Ask An Uber Affiliate – Round 10
airbball23 asks…
do you create your own landing pages or you outsource it?
For the most part I create my own. Every now and then I have to outsource some PHP work on it.
Vista Sidebar Gadgets asks…
It seems like you’re not cloacking your affiliate links on the right sidebar of your blog, why?
Did you ever split test it and found it was better this way? Or you just didn’t want to bother cloaking the links?
Advertisers pay to have their ads there, and those are the links they give me.
AffMarketingNot4Everyone asks…
Do you use an individual programmer or a company? Where did you find?
Are your landing pages, the simple ringtone type landing pages, or are they more complex in design, with multiple pages?
Do you think direct linking is worth it?
1) Individual, met him at a conference.
2) Depends. Simple ringtones pages are simple, other pages have boat loads of content.
3) No.
Monkeyboy asks…
How are you affected by the new Adwords slap that involves display urls?
I’m not, I play by the rules ;).
art asks…
Which tools do you use to build your websites?
Do you build a frame around the affiliates landing page or create new landing page?
1) Photoshop/Dreamweaver/Pagespinner (Mac program).
2) Sometimes I’ll iFrame the offer on my domain AFTER they click through my original landing page.
Ruud asks…
Do you send PPC traffic directly to the merchant’s website or to your own landing pages? If both could you define what percentages of direct traffic are?
Have you ever tested multiple merchants on one landing page and if yes, did it increase your benefits?
1) To my own landing pages, I don’t like direct linking.
2) Yes I have. For the most part I stick with one merchant on the page. I used to have some success with a couple review-style pages, but I seem to have more success focusing on 1 merchant.
Hyder asks…
Do you think you would be willing to give suggestions to other affiliates out there, such as me, on their landing pages and how to improve certain aspects of their sites – taking into consideration what they’re to achieve with them, like more sales/leads etc…
The best advice I can give is through blog posts on here. I want to help everybody but unfortunately that would leave me with 0 minutes for my own stuff. So the best I can do is answering questions and writing articles on Uber Affiliate.
Frank Abagnale asks…
Could you show us one of your expired old landing pages?
The directory site you sold, what was the URL? and why was it worth 8,000$?
Best tip for a proxy network owner? (I have a few, but making low revenue each day)
1) Nope, sorry :).
2) It was worth $3,000. InfinityWebDirectory.com the owner kind of let it die off. It was PR5 and was making a few hundred a month from paid submissions.
3) I haven’t done proxies in over a year, couldn’t tell you how the status with things is now. Back in the day, I would have told you just replicate your proxies and make 1,000 of them.
Pedoua asks…
You say you create hybrids. What are hybrids, can you give us a clear example? Perhaps an URL to such a business model?
A hybrid basically just looks almost like a simple graphic landing page, but contains perhaps a menu with links to articles within the site. Basically a landing page loaded with content that isn’t designed for the user to click on, but is still there for Google to read.
I have never had any luck outsourcing anything, not sure why but most people I have hired in forums or freelance sites never finish their jobs.
I’m not sure where I’m suppose to “Ask an Uber Affiliate” a question, so I’ll do it here.
You say that direct linking to a landing page is not worth the time and effort. I’m wondering (coming from an extreme noob) how to do research the product you’re planning on promoting so that you know with some level of certainty that it will convert on your custom landing page/site? I just don’t want to spend the time to develop a custom site dedicated to this one product only to find out that the product isn’t converting. Or do you just develop one basic template for each product rather than a totally custom design for each one? Using a cookie cutter approach may not be as bad.
Thanks
Ask for referrals when hiring someone and actually *contact* the referrals to see if they’ve done good jobs. Lazy programmers are great because they tend to be the best at automating everything (since they don’t want to do the actual work).. but they need to be motivated properly =) hehe
Paul,
Not sure if we’re supposed to post questions in the latest Q&A post or the original one… but I was wondering if you only promote products you believe in/would buy/fill out the lead yourself… or do you go after anything that converts?
I have more of a general question, and maybe you or someone knows the answer: Lets say 2 ads in different adwords accounts have the same display URL – which one will be shown? The one that pays more per click?
So working with Google it seems that you have to use real websites with quality content if you want to succeed..
OK paul, i’m starting to see lots of repeat questions and answers from earlier rounds. Not the same people asking them, but just variations of old questions with similar answers.
Maybe it’s time to move past the Q and A thing for now…
Paul,
I’m actually one of those people that was reading and reading forever before starting ANYTHING…. until this week. After about a few months of reading and reading (and getting tired of reading), I dove into Facebook advertising this week. Found an offer that converts… not sure how to optimize it to find the best target group (other than creating more of the same ads targeting different groups, etc). Anyway, I had a few questions that I don’t “think” have been answered… so here goes…
1) I understand that you say landing pages work much better for you than direct linking. Thats what I hear for the most part across the board on other AM sites/blogs. Does making a landing page for a ZIP/EMAIL offer make any sense? So far I’ve been direct linking either to the offer or a page on my site that would redirect to the offer page. This works on Facebook. Does this redirecting work on Google (especially knowing that google has updated their rules regarding display urls, etc)?
2) When you are creating landing pages, is there “usually” some sort of form submission on those landing pages (like a name / email capture form which redirects to the actual affiliate form)? Or does the landing page only have information (serving as a sale pitch to the consumer and also for increasing Quality Score) with a call to action button taking them to a form? I guess my fear is that the more pages the customer has to go through to actually buy the product, the less likely they are to convert. I could be WAY off in that assumption. Maybe the trick is to build / hype up the product to the consumer on the initial page so that they are hooked and can’t wait to send their info… gosh.. maybe that really does work…:-|
Cheers,
Gurpreet
Fish where the fish are. Find someone who’s done impressive work and THEN hire them. Don’t find some shmo in a forum then hope he does impressive work. Note: If you do insist on using forums, go for the mods at least. They know the game and will do good work. You’re just gonna have to pay more.
Paul, I’ve been learning a lot from most of your Q&As, but this one was very underwhelming. If you’ve already answered a question (like how to scale, do you do direct linking, do you do lead gen v product sales etc.) then could you ignore it in the future? Maybe make a list of previous Q&As you’ve done and post them at the start of each Q&A…
Also: Might want to check the coding on your comments; my ‘mybloglog’ avatar appears below, (face with burgundy brick and window background) but not in your comments.
In what scenario would you rather create a landing page over direct linking? I’ve read that landing pages are almost always better for conversions. I doubt this is the case for zip/email submits. If landing pages are primarily helpful when trying to convert on a lead or sale, then what is the purpose of it… so pump/hype up the product/service, and have a person click thru with a email capture form?
Something I’ve wondered about myself. I can’t bring myself to promote any old crap even if it converts. So most biz-ops are a nono for me.
Find a niche your interested in and find solid affiliate programs in it … there are bound to be some.
If it’s a product you’ve used in the past even better. Ask the wifey or girlfriend too …
If you have your own experience with a product or service craft a review page, these can do wonders when done openly and genuine!
If you were brand new to marketing, what would you do:
1) Work on ONE offer as much as you could in efforts to get it profitable and potentially on somewhat auto-pilot (if you knew there was potential)
2) Work simultaneously on multiple offers with an attempt to produce a few profitable offers at once
3) Explore 10+ niche areas with an attempt to potentially make some money on something.
Thanks Paul.
I really like how you make a point to answer questions, although you never answered mine :( Does UberAffiliate.com itself bring you in any money? I do see some ads, but there really isn’t too much in terms of affiliate links/ppc links… I see some paid advertising and that is about it. I am looking to make 2k a month (no not overnight lol) from my site. My lab closed, so I am out of a job in a month. I was trying to make some extra money doing what I love, and thought it couldn’t hurt to try.
What would you suggest for someone trying to earn 2k a month? Focus on affiliate sales of a specific product (like selling christian jewelry for example), or a mesh of different things on one site?