General Affiliate Marketing | Finch Sells

Stop Wasting Money! Start Hoarding Data

May 29 2013

Affiliate marketing arbitrage is one of the simplest careers in the world. There are no politics, no glass ceilings, and no barriers to entry. The focal point of 99% of what we do is numbers. Can you make them work for you?

From CPCs to EPCs, from CPMs to CTRs… what may appear to the uninitiated as random digits on a screen, can be optimised and manoeuvred in to a recipe for serious, serious moo-lah. But only if you know how to work them. And thankfully most people don’t.

The EPC Spreadsheet

Many affiliate networks distribute spreadsheets of their top performing offers, complete with EPCs, conversion rates and ranking by revenue.

Affiliates seem to love these documents, despite the warped data they can represent. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if 50 new publishers are direct linking one offer, while 5 veterans are pre-selling another, the EPCs are going to look favourable for the pre-sold offer. We take a lot of this bias for granted in the pursuit of easily consumable golden nuggets.

EPC spreadsheets are good for ruling out dud offers, and a welcome helping hand for deciding where to start, but they are not an accurate representation of how your marketing will perform.

If you run a lot of campaigns, and particularly if you are an adopter of the ‘throwing shit at the wall’ technique, I suggest creating your own performance spreadsheets.

In short: Learn to make use of your data.

You pay for it. You bust your balls for it. Why waste it?

If affiliate marketing is all about numbers – and it is – then failing to stockpile your data should be seen as a karate cock slappable offence.

With every campaign, you can store data on multiple levels.

Country Specific Data

I have a file for every single country that I advertise in, as well as an Excel spreadsheet with an overview of the key points I need to remember.

In the spreadsheet I aim to correlate some baseline metrics for each country based on the hundreds of thousands of dollars I have spent arbitraging my damn hairline away.

Metrics such as:

The best offer in that country, by EPC
The second best offer, by EPC
Average CPM/CPC to draw traffic from each of my favourite traffic sources
Average landing page CTR (some countries can be bashed for 70%, whilst others are tough to optimise beyond 35%). No idea why. That’s why it’s important to take notes.

Note: Media buyers should have doubts about running a campaign if the gulf in performance between best and second best offer is enough to eat up most of their profit. Have a Plan B, or stick to low-risk marketing on self-serve platforms.

There’s no shame in being a one trick pony, and there’s no sense in being an over-confident donkey who just blew $15,000 on a campaign that has no viable Plan B.

My countries overview spreadsheet is a permanent fixture on my desktop.

How many times do you find yourself surfing through new traffic sources, checking out the minimum bids and running calculations in your head to see if you might get profitable? Get that data out of your head and on to paper.

I will say it again: affiliate marketing is all about the numbers.

If you get in to the habit of recycling your data and archiving it for future reference, you will soon find that there is no such thing as a failed campaign. Only more numbers. Numbers that will lower the risk, and the uncertainty, of your next investment.

There are two forms of filing that can also help you.

Digital archiving

What do you do with those landing pages and creatives once you’ve pushed them through the FTP?

I used to let them fester on my desktop before eventually click-and-dragging in to a spiralling abyss marked ‘To Sort‘, one day to be found a dozen archives deep.

I’ve since got in to the habit of storing every single landing page in a country coded folder. If you start this today, you are unlikely to see immediate benefits. But six months down the road you will have enough assets to move quickly in to just about any market in the world.

Naturally, a good labelling system is vital. 1001 folders titled ‘LP1‘ are more trouble than they are worth. Name your landing page variations accordingly. For example: Rules, Qualifier, Short Sell, Sales Letter, Squeeze, and so on…

If you are particularly adventurous, you will have multiple sub-variants inside each folder. Again, name them based on their distinguishing qualities. Future You will be grateful, unlike 2011 Me, who spent many hours fishing through his Trash Can looking constipated.

Paper archiving

Besides the overview spreadsheet and the digital files, I keep a paper record of every single country that I advertise in. As you might imagine, some are thicker than others. Australia is starting to resemble a J.K. Rowling brainfart, whilst a stiff breeze sends China in to my laundry basket.

What do I store in the paper files?

A whole raft of miscellaneous information, such as:

Print outs of successful creatives
Printed mind maps of available offers matched to networks (Get MindNode)
Email correspondence with affiliate managers
Skype conversation transcripts from networking sessions
Related forum posts, case studies and follow alongs (Join STM)
Cheat sheets of common language translations so I can understand my own ads (surprisingly helpful!)
Popular local slang terms

You could probably do this shit in Evernote, but I like the smell of paper.

Every single campaign you run is a haven for data and insights that can be tucked away and referred to in the future. Some of those insights will be relative to a traffic source, others to a country, and lots will be to a particular offer or creative approach. If you are the kind of affiliate who regularly gorges on network EPC spreadsheets, there’s very little excuse for placing less value in the data that you bought.

Data is no guarantee of success

Affiliates are pretty lousy at predicting how their campaigns will perform. This is a damn near universal trait.

I thought it was just me; a bumbling fool in an ocean of wizard mathematicians. But no, having sat through my share of mastermind sessions recently, I can say with confidence that many of you are just as bad. Collectively we project numbers about as accurately as ~~ReBumberclart~~ Republican Karl Rove on Election Night.

Nate Silvers, we ain’t.

Let’s see…

You’ve spotted that you can snap up 200,000 impressions per day at a CPM of $0.70 and you hope that with a combined ad CTR of 0.25%, a landing page CTR of 30% and a conversion rate of 1/10, you’ll be enjoying a 100% ROI.

You’ve gone so far as to multiply your $140/day profit by 30, and have tentatively pencilled ‘$4200‘ next to a sketch of ‘JUNE‘ with doodles of the cocaine and hookers that you’ll buy with the harvest.

Initial estimates are fine. But don’t kid yourself. You are not going to have an accurate idea of the true numbers until you bite the bullet and go live. And it’s usually at this point that most of us scrunch up those hopeful projections, launching them in to the office bin while snarking viciously:

“How was I to know my CTR wouldn’t nudge past 0.06%?”
“A 3% conversion rate? Are you shitting me? No? Are you SCRUBBING me?”

If you place too much trust in your estimated numbers, you will find yourself so disenfranchised at the end of Day 1 that there’s a good chance you’ll have abandoned ship before the weekend. That’s how money gets wasted and confidence wanes.

Data spreadsheets and detailed files can help to rein in your focus. But they will not perform miracles, and they will not turn your brainfarts in to fairy dust.

There’s a famous quote from Thomas Edison:

“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

Naturally, like any wise bastard from years gone by, his words have been passed through memos and mutilated on blogs to the point where you’re just as likely to recognise them as:

“Genius is 20 percent my balls and 80 percent my balls.”

Well, I’m more of a Pareto Principle kinda guy.

It’s tough to say how much of an affiliate’s success stems from genius. But I do know that moments of creative brilliance are rare, and data is not.

Many affiliates carry around their stats as a burden; a constant reminder of how wrong they can be. The best affiliates bounce off their data not as crushing evidence of an initial bad judgment, but as vital signposts for where they need to improve. Sometimes the signal gets lost in the emotional sting of losing money. C’est tragique, now get over it.

You can make a lot of money by applying basic data-driven principles to very ordinary advertising. It’s not rocket science. And the next time somebody asks me what I do for a living, that’s exactly what I won’t tell them.

Me, Myself and Affiliate Marketing

Apr 08 2013

The arrival of Spring marks 4 years since I quit my day job, dropped a brick through the alarm clock, and chose full-time affiliate marketing as a career. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll be familiar with my annual outpouring of ‘what I’ve learnt in the previous 12 months’, and the gory detail it so often entails.

Well, hold on tight…

What happens to the human brain after four years in affiliate marketing? Is twenty-something dementia an inevitability? Does the industry have a future? These are questions that have been landing in my inbox with increasing regularity since the launch of my Affiliate Marketing Survival Guide 2013.

I’m going to condense one of the hardest years of my life in to 7 takeaway brainfarts. Make of them what you will.

You Can’t Live Off ‘Potential’ Forever

I had a slight identity crisis through the winter. You might refer to it as a first world problem, but I live in the first world, and we all have our battles. Sucketh on.

When I launched my affiliate business, I was 21 years old and a lot of my identity and self-worth was built around being a young entrepreneur instead of a slave to academia. As the years have gone by and my friends have left University and started their own careers, I’ve struggled to rationalise how this particular brand of entrepreneurship – affiliate marketing – correlates to the type of business figures and moguls I’ve come to admire.

My own identity has been placed under the hammer, and while I can justify advertising until my face burns blue, I’m not entirely at peace with the legacy of it.

I read a fantastic piece of advice in The Chimp Paradox that goes like this:

Imagine that you are 100 years old and on your death bed with one minute left to live. Your great-great-grandchild asks, “Before you die, tell me, what should I do with my life?”

Pause for a moment now and try to honestly answer the question immediately within the next minute. You have just one minute, start now and then when the time is up and you have worked out what you would say to them, continue below.

…

Many people will answer with statements such as, ‘it doesn’t matter what you do’, ‘be happy’, ‘don’t worry’, and ‘make the most of it’.

Whatever your advice was to your great-great-grandchild is really the advice to yourself. If you are not living by this advice, which is the essence of your existence, you are living a lie.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the transition from a young guy in the industry with stars and dollar bills in his eyes, to being an established part of that industry and then not being sure if the industry is what he would want on his tombstone. This, in large part, has forced a dramatic shift in where I spend my time, and where I see my future.

Writing 1000 Words Per Day

One of the best decisions I’ve made in the last year is a commitment to write at least 1000 words every day.

Sometimes my writing involves commercial products that I intend to release, sometimes it involves blog posts (like this), and sometimes it means wave after wave of scribbles in one of about 5,000 moleskines.

I went through a phase of brutally recommending the 1000 words a day as catharsis to anybody and everybody who would listen. The truth is, everybody is different. Writing is just one of many different forms of expression, it only so happens to be the one that best erases my stresses and strains.

Whether you are a writer, an artist, a social butterfly or somebody who can only think straight with adrenaline coursing through his veins, it pays damn well to get in touch with the medium that allows you to express yourself and ‘get it out’. Finding what works for me (although I already knew) is definitely one of the plus points of the last 12 months.

A Bad Diet is a Big Handicap

After growing sick of Masterchef breakfasts, I recently rocked up to Whole Foods and pillaged the supplement and shake aisles for more vitamins than I’d previously ingested in my other 25 years combined.

While I have slipped back in to bad patterns recently (a broken fridge will do that to a man), there is no mistaking the benefits of eating well. The effect a good diet – and particularly a nutritious breakfast – can have on your productivity is absolutely mindblowing.

I have a sweet tooth, some might even say a McTooth. But I’ve seen what difference processed crap has on my ability to think clearly, and to sustain that focus for hours at a time. I will be damned if I don’t consolidate some major dietary changes in the next 12 months. It’s money on the table in billable hours.

Mind Power Experiments

I recently followed a tip from Charles Ngo and have been taking L-Theanine supplements mixed with caffeine and Green Tea before the more intense parts of my day. Kiss my balls in advance, I’m not talking about RedTube.

L-Theanine is an amino acid that can lower anxiety and reduce the psychological and physiological effects of stress. It is relatively free from side-effects (everybody reacts differently, do not assume I wear a white coat), and one of many nootropics that *may* boost cognitive performance. If Limitless grabbed you by the gooch, they are worth checking out.

While I have started to build up a tolerance to L-Theanine, it remains a pretty badass supplement when used sparingly to trigger a 3 to 4 hour burst of lucid focus, something I swear by when I’m writing. I kicked back a dose before writing this post and my eyes haven’t left the screen. Godsend.

Another ‘mind hack’ I’ve become very familiar with in the last year is hypnosis. No, not the apocalyptic Derren Brown kind, but gentle, relaxation techniques. I took 7 hours of professional hypnotherapy from Darren Marks in Harley Street (recommended), and the sessions have helped me to get a grip on some damaging personal issues that were getting my titties in a twist.

Cheap self-hypnosis tracks are available all over the Internet, for just about any pursuit imaginable. Even if you don’t ‘believe in hypnotism’, they are excellent relaxation tools for 20 minute breaks.

Relationships can’t be immune to change

The last time I mentioned my relationship, it was in glowing terms with an engagement and a move to America on the horizon. Well, that didn’t work out so well. I broke up with my ex in February, and the quiet on this blog has a lot to do with the force of the change ripping through the rest of my life.

There was no hatred, no resentment, no posturing to spare the blame. Just a sad mutual realisation how something that once felt so right; over days, weeks or months; had splintered in to something that no longer was. That’s the story.

I resent the 24/7 gossip mill culture that says scapegoats need to be found, drama made, or an opinion of a person has to shift if you break up with them. It’s Grade A bollocks, and I have no time for the bloodthirst.

Even worse, there’s judgment from the passive observer (who could only possibly find fulfilment in an episode of Hollyoakes); he or she who thinks that two grown adults making a decision has to reflect badly or tellingly on one of them.

“Where did it go wrong? Who did what?”

C’est la vie.

Sometimes life throws you lemons.

Instead of making lemonade, I prefer to throw them back at the idiots who need conflict and bitching to get through their days. That’s pretty much all I want to say about it.

This is an affiliate marketing blog. And yes, I use the term loosely.

I Cannot Dance

Holy shit.

Being single again has reminded me how garishly offensive-on-the-eyeballs I can be when unleashed on a dancefloor.

My friends knew this already, but I had forgotten the fact over time.

I want to take this opportunity to say sorry in advance for the empty bars, clubs, etc.

It’s not you, London, it’s definitely me.

And what about Affiliate Marketing? Is it Dead?

No, she lives.

There were times in the past few years where I felt overly paranoid for questioning when Lady Affiliate Marketing would pop her clogs and we’d all be forced to look for a day job.

The bottom line is that any change is gradual, and even our worst fears (traffic source meltdowns, offer implosions) are negotiable by diversifying carefully, not resting on your laurels, and reading your RSS once in a blue moon.

Basically, don’t live under a rock, don’t pretend you’re invincible, don’t brag about your success (Karma is a bitch) and you should be okay.

One day, the industry will resemble a completely different beast. That’s true. And yes, one day the tactics that worked in 2013 will be laughed at by the Internet nerdscallions of 2017.

Who needs to lose sleep over it?

The rest of the ‘unanswerable questions’ have a time, a place and a name.

They’re called 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Keep your eyes open, work hard, don’t be a complete fuck-up, and you’ll be just fine.

Recommended This Week:

For a more complete dissection on where affiliate marketing stands, I suggest you pick up this Survival Guide, updated for 2013.

1 Giant List of Affiliate Marketing Resources

Mar 18 2013

Update November 2014: This post (updated) has now replaced my prehistoric Affiliate Toolbox.

I have decided to compile a list of all my favourite tools, networks, blogs and resources. Feel free to scroll through it below. If just 1% of it is enlightening and/or informative, then this won’t have been a colossal waste of time.

Enjoy.

(I’ll be editing the list regularly. Well, semi-regularly. Last updated in November 2014.)

Blogs

CPA

FinchSells – Well, hello.

Charles Ngo – One of the most relevant blogs out there for affiliates today.

I Am Attila – This guy has some excellent, excellent content. One of the most hands-on blogs in the industry today. Case studies and heaps of great insights.

Premium 23 by Leonidas – Probably the leading blogger authority on pay-per-call at the moment.

Mr Green – New Zealand’s best (and maybe only?) affiliate marketing blog?

IM Grind – Daily Internet Marketing news. Fetish for infographics.

Aff Helper – Regular contributions from all over the affiliasphere.

Adult Media Buying – Man o’ Scandal? You’ll enjoy this. Sound advice for making a filthy dollar.

PPC.bz – Hilarity, affiliate marketing and… weed porn?

Aff Engineer – Has a lot of useful content on TeeSpring campaigning.

Wall of Monitors – The blog of affiliate marketer ‘HeavyT’. Shares more than just his monitors.

Perform(ance Marketing) Insider – The Daily Mail of affiliate marketing rags.

Perform(ance Marketing) Outsider – Amusing parody, that often manages to be more relevant than the above.

IPyxel – Lots of tips for getting profitable on Plentyoffish.

StackThatMoney – Head straight to the Case Study section.

Luke Peerfly – Award winning affiliate manager with a busted brand if he ever leaves Peerfly.

Nicky Cakes – The blog that got me in to affiliate marketing. No longer updated, some classic reads in the archives.

Aff Playbook Blog – Lots of practical tips, especially useful for PPV marketers.

Zac Johnson – One of the longest running CPA blogs out there.

CTRTard – Helmet wearing CPA dude. Where did he go?

KJ Rocker – Dubai based CPA affiliate, lots of focus on viral content.

Ian Fernando – Travels the world pointing his finger. One of the last remaining active CPA blogs.

Rohail Rizvi – Affiliate insights and regular ‘earnings reports’ if you need some inspiration. Doesn’t seem to post much these days.

Justin Dupre – Where the fuck is Justin Dupre? Does anybody know?

Riley Pool – He said he was going to post a new campaign every day, then he disappeared completely. A recurring trend in the affiliate blogosphere!

Bryn Youngblut – I just love his name. Another once prolific CPA blogger who has vanished, presumably back to Monkey Island whence he came.

Inside Affiliate – Check out his older posts on PPV.

Affiliate Help – Covers a lot of the basics in an easy-to-read manner.

POF Blog – Advertising on POF? Ben can hook you up with some good strategies.

Who Is Andrew Wee? – The kind of guy who seduces affiliates with ice cream and chocolates.

AM Navigator – Interesting perspective from those managing affiliate programs. ‘How to monetise us pawns…‘

Moby Affiliates – One of the few blogs dedicated to mobile affiliate marketing.

Mob Aff Blog – Another one, written by an angry Russian dude.

Affbuzz – Aggregates the latest CPA news.

Affposts – Like Affbuzz, emphasis on newer posts.

Conversion Optimisation

UnBounce – Delicious landing page optimisation tips.

Conversion XL – ‘Extra Lucrative’ conversion advice.

Topping Two Percent – Excellent write-ups, lots of juicy info on how to squeeze the maximum out of your landing pages.

Boost CTR – Light a rocket up the jacksy of your search and social ads.

Optimizely – Full of A/B testing examples.

Shock Marketer – Consistently good advice, no fluff.

Conversion Voodoo – Company blog with plenty to say about improving conversions.

General Marketing

Dave Trott – The most readable man in advertising. Get his books, and read his blogs.

OKTrends – Unmissable insights for anybody working in the dating niche. You need to read this.

Kiss Metrics – More data analysis than a marketer can shake his stick at.

ViperChill – One of the most informative Internet Marketing resources on the planet. Featured in the Guardian.

Sugarrae – Impressive collection of straight shooting posts. Covers a spread of Internet Marketing topics.

Direct Response – One of my favourite direct marketing reads. Don’t just beat the competition; crush it.

Blue Hat SEO – Outdated as hell, still an epic read.

Shoemoney – Love him or hate him, you can’t not know Shoe if you work in this industry.

Inside Facebook – Essential reading for the sadists otherwise known as Facebook marketers.

Dukeo – Has really come on strong in recent months. Lots of great content for affiliates.

SkyRocket SEO – One of the few SEO blogs I keep coming back to.

Generation Y – Tips on how to survive working from home, from those already surviving it.

PPC.org – Tips and tricks for clickety clicks. Heavy focus on Google.

Skimlinks Blog – Regular dollops of advertising industry news.

Think Traffic – Consistently good advice for brand building and traffic swallowing.

Networks

There are so many networks out there. I’m only going to recommend those that I’ve tried personally, or those with near unanimous praise.

CPA

Adsimilis – If you’re sick of networks posturing over who has the biggest grapefruits or the dopest bling, then sign up with Adsimilis. They ‘get’ the affiliate mindset, without adopting it for themselves.

Clickdealer – One of my favourite networks. A ton of great offers and perfect for a dating/adult marketer. They also run a nice loyalty points program which I’ve used to bagsy a crap ton of Amazon vouchers.

Advidi – One word: BUDBI. These guys are major players in the adult vertical. If you can’t beat them, get with them. They’ve got a lot of exclusives. Very strong in NL/BE.

A4D – Led by Jason Akatiff, A4D is one of the most highly regarded affiliate networks in the business. You’ll be tough pressed to find a bad word said about them.

Convert2Media – Recognized by 500 INC. as one of the fastest growing companies in America.

Neverblue – Tons of great mobile offers, and one of the rare few genuinely ‘international’ networks. Made my first ever CPA commission with Neverblue. *le sniffle*

Above All Offers – If Eli Aloisi puts even half the time in to his network as he did with the BlueHat blog, this has to be worth joining.

F5 Media – Founded by the same guys who brought you the STM Forum, F5 packs a bunch of strong dating offers.

Monetise – Promising network with a heavy slant towards UK offers.

Peerfly – Strong industry following, popular launch pad network for beginners.

Incent.ly – Owned by Peerfly, dedicated to incentive traffic.

Mundo Media – I haven’t tried them, but I’ve heard good reviews. Mobile seems to be their specialty?

Ploose – Good for adult dating and hookup offers.

Cupid – Vast selection of dating offers from Cupid.

People Meet – Home to the People Meet brand. Excellent converters.

Date Connected – Another direct dating/hookup merchant, home to JustHookup. Can you guess which niche I work in?

Traditional

CJ – Known for its shoddy treatment of affiliates, but with so many good offers, you’ll want to join regardless.

ShareASale – Much respected Chicago-based network. Large selection of boutique CPS offers.

LinkShare – Another colossal network. Better support than CJ.

ClickBank – Where many an affiliate marketer sold his first shining turd. Sketchy digital products galore. They have the audacity to start deducting commissions through ‘admin fees’, which will piss you off.

Amazon Affiliates – Underrated by CPA affiliates, overrated by everybody else.

Google Affiliate Network – Boo the irony.

Mobile

OfferMobi – One of the leading mobile performance networks.

KissMyAds – Mobile affiliate network. Regrettable name for the dinner table?

Linking Mobile – UK based, recommended to me. I haven’t tried them.

Conferences and Meetups

Affiliate Summit – The premier affiliate marketing conference, where affiliates convene to talk shop and party in strip clubs (or drown in sausage).

A4U Expo – Popular performance marketing conference, especially in Europe. A bit suity.

ad:tech – Digital marketing conferences scattered all around the globe. Very suity.

LeadsCon – Vegas/NYC based event dedicated to lead generation.

AM Days – Specialised conference for the management of affiliate programs (aka, how to deal with unprofessional slackers in their underpants).

Self-Serve Traffic Sources

Below is a relatively small selection of traffic sources that I can personally recommend. For a more comprehensive list, see this sprawling bookmark cert on 3things.

Search

Google AdWords – Still the King of search PPC. Not an easy dragon for the affiliate to slay.

Bing Ads – Closest alternative to AdWords. Less booty lashings.

7Search – You’ll need to be on your game to find a converter in here. Only troopers hit the green.

Social

Facebook – Hugely competitive. Potential to make you rich. Quickly.

Twitter Ads – …Good luck.

POF Ads – Target dating users down to the hair color. Saturated but still powerful.

Adly – There’s something I find immensely entertaining about the prospect of affiliates soliciting celebrities for their ads. What’s the worst that could happen?

Cubics Adknowledge – Advertise across a selection of over 1200 Facebook apps.

Contextual

Media Traffic – Good PPV network for single opt-in submits and gaming offers.

TrafficVance – Highest quality PPV traffic in the business. Requires $1000 deposit.

Lead Impact – Good starting point for PPV marketers. Lots of room to scale your campaigns.

DirectCPV – Haven’t tried them but they’re always giving free coupons away. Sign up and make the most?

Display

AdBlade – Self-serve, popular choice for the CPA affiliate (particularly those who dabble in rebills).

50onRed – Intext and display ads available. $500 to get started.

BuySellAds – Buy direct placements on high profile websites. Easy to use. Tough to find the good spots.

Buy Ads – More direct placements.

Pulse360 – CPC-based with lots of high quality traffic. Expensive. Won’t work on lower payout offers.

engage:BDR – High quality display traffic that you’ll need some budget for.

SiteScout – Low risk media-buying entry point for affiliates. Suggest you start here.

MochiMedia – Great launch pad for newbie affiliates in the gaming niche.

Ad2Games – Lots of quality gaming traffic. Heavy German influence.

CPM Star – More gaming traffic. Only limited experience with this one, looks decent.

Juicy Ads – Incredibly lenient, self-serve adult dating platform. Cheap. Great for learning the ropes.

Traffic Junky – One of the most popular sources of adult traffic in the world. Big volume. Equal competition.

Exoclick – More adult dating by the bucket load. Probably not *quite* as good quality as TJ, but offset by cheaper traffic.

AdBucks – Don’t be fooled by the minimal interface. This adult display source packs a donkey punch.

Retargeting

AdRoll – Named the #1 Advertising Company by Inc. Magazine. Growing fast, seems to be everywhere. Oh wait…

Retargeter – Renowned for having one of the best customer service teams in the business.

Chango – Specialises in search retargeting rather than site retargeting.

Mobile

AdMob – The daddy of mobile advertising. Now owned by Google.

Decisive – The launch pad for newbie mobile marketers. Great interface, easy to use. Good for getting your toes wet.

BuzzCity – Another good mobile source to get started with.

Leadbolt – Temperamental but popular platform.

InMobi – Lots of traffic, not the best interface for a newbie.

Adfonic – Over 100 billion monthly impressions.

AdModa – Has a useful Campaign Planner to help you avoid desolate markets.

JumpTap – Hit and miss customer service, high quality traffic. Worth sticking with.

Search Marketing Tools

SEOMoz – Powerhouse in the SEO world. Monitors your search and social performance for a good price.

Open Site Explorer – Part of SEOMoz, but free to use. Offers a bird’s eye view of your site’s current standing in relation to competition.

Spyfu – Download your competitor’s profitable keywords (then do your damn best to find them).

SEO Book Tools – Useful all-in-one resource covering most of the SEO board.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool – Don’t live by this tool, but don’t completely ignore it either. Useful when applied in context.

Forums

Subscription

Stack That Money – My forum of choice for affiliate marketing discussion. I’m a moderator here, and it’s the only forum I post on. This is high-end CPA advice for those who are actively running campaigns. Costs $99/month, worth every penny.

AffPlaybook – Another popular forum, particularly with North American affiliates. This started as a specialist forum for PPV, but it now covers pretty much every avenue for the CPA affiliate. Costs $67/month.

The Dojo – New paid addition on the AffiliateFix forum. Lifetime access for a one-time payment.

Free

WickedFire – Where the occasional golden nugget can be found buried between tits, ass and Rick Astley. Generally NSFW.

Affiliates4u – Very active forum, heavy European influence. Better place to network with merchants and product owners than it is to find other affiliates.

ABestWeb – Largest affiliate marketing forum in the world, with a heavy corporate slant. Where the utterly blind converge with the suited and booted.

AffiliateFix – Mostly focused on CPA marketing, seems to specialise in free traffic sources and generating leads on a budget.

Must-Read Books

The Affiliate Marketing Survival Guide 2013 – Written by yours truly. My uncensored take on where the industry stands in 2013, and most importantly, where your business needs to stand in 2014.

Ca$hvertising – A must-read for any direct response marketer. Golden tips for improving your sales funnel with an emphasis on getting the conversion now.

The Millionaire Fastane – A book of two halves. Skip the preaching first half, but burn the value creation tips of the second half in to your retinas and live by them.

Influence – A seminal classic from Robert Cialdini that many affiliates glow over as the most important book they ever read.

Ogilvy on Advertising – Classic work, now decades old, yet Ogilvy still speaks more sense than most. The lessons of an advertising great.

The Happiness Advantage – Wise words for those whose happiness depends on the next stats refresh.

Thinking, Fast and Slow – A modern classic on understanding people. A skill that pays the bills in this biz.

You Are Not So Smart – Light, fun, breezy read on the many psychological biases and flaws that an affiliate marketer could do untold damage with.

Zero to One – A cracking read on entrepreneurship from Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley legend and co-founder of PayPal.

How to Build a Billion Dollar App – Inspiring stuff, and good practical steps.

Outsourcing and Delegating

ODesk – Great place to hunt for programmers, designers and virtual assistants.

Easy Outsource – Hit and miss pool of Filipinos for hire. Some golden workers, some… not so much.

Elance – Slightly more expensive, and generally more ‘westernized’. Use Elance to hire specialised writers for your ‘money’ sites.

One Hour Translation – If you are running foreign campaigns, it can be tempting to cut corners with language translation. Don’t do it. Use this site to get your landing pages and creatives translated within the hour.

Guru – Another big cat in the outsourcing world. I’ve never used it.

Fiverr – Seriously, is there anything that can’t be outsourced to Fiverr? This site is like a slap in the face to every freelancer who cherished his hourly rate. Good for us though…

99 Designs – Crowdsource your design work. Pricy but spoils you for choice.

Mailing Software & Tools

AWeber – Popular email marketing tool. Loses points by charging for unsubscribers, still my favourite.

MailChimp – Has a free option up to 2000 subscribers.

OptinSkin – Sends your opt-ins through the roof. Used on this site. Developed by Mr. ViperChill.

Mobile Resources

Inside Mobile Apps – Probably the best resource on mobile app dev.

HowToGoMo – Test how your site looks on mobile devices.

Mobilizer – Great mobile browser tester, free app.

iMobiTrax – Mobile tracker from the guys behind IMGrind. Looks very impressive.

MobGrind – Useful aggregator for mobile news.

PPC.bz Mobile Resource List – A list within a list. So what?

Content Publishing

WordPress – Has opened up content publishing to the mass market. Love you, WordPress.

Joomla – Flexible and aesthetically pleasing platform.

Clickthroo – Landing page builder with over 100 templates and split-testing functionality.

600+ places to share your content – Use, don’t abuse!

Research Tools

IMDB Coming Soon – If you like to monetize trends, this is probably the most underrated resource on the planet. Pick a blockbuster movie in the distant future, build your website, eat the traffic.

IMDB Just Announced – Get your first mover’s advantage on.

Google Search Trends – Analyse the latest search trends. You’ll need to act fast if you want to make any money from them.

Google Ad Planner – It’s almost like they want us to advertise with them!

Amazon Future Releases – Drill down your search by categories to find the hottest products coming soon to your niche.

Yahoo Clues Beta – Clues is a pretty good name for it. Data that gives you a headache.

Think With Google – Small mountain of research in to consumer trends. Broad in scope, interesting nonetheless.

Compete – Popular research tool. Scratch the underbelly of your competition, sniff out their popular keywords, monitor traffic metrics.

What Runs Where – Spy on the world’s most successful display campaigns.

Mixrank – Good, underrated alternative to WRW.

Adult AdSpy – For adult dating marketers with good self-control. Wank ‘o clock.

Offervault – Handy tool when searching for CPA offers.

oDigger – Network reviews and offer searcher. I wouldn’t place much faith in the star reviews, but the rest of the site is useful.

Creative Tools

BannerSnack – Suck at making banners? Use this.

Icon Finder – More arrows and buttons for your landing page than you could ever possibly need.

Ugly Banners Work Better – Oh yes they do. This is a sweet tool for fuglifying your creatives and increasing that all important CTR.

Jing – Don’t miss inspiration when it comes. Jing allows you to capture images and clips on the fly. Great for scoping campaigns.

Convertasaurus – Select two calls-to-action and watch them fight to the death. Not sure how accurate but pretty cool?

Browser Shots – Always be testing how your landing pages look in different browsers.

BrowserStack – Best browser tester I’ve found so far. Works for mobile too.

Tracking Tools

Complete Solutions

Voluum – To say that Voluum has ‘disrupted’ the tracking market would be an understatement. This cloud-based software is my new tracker of choice. It is immensely powerful, fast and stable. If you want somebody else to handle your data (for better or worse), Voluum is where you need to be.

Thrive – Self-hosted, looks beautiful, has rave reviews. I haven’t tried it yet. Released by the same guys that created POFPro.

AdsBridge – Next generation cloud-based tracker. Has a useful landing page builder, multi-user management, and automatic campaign optimization tools. Slightly cheaper than the other options on the market.

CPV Lab – Premium but oh-so-easy campaign tracking. An update was rolled out for mobile campaign tracking that keeps it competitive with the new solutions on the market.

Tracking202 – More customisable than CPV Lab, and free. Can be a little fiddly if you’re a technophobe.

Bevo Media – ‘The only place affiliate marketers need to be.’ All in one suite. Never tried it.

iMobiTrax – Mobile tracker from the guys behind IMGrind.

Tracking Everything Else…

Optimizely – Popular A/B split testing tool with a free trial.

ClickTale – Spy on your website’s visitors.

Crazy Egg – More spying goodness. Eye tracking technology.

Google Content Analytics – Some very useful (and free) website performance insights from the big G.

Visual Website Optimizer – A/B testing, multivariate testing, heatmaps. Free trial available.

HasOffers – If you’ve ever wanted to create your own affiliate program…

Cake – See above. Another network favourite.

POF ExcelBundle – Free collection of Excel tools to optimise and manage your Plentyoffish campaigns.

Productivity Tools

Producteev – One of the best takes on David Allen’s Getting Things Done system to date.

Wunderlist – New favourite of mine. Simple to-do lists. No clutter.

Trello – Excellent tool for managing your workflow.

LeechBlock – A must have for ‘work from homers’. Block yourself from time-wasting sites.

Pomodoro Timers – Nine timers for the popular productivity hack where you break your day in to 25-minute work stints.

Hack to Sleep – A good night’s sleep = much better productivity. Various sleep hacking tips and products. Includes some good sleep tracking apps.

Yast – Track where you are spending your time. Needs a sand pit to bury your head in upon analysing results.

Sanebox – An absolute Godsend for anybody who spends Monday morning drowning in emails. Filter the chaff.

WriteMonkey – Spend a lot of time writing? This tool removes every last distraction from your screen. Write monkey, write.

Miscellaneous Tools

Concierge – All-in-one shop for every service an affiliate could possibly need, from copywriting to server tuning to legal advice.

FTC Guidelines – Well, this you did not expect.

Evernote – Remember everything, everywhere. I could not live without Evernote.

Ad Calc – Estimates your anticipated CPCs, EPCs, CTRs, CPMs, BMIs and so on…

SimplyNoise – One of my favourite ways to stay productive. Use this free tool to increase your focus and block out any noisy distractions.

SimplyRain – Like white noise, but slightly more pleasing on the ear. There’s nothing like a heavy thunderstorm to block out the irritating arsewipe from across the office…

Coffitivity – Fuck, this is getting ridiculous now. Stay productive to the sounds of a bustling coffee shop.

Flippa – Sell websites, buy websites. Flip your god damn balls for profit if you so wish.

UBot Studio – Beast of an automation machine. Amazing for web scraping and point-and-click task gobbling.

Mr Green’s POF Uploader – Carpetbomb POF with your ads. Nice time saver.

GeoSurf – One of the best proxy tools on the market.

Maxmind Geo Tools – A staple in affiliate marketing landing pages, this open source tool lets you serve different content to different countries. Worth thousands if used correctly.

OIOPublisher – Sell ad space on your websites. Full geotargeting available. Excellent plugin.

Slanguage – Good resource for local slang. Give your campaigns a local touch.

Cool Slang – More slang, careful how you use it.

The Premium Post Series – Seven volumes of explicit, juicy affiliate marketing tips, straight from this author’s arse.

LastPass – Because when you work with a gazillion networks and a billion traffic sources, remembering passwords can be a pain in the arse.

Crunch Accounting – £70/month for excellent accounting software and advice whenever you need it. UK only.

Web Page Test – Slow landing page = Low conversion rate. This tool checks the speed of your pages.

VTC – I have a soft spot for VTC. When I dropped out of school, I taught myself everything online-related using this site.

Lynda – Video tutorials for just about anything business related.

Useful TED Talks

‘How to get your ideas to spread’ – Seth Godin doesn’t like to play it safe.

‘The tribes we lead’ – Seth Godin on the power of building a tribe, and how to lead one.

‘Life lessons from an Ad Man’ – Rory Sutherland on the difference between ‘real’ value and perceived value.

‘The happy secret to better work’ – Shawn Achor shares some of the secrets from his Happiness Advantage philosophy. Enlightenment for affiliates.

‘The power of time off’ – Stefan Sagmeister on the revitalising effect of planned time off. When was the last time you did nothing?

‘The puzzle of motivation’ – Dan Pink on why most managers get it wrong.

‘Trial, error and the God Complex’ – Tim Harford on why trial and error is the way forward. It really is.

‘What physics taught me about marketing’ – Dan Cobley’s fascinating if slightly contorted slant on what marketing and physics have in common.

‘Schools kill creativity’ – Hugely popular talk from Ken Robinson that I wish I could have sent to my teachers 10 years ago.

I will be adding to this list over time, and it’s only natural that I will have forgotten a few deserving sites and tools. If you think something needs adding, feel free to plug it in the comments.