All posts in Affiliate Networks

Being A Good Affiliate Manager

by UberAffiliate on June 18, 2008 in Affiliate Networks with 17 Comments

Instead of being the usual post with tips for affiliate marketers, I want to write a post directly for affiliate managers. Why? Because indirectly this can make a huge difference for us, the affiliate marketers.

Affiliate managers can play a big role in getting you the right offer, payout, deal, etc. Some affiliate managers are better than others, simple as that. So to all you affiliate managers out there, keep these points in mind and try to apply them to your every day business.

Tip #1 : DO NOT be pushy when trying to recruit an affiliate.

There’s nothing that draws me away from a network more than when they are pushy and annoying about trying to get me to run offers. With some networks I’ve kindly explained that I have a full platter in front of me and have 0 time for any new projects, and that I’ll take a look once some time opens up. I still got e-mails and IMs every week asking me to look at all these new campaigns. Don’t be pushy! I know you’re out there, if I’m going to come to you, constantly bugging me about it will not help.
 
Tip #2 : Only show the best.

This goes for recruiting new affiliates or with affiliates you already have. I don’t want to see 50 offers that you “think I can do great on”, I’d rather you show me 2 offers that are doing great for affiliates and you really think with my background I can do some volume on. If I’ve told you that I excel in financial offers, showing me 10 ringtone and funcard offers probably isn’t going to entice me too much. This leads me to the next tip…
 
Tip #3 : Know your affiliates.

Knowing your affiliates is huge. Using the example above, if I’m a huge financial guy, I don’t want to even look at a funcard offer. I want to see the best debt offer you have and what extra creatives you have for me to look at on that offer. Now a lot of affiliates won’t tell you exactly what offers they’re promoting, but most will at least give you a category as to what types of offers they promote (financial, dating, ringtones, weight loss, etc).
 
Tip #4 : Be reliable.

I have the cell phone # of all my really important affiliate managers and I know that if I have a problem, I can get help as soon as I want. There’s horror stories online if guys who have been trying to get in touch with their affiliate manager for weeks and haven’t gotten a response. Granted some of these guys are probably a little..er..retarded…I’m sure there’s guys out there who have been “looked past”. Try your best not to overlook anybody, you never know what affiliate can be trying to get in touch with you. He could be huge. Respond to your affiliates on AIM, reply to their emails, and if they’re important enough give them your cell.
 
Tip #5 : Don’t bullshit affiliates.

I hate taking crap from a manager trying to negotiate. If you’re Network A and getting $20.00 on an offer direct, I may talk to Network B who gets the same offer and payout, and they offer me $18.00 without a problem. Don’t tell me the “absolute best” you can do is $16.75. You’ll take a little sacrifice in margin like any other good network until I send a little volume and you get more from the advertiser and get your margins back to normal.
 
Tip #6 : Be as transparent as possible.

Transparency is KEY in any good affiliate network/affiliate relationship. You tell me exactly what’s going on with you guys, and we’ll make the best accommodations so both parties profit out of it. We’re all here to make money. As long as you’re not taking a 1% margin or something crazy, we’re both going to make money. Transparency is a testament of good faith and builds a good relationship. I’m much more likely to stay with you in the long-term if you’re transparent.
 
Tip #7 : Keep my information private.

Pretty simple tip, right? Its a shame it doesn’t happen out there. Don’t be freakin greedy and go and give out information about my campaign, or rip it yourself. I’ve had this experience not only with myself, but with other affiliates out there who have talked to me. They’ve seen networks themselves copy the affiliates landing page and method or promotion…that’s pretty damn low.
 
Tip #8 : Learn your trade and help me.

One of the best things you can do as an affiliate manager is learn affiliate marketing well. You know how everything functions and how to work things on your end, but you should get out there and try to see the affiliates side of everything. You’ll be able to then make suggestions to your affiliates and directly help them make more money. I’ve had some pretty good ideas come from smart affiliate managers, so it definitely helps.
 
Tip #9 : No affiliate is too small.

I pretty much sucked when I started with affiliate marketing. My manager was Fraser at Azoogle and I was a complete newb. I bugged him day and night asking him questions about affiliate marketing and would IM him and annoy him every time I got a lead…which was about twice a day. I was doing like $30/day for my first month or 2. He stuck with me, helped me, never ignored me, and I went on to now do over 7 figures for him at CX Digital. Think it was worth it for him to put up with my crap for a couple months?

Hopefully a couple of those tips can help you become a better affiliate manager, or just get a different perspective on things.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Be Positive On Your Landing Pages

by UberAffiliate on May 20, 2008 in Affiliate Networks, Affiliate Tips with 31 Comments

This one is pretty much a no-brainer to all smart affiliates. One thing you need to be doing on all of your landing pages is : be positive. Ever notice a trend when you browse all the landing pages towards the top of the search engine? Here are some happy tips to make sure you’re implementing :

  • Involve people. People make the landing page seem real, almost personal. The most common thing that’s done is your average good looking blonde. Sex sells yeah, but notice something else about them? They’re always smiling. I’ve used brunettes on pages and unless you’re trying to convey something sexy like with dating, they have a cute smile on. They work great on financial pages like credit reports and insurance pages. Traditional cute blonde…low(er) cut business suit…glasses…solid.
  • Happy colors. Blues, greens, oranges, reds. Nobody wants to go to a landing page that looks like a rainy day with 5 different shades of gray. The most popular color is probably blue, although I’ve had some success with orange pages on a white background. In most cases keeping the background white is better, black looks much too dark and almost depressing.
  • Focus on positive copy writing. Unless you plan on being ruthless and attacking their weak points with something like “Loser like you can’t find a woman? They can’t see your face here so put up a fake picture on Mate1 and chat with the hot chicks you desire!”, generally be positive in how you word your statements. Notice how the tagline of Geico is “I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance.”, not “I was poor and depressed so I tried saving some money on car insurance with Geico.” Their statement is happy, they’re saving money, things are great. Stress why your product of service will help them solve whatever problem they have.
  • Testimonials. Testimonials are definitely solid and most places know that. Research your offer page and most likely there will be a testimonials section somewhere with people praising the product. Scrape those bad boys and put them on your landing page. It gives the person a great positive and personal feel for what they’re researching.

More tips hope they help. And for the picture of the day.

Popularity: 5% [?]

CX Digital $750 Signing Bonus

by UberAffiliate on April 30, 2008 in Affiliate Networks with 53 Comments

So talking to a friend, I just found out that CX Digital is running some signing bonus. If you do $7,500 in commissions your first month (piece of cake eh), they’ll give you $750 free cash money. Not too shabby at all I’d say, hurry up and sign up if you haven’t already. If anybody knows anything more about this, just drop a comment.

Also, if you had trouble getting approved (their approval person is…well I dunno not nice), just send me an email and tell me your name and email, and re-apply. I’m going to send them a list of all the names and emails of people they need to approve.

Alright, lata.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Thank You MarketLeverage!

by UberAffiliate on April 29, 2008 in Affiliate Networks with 23 Comments

Yesterday a nice package came in the mail, was addressed from MarketLeverage. I open it up and it was a really nice Nike gym bag, nice! Feels a little heavy though, so I open it u and it’s loaded with stuff inside. Inside was a Flip video camera, tripod for the Flip, case for the Flip, pen/flash drive, hat, Nike sweatshirt and Nike golf polo, and a blanket. It was pretty cool since I wasn’t even signed up with MarketLeverage until a couple hours after that (hey it worked I’m a sucker I guess). I’m just writing this to say thanks guys!

Note this, this is NOT a review of MarketLeverage and I have NOT made any money or tested any of their offers. I would never review a company and praise them if I had not used them. I simply made this post to publicly thank them for the gift they sent me. If I test them out and it works out in the future, I’ll be sure to let you guys know.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Affiliate Marketing Is Dirty

by UberAffiliate on April 25, 2008 in Affiliate Networks, Affiliate Tips with 61 Comments

Time to shed some light into your newborn eyes. A lot of the seasoned affiliates know this already, but I bet a lot of you reading don’t.

The reality is although our lives as affiliate marketers are great, if networks/advertisers weren’t dirty as hell, we’d all be a lot more wealthy. Real life example? A few days ago I’m running an offer on Network A. Over the past two weeks EPC has dropped and the campaign was getting crappy. So I find the same offer on Network B, and decide to switch it over. With Network A, I had done $1,900 revenue from midnight until 2pm.

New day starts with Network B, it’s 11:30am and I’ve already done $4,500 revenue, $3,000 of it being profit. Give Network B a full day to run and whoa what a shocker, they “talk” to me about having to decrease volume for a bit, and the mysteriously my revenue seems to automatically drop on it’s own. After having things happen like this so many times, I do my best to limited my pissedoffness. So here are the things that affiliate networks and advertisers do, I’ve experienced them all…

  • Networks take around a 20% margin (sometimes more) on their offers. This isn’t dirty, but it’s something a lot of affiliates don’t realize. Say there’s an offer and the payout is $20 on it. The network is getting at least $25 on it, and the number is most likely closer to $30. That means if they were a good network and cut their margins for you, you could get $27 on an offer that you were originally getting $20 for. An extra $7 a lead takes a campaign from losing $1,000/day to making $1,000/day. But most networks still won’t sacrifice their margins for you (at least to the extent in which they should), so instead of making a ton of money, you’re forced to call the offer quits.
  • Networks shave leads. As most of you know, Direct Track (the system which a lot of popular networks use, like Copeac, CPA Empire, Clickbooth, etc.) automatically shaves. They won’t report as many leads as you actually drove. So if you send 100 leads on an offer, the network might shave 5 of those leads off for themselves. In addition to that, the advertiser will shave as well. Flycell I think has been reported to shave like 20%, which means if you drive 100 leads, they’ll take 20 of them. I can’t remember where I heard this, but I know I heard that somewhere. It explains why Flycell was able to offer everybody $18 payouts. People promoted it like crazy because they thought the payout was so much better, but they just compensated by shaving a ton of leads off.
  • Networks track differently. A lot of affiliate networks use their own tracking systems, some work better than others. I’ll run one offer on a networks, switch to another network on the exact same offer, and my conversion rate will increase. This is because the tracking system is better and/or the network is shaving less.

All of these points may come as no surprise to you guys, especially if you have experienced them. My point in discussing this is that affiliate marketing is not easy. Sure it’s the best job anybody could ask for, you get to work where and whenever you want, but there are certainly things that make it hard as an affiliate marketer to succeed.

How do we overcome this? The first reason is by accepting it. Advertisers will shave and scrub, it’s just what happens. The second way is by using the power of negotiation as much as you can. See that one network converts at 20% and another converts at 12% on the exact same offer? Tell them they need their tech team to fix the tracking issues before you run any more traffic with them. Payout not high enough for you to be making money? Most networks would rather take a smaller margin than no margin, so they can be pretty flexible in what they give you.

Moral of the story, just understand that you’re pretty much on the bottom of the totem pole, and to work your way up you need to be very aggressive in what you do. Either that or start running your own offers or networks, then YOU have the power ;).

Popularity: 5% [?]

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