Finch Sells | Affiliate Marketing Blog

The Reality Of Affiliate Markeconomics

Aug 10 2011

How lucky are affiliate marketers to be financially independent?

Whichever way you look in the press, percentages of individuals are doomed. 9 percent of the population is unemployed, 95 percent is too stretched to buy a first home, 47 percent is busy looting Asda for a packet of rice. Forgive me for my number crunching cynicism, but why are we so obsessed with percentages?

Since when did the individual view his professional crisis as a colour on a pie chart?

CNN and the BBC can spend hours dissecting every last tribulation of the economy to a fine detail, but ultimately, they can only deal in averages and sweeping states of the nation. We, as individuals, have to take responsibility for rising above the insufferable fate that awaits those who aren’t personally driven to swim against the tide of national averages.

When reading the newspaper fills you with a sweeping sense of dread, maybe it’s time to put down the shit rag, turn a blind eye to the latest headlines and continue with life and business.

There’s only so much scaremongering I can handle on the subjects of unemployment and business growth before it starts to turn really fucking old really fucking fast.

It’s tempting to blame our personal failings on the condition of the state. Tempting, but ultimately beating around the bush in spectacular fashion.

If you are one of the millions who cannot find a job, how about creating one? Or locating where the demand is, and adjusting your skills to match?

If you are one of the millions who cannot pay a debt, how about living within your means? Or finding the willpower to say “No” when faced with materialistic desires that you simply can’t afford but choose to have anyway because you’re a feckless tool.

Recently I’ve seen affiliate marketing as the perfect source of income during times of economic turmoil. It’s flexible, fluid and allows me to speak from a high horse of pro-entrepreneurism that simply isn’t possible for most honest businesses.

I don’t believe it’s mere coincidence that the last recession in 2008 triggered an almighty boom in the notorious “work from home” kits. Your average family was worried about the fragility of employment, and how it would service debt if his and her jobs disappeared overnight.

Fast moving affiliates jumped on that vulnerability and made an absolute killing with home biz kit rebills. They didn’t last forever, thank god, but highlighted how recession, depression or market euphoria doesn’t matter a damn jot to the entrepreneur who can change what he sells at the flick of a switch.

We have the power to move where the money is.

Online entrepreneurs don’t have to spend months in the trenches doing research, lobbying banks for loans or calculating intricate margins to ensure their stock levels are correct. Instead we can react to market trends, create digital products in a matter of weeks and have them available to download with none of the risk of tight margins.

No matter how grave the economy becomes, people will always be buying. Where there is spending, there is the desire to spend knowledgeably. And where there is people asking these questions, there is a shit ton of affiliates queuing up with ebooks that monetize the answers.

Thanks to the rise of the Internet, we know better than most how lucrative it can be to move quickly in to those buying markets.

Our price for this flexibility is the impending sense of business instability, the castle built on sand syndrome. These are shackles that most successful affiliates learn to cast aside, either through diversifying or by removing the word ‘complacency’ from their newspeak.

Even if our domestic economies were to face total annihilation, it’s never been easier to spread the wings and set up shop elsewhere. Is it so hard to advertise to foreign countries? To translate your products in to the native tongue of a more extravagantly spending nation?

Not really, it’s just another challenge we can overcome in days while the brick and mortar business is still occupied in the prison of distribution logistics.

Affiliate marketing clearly has a lot going for it, but with such rapid movement in to new markets, we are also guilty of filling the web with more useless crap than the average surfer could sift through in a lifetime.

This is where I see affiliates biting the dust in future. Our industry has grown so fast and so profitably that we’re going to have to become much more accountable for the information we publish and any claims we make. Dare I say it, we may actually have to start slapping our names to some of this shit.

Our landing pages are typically hidden in subfolders, draped in anonymity with WHOIS protection. We anticipate customers will buy through our links because we treat them like hopeless lemmings, selling them the moon and then shoving them off the cliff face. How long can it last?

Aggressive marketing has always existed. Yet with the freedom affiliates have, there’s never been such a whirlwind of false, bad and misinterpreted information.

We specialise in creating sales, but the actual companies we sell for are becoming more and more disconnected from the selling process. This results in more and more bullshit. More and more customers being shoved off the cliff.

Affiliate marketing, despite the rising costs and legal shitstorms, is still a very lucrative industry. It always will be, by virtue of the fact that it’s an industry composed of all other industries. How can it go out of fashion?

What needs to change is the culture of anonymity and the kamikaze any bold claim will do approach to selling. The sooner affiliates focus on providing genuine quality to the industries they choose to work in, the faster the bad press will disappear and the quicker we can get on with calling ourselves actual businessmen.

Recommended This Week

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.
Lots of Ads is the latest service to offer spying capabilities over Facebook’s most profitable ads. The great appeal for me is the ability to spy on International markets including France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil and many more. Save time on translations and tap in to the most lucrative markets on Facebook. Definitely a worthy addition to your toolkit. First 20 customers only who use code FINCH11 will receive 10% off their lifetime subscription. Enjoy!
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The Traffic Source Doesn’t Suck, You Suck

Aug 02 2011

What do successful affiliates have in common?

Is it fast cars, heavy wallets and eyes shaped like dual-screens?

Maybe, but there’s something else. I don’t think you’ll find a single successful affiliate who hasn’t shown a good knack for understanding his traffic sources. It may be one traffic source, it may be many. But without that working knowledge, you’ll find it painstakingly difficult to generate profit.

Self-serve advertising platforms like Facebook, Plentyoffish and AdWords are enduringly popular with affiliates. I mark this down to two reasons. The ease of launching a campaign, and the abundance of case studies readily available for digestion.

However, these platforms are only a small segment of the online advertising space. A few affiliates have commented on my Facebook related posts saying that, actually, it’s not even worth bothering with Facebook these days. The big money is in advertising on display networks and nailing down media buys.

While I would disagree that Facebook is no longer worth the bother, there’s definitely truth to the argument that display advertising is a lucrative and sustainable replacement.

The problem with display advertising – and by twisted logic, the incentive – is that affiliates find it much harder to launch profitable campaigns off the bat. They become disheartened when the inventory shrinks at closer inspection, many of the featured sites refusing to run ads in popular affiliate verticals. They see CPMs of $3.50 that set the alarm bells ringing.

In many cases, the control panel itself is a sprawling mass of more options than a “no bells and whistles” Facebook advertiser could shake a stick at.

So the affiliate does what could be expected of him. He runs back to Facebook’s loving arms, willing to sacrifice the great unknown for super tight margins and bitching interns. Whatever makes you feel at home, right?

There are hundreds of traffic sources that can be called upon. Why do so many affiliates choose the same two or three? In fact, let’s elaborate on that. Why do so many affiliates settle for being mediocre on the same two or three?

I’ve linked to this article countless times, but it’s value never diminishes. So once again, here is a list of traffic sources that could keep you busy for the rest of the week.

Now, back to the question of what do successful affiliates have in common?

The answer is patience, determination and perseverance to cancel out distractions, take one of those ad platforms, and sponge up every last piece of information about it.

You can do this by signing up and hacking together a campaign to test the waters. I don’t recommend it though.

Have you seen what happens when you try to port a Facebook campaign to Plentyoffish? It doesn’t work. No two traffic sources are the same, so porting a campaign to another in the hope that it will become profitable straight away is very optimistic thinking.

Before advertising on a new traffic source, I like to contact my account manager and interrogate him for some perspective on what other affiliates are doing. This shows that I need direct results and that I don’t have budget to piss my message in to the wind on a branded hope and prayer.

Once I have a good idea of how suitable the platform is for direct response marketing, I’ll make a decision on whether I want to go ahead and inject whatever holding balance is required. This is a small step, but it saves me the bother of 2009 revisited.

2009 revisited? Yeah, having a leftover balance of $982.94 in seven different traffic sources after losing my Google account and depositing a grand in to every alternative I could find. Binge depositing is bad, kids.

If you’re going to try a new traffic source, it’s only logical that you extend it the same level of patience as you would with Facebook. If the first campaign bombs, you probably had a shitty campaign. Don’t blame the foreign traffic source for your own ineptitude or one size fits all marketing.

Gather some test data and then drop your account manager another email. Ask for some advice on how you’ve configured the campaign. Does it look right? Are you missing any obvious tricks that other affiliates are cashing in on?

As always, it’s necessary to measure campaign variables in a strategic manner. You can only do this with a clean slate. I’ve been working with an adult traffic source lately, and even though I’m dealing in the same vertical (dating offers), I’ve had to assume the identity of somebody who knows nothing. I split test variables that I needn’t even worry about on Plentyoffish because I’ve had time to key in those campaigns already.

Small details cause massive ripples of change. Imagine if you’d never played with the browser targeting on Plentyoffish, or the geographic filtering on Facebook. Christ, just imagine the carnage if you showed Facebook the same disdain that these new traffic sources receive when you can’t get your first campaign profitable.

Successful affiliates know this, whether they’re advertising on Facebook, AdWords or some shitty display network based out of the Angolan jungle. The money is in the detail, the planning and the execution. Learn the traffic source and you’re halfway there.

Recommended This Week

Above All Offers has been gaining some serious traction lately and if you’re not already registered, now would be a good time to get in the door. It’s run by some of the smartest guys in the biz, with a good selection offers, weeklies and laser fast support. If you were ever a fan of Blue Hat SEO (check it out, it’s semi-alive again!), you should know that Eli most definitely knows his shit. One of the early inspirations that attracted me to the industry, it seems that his network is going to end up just as well respected. Sign up, homes!
If you’re not already registered on PPV Playbook, you are missing a beat sunshine! Easily the BEST place to learn from marketers who are actually making money. It has some awesome case studies. The catch is that you will need to pay some of your hard earned pesos to access it. I swear from the bottom of my black heart, joining is worth every penny
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What Disney Can (And Can’t) Teach You About Dating Ads

Jul 27 2011

Watching a Disney movie is like wading through all the stereotypes that have been proven wrong since your childhood. It can be a traumatising experience for the Bridget Jones thirty-something who still hasn’t found a man remotely akin to Prince Charming. If you’re a guy, it’s more of an exercise in ninety minutes of wishful thinking.

I’ve never been a Disney fan. It lacks swagger, and I just hate how the annoying brat always wins.

I guess my personality can be summed up by the sweeping emotion I felt at the end of Wall-E (was that even Disney?). My girlfriend shed a tear of happiness. I felt a pang of resentment that the fucker didn’t get crushed.

Alas, Disney movies can still serve a purpose – even for black hearted affiliate marketers such as myself. They can help us explore the visual stereotypes that have been ingrained in to consumers from an early age.

There’s no finer example than the portrayal of a handsome Prince Charming. Check out the chops on this smug bastard:

Everything about the dude screams stereotypical attractiveness, but what features create that image? I think the defining attributes are the pumped macho build, the wide smile and the chin.

Knowing what we know, that girls from a young age are conditioned to view these physical features as attractive and desirable, how would Mr Chinny fare as the lead model for our latest round of dating ads?

Very well is the answer, certainly from the majority of my own tests.

Guys with “the Disney Chin” seem to have a natural advantage when it comes to clickability. Ironically, the effect was amplified when I used an amateur model who also happened to be dark and handsome.

Get chin, get laid.

Another interesting finding was the correlation between images that appear professional, and those taken in the amateur MySpace hobag style. If I used a professional model with a big chin, the CTR was much lower than an amateur quality photo of a male who possessed the same chin factor.

I guess this confirms what most of us already knew. Photos that look “home-made” will routinely outperform the rest.

But does it tell us anything else? Maybe females are banner blind and happy to ignore Disney stereotypes when they’re obvious to the naked eye. But shove the same stereotypes in a natural looking environment and you will frequently reap the rewards.

If Prince Charming is a good marker for your female dating ads, what parallels can we draw between Disney and single males?

I ran a similar test using the classic Princess (blonde, hair-down-to-her-arse…) as my requirements for suitable female models. In nearly all cases, this classy respectable image was outperformed by two twin click factors: tits and ass.

It seems guys don’t want to click on ads that follow the Disney stereotype of beauty. Maybe that’s because beauty is an afterthought to the male instinct of click whatever gets the loins a’pumping. Who knows? But I found in nearly every experiment, the skankier the chick… the faster the click.

Guys respond much more readily to a pose that can be interpreted sexually, heavy make-up, secretary glasses poised at lusty angles (Click BOOM!), and a bit of rough around the edges.

Does that mean they’d date the same woman? Probably not, but it’s an effective formula for attracting clicks.

Recommended This Week

Lots of Ads is the latest service to offer spying capabilities over Facebook’s most profitable ads. The great appeal for me is the ability to spy on International markets including France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil and many more. Save time on translations and tap in to the most lucrative markets on Facebook. Definitely a worthy addition to your toolkit. First 20 customers only who use code FINCH11 will receive 10% off their lifetime subscription. Enjoy!
Another useful tool for spying on competitors – and building PPV target lists – can be found on MixRank. MixRank lets you locate the best performing ads on Google’s content network, and also pinpoint where they are being shown for the most profit. It’s good and it’s free.
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