Finch Sells | Affiliate Marketing Blog

How To Stop Thinking Like 95% Of Other Marketers

Apr 02 2010

One of the benefits of being a “blogging personality” in the affiliate world, and hopefully a trusted one, is that a lot of people come to me with their best kept ideas and ask for my input. My inbox seems to attract some incredibly creative minds and it can be enlightening to hear some of the strategies that other marketers have devised. But for every innovative affiliate, there must be a thousand hopeless sheep.

A couple of years ago, it may have been possible to drag some bum off the street, teach him a trick, show him FTP, and hey presto – you’ve got an affiliate marketer. The barrier to entry was so low, and the competition so light, that anybody with half a mind for selling the bullshit dream could run wild with profit. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.

You can’t just plug in, profit and piss off anymore. There has to be method to your madness, because other marketers have upped their games to combat the rising costs of saturated traffic sources.

The key to success is no longer to apply some basic newbie guide, but rather to innovate and strike the market before your peers. The biggest money in affiliate marketing goes to the guys and girls who jump on an idea before everybody else. The problem is, there can only be so many ideas to go around. Having to innovate to survive is a scary thought because as we all know, moments of inspiration do not run on tap. They can be days, weeks or in the case of my good friends over at the Warrior Forum – cosmic light years apart.

But what too many marketers don’t realize is just how far one good idea can go.

Imagine being the guy who had that moment of inspiration and decided to submit a Facebook flyer with the simple title “Want A Girlfriend?” all those months ago. If I had to take an educated guess, I’d imagine that he probably targeted his ad to the usual 25-39 crowd in the United States. But because nobody else was cashing in on the same concept, it was easy money.

These days, entering the same market with the same simple concept is a challenge where most will fail emphatically. Those who succeed will have split tested until blue in the face, rinsed through a hundred different creatives, and probably still have trouble sleeping given the delicate margins between profit and loss.

Entering a saturated market means you have to be good at what you do. Damn good. So what’s the most logical business direction you can take?

Judging by some reactions, it would probably be to bitch, moan, and sob that Facebook doesn’t work. All the while glaring enviously at those who still seem to be profiting with the same god damn ads every single day. Isn’t it just a slap in the face?

No, the solution is to stop thinking like 95% of other marketers. If your to-do list reads like a bunch of tips from an affiliate marketing blog, then you’re not thinking far enough outside the box. You’re just one of the many sheep with the same list of ideas and the same half-hearted execution that will ultimately result in failure and more bitching and whining.

When I’m brainstorming new ideas, I like to ask myself – “How can I get rid of a few more competitors? How can I avoid as many other affiliate marketers as possible and still reach my intended audience?”

If I’m taking a dating offer, maybe my targeting doesn’t read like this:

Male
25-34
United States

Because isn’t that what EVERY affiliate marketer will be thinking? You’re instantly competing with not only the established affiliates, but a thousand other newbies who’ve simply thrown up a “test ad” in the most obvious market. Thinking obvious gets you nowhere.

Let me just tell you that the single quickest shortcut you can take in the dating market is to switch that targeting from men to women. I guarantee that you’ll filter out 90% of the newbie slash retarded competition. You’ll still need to do a lot of work to find a winning concept. But it’s a step away from the obvious, a step towards your first untapped market.

Once you start taking those steps, it won’t be long before you’re marketing internationally, in foreign languages, to specific keyword subsets…carving your own niches out of the inventory. Whatever. Just know that if you’re doing your best and your best isn’t profitable, your best is not good enough. So move on and find a market which hasn’t already been raped up the arse by a thousand other affiliates.

If there’s one success story you should be listening to, it’s not that some dude is banking five figures a day on dating ads in April 2010. It’s that the guy who did it FIRST…had the easiest ride.

Do you want to spend the rest of your week scratching the margins, desperate to sustain a minimum CTR, because you know just how banner blind your target audience has become? Well, instead of split testing new titles, perving for 110x80s on Bing…why don’t you take matters in to your own hands? Find a market that every other affiliate and his dog hasn’t stuck his wang in yet.

Brainstorm your ideas, look at them carefully, and do the opposite. If you can stop thinking like 95% of other affiliate marketers, you’ll find yourself reaching markets that are still willing to listen to your bullshit.

Got a question for an affiliate marketer?

Seeing how I don’t like using AIM and emails get all too easily lost in the shuffle, I’ve opened a Formspring account where you can ask questions related to affiliate marketing, or whatever else tickles your fancy. No smart arses, please. I don’t like people trying to be wittier than me.

Click here to ask Finch a question

Back To Basics With Facebook Ads

Mar 26 2010

I haven’t posted about Facebook Ads for a good few months now. You probably figure my masterplan of finding, falling in love with, and marrying a sweet Facebook intern was a raging success. Actually, it wasn’t. I still suffer, like most of the affiliate world, from mindboggling approval guidelines and acts of rejection logic that put my world in a spin. I’d complain if I thought it’d make a difference.

More recently I’ve been doing some consultancy work and helping other individuals, mainly those involved with small business, to gain some mainstream exposure with a little help from my intern friends. Advertising on Facebook is valuable and often profitable, which is why so many of us choose to gut it out and submit endless rounds of ads until something sticks.

What really strikes me, as an affiliate, is the scope for expanding my own business by working with small local start-ups. Particularly those without a marketing team. If you’re a successful Facebook affiliate, whether you know it or not, you are a hot commodity. There are businesses out there who will pay good money for your expertise, and with good reason.

Anyway, I’m going to break down the key components behind any successful Facebook campaign. This is quite basic for some of you, so I’ll try to throw in some extra tips.

Before you even think about creating your ad, you need to make a decision. Are you going to bid CPM or CPC? Why is it such a key decision, you might wonder. The answer is because the model you choose will have a critical impact on the wording and message you will need to be sending with your ad text.

I wrote an entire post dedicated to the CPC vs. CPM question. I’d suggest you check it out if you want a comprehensive look at the matter. But the basic gist of the story is this. By bidding CPM, you can afford yourself the luxury of sending a much vaguer message with your ad text. Just as long as your landing page does a good job of twisting that message in to a sales pitch that actually works. You can be as cryptic or dare I say it – misleading – as you want.

If you’re producing a high volume of clicks and a good CTR, you can manipulate your campaign in to something that backs out on the right side of the red. I’ll take a dating ad as an example.

As usual, whenever I give away examples like this, people will go ahead and rip it image for image, word for word. Good luck. Why do you think I’m using it as an example?

Anyway, which ad do you think is more suitable for CPC? The creative which is designed to generate as many curious clicks as possible, or the creative that outlines the steps the user needs to take?

This is going to save you a lot of money. If you’re thinking of bidding CPC on Facebook, you better take that user’s hand and practically drag them through the necessary steps to fire your conversion. It’s no good being cryptic like I have with the first “secret admirer” creative.

By bidding CPC, you need to get the maximum bang for your buck. You want everybody who clicks that ad to be fully prepared for the steps that await them. I can imagine if I set the first example to CPC, I’d probably wipe out in spectacular style and be left with cornflakes for dinner. There’s only one thing worse than a CPC ad that doesn’t convert. And that’s a CPC ad with a ballbreakingly high clickthrough rate that still doesn’t convert.

In contrast, if I were to bid CPM with the cryptic dating ad, I’m now faced with two issues.

How can I get the clickthrough rate high enough to minimize the cost of my clicks?

The answer?

Test the living crap out of it until I find some numbers that fit in with my EPCs. Change the headlines, split test different age demographics and work out which time in the day is most productive for drawing the clicks. Ahem, after 6pm, use your fucking brain. You ever fancied shagging strangers over breakfast? Well there you go then.

The second and most important aspect to a successful CPM campaign is twisting that original cryptic message in to something that delivers high quality leads to the offer. You probably don’t give a monkey’s arse about the quality of your leads, but you should. When an advertiser knocks you off an offer, it’s a spanner in the works to the groundwork you’ve put in before.

Many affiliates will simply direct link with the high CTR ad and hope that by the law of numbers, all will be profitable in the end.

I don’t like doing things this way. In fact, I rarely ever direct link my offers.

My goal with the cryptic ad would be to develop a small landing page, possibly flogging it up with some dude explaining how he never knew he had so many admirers – until he added Zoosk – and now he can’t stop getting bombarded with messages from girls who want to know more about him. Have I tried that method before? No, because I want to keep my Facebook account. But you should be getting the idea that it’s important to deliver SOMETHING on your initial message. Otherwise you’re going to drive a lot of clicks and still be eating a lot of cornflakes for dinner. Comprende?

I’ve used dating and Facebook as examples here, but the methods are exportable to all traffic sources. You need to plug in your brain and start asking yourself not just “how can I get the most clicks to my offer?”, but “how can I get people clicking through with the right intentions?”. A conversion rate is significantly more important than a clickthrough rate. It highlights the importance of tracking and not interpreting your stats at face value.

I’ve seen affiliates turn off ads with the lowest CTR without even stopping to check which ads had been delivering the conversions. I mean, really, that is the act of somebody who wants to believe he’s tracking his campaigns but is probably just shooting himself in the balls over and over again. As long as you feel like you’re being productive, that’s all that matters – right?

There’s a few more Facebook themed posts lined up for the coming weeks so check back soon if this is your thing.

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Mastering The Art Of Getting Shit Done

Mar 17 2010

The summer is coming in London Town. And that spells major trouble for my work productivity levels should I decide that airing my balls to some rays is time well spent.

One of the questions I get asked by my non-affiliate friends is how I manage to not waste my life playing videogames and watching TV. It would be very easy to hit cruise control and let business take care of business while I watch four back to back seasons of Prison Break. Obviously I’m not talking from experience. Anybody who has enough time to watch 3418 minutes of espionage during working hours should probably stop blogging about productivity tips.

It would be rude not to finish what I started so fuck you.

I’ve been experimenting with various time management techniques, Firefox extensions, and god knows what else in my pursuit of a productive working day.

One of the most talked about productivity tips is simply to make a to-do list.

Now, I’m not knocking anybody who manages to stay on top of business with a simple notepad. In fact, I envy you. But personally speaking, if I’m having a lazy day, I’ll just give myself less to do on my to-do list. Which defeats the purpose of making a list altogether.

There will be some guys and girls out there who shake their heads in disgust.

“Productivity tools? Do you need Antony Robbins to inspire you to brush your teeth too? Just get it done and stop fart arsing around, you emo blogging prick”.

Yes, some people are capable of sitting at a desk, plowing through their tasks and not so much as batting an eyelid at a fresh new post on FinchSells.com. Others, thank God, are easily distracted.

I was sitting in a library musing through various self-help books the other week (don’t ask). I stumbled across a method in a book called Stress Proof Your Life, which is a really dull read except for this one particular method. So don’t go canvasing Amazon for a new bedtime story just yet.

It basically outlined the power of momentum in your working day. I’m sure many affiliate marketers are in the same boat when I say that momentum is probably the deciding factor in how much we get done on any given day.

I find it very easy to sit at my desk and tear through hours and hours of work. But only if I have the momentum where I feel like I’m getting somewhere. Otherwise I’ll bitch and moan and find the most fiendish of ways to waste my own time until somebody invites me to a pub where I can pretend that I’ve been at it hammer and tongs all day over a pint of the good stuff.

Momentum is everything.

If you set yourself a simple to-do list, it becomes very easy to switch off after you’ve completed a task. How often have you found yourself scratching your head at 5pm having spent the morning whacking off and telling yourself that it’s all okay because you don’t have plans tonight and those tasks will get done eventually?

I’ve started breaking down my tasks in to three different categories:

6 x 10 minute tasks
6 x 20 minute tasks
6 x 30 minute tasks

The idea is that you set a recurring timer to run through the time allocations with no gap in between. For example, the first hour of my morning may look like this:

10 minutes – Reply to emails from night before.
10 minutes – Analyze stats for yesterday’s campaigns.
10 minutes – Update PPC ad groups with new A-B split test.
10 minutes – Update Facebook campaigns with fresh images.
10 minutes – Add another 100 test URLs for PPV campaign.
10 minutes – Set and forget my automated scripts for the day.

These are all tasks that I could quite easily stretch to take an hour out of my day each if I was working from a simple to-do list with no time constraint. By setting the recurring ten minute alarm, you’re concentrating on one task for a very short window. It encourages you to keep moving, quit Twittering and start building the all important momentum that gets shit done.

After all my ten minute chores are done, I go straight in to the next set of activities. It might read like this:

20 minutes – Research demographics for Offer X. Decide on test groups.
20 minutes – Find and buy suitable imagery for the landing page.
20 minutes – Plan out important points to be conveyed in landing page copy.
20 minutes – Set up hosting, tracking & domain.
20 minutes – Sort out laundry, put on some clothes and apologize to the neighbours.
20 minutes – Carry out keyword research and assess prices across different platforms.

Why would I distract myself with laundry when I’m in the middle of setting up a campaign? It may sound like a really bad idea, but as long as you stick religiously to the timings, you begin to develop the momentum where it doesn’t matter what you need to do – you just do it. And that is the ultimate mindset you’re looking to achieve. To be able to get the ugly crap done.

I leave myself an hour at the end of the day to deal with the inevitable bullshit that arises while I work. Dropped offers, phone calls, email correspondence…the necessities of running a business that can be ballbreakingly annoying if you allow them to dictate your working day.

Everybody has their own way of staying productive. Some people are just natural troopers who’ll rip up the earth to get their latest project online. If that’s you, congratulations, come back when I have something worth reading.

An excellent tool I was pointed towards not too long ago is Leechblock. This is a Firefox Extension that you can set and forget in your browser. It will display an ugly red “THIS SITE IS BLOCKED” message when you try to access your usual time wasting sites. Twitter, Facebook, Statcounter…whatever you find yourself clicking back to, get it blocked and get on with your work.

Staying productive is one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced since becoming a full-time affiliate. Dragging myself out of bed when the body says no, fighting the urge to slack off over a bacon sarnie when I’ve drunk too much the night before. It’s not easy and it requires self-discipline. I can’t remember who I’m stealing this from but it’s the gospel truth: Procrastination is masturbation…you’re only ever fucking yourself.

It doesn’t really matter if there’s a method to your madness. Being static as an affiliate is the ultimate recipe for disaster. Do what you have to do and then reward yourself when it’s done. Even if the reward lasts 3418 minutes.

EDIT: Most people who’ve added me on AIM are pretty much aware that I don’t actually use AIM unless it’s a full moon or something. I’ve created a Formspring account for people to ask their questions somewhere I can answer them in my own time. And of course, for the odd smart arse to post something witty. You can post questions here: http://www.formspring.me/FinchSells. If it’s a question that you don’t want other people reading, forward it to my email and I will reply on a rainy day.