All posts in Industry News

AffSpy – Affiliate Intelligence

by UberAffiliate on February 18, 2008 in Affiliate Tips, Industry News with 30 Comments

I’m about to release a pretty revolutionary tool that will change the affiliate industry, which flows along nicely with their slogan “Change the Game”. You heard it from here first, may I present…

AffSpy – Affiliate Intelligence

Now right now, the private beta release isn’t actually live yet but will be in about a week (only select people will be able to test it then). I am good friends with the founder of AffSpy and was able to go into the beta and take some screenshots and let you guys know how cool it’s going to be. Sign up to the VIP list on the homepage to get all the updates and exact date of release. We’re going to be getting a table at the meet market at Affiliate Summit which I believe is on Sunday morning, so if you want to see me stop by there. I’ll be lookin’ like this :

Alright so now what is AffSpy? Right now, it’s basically a search that pulls data from all the top affiliate companies and displays it right in front of you. Say you’re running Flycell on ringtones right now and you want to know if you’re getting the highest payout. Go to the search and just type in “flycell”, and see the results shown below (click to enlarge) :

Now we find the offer that we’re promoting. The first option is the one we want, and we see that 6 networks have it, and the highest shelf payout is $16.50. Let’s click it and compare the payouts…

You can instantly compare payouts from different networks. What does this mean? You can find other networks with the same offer but offer a higher payout – which means more money in your pocket…awesome. In the screenshot above you can scroll down further and there are a bunch of other offers/networks to look at. We can see that Copeac has the highest payout at $16.50/lead. We can preview the landing page and add this offer to our favorites list.

We can also view the banner/email creatives right from AffSpy, without even having to join/login to the network. Just click on the little button and down they pop :

There’s like a million other banners if you scroll down more – really cool. So right now we can research and find the network with the highest payout on any offer we want. We can also research new offers with AffSpy. Say you’re promoting ringtones using Flycell, but you’re looking for something that will convert better. Just go in the search bar and search “ringtones”. You’ll see 34 offers come up :

We can browse a ton of networks instantly and research other offers out there. Again really helpful, time saving, and money saving. If we navigate to the Browse tab at the top, we can see a nice little advanced search :

You’ll be able to search for offers by keyword, country, promotion type, network, etc. On the side you’ll also see quick links to new and top campaigns. No more having to pay attention the 25 emails you get every day from networks with their “new offer reports”. Just go here and check everything out and maybe find an offer you normally wouldn’t find.

Overall, it looks like an awesome tool and the best part for affiliates is that it’s going to be free. You can meet the AffSpy team at the table at ASW as well as sign up for the private beta list. The list is limited to 100 affiliates so make sure you stop by Table #90 early to get on it. Enter your email on AffSpy.com to be notified when it’s open to the public.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Top Affiliate Challenge : Are You Ready?

by UberAffiliate on February 3, 2008 in Industry News with 24 Comments

Just saw this posted about over at Shoemoney, there’s a new Apprentice-style affiliate marketing reality TV show called Top Affiliate Challenge. It was created by Thor Shrock, who placed third in The Next Internet Millionaire. What’s going to happen is 12 contestants will be split up into teams and led by 3 affiliate gurus through various challenges. Eventually only one will be the victor in the end. If you want to enter, you’ll audition and fans will pick who moves on to actually be on the show. It is going to be a live show and will be filmed in Nebraska I believe. All expenses are covered for the contestants which is pretty cool.

So my question to you is : are you going to audition? Should I audition myself? I think it’d be really fun…just being on TV would be cool. It’ll be neat to see what sort of challenges they come up with, along with how the teams decide to solve/complete them. If you’re interested at all, here are some of the important dates about the challenge :

March – Auditions Begin
June – Contestants Selected
July – Filming and First Episode Airs

Since the show is filmed and aired in the same month, I don’t think it’s all pre-recorded. Should make for an interesting show, especially for us in the industry. Next month auditions start (not sure how they’ll be done, maybe a video or something), so start preparing what you’re going to say.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Adwords Preview Tool, Azoogle Referral Fiasco, Politics, and More!

by UberAffiliate on January 31, 2008 in Industry News with 42 Comments

Too much to actually write about, so yup I made a video. I discuss a few things here, I’ll let the movie do the talking.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Facebook Article on Shoemoney – Questions

by UberAffiliate on September 24, 2007 in Facebook/Myspace, Industry News with 22 Comments

Hey guys. If you didn’t see I did a guest post on Shoemoney about Facebook here.

If you have any questions about anything just post a comment and I’ll answer it.

Also, as of right now I do not advise using any of these methods on Facebook, as it seems they are taking actions against affiliates (Facebook staff has gone to a post at Wickedfire telling those that they have personal information and are acting), so I’d stay away from it until everything clears.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Google’s Quality Score Gets More Fun

by UberAffiliate on September 20, 2007 in Google Adwords, Industry News with 7 Comments

Most of you have probably seen the Google blog post a couple days ago enforcing the use of high quality websites. They disclose that the following sites will be penalized with a low quality rating :

Data collection sites that offer free gifts, subscription services etc., in order to collect private information

Arbitrage sites that are designed for the sole purpose of showing ads

Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor’s computer

I don’t know, to me that stuff is pretty common sense. Google’s a bitch and always has been, they just want to run a clean advertising program. They tell us that if users “complain” about the ad they click on, Google will ban the URL only after slapping you in the face. I see arbitrage as taking the biggest hit to quality score, we’ll have to see if it takes any effect on the advertisers.

This all just kind of reiterates what people have been saying for a while, you’re going to have to make your “bridge pages” seem like actual sites with relevant content, outgoing links, blah blah. This kind of gave me an idea for my next post, which will probably be : How I Do Quality Score. It’s not rocket science (pretty much follow the rules as best you can), but maybe you’ll learn a tip that you’ll implement.

Oh, Google also says “we will no longer post advance notice of upcoming updates.” So it looks like the Google Slap is evolving into the…Google Sucker-Punch?

I think I might do that Adwords Professional certification thing, I’ve heard a lot of good things. Any of you guys take it? Drop a comment (make sure to put your URL in) and get a link in the sidebar (top commentators).

Popularity: 2% [?]