Tag Archives: affiliate marketing

10,000 in Your List…Now What?

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One of my friends mentioned that he’s built a list of 10,000 opt-in members into his mailing list within a period of 7 days…so what’s he supposed to do now, he asks.

I don’t think any responsible email marketer will give advice before finding out more information.

For example, how was the list built? Using PPC? Expired domain traffic? Co-reg traffic? Via opt-ins through Squidoo or HubPages? Via an article directory? As a result of a follow up/update list after buying a product (either an affiliate product or your own product).

Each of these channels comes with it’s own level of permission – and if you’re a permission-based marketer, you’ll realized that someone who’s just bought something from you has a higher level of loyalty and stickiness, compared to someone who’s just downloaded a free report off your site.

So back to the 10,000 mailing list – determine the source of list/lead generation is important. Are they emotionally invested in you? Have they spent money purchasing something you offer? Called into one of your teleseminars and stayed the full duration because they found the information compelling? Are they merely curious strangers? Or evangelists for your brand (also known as “raving fans”).

Once you’ve sorted that out, you need to figure out the demographics of your list too. What’s their Continue reading →

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

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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 →

Post-Affiliate Summit West Monetization And Action Plan

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I’ve landed in Singapore after a gruelling 17 hour 30 minute non-stop flight from LAX to Singapore (considerably shorter than the 20+ hour flight with a stopover in Tokyo or Hong Kong) and promptly took a 7-hour afternoon nap. I do love working my own hours…

affiliate summit shawn collins missy ward

At Affiliate Summit West with ASW co-founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward

If it was your first Affiliate Summit or you would like to get more out of your trip, here’re my suggestions:

  • Follow Up

Yes, you can mass mail all the people you met, but social marketing/conversational marketing is what’s going to give you an edge in building relationships and bringing your business to the next level. Include a personal note, talk about winning Continue reading →

2 More Affiliate Summits Coming Up This Year???

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If you’ve been watching the Affiliate Summit website, you might’ve missed this little goodie, if you blinked:

Upcoming Affiliate Summits: Boston (August 10-12, 2008) — New York City (October 5, 2008).

I’ve known about Affiliate Summit East in Boston later in August, but “New York City”?

That’s news to me.

Is that going to be “Affiliate Summit East 2”?

My buddy, Loxly, aptly pointed out that the NYC event is just one day. So it could be a scaled down event?

I would have checked with Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins, but he looks like he’s away from his computer now.

Maybe we’ll see some updates shortly from Shawn.

I’m already making plans to attend the Boston event, though it’ll be interesting to hear what “Affiliate Summit East 2” in NYC holds…

$4,995 Prize In The Affiliate Version Of The Fast and the Furious

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One of the little-known events at the Affiliate Summit in Vegas next week is that there’ll be a competition with a first prize worth $4,995 being given out. I am pretty surprised that as of the last update, there’s only 4 (yes, FOUR) participants in the running for this prize.

If a 20% (1 in 5) chance of winning a $5,000 prize (and an opportunity to contribute to a worthwhile cause) doesn’t excite you, I’m not sure what will…

Enter the Great Affiliate Road Rally, where you get to race against other Affiliate Summit West attendees for a chance to win a booth at the Affiliate Summit East tradeshow/seminar Aug 10-12 in Boston, MA.

Yes, the prize is transferable, and I’ve got word from Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins that a second and a third prize might be added too.

It’s a “bring your own car” (BYOC) competition, so you can pick up a remote controlled car at Target, Wal Mart or order it from an online retailers like Amazon or a RC specialist.

The event will be held indoors, so only electric cars will be allowed and it’ll be conducted in the same room as the keynote address (seating capacity of about 1,000…!), so you can expect a pretty big room.

To separate this from being a pure drag race, Shawn says he will fiendishly set up obstacles along the race route, so it’s not just a matter of getting a F1 car or a Nissan Skyline and hitting the throttle as hard as you can.

I’ve noticed that Affiliate Summit founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins have gone all out to raise funds for a selected charity at every event and this Affiliate Summit is no different.

The beneficiary is the Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation. Great Affiliate Road Rally participants can make a minimum donation of $100 at the Affiliate Summit link to Starlight to secure your entry.

I have my pit team already putting one of my cars through its paces…

bianca wee

Pit mechanics Bianca Wee putting the car through its final paces

So my team and I will Continue reading →

Friday Podcast: A Wide Open Market For Software Affiliates – Revenuewire’s Geordie Carswell

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revenuewire geordie carswellPromoting software as an affiliate marketer can be very lucrative, as Revenuewire CEO Geordie Carswell (right) explained during our Friday Podcast discussion.

With some affiliates racking up between 800 and 1,000 sales a day and with payouts of about $25 per license, that adds up to about close to a cool $1 million in gross commissions each month.

And the good news is that the software market still has a lot of room for growth.

During our discussion, Geordie went into detail about:

  • How to evaluate software products to promote
  • Create an effective marketing campaign that will maximize your profits
  • Promoting digital products using PPC (pay per click traffic) vs SEO (search engine optimization)
  • PPC tactics that the affiliate big dogs use that you may not be aware of yet
  • Comparing the Google Search network vs the Content network

Geordie is one of the most savvy PPC marketers I have come across and it was great to get the PPC tips from him and a wealth of information about getting started as a software promoting affiliate.

Check out the Friday podcast below:

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Note: Revenuewire will hold it’s official launch at Affiliate Summit West in Vegas next week. Geordie and Revenuewire team members will be at the booth in the tradeshow hall.

Also check out:

–> Revenuewire

–> The Revenuewire PPC Blog