Category Archives: affiliate marketing

Affiliate Marketing Tips From 2 Industry Veterans

I have to thank Jeremy Palmer for helping introduce a new routine for me this week.

Because of the BlackInkProject, I’d been waking at 5am (later rolled back to 545am) to make it for his live affiliate training (3pm PDT is 6am in Singapore…)

If you’re already an affiliate marketing veteran, what you’ll take away from Jeremy’s lessons is not what he says on the surface, but also “what lies beneath”. Look beyond the surface and you’ll get an insight into how he strategizes his system, develops a process and applies that process with ruthless efficiency when approaching a new niche.

So if you’re on the forums asking “I want to start a shoe blog, I hear they make good money. How do I start?” you’re probably barking down the wrong track.

Instead, take a moment to map out your goals/outcomes, develop a plan of action and be prepared to change course along the way.

As someone who made it to the sophomore year as an EE/CS (electrical engineers, computer science) major before dropping out and making a minor switch to creative writing and psychology, I’d like to think that one thing I’ve carried over from my 2 years of engineering is a systems-based approach to building a business.

Which totally echoes what Scott Jangro mentioned during the recording of our Friday Podcast session.

If you haven’t read between the lines in the affiliate and internet marketing blogs out there, and go beyond the “make quick cash” ebooks you see being flouted and touted and pimped all over the place, you’ll see a trend towards building a business online. And it’s no “big shock” or suprise either.

If you look back historically at the first salesmen selling snake oil and other miracle cures, they were soon supplanted by guys who were the real deal.

Do you think the online world is going to play by different laws?

So just like the dotcom crash of 2000 wiped out the guys who had Continue reading

Affiliate Marketing Training Program Black Ink Project Launches

UPDATE: Check out the latest version of: The Black Ink Project

It takes a lot to get me out of bed early in the morning, but Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink Project kicked off to a great start today.

Jeremy talked about his start in affiliate marketing and the niches he’s in (dating, web hosting, music downloads, VOIP, online marketing), as well as criteria for shortlisting and testing viable niches.

More importantly, he also talked about a number of niches he “failed” at and eventually dropped.

If you’re not already generating a 5-figure income from your affiliate marketing efforts, you ought to sign up for Jeremy’s 20 session, free (yes…it’s free) training at the Black Ink Project.

I’ll be presenting content later in the series, and as the program picks up steam, I know that more than a few Super Affiliates are going to come out of this program.

The first week of training kicked off at 3pm PDT and continues the rest of the week.

Check out the full schedule and register at: Black Ink Project (limited spaces available).

The call recordings may be available 24 hours after the initial session.

Also, find out more about Jeremy Palmer’s strategies from his appearance on a recent episode of the Friday Podcast.

Note: US and Canadian BlackInkProject members have a toll-free number to call in. I made a long distance call, but it’s great to find out that webinar provider WebEx (a Cisco company) is providing real-time audio stream too.

Namecheap Domain Registration Discount Code And Video Developments

Here it is: the discount code this month at domain registrar Namecheap this month is “AprilShowers”. [works great in tandem with BlueHost shared webhosting]

I know it works because I just got a new domain there a couple of minutes ago. More on that later.

Just a note about “Super Affiliates”, I was chatting with Kim Rowley last night about marketing techniques and mentioned the power of video blogging and YouTube.

I wake up this morning and she’s posted a VIDEO product review post at her shopping site TechTheStyle.

If that’s not enough, her partner Pat posts a VIDEO followup a couple of hours later here. (I dig the window blinds which gives his video a “Max Headroom-ish” feel and I thought the timecode gave it a techy/industrial feel).

If you’re still suffering from “structured procrastination“, I say “bull-crud”, get off your behind and do something, instead of just wondering why folks like Kim and Pat are so “lucky”…

Back to the domain, I got a new one – AndrewWeeLive.com – the nice ones I was hoping for were taken already.

The site will be more personal in nature, a theme that I connect with, especially with the recent Sam Harrelson AffiliateFortuneCookie podcasts and the Scott Jangro “JangroCast” (should “JangroCast” be a new trigger term for “Sorry, Jangro“?)

It will also give me a reason to use my new MacBook as more than as just a paperweight.

Anyone have any tips/suggestions on getting started on the Mac?

Market Leverage Set For Trademark Face-Off With Microsoft?

I was downloading some files off Microsoft and noticed their logo:

microsoft

(swiped from my browser tabs).

And here’s the logo for affiliate network, Market Leverage:

market leverage

Which looks fairly similar.

I’ve seen companies fight it out in the courts when it comes to trademark similarity, and Microsoft certainly rigorously enforces it’s intellectual property.

Watch this space for updates…

Are Affiliate And CPA Networks Shooting Themselves In The Foot When It Comes To Affiliate Recruitment?

One of the issues that has been bothering me since I started out as an affiliate has been “why do affiliate and CPA networks pay out such miserable recurring payouts for sub-affiliates”?

If you’ve checked into an affiliate or CPA network control panel, you’ll typically see a “Super Affiliate” or “sub-affiliate recruitment” link with payouts ranging from about 1% to 2% of commissions generated and if you’re lucky, you’ll sometimes see 5% or 10%.

At those levels, is there any real incentive to go out and recruit affiliates/publishers for your network, aside from wanting to build goodwill and possibly a couple of bucks for a nice Friday night dinner?

I understand that margins can be pretty thin, especially since a number of CPA networks are the ultimate traffic arbitragers – they “buy” traffic from you at $1-$1.50 per zip/email submit lead, and attempt to upsell them into an affiliate offer or merchant-direct offer on the backend.

Granted, I haven’t seen the financials of one of these networks yet, but I’m wondering that if you are already relying on affiliates to generate your sales…why not go the extra mile and incentivize them to go out and recruit more affiliates for you? Especially with a decent payout. (we’re not even considering networks which pay you $3 or $5 to recruit an affiliate…).

By my estimations, one out of every 100 affiliates is a top performer (hence the term “top performer”), in this league, you’ll see guys like: Amit Mehta, Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman, Zac Johnson, Bobby “bluebobbo”, Jeremy Palmer, James Martell , Paul “Uber Affiliate” Bourque among others.

But I think the game of getting top affiliates is like going out on a fishing boat. You cast your nets and get a whole bunch of prospective affiliates, but you won’t know who’ll be a top performer until you haul in your catch and sort everyone out.

On that basis, the less-skilled affiliates will weed themselves out and a higher payout won’t matter anyway. On the other hand, a better performing affiliate will be motivated to go out and get results.

I think the bottomline is Continue reading

Affiliate Summit West 2008…A Story In Images

Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins has got the pictures from the professional photographer from the recent Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas last month (all 630 of them) and has mentioned them on the Affiliate Summit blog. You can check out the Affiliate Summit West Flickr photostream.

Here’re some of my favourites:

julia stead

With the ShareResult affiliate network affiliate manager Julia Steat at the Great Affiliate Road Rally

laura alter

With Notebook Forums‘ Laura Alter (yes, she is 6’ and wearing heels…)

tris hussey

After talking to him for about a year, I finally got to meet B5 blog network’s training manager Tris Hussey

social media justine ezarik tris hussey

At the social media session with Justine Ezarik and Tris Hussey

zac johnson amit mehta

Zac Johnson and Amit Mehta at the Super Affiliate session

engaging the media

At the “Engaging the Media” panel session with Lisa Picarille, Anik Singal, Valerie Stevens and Jim Kukral

jim kukral

I don’t know about you, but I think Jim Kukral deserves some type of award for being the most photographed!

Be sure to check out the other pictures at the ASW photo collection.

Affiliate Summit as always was a blast (I still have about 500 of my own pictures to put up somewhere…).

If you’re keen to bring your affiliate business to the next level, be sure to check out Affiliate Summit East from Aug 10-12 in Boston, MA.