All posts in Industry News

Haven’t made a post in a while, I’d like to get back to posting more but I’ve said that before, so we’ll see what happens. I’ve had some industry friends come out with a few things though and figured they were worth sharing.
 

Local Lead Plan from Chad (CDF Networks)

I’ve known Chad for a while now, I’m sure many of you guys read his blog CDF Networks. If you know anything about him from his blog/tweets, it’s that he’s a good and honest guy. He doesn’t need to tear it up on rebills and acai because he knows what he’s doing outside of that realm (ie real marketing…acai is like taking candy from a baby).

Today is the official launch of his infoproduct Local Lead Plan. He gave me a free copy and it’s actually pretty awesome. The product is all about generating affiliate like commissions, only from local businesses, not affiliate networks/global offers. This is something he’s been doing for a while now and has gotten really good at it. It’s also something that’s very easy to share because for the most part, it’s local. He’s not too worried about you stealing his campaigns because they’re where he lives and already his clients.

If I were going to do this I’d join my local Chamber of Commerce that has business events for networking local businesses. That will give you a nice variety to pick from, and from there it’s about approaching them and letting them know that you can send them a bunch of new customers if they want to set something up. You’d then build an affiliate site for them and send them online traffic and get paid based on how many customers you send them.

I see this as being nice because it’s a little extra work (instead of just grabbing an affiliate link), but in the end you get more control. I have a feeling that most businesses won’t have much idea about what you’re talking about, which makes it easier for you to dictate the rates and commissions.

I believe there’s some nice eBook price slapped on of $79 or something…but honestly it’s worth it. If you’re struggling at all with online affiliate marketing, Local Lead Plan is definitely something you can profit from. Not get rich quick, but certainly can get rich.
 

Tatto Media Bi-Annual Affiliate Survey

Tatto Media just released a survey they took with over 2,500 affiliate marketers participating. They asked some general questions about the industry and got some cool figures/graphs. Shoemoney did a blog post about it a few days ago here.

Some of the more interesting points :

• Nearly 68% of affiliates were promoting on 2-6 different networks, while approximately 22% were promoting on 7-15 different networks. Only 2% of respondents promoted on 36 or more. 50 affiliates out of every 2,500 are promoting offers on 36+ networks? Oh mama, for me it’s always been 2-6.
• 60% of respondents believe that affiliate marketing-related tradeshows and conferences are valuable to their business, with the majority, 55%, stating that Affiliate Summit is the most valuable. Found this kind of interesting, I thought it’d be higher than 60%. Trade shows like Affiliate Summit are awesome for business, if you don’t get something out of it, it’s because you’re doing something wrong…not the conference not serving it’s purpose.
• Many affiliates read various industry blogs for information, but nearly 42% said ShoeMoney was the blog they read most. NickyCakes was also popular at 35%. Not a surprise that Shoemoney came in at the #1 affiliate blog read. 35% from Cakes surprised me though, maybe it’s because he won affiliate of the year (for…what exactly? I didn’t know that referring a bunch of the original acai guys, traveling to Asia, and coming out with an overpriced product was what Shawn was looking for). Only kidding Cakes, I jus’ mad ;). My blog came in at 15% which surprised me…I haven’t been posting at all I figured it would be lower.

You can download the full report and check it out here.

On a side note, HasOffers a while ago opened up some different and paid options for their affiliate network software. If you have a product and you want affiliates on it, starting your own mini-network is a good place to begin.
 

Volk-nation Tearing It Up

When he’s not at a freakish family birthday party or hanging with his boo Mrs. Volk, JV has been taking the guru world by storm. He released his free affiliate marketing guide, and since then jumped from ~3,000 readers to almost 15,000. He posted some stats on his blogs 3 year anniversary :

# See about 1,003,980 affiliate blogs stop blogging.

…shit! That’s me.
 

Neverblue Escape

If you’re a Neverblue affiliate you may know about their Out of Bounds contest. You can win an all-expenses paid awesome trip to Vancouver Island and do a bunch of outdoor activities like jet-skiing. Neverblue is a solid network and I’ve always been a fan of networks that don’t use DT. One of the ways to win is by becoming 1 of the 7 affiliates with the highest incremental revenue gain. That means you don’t have to do ridiculous volume, you just have to show the best growth on your offer.
 

Twitter Ads

Twitter really isn’t my friend, but they are releasing an ad platform. I haven’t read too much into it, but TechCrunch reports they’re starting with a CPM model and I read on Wickedfire that these will show up in searches only. With the amount of bots performing searches this would really water down CTR and skyrocket CPC.

Maybe a blogger will find an exploit and become famous like meeeee (please understand my sarcasm in almost anything I ever say).

Popularity: 17% [?]

This is just from a couple days ago, but DazzleSmile is suing Epic Advertising (Azoogle) and Jesse Willms (Just Think) for basically abusing their brand. Read the PR Here.

In a nutshell (from what I believe and have heard), DazzleSmile was already a teeth whitening company that nobody has heard of really. Just Think comes along and makes DazzleSmile Pro, the rebill offer. Azoogle is one of the many affiliate networks that pushed Dazzle.

As you can imagine, when you brand something with a shady rebill you’re almost guaranteed to destroy it’s brand in some way. People will be pissed off, they’ll report it to scam alert and ripoffreport and that ranks high in Google. I’d be pretty pissed too if I had a brand I built and someone came along and basically ruined it. Don’t quote me on this as it may be rumors and what not, but I did hear that jail time is going to be involved in this.

If you want to check out the legal jargon, check this link out.

EDIT : Just read through that entire PDF. Pretty intense but an entertaining story to say the least. Seemed like an internet marketing version of Law & Order lol. Some major charges going on in there though.

It’s a good thing I didn’t name my product Hydroxycut Pro like I was planning on.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Ok reading and listening to things out there regarding the US economy is starting to get kind of old. I hear the exact SAME thing over and over…

The rough economy will affect affiliate marketing. People won’t have the disposable income to buy products online that they did before. We’ll see a massive drop in online sales and affiliate marketers will suffer. BUT, offers like payday loans and credit offers will do better than ever because people won’t have money and will need it.

We’ll get over the first quick thing – people saying how payday/credit offers will do great. Well first off congrats on making the GENIUS assumption that if less people have money and have to pay bills, they may be more likely to look at a payday loan. Sheer genius there I would have never thought of that myself. Expect a massive increase anyways because Q4 is king for affiliate marketing.

Next is this crazy thought that affiliate marketers will suffer and see revenues drop. Three points I want to make :

1) We’re in Q4 and like I said, affiliate marketing kicks ass over any of the other quarters.

2) People are still going to be spending money, there will always be consumers (unless we go into a depression, which we will not.

3) The vast majority of affiliate offers are shady anyways and the consumer doesn’t actually think they’re going to spend money.

Furreal, what are the biggest offers? Ringtones…dating…acai/green tea…credit reports…mobile, etc. In all of these offers the consumer is usually blind to the fact that they’re going to be charged. They either think what they’re getting is free, or they just have to pay $2.95 for shipping.

We’re only going to see affiliate marketing tank if everybody goes poor and has to sell their computer, and that won’t happen.

So let’s quit crying about the economy and go make some more money, eh?

P.S. I haven’t seen my own personal stats suffer at all.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Yeah, you’ve probably heard about it but if not: Myspace opened up their own advertising platform to anybody who wants in. I’ve made a couple ads and it seems like they’re approving most things as long as you stay within their thin guidelines.

It’s Myspace – go make some ringtone/crush/dating ads and rock it.

Also how you guys doing in the CX Digital billionaire contest? Here’s a screen from my acct :

Popularity: 5% [?]

So I’m at the Media Breakaway Conference in Denver, and at dinner about an hour ago CPA Empire announced that they will be re-branding to Affiliate.com.

They announced that they’re putting their affiliate managers through an affiliate training program, blah blah…

The big news is, NO MORE DIRECT TRACK. They’re building out their own tracking system which is sweet, and want thoughts/ideas from affiliates on what they should do. Here’s a pic I shot from my table.

Popularity: 4% [?]