5 Super Affiliate Strategies to Boost Profits

As I sat here a couple minutes ago, I wanted to blog, but wasn’t sure what to blog about. So I went ahead and casually typed “5 Super Affiliate Strategies to Boost Profits” into the Title bar of WordPress. Now I’m here wondering what I’m going to talk about, so I’m just going to kind of think of random tips off the top of my head and sort of throw them out into this blog post.

Tip #1 : Special Characters in Yahoo/MSN

One thing I used to use in Yahoo and MSN were special characters in the ad copy. It doesn’t really fly in Google, and you can even get caught in Yahoo/MSN (I have before). What you can do is copy/paste special characters that are created using the ALT button and a number, and have those in your ad title. This draws more attention to your ad, and can increase your CTR. Here’s a chart with a bunch of different special characters that you can play around with…click. I remember I used to use the musical note in my Yahoo ringtone ads back in the day.

Be warned though, this technically isn’t allowed, so don’t come crying to me if you get busted. Usually what they’ll just do is tell you to change the ads though.

Tip #2 : Don’t Talk About Your Page…to ANYONE

This is a super affiliate strategy that most don’t talk about. Unless I’m working with people I 100% fully trust (which is almost nobody), I DO NOT give my landing page out to anybody. Hide your referrers and when your affiliate manager asks you to see your landing page, tell them you keep that stuff private. If they really really wanted to they could find out, but for the most part they won’t do much digging. I’ve found that affiliate managers like to blab…a lot. They’ll see your page, see you’re doing well with it, and then tell Veronica down the hall that their affiliate owns BlahBlah.com and is running this offer great. Well Veronica gets paid on a percentage of the commissions her affiliates make, so she doesn’t care about screwing her co-workers affiliate, she wants the money. So she’ll go to her affiliates and say “hey keep it a secret but this offer is doing really well with a landing page style like this”. Yes I know I’m accusing affiliate managers at companies of doing that…but tough shit I’ve learned from a lot of personal experience that it happens.

So do yourself a favor and no matter how excited you are about the success of a page, don’t tell anybody about it. And make sure your affiliate managers or their co-workers aren’t giving out ANY of your information either…because it sucks when it happens.

Tip #3 : Attend Events

Being a closet affiliate is great for those who are already making millions on the internet and don’t want anybody to know. For the rest of us that are just starting off, attending events could be the thing that transforms you into a super affiliate. Going to an event like Affiliate Summit allows you to network with thousands of other affiliates that are in your shoes. Because of this, you may :

a) Find somebody in the same shoes as you. Talk a little bit, exchange cards, get back home, continue the relationship, and then team up together. Since you’re both starting off and need a little help, work off each others’ strengths and use it to your advantage. Create a long term partnership and both keep learning more and more, and together you can build an empire. Would you rather spend 1 year to struggle your way to $10,000/month, or spend 6 months with a partner to get up to $50,000/month combined ($25k after you split it in half)?

b) Find somebody bigger to introduce you to that “special someone” that can hook you up with a great deal. I’ve been introduced to so many great people through events. I’ll tell you this – you’re much more likely to get hooked up with something awesome when you get to meet the person in real life. I won’t mention who, but I was introduced to a pretty big guy in the industry at Affiliate Summit West, and after talking with him a little bit he agreed to send me over data that I could potentially turn into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pretty crazy eh?

c) Overhear a secret here and there that other affiliates are talking about. I’ll admit it myself, I am much more revealing at events than I am over something like email or AIM. People are much more laid back (and sometimes drunk), and likely to just chit chat loosely about some of the things they’ve heard.

Tip #4 : Complain

Sounds crazy, but a tried and true super affiliate strategy is to complain. Most people are too lazy to complain, and it’s why they don’t make a lot of money. Did Adwords screw one of your campaigns and shut it off? Call and complain. Did you not get credited for 2 hours of downtime with an affiliate network? Call and complain. Do you have proof that a network is shaving leads because you switched to another network and saw a 5% higher conversion rate? Call and complain. Most affiliates just roll with the punches and throw away money. Businesses like Google and Incentaclick are out there to help you make money. So when they see that have a dissatisfied customer, they magically “speed up” their process of fixing your problem. It’s what good companies do, so make sure that if something isn’t right and nothing is being done about it, let ’em know.

Tip #5 : Know That Money…is Nothing

Well obviously money is something, it’s what we’re working for and what allows us to live whatever sort of lifestyle we have. But when it comes to affiliate marketing, you have to just treat it like it’s a game and that money is nothing. You make a lot of money, that’s great keep on doing it. You lose a lot of money, realize that it happens and you have to keep trying different things and eventually it’ll work out. Just because you’re a super affiliate doesn’t mean every niche you touch turns to gold. Last week I ran a campaign that lost $8,000 in one day. Two weeks before that I ran a campaign that lost about $2,000/day for 3 days straight. Would I be a super affiliate if I didn’t have losses like that and suck it up? Probably not. I lost a total of $6,000 in three days, sucked it up, and then went back and hit it hard a week later. Lost $8,000 in one day, did I give up? No. It’s a mentality you simply can’t have. You can’t be worried that you’re going to lose everything and it’s going to mean you suck at life and need to go apply at McDonalds.

Set some money aside for serious testing, and then don’t be afraid to blow it all. If you collect data with it, it’s not losing money, it’s investing money. Once you suck it up and learn that, you’ll realize that instead of losing $8,000, you lost $10,000 on one set of keywords and profited $2,000 on another.

Ok so I totally winged this post and I’m really tired, but hopefully some of it made sense to you guys. I just realized that the first tip is totally out of context and theme with the rest of the article, but that’s alright haha.