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 might be easier to get started.

Payouts are typically related to the amount of effort needed to get the lead/prospect to take an action.

For submitting their email address or zip code, it might be $0.50 – $2. For activities requiring more effort, such as filling in a request form, or purchasing a trial pack or product, it could be upwards of $100.

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Evaluating Affiliate Networks

The majority of affiliate networks use DirectTrack, a software developed by Digital River. One issue with Direct Track (DT) is that some spyware detection/protection software identifies DT cookies as spyware and hence removes it. Because your commissions are tracked by the cookies embedded in a user’s browser, having the cookie removed means the action/sale can’t be tracked to you, and you won’t receive credit for the sale.

There’re currently more than 350 affiliate networks (about 5-10 major networks and about 300+ small outfits) in the industry.

There’re also a number of merchants (large and small) who offer their own in-house affiliate programs (such as Amazon and the eBay Partner Network), so affiliates will sign up directly with them.

For a list of affiliate networks I work with and recommend, you can check out the Affiliate Network Review resource page.

Getting Started As An Affiliate

Here’s the major problem for most new affiliates – getting too bogged down buying educational courses, reading blogs and forums and going to tradeshows, seminars, meetups – without ever actually making much progress in starting or putting enough time into their own campaigns.

Here’s a tip: Get started today.

If you’re new to the industry, you might try setting up a personal blog and apply to affiliate programs which are easier to get into (the Amazon Associates affiliate program is a pretty easy starting point – note: they have recently discontinued some forms of promotion, so be sure to read their terms and coniditions carefully).

Another tip: Sign up via an existing affiliate’s link then drop them an email

If the affiliate knows you, they can put in a word to their affiliate manager and this might increase your chances of getting accepted into the affiliate network (note: it may not always work).

If you’re like to go with this strategy, you can check out the Affiliate Network Review page and drop me a note via the Contact form, including your full name, email address used in the application, plus some information about yourself and your experience.

Credibility is a very important element if you want to go along this route, so it’s important to promote quality programs on the reference site you might be using. Including things like ponzi schemes or poor quality/scammy offers on your site will be a surefire way to get your application denied.

You can also follow up with a phone call to the affiliate network via their phone number which helps a great deal.

One great way to get started as an affiliate, especially if you’re based in Singapore is to participate in the WhoIsAndrewWee.com affiliate challenge (sponsored by Market Leverage), which is specifically focused on Singapore-based affiliates.

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In the next Affiliate Marketing Tips: Researching niches and evaluating affiliate offers

• Take on more projects than you can reasonably handle?
• Have no problem starting a new project every day, but counting completed projects, you don’t go beyond the five fingers on one hand?
• Receive an email or a phone call for a JV (joint venture) opportunity and 30 seconds into the call, your first questions are: “what’re the payouts like?”, followed 2 seconds later with an “I’m in” before the guy finishes his pitch?

If you’re answered “yes” to at least one of these questions, you might be suffering from “Internet Marketing ADD”…seek professional help immediately.

A common refrain heard on the forums is that experienced Internet Marketers have difficulty focusing on a single project and are constantly “project flipping” as often as switching stations with the TV remote.

Here’s a realization:

To be an entrepreneur, you need to be able to multitask pretty effectively. I don’t mean only being able to work on a couple of things at the same time… You will also need to take on a couple of roles at the same time – CEO, COO, CFO, CTO, CMO, etc. You need a broadbase of skills, or at least an elementary understanding of sales, finance, marketing, product development, technology, as well as keep an eye on the strategic direction of your business.

In contrast, I know a number of professionals (lawyers, bankers, engineers) who are experts at what they do, they’re the archetypical “inch wide, mile deep” specialists, but their lack of a broadbase means they have great difficulty managing a business, given its myriad requirements. But give them a single task and they can chug away at it for weeks or months on end.

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If you’re reading this, you’re probably an Internet Marketer. What can you do to deal with this problem?

Here’s my take:

• Go with the flow: You know you’re not cut out to do one thing for weeks on end, so don’t fight it. Break your day up into several pieces. Focus on product development in the morning (or whenever your peak periods might be), talk to joint venture partners or strategic partners as you feel you’re moving out of your zone. Answer email and tackle customer support issues during your downtime.
• Focus, focus, focus: This was a major problem for me initially when I was doing consulting. You can take on 20 projects, and deliver below your optimal performance on all of them. OR you could charge a premium and work with your preferred 3-5 clients. If you work in performance incentives and revenue share, you might end up doing better with a select few, rather than attempt to take on the market.
• Recalibrate, reorient and refocus: Take time out to audit your efforts. Is what you’re doing helping you move toward where you want to be? Evalute and do the equivalent of “testing and tracking” in your business. Jettison projects that are stumbling or backsliding. Declutter experts say there is limited space in your life. If you cut and clear away stuff that isn’t helping you (people, projects and places), you’ll free up more “space” for new things to come in.

“Like you, I’m a writer by training and since become a SAHM (stay at home mum), I’ve mastered the basics of blogging and writing articles and am starting to get into simple product creation.

Some of this other stuff like SEO is beyond me. I bought a couple of dummies books and know some basic HTML and can do a simple page. But the PHP and MySQL programming stuff is way beyond me. Help! I am feeling overwhelmed and although I’m doing ok now, I can’t help feeling that I won’t be able to master it all.

Please advise what I can do about this.”

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My Answer:

It’s great that you’ve taken the step of taking the plunge into Internet Marketing.

Like you, I’ve pretty inept when it comes to programming stuff too. Aside from being able to generate content (blogging, articles, forums and information products) and network and generate traffic, I don’t wander into programming too much.

Here’s what I’ve learned from some of the experienced guys I talk to:

Internet Marketing is counter intuitive to what you learn in school:

In school, you need to master math and science and the liberal arts, on top of that you have foreign languages and maybe have to pick up a musical instrument or art too.

So what happens is that you become a jack-of-all-trades and just about average or maybe above-average or below-average in each area.

In the world of business, it’s completely different. You need to focus on your strengths. Most marketers will have just one strength. If you’re lucky, you might be strong in two areas. I haven’t met a marketer who’s great at:

• SEO
• Traffic Generation
• Testing and tracking
• PPC
• Social traffic generation
• Product Creation
• Email marketing
• Blogging
• eBay auctions
• Product launches
• Affiliate Marketing
• Affiliate Management
• Podcasting/Vlogging
• Press Releases
• Media Buys
• Programming/application development
• Web/graphics design
• Forum management

Instead, what you should do is focus on your strengths.

If I need help in an area where I lack expertise, I’ll use the following criteria:

If it’s a minor project, I’d outsource the project to a freelancer or team through my network of contacts. If you don’t know enough people, you can ask a friend for a recommendation or look for someone on the forums. As a last resort, I’d go to sites like elance or rentacoder as you’d have to spend some time filtering the talent.

If it’s a major project, I’d be more inclined to get a personal referral to someone experienced. Alternatively I’d look for a partner, especially if it’s likely to turn into a longterm business.

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Regardless of your area of expertise, I’m sure that you’d be able to generate a comfortable $3,000 to $5,000 a month from your efforts and if you budget it correctly, you should be able to pay for improvements to your products and services or blog/forum/website (which would pay for themselves within days or a few months).

The major motivation killer for Internet Marketers is the feeling that they’re overwhelmed by the feeling that they need to “know everything”.

Just focus on one thing and all the pieces will fall into place.

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