The launch of the WhoIsAndrewWee.com Affiliate Challenge a couple of weeks back has proven to be quite an attractive proposal for new and experienced affiliates.
With prizes like gift cards and mini laptops on the line, there’s been a long line of applicants to Market Leverage in order to participate in the contest. (Note: for this specific contest, you have to be Singapore-based in order to qualify).
The sticking point has been getting approved – to date, there’s only 1 eligible contestant in the contest.
One of the “risks” in making this contest only for Singapore-based affiliates is that there might be zero participants in the contest – not because there’s no interest, but because international affiliates in general have to take number of additional steps in order to get their affiliate applications approved, compared to their US counterparts (a point I highlighted during my appearance on Missy Ward’s TheSpew Episode “The SpewGirls Go Global” ).
Here are a couple of tips to be successfully approved as an affiliate (more…)
So everybody knows the high paying niches – payday loans, credit repair, weight loss, grant information, programs with a continuity/rebilling element to the customer (ie: the “Google” money making CPA offers). But just because you know an offer pays a larger upfront commission, doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to convert it into a winning campaign.
Just looking at the street (standard/baseline) payout doesn’t give you an idea of how well it will do, unless you have the offer conversion data.
Most affiliate networks will list their top offers, like Market Leverage does within their affiliate interface:
Picking an offer based on the highest payout is probably one of the worst ways to pick an offer – because there’re many more variables that affect the success of any campaign.
You might also look at the EPC (earnings per 100 clicks), which is in the form of a dollar value. Eg: $0.50 EPC or you might see $50 EPC. That means out of every 100 clicks sent to the offer, the average commission generated is the amount you see.
Take note though, these figures aggregate commissions generated across the network – you’ll have earnings data from PPC marketers, emailers, SEO affiliates, social media affiliates aggregated into a single figure. To have EPC be more useful, you should ask your affiliate manager for the breakdown and look at the average EPC for the type of traffic you’re generating.
As you’re looking at different offers, you might like to shortlist at least 5 to 10 different offers to research.
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Researching Your Niche
Although you might have a rough idea about what your niche is about (dating has something to do with people joining a dating service and the service provider pays you a commission for the lead), you should go a step further to look at the niches in greater detail.
Google has an editorial review team that reviews news sources (including blogs) and includes them in the list of content providers for the Google News service. By checking out news coverage within the last 3 months (perferably within the last year), it’ll give you a sense of how well the niche is doing, and if it’s a niche with affiliate/CPA offers with a short lifespan, how long it’s been in the marketplace.
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Google Trends is a way to graphically see how the niche/offer has been performing over a period of time.
For example:
For a niche like college grants/grant information, the peaks for search volume (more…)
Brandon Adcock, better known by his online moniker MajorBTA came on the Friday Podcast to share his insights on starting out and becoming a successful affiliate.
Like successful affiliate Dr Ngo (AKA Charles Ngo), Brandon got his start managing the SEM (search engine marketing) operations for a major retailer and had insight into the workings of traffic and lead generation.
He’s had more than his share of challenges and obstacles along the way to his current level of success and during the Friday Podcast, he talked about:
How he started promoting credit card affiliate offers and how he dealt with challenges when the programs started imploding
How he encountered a series of failures when he started promoting weight loss CPA offers and the platform where he managed to hit his first $1,000 day.
What you should do to research an affiliate/CPA offer before you start promoting it to increase your chances of success
Advice for new affiliates starting out
There’re quite a few nuggets of information for new and experienced affiliates which you can check out at the link below:
This is the first in a series of educational post about getting started as an affiliate marketer. Whether you’re new to the industry or have some experience under your belt, you should get more tips and strategies to enhance and improve your campaigns.
What’s Affiliate Marketing and CPA Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a channel or method where advertisers (also known as merchants or product owners) recruit partners to help them:
Generate prospective customers OR
Pre-sell them on the idea of buying the product OR
Getting involved in the sales process themselves
Depending on the advertiser you’re working with, you might be known as an affiliate/affiliate marketer/partner/associate/reseller.
You might be paid on:
The number of prospects generated (lead generation) OR
The value of products bought (revenue share/pay-per-sale) OR
On an ongoing basis receiving regular payments as long as the customer continues the product/service. (continuity/rebilling/subscription)
CPA marketing or Cost-Per-Action marketing is primarily focused on the lead generation aspect of the business. You might receive a $30 payout on a $4.95 trial by the customer. The advertiser is able to recoup their commission payout to you by selling a premium product on the backend (as a product upgrade), or enrol the customer in a monthly subscription.
Hence, for many new affiliates, the CPA route (more…)
Market Leverage Social Media Manager Dina Riccobono, came on the Friday Podcast to talk about the network’s social branding intiatives. Specifically, industry observers will note that Market Leverage has often taken the lead in reaching out to affiliate via the social media channel – Market Leverage TV, Greenlink affiliate video tutorials, and engagement on blogs and forums.
I invited Dina on the Friday Podcast to give her insight into intiatives like:
What social media marketing means to Market Leverage
Some of the past social campaigns that the network has led
How the online social media projects tie in with real-world tradeshows and events
Market Leverage’s new mobile application for affiliates
Brandon Adcock, better known by his online moniker MajorBTA came on the Friday Podcast to share his insights on starting out and becoming a successful affiliate.
Market Leverage Social Media Manager Dina Riccobono, came on the Friday Podcast to talk about the network’s social branding intiatives. Specifically, industry observers will note that Market Leverage has often taken the lead in reaching out to affiliate via the social media channel – Market Leverage TV, Greenlink affiliate video tutorials, and engagement on blogs and forums.