance myself from slinging rebills that leave nothing but a sour taste in the mouth. Offering a quick fix doesn’t have to involve blatant lying though. It can simply be smart savvy marketing.

A technique I played with quite recently involved giving away a free ebook to my dating leads. We’ve all heard of Plenty of Fish, right? I haven’t spoken about *that* traffic source before, mainly because it served to benefit nobody who was already advertising there (rising click costs, invasion of newbies etc).

But if you’re advertising on Plenty of Fish, what do you know about your target audience? We can guess that we’re marketing to singletons who still haven’t found that special somebody. Despite putting in a clear effort by joining a dating site.

I think the reason so many affiliates fail with their advertising efforts on POF is because they forget to sell the appeal of the site they’re promoting. Think about what would constitute a “quick fix” to an existing dating site member. Maybe the women aren’t replying to your messages, maybe the guys are a bunch of narcissistic dicks with zero conversation skills. Either way, you need to establish something that you can fix.

I chose to give away a free ebook offering “ten explosive tricks for getting girls to message you on dating sites”. I will have you know that I outsourced it and didn’t write that shit myself. I then built out a landing page with an opt-in form.

“Sign up to my hot-shit newsletter and not only will I show you how to get women messaging you on dating sites, but I’ll send you an exclusive rare invitation to the best dating site to practice these tricks. I can only give away this link to [7] guys. If you’re sick of being Read & Deleted, you need to ACT NOW!”

Boom shake, shake, shake the room. Conversions, opt-ins, orgasms, profit. Everybody wins. By offering a quick fix to the biggest problem a guy can face on a dating site – being ignored like he’s carrying the plague (obviously I outsourced the research too) – you can slice through the competition and simply convert better than everybody else. Not to mention, if you use this method, you’re building yourself a long term business asset in the list.

But think about the concept. Don’t just jack my shit and run it for yourself. The second you place yourself in the collective shoes of your target market, you can find something to fix. Sometimes it’s necessary to develop your own freebie giveaways, like I did with my ebook, in order to present that quick fix without scamming the user or placing false promises in a service that might not be able to deliver.

There’s only one trick that works better than a quick fix. And that’s a quick fix that won’t be here tomorrow. So always remember to splash your landing pages with the urgency of countdown tickers, expiration dates and whatever else Ryan Eagle has recently added to his Network Application page.

It’s a sad state of affairs that consumers are so hesitant to place their faith in anything that doesn’t offer overnight results. But that’s the reality, so we have to adapt to it. Ask yourself what you can do for the user today. Then focus on developing a brand that’s simply too convenient for them to walk away from. If you find a quick fix, you’ll get a quick conversion.

Still haven’t bought Ca$hvertising?

Last time I recommended Ca$hvertising, the book was out of stock within a few days so I’ve got good faith that you guys went out and bought it. If you don’t already own it, buy it now.

Today is a rarity. I’ve actually published two posts in 24 hours. If you’re looking for some more reading, check out How An Affiliate Deals With 9am – A guest post I contributed to Kirsty’s blog over at Affiliate Stuff. Thanks for the guest spot, Kirsty.

Finally, follow me on Twitter.

Judging The Size Of An Affiliate’s Balls

Jul 26 2010

You can often judge the size of an affiliate’s balls by his willingness to keep scaling a successful campaign when he’s surpassed the amount of profit he was originally hoping to make.

A sense of vertigo can kill the desire of the “working class” affiliate. Maybe instead of raising the CPM bid to $0.50 and opening the traffic floodgates, he’ll settle for his slow trickle of leads at $0.45. When you’re profiting, and profiting well, you need to let go of your reservations about cranking up the heat and raising your costs. Spend serious money to make serious money. That’s how it works.

Your little friend, Volume, will make a 650% ROI micro-campaign look laughable when the powers of mass consumption are at work.

Yet many affiliates panic over the idea of bidding higher to capture more traffic, especially if they reach a level of profitability where the bills are paid and they’re living in comfort. Success isn’t just the relentless pursuit of optimized campaigns, but developing scaled campaigns that reach mass markets. A constant aching desire to increase revenue, the heartbeat of any successful entrepreneur, is why the super affiliates are wining and dining the girls you can only whack off to over Facebook in your mother’s basement.

If you want to live like a super affiliate, THINK like a super affiliate.

Don’t set yourself flimsy targets like “this month I’m going to make enough money to pay my water bills and then maybe splash out on some toys for my hamster”. If you aim low and succeed, you’ll be filled with a sense of achievement that you don’t fucking deserve.

If you’re making money with a campaign, raise the click prices. Raise those bid prices. Expand your demographics to be as all-encompassing as they possibly can be while still making you money. The broader you can survive, the sooner you’ll thrive.

There are times where I look at my Excel spreadsheet and I see a campaign with 650% ROI. Boasting any kind of volume, I’d be ready to say screw you all, pack up my blog, bust out the sun-cream and spend the rest of my life in the Bahamas. But of course, 650% ROI doesn’t mean shit unless it’s sustainable and scalable.

There are marketers out there who will tell you that to be successful, you need to tap up tiny little micro-demos and blow hundreds of dollars testing down to the smallest detail. While this can often be the case, you should allow your campaign to develop naturally before you start piss-arsing around with the “DOES THIS PERSON LIKE GAMES & PUZZLES” attribute on POF.

Every additional targeting criteria you add to your campaign is one more hurdle you’re going to have to jump in the future if you wish to scale. The truly successful super affiliates have one of two traits:

1. The ability to profit from broad ads with mainstream appeal.
2. The ability to automate hundreds of targeted ads in smaller demographics.

I’ve written many posts referring to the potential of laser targeting your campaigns down to the smallest detail. But if you’re going to take this route, you need to be able to automate the process.

Too many affiliates scratch around hopelessly to come up with a single campaign using targeting that looks like this:

I’m sorry but there are only so many Hispanic chain-smoking crackwhores in Canada.

Even if you are making a ridiculous ROI, is it really worth it? If you’re not rolling out a dozen other campaigns with similar targeting, you’re simply pandering to a small crowd in a shadowy corner. Forget the bright lights of super affiliate success, you’re not going quit your day job while you’re loitering on the outskirts of micro-niches.

The energy you put in to your work should be reflected by the potential it has to grow in to something meaningful. And I’m sorry, but if you spend entire days plotting out campaigns that are born with the disability of being critically unscalable, you’re going to spend the rest of your working life in the trenches.

This all stems back to the mindset of the affiliate. Are you looking to make enough money to survive? Or are you looking for opportunities to get a really fucking big swimming pool and a wife like Jonathan Volks?

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the example of targeting I’ve outlined above, but ONLY if it’s your launch pad to mass marketing.

Look at the main niches in CPA. What do they have in common?

– Everybody is concerned with how their body looks.
– Everybody wants the chance to make more money.
– Everybody wants the comfort of a relationship.

These are all qualities that appeal to the mainstream. So instead of sitting there and wondering how you can appeal to a tiny micro slice of the market, stop thinking so small! By all means get creative with your concepts, but have the persistence and innovation to scale them to wide and far reaching demographics.

The super affiliates out there, most of them, have recognized that it only takes one winning concept to get incredibly rich. Do you really think all of these guys are smart enough to keep pulling innovative campaigns out of the bag? No, it’s usually a case that they’re more efficient when it comes to scaling what already works. They have the balls to win big.

I think many affiliates are still stuck in the financial constraints of their day job mentalities. They have a fixed monthly wage they want to earn, and the second that figure is reached, scaling becomes irrelevant. Why push on in to the unknown?

Log in to your Facebook or POF account and I’m willing to bet you’ll find campaigns where you targeted micro-niches and made a profit. Was the ROI such a burning distraction that you never ventured in to broader markets? I’m guilty of the same mistakes in the past. But if you don’t scale, you’re like the hermit worker who doesn’t have the balls to ask his boss for a pay rise. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. If you don’t scale, you’ll never know.

The next time you’re laser targeting a campaign to a small crowd, ask yourself “How scalable is this concept?” If you can’t think of a way to take it mainstream, it’s probably not worth the bother. Save your energy for campaigns where there’s potential to earn big.

Finch guest posts on PPC.bz (Because he hasn’t slagged me off yet)

I’ve recently been looking for writing opportunities on other blogs. Dearest Barbie from PPC.bz offered me the chance. I was tempted to submit a YouTube video since that seems to be his thing these days. But alas I wrote a piece called Saving FML America. Check it out, and drop me an email if you’ve got a blog I can sling my junk on.

Until then, follow me on Twitter

The Advertiser Didn’t Like Your Traffic, Now What?

Apr 28 2010

Over the past month, I’ve had a few emails landing in my inbox that I wasn’t used to receiving until I made a few key changes to the way that I approach my campaigns. These were emails from affiliate managers telling me that certain advertisers were really happy with my traffic.

“Is there anything we can do to help you scale up the volume?”

Woah woah, hold on a second. What did you just say?

An advertiser… is happy… with my leads? You sure you’ve got the right email? They want me to send more traffic? Dude this is where you’re supposed to halve my payout and tell me to aim for an older demographic before I get shafted off the offer and in to oblivion completely.

It’s actually quite refreshing to be told that the leads you’re sending are backing out for the advertiser. It filled me with a sense of “Oh my god, maybe affiliate marketing CAN last longer than 5 minutes”. It also gave me the warm fuzzy feeling in my balls that what I was doing was actually working for all parties concerned. Clearly I was happy since I was still getting paid. The advertiser was happy with my leads-to-sales ratio. And presumably some creep was happy with his sparkling members’ access to one of the more shadier dating sites on the web. Everybody’s happy.

This is a stark contrast to the emails I used to receive when I started with lead gen offers. Back then, I never really stopped to consider the implications of scraping the barrel for whatever and whoever would be willing to submit my form. All I cared about was the ROI.

Unfortunately, when you’re working with CPA networks, that kind of attitude is probably going to have you jumping from offer to offer, systematically burning your bridges and relying on quick bursts of profit until an advertiser shuts you down. It’s about as stable as a wooden raft on the high seas.

And if this is you, it’s probably a good time to stop and think about why you’re getting shafted on such a consistent basis. Advertisers can be shady little shites, make no mistake about it. They’ll scrub and shave and do everything in their power to make the little man – that’s you – pay for their failure to break even. And in some cases, they can be downright greedy to the point where they’ll dick on you just to top up their Christmas bonuses.

That said, many advertisers have entered the CPA industry looking to play a fair game. They’re willing to pay for quality leads, and they do respect the work of affiliates who deliver the right traffic. It’s important to work WITH the advertiser, even through gritted teeth at times, and avoid burning those bridges that pay for your beach house.

The best way to avoid getting removed from an offer is to stop scraping the barrel. If a dating offer is open to both males and females over the age of 21, how many affiliates take that as a green light to flood the advertiser with 21 year old guys? Sure, the offer description didn’t say you couldn’t send this type of crowd to the offer, but you should probably be taking a little more responsibility and mixing it up with demographics that are more likely to produce sales. It might not matter to you – you’re paid by the lead, right? – but if it doesn’t make somebody money further up the chain, you aren’t going to be promoting it for long.

Another way to boost your “quality score” is to cut the bullshit. Don’t say something is free when the final call to action isn’t going to be free. It took me a while to axe this from my own campaigns, but it’s fundamental. Sell the trial factor to your audience, but don’t mislead the user in to thinking that the whole slice of pie is a no strings attached freebie. That isn’t good marketing.

Cutting out the “FREE” hook may lower your conversions slightly, or even dramatically, but consider this. It’s better to be running at 50% ROI for six months, than it is to be running at 100% ROI for one week.

Another factor that will influence the quality of your leads is the traffic source. Nobody can really explain it with a logical reason. But on some offers, a user clicking through from MSN will be much more likely to convert for the full shabang than a user clicking through from, say, Yahoo.

I’d love to say there’s a way to predict how certain traffic sources are going to perform on a given offer, but it’s close to impossible. I’ve been removed from offers that were backing out excellently on one traffic source, but bombing on another.

The only way to deal with unpredictable traffic quality is to ask for feedback directly from your affiliate manager. I think many marketers are shy of hassling the advertiser for an assessment of their leads. I say shy, it’s probably more like shitting bricks at the thought of doing something so potentially suicidal to their business. Perhaps you’re scared the advertiser will wake from a slumber, check over your stats, and realize you’re blowing a bigger loss than Iceland blows ash. Before you know it, they’ve shut you down and a profitable campaign is dead in the water, right? That’s rarely the case.

Simply asking the advertiser for some feedback on the quality of your leads will show that you’re serious about your job. But it also gives you some tasty knowledge that you can exploit if you’re clever. I managed to get a rough idea of my leads-to-sale ratio on one particular offer. I did a little research, found a program where I could work directly with the advertiser on a CPS basis, and it actually worked out more profitable. The only way I would have bothered to explore this avenue was by finding out that my lead quality was good and that the advertiser was happy.

A happy advertiser generally equates to solid sales. You can take that information and split test in a CPS campaign. If an advertiser is offering you significant pay bumps to provide more volume, the chances are excellent that you’re going to make more money by abandoning CPA altogether and raking in money by the sale.

I don’t think there’s a single affiliate who hasn’t suffered from lead quality issues at some point, or that won’t in the future. But if it’s happening too often, you need to shine a light on why. Jumping from offer to offer will only work for so long.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that if affiliate marketing died tomorrow, you’d still be able to make money for a company? You know, by actually fulfilling the simple premise of connecting the right people to the right products? It’s easy to see why affiliates are often tarred as the lowest level of marketers, even if they’re some of the richest.

Being the delivery guy who delivers empty boxes just isn’t going to last forever.

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Finch Sells is the anti-typical affiliate marketing blog, designed and written for real affiliates. If you’re interested in reading more and grabbing the odd tip, follow me on Twitter. I don’t sling you shitty ebooks but I do talk about my balls. So you’re morally obliged to, okay?

That’s what I thought.