Affiliate Magazine

Fourth Quarter is Over. Now What? – By Vinny O’Hare

FeedFront Staff — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:00:18 +0000

The rush of Christmas is over, so now would be a good time to see what sold during the holiday season and dedicate a site to that topic. I normally use January as a time to focus on one brand-new site. You can go into your analytics programs and see what people were looking for and make a new niche Web site.

I like to make sites that are not just sites that sell products in the fourth quarter. Too many marketers focus on making a site just for Christmas. You should focus on a site that sells year around. It is also a good time to make that hobby site that you’ve wanted to make for a long time… you know that labor of love that you’ve always wanted to make.

Try to think of things that would sell throughout the year, such as team sports products. Every time you turn on a game all you see is people in the stands with jerseys on from their favorite team. Somebody has to sell them the jerseys it might as well be you. You can also think of all the sports that run the most during the year, my last site was based on NASCAR, since the season practically runs 10 months out of the year.

Kids are playing soccer all seasons, especially in the warm weather states. These kids need new cleats, shorts, balls, etc. You can also look towards your favorite hobby and develop a site around it. Hobbies are all year round also, you don’t take a break from your favorite hobby. Like I’ve said there are many ideas you can get just by looking at your analytics programs.

In addition to your analytics program, you should also look at Google trends, and take a look at the fourth-quarter searches. Odds are using these two tools will enable you to come up with a new site idea.

Some categories that are strong across the calendar year are home renovation, cooking, tools, automotive, and you can break each one of them down into a niche.

For home renovation you might just want to focus on bathrooms. Cooking can be anything from recipes to cooking utensils. Mechanics use tools all year round, and the automotive industry could be broken down in hundreds of ways, from tires to auto insurance.

Speaking of automotive, many people research new cars online before they go into a dealer. They could be doing this research on your site. Automotive manuals are always a big seller for people trying to repair that car.

Affiliate programs exist for almost every niche, and if you can’t find a good one, you can always turn to Google AdSense or some other contextual advertising program.

Vinny O’Hare is the founder of Vincent O’Hare Consulting, (VinnyOHare.com) an Internet marketing service that provides information on how to make money online with affiliate programs and contextual advertising.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 9 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/24376105/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-9
FeedFront issue 9 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article002334

Building a Fortress Around Your Business – By Ryan Osborne

FeedFront Staff — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:16 +0000

If data truly is “the new oil”, then how are you supposed to protect yourself from the liability and risk that pervade the affiliate marketing landscape? No doubt you have taken the requisite technical measures to protect your sizable investment in your business, and frequently consider what more can be done.

But, what do you do when something breaches the defenses? What happens when clients, customers, or the public begin making demands “to be made whole”?

There are two defenses that each company needs, regardless of size, in order to withstand the attack: (1) strong licensing agreements, and (2) insurance.

A strong, well-written, licensing agreement is the first step to limiting the liability each company faces after a catastrophic event. The licensing agreement serves to limit liability and clearly define relationships. In most cases, it will effectively enable the parties to resolve the dispute and continue the mutually beneficial relationship they entered in the first place.

However, the license agreement will not stop some parties from seeking an additional “pound of flesh” from you after an unfortunate event. In fact, you may have acted within the licensing agreement and still face a lawsuit.

This is where insurance comes in. Insurance is the security blanket in case catastrophic events or when an aggrieved party seeks further payment for their injuries.

Your company should obtain insurance that protects against data privacy breaches, intellectual property violations, breach of contract, and media/advertising risks.

With this protection, you have the insurance policy to defend the lawsuit and pay damages as necessary.

Here are a few examples:

Scenario 1:

Major Oil Company with 10,000 stations
Outsources credit card processing/Point of Sale network to third party
System fails for 6 hours
Claim of 20 lost sales per station at an average of $30 per sale (Total claimed loss of $6M)
Arbitration panel awarded claim of $4M to Oil Company on Breach of Contract claim

Scenario 2:

Company deceived into selling customer information to con artist
Data included financial data and other important personal information
Class action lawsuits and 43 states Attorneys General became involved
Estimated total cost to company $33.8M

Scenario 3:

Retailer loses customer specific information over the span of two years through firewall security breach
20 class action lawsuits are filed
Retailer had to reimburse expenses for some customers, undertake data security measures and system evaluation, address identity theft for all lost records
Estimated Total Cost $156M

These scenarios highlight loss of data events and a loss of network/service event. All three scenarios could present hurdles too significant to overcome.

By structuring the proper licensing agreement and then complimenting it with the proper insurance policy you will have the best chance to operate a successful affiliate or online marketing business in today’s volatile business climate.

Ryan is a partner with Citadel Program Managers which offers insurance services and can be reached at rosborne@citadelus.com.

3 Federal Regulations Online Marketers Must Follow – By Anne Mitchell

FeedFront Staff — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:00:50 +0000

2009 was an interesting year for changes in Federal regulations which affect Internet marketers. There were changes to CAN-SPAM, and a revision of rules by the Federal Trade Commission; both of which directly impact Internet marketers.

Below are three Federal regulations which Internet marketers must follow:

1. Email Sent Out Featuring Someone Else’s Product or Service

Email sent out featuring a third-party’s product or service must also include information about the entity that is actually sending out the email, otherwise the third-party can be deemed solely responsible under CAN-SPAM for handling all opt-outs. Put another way, if your product or service is advertised in email being sent out by someone else, be sure that they include information about themselves in the email, or you may find yourself legally liable for helping users opt out of the mailings. This is known as the “designated sender rule”.

2. Email Sent by Affiliates

Vendors are legally liable under the Federal CAN-SPAM law if their affiliates use spam to advertise the vendor’s product or to otherwise generate sales for the vendor. This means that if your affiliate sends email featuring your product or service, and that email is deemed to be spam, then you may be legally as guilty of spamming as your affiliate, especially if you knew or should have known that the affiliate was using spam to advertise your product.

3. Testimonials, Reviews, and Endorsements in Marketing on the Internet

The use of testimonials on the Internet is now being more strictly regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, and testimonials that suggest outstanding results that are not actual typical results must disclose that the results being featured in the testimonial are not typical, and must indicate what typical results can be expected.

Additionally, if you favorably review or endorse a product or service, and you have been in any way compensated or provided with a benefit in exchange for the review or endorsement (or even if you just have a relationship with the provider of that product or service) you must disclose that information.

For example, if Acme provided you for free with that nifty widget that you just reviewed, you must disclose in your review your relationship with Acme, and that Acme provided the widget at no charge.

While these three rules may seem onerous or burdensome, they are not really that difficult to follow once you understand them, and following them not only keeps you within the law, but distinguishes and identifies your business as being above-board and ethical.

Anne P. Mitchell is an Internet attorney and law professor, and runs the Institute for Social Internet Public Policy (ISIPP), best known for their SuretyMail Email Accreditation service.

Acquisition Strategies for Mailing in the UK – By Cari Birkner

FeedFront Staff — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:02 +0000

Working in the marketing department at a company whose core business is monitoring email compliance, I spend a lot of time studying global email marketing laws.

So, I asked reputable networks and publishers how conflicting laws and cultural nuances translate into reality for email. I got great feedback from Warren Corpus, Vice President of Business Development at Vayan and Kimberlee White, President of AKMG.

Warren: “Because of the different opt-in procedures and the different data collection laws in the UK, we find much smaller quantities in UK files and the files themselves harder to come by for list management.”

Kim: “There are definitely better open and click rates in the UK. More revenue is made off smaller amounts of data compared to US data. However, more often than not, I am seeing lower payouts for UK leads.”

Zack Bernato, Vice President of AdMarketers, gave me a run down on the pros and cons of publishing in the UK market. If you’re thinking about mailing in the UK, here are the essential takeaways from my interview with Zack:

The amount of data is much smaller, but the quality is better.

“The offers convert much better. They click on everything.”

Consumer data records have a much shorter lifespan in the UK.

“The open rates and click rates are great right off the bat, but a record in the UK is only responsive for about two weeks. In the US, it would take at least a month for a static list to go cold.”

The UK advertiser has a different time table for processing payouts (in pounds, not dollars).

“In the US, most payouts are net 10, net 15, or net 30, meaning you’ll have your money by January for traffic from December. In the UK, advertisers pay net 60, so payment for traffic is delayed considerably, and hinges on the exchange rate on the last day of the month.”

Follow CAN-SPAM and maintain a suppression file, in addition to following publisher-based UK opt-in laws.

“As a US company mailing in the UK, I don’t take chances with regulators on either side. It’s my responsibility to respect opt-outs from my offers by maintaining my own suppression file, even though the UK doesn’t require it.”

Utilize your own technology for tracking and reporting.

“Most traffic comes from the US to other countries because we understand the space. Hosting your own UK sites allows for better filtering and reporting, and ultimately better lead quality.”

If you’ve heard expanding into the UK is the right move, I’ll end with some words of wisdom from Zack that ring true in affiliate marketing and perhaps in all business ventures:

“Email in the UK is lucrative, if you work with the right people.”

Cari Birkner is the Marketing Coordinator at LashBack, LLC and contributes on the subject of email marketing compliance to Deliverability.com.

Affiliate Program New Year’s Resolutions – By Shannon Simmons

FeedFront Staff — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:00:09 +0000

With the start of a new year, it’s the perfect time to give your affiliate program a fresh new start. Here are 10 great ways to renovate your affiliate program and optimize it for success in 2010:

Audit Your Affiliate Program – This is vital to the success of your program and it also holds the greatest potential impact. An affiliate program audit should look at every area of your affiliate program. The purpose of an audit is to identify areas within your program that you can alter or modify as well as identify additional opportunities that will grow the performance of your program. You should look at everything from a detailed competitive and banner/link analysis to a paid search analysis.
Respond to Affiliate Inquiries Within 24 Hours – Taking care of your affiliates should always be your main priority. By answering their inquiries promptly you show them you value their partnership and will promptly assist them as they continue to work with you.
Confirm that Your Creative and Links are Up to Date and Valid – This will make a huge difference in revenue for your affiliate program. Confirming that your creative and links are always up to date will make your users shopping experience easy and more productive.
Tracking Testing Procedures – Creating a process that is frequent and consistent for your tracking procedures will boost confidence for your program’s affiliates. Affiliates rely on proper tracking for their livelihood and they won’t promote offers that aren’t easily monitored and tracking correctly.
Ample Notice of Promotions to Affiliates – Giving affiliates plenty of advance notice about new promotions will ensure that they will keep your offers current. Two weeks at minimum is generally considered ample notice.
“Activate” Affiliates – Are your affiliates performing as well as they should? Reach out to those affiliates that you feel could be performing better and see what kind of offer you can provide them with in order to boost their performance and commissions.
Correct & Complete Information for Promotions – When you are sending out coupons or promotions to affiliates, be sure that they have start/end dates, restrictions (if applicable), etc.
Exclusive Offers to Top Performers – Offering your top performers exclusive offers is a great way to express your appreciation to them. Frequently contacting your top performers will ensure that they continue to promote your offers.
Merchandising – Ensure that you are creating link templates for top products and sending them to your affiliates via weekly newsletters, affiliate blog, or Twitter.
Content, Creative & Collateral – The more of these items that you create, the better! Keeping these items up to date will definitely help your program be successful.

I plan on implementing each of these steps for all of the programs I manage in 2010. I hope that you find this information helpful and prosperous with your programs too.

Shannon Simmons is an Assistant Affiliate Manager for the affiliate management agency JEBCommerce.com, MyAffilateCoach.com and NewsForAffiliates.com.

Using Analytics to Identify Affiliate Abuse – By David Naffziger

FeedFront Staff — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:00:01 +0000

Detecting affiliate abuse is one of the more challenging aspects of affiliate program management. Since the majority of affiliates add value to a program, identifying the abusive affiliates can feel a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.

The performance data provided by the affiliate networks is one of the most valuable aspects of the affiliate program, and can be used to identify affiliates engaged in abusive behavior.

Study the Inbound Referrers

Most visitors to your Web site come with information in their request that tells the Web site where the visitor came from. This information, known as the “referrer”, is used by programs such as Google Analytics to identify traffic sources. There are three important patterns to look for:

Referrer from the Search Engines: If the referrer shows one of the search engines as the source, the affiliate is probably purchasing PPC ads and using an uncloaked affiliate link in their ad.
Referrer from Webmail Clients: Affiliates using email as a marketing tool will often show referrers from web email clients.
No referrer: A number of trademark bidders (or affiliates trying to mask the source of their traffic for other reasons) are using cloaked affiliate links with a referring technique that strips the referrer from the user’s session.

Not all networks provide full referrers, however they often provide a report that at least shows the domain the traffic came from.

Understand Abnormal Conversion Rates

Affiliates using different promotional methods will have different conversion rates in your program. Significant differences in conversion rate from your program average might indicate something is amiss.

For example, unusually high conversion rates can be indicative of trademark bidding, while unusually low conversion rates (coupled with high traffic) can be indicative of adware.

Many merchants group their affiliates into categories (email, SEM, coupons, website, etc.), and then study the performance of the affiliates in each group. This approach allows for a clearer identification of suspicious activity.

Study Transaction Timing

Just looking at when an affiliate’s transactions occurred can also be very informative. Two things to look out for:

A temporary traffic surge: A quick, short burst of traffic could have come from an unauthorized email campaign or a successful social media campaign. Regardless, it is probably a good indication to look further.
Off-hours transactions: Transactions that only occur at night or on weekends might be indicative of a day-parted PPC campaign.

There are plenty of good reasons why a non-abusive affiliate might be using a technique identified in this article. Simply discovering an affiliate that matches one of the patterns above does not confirm the affiliate was doing something wrong.

The best approach is to develop a relationship with the affiliate so that the merchant understands their promotional methods. These techniques should be used to identify affiliates that warrant closer investigation.

David Naffziger is CEO of BrandVerity, a firm that detects affiliate violations of merchant paid search policies.

Unleashing the Potential of PPV Advertising – By Bryn Youngblut

FeedFront Staff — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:30:51 +0000

So what exactly is PPV advertising?

PPV (pay per view), also known as CPV (cost per view) is usually referred to as contextual advertising. PPV is technically adware; not to be confused with spyware. Adware comes from an ad-supported program that a user installed onto their PC, which they agreed to when installing it. PPV allows you to not only bid on keywords but also domains (URLs).

So what’s so good about PPV? From my experience, it is incredible if done right. I have some campaigns, for instance, where I spend approximately $50 on a day and they each generate thousands in revenue. Not bad, eh?

Why am I sharing this information? Probably because I am a mad man or maybe because I do well enough that I feel like giving people some inspiration. It has always helped me in the past.

Now that you know the basics, I will walk you through the steps to get started. You’re going to need to be signed up for a network. For beginners, I recommend signing up for MediaTraffic, and when you are more advanced, try out TrafficVance.

The first step is to choose which product or service you want to promote. The most recommended are simple and short-form submits; but don’t limit yourself to these.

After you have chosen an offer, it’s time to start researching keywords; and most importantly URLs. There are a number of ways to do this. If you are not familiar with the process, just search around the Web for keyword researching tools.

As far as finding URLs goes, it’s pretty simple, but does require some creativity. What I typically do is a simple search for my offer or things related and copy down the URLs that come up. Then I take those URLs over to Quantcast.com and get a ton more related Web sites using the “Audience Also Likes/Visits” feature on the right hand side.

Once you have your list of keywords/URLs, it’s time to setup your campaign. It is VERY important that you track everything, so you can eliminate the keywords/URLs that are not converting.

The most common question I get is “Should I direct link the offer or use a landing page?” and I always reply that if you’re not sure, why don’t you split test it and find out? Some offers work well direct linking to them, and some do much better with a jump page.

If you take PPV serious enough, you will likely experience a financial rollercoaster. You WILL lose money testing things. You WILL have unsuccessful campaigns. You WILL fail, and that’s life. But if you make it past all the failures and don’t give up, success could be right around the corner…

Bryn Youngblut is a full time entrepreneur and affiliate marketer, and he blogs at www.Bryn.me

How To Recycle Your Affiliate Blog Content – By Justin Premick

FeedFront Staff — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:00:08 +0000

If you’re one of the many smart affiliate marketers who blog regularly, I bet you put a lot of effort into creating high-quality content.

Often, that valuable content is timeless, but only appears on the most-viewed part of your blog – the homepage – for a short time. Other posts push it off your homepage and into oblivion.

This is frustrating, after all, new visitors could benefit from this content, right? Even if they sign up days, weeks, months or years after you publish it.

Fortunately, with a simple email marketing tactic, you can resurrect your content from the depths of your blog and keep it in front of your ever-growing, ever-changing audience.

Turn Your Blog’s Best Content Into an Automated Email Newsletter

There’s no reason to put all that hard work into creating great content, then get just one round of visits, comments and sales from it. Why be satisfied with that?

Much of your blog’s content isn’t only relevant at one particular time. And to borrow from an old NBC slogan, if subscribers haven’t seen an old post, it’s new to them.

Get that old content out to them and make it fresh again!

Create an Autoresponder Campaign For Your Blog in 3 Easy Steps

1. Identify Your Best Content

Go through your old blog posts and decide which are the truly high-quality ones that new subscribers need to see.

2. Turn Each Post or Group of Posts into an Email

A couple ways to go about this:
The fastest, simplest way is to just copy and paste your full post content into an email, style as you see fit, and save. No introduction, no conclusion, just the post as a standalone email. A little boring/dry but it can work.

Paste a compelling excerpt from your article, link to the full post, and add a brief introduction and conclusion to the email.

I like this method because it encourages click-throughs, but you may find that including the full post is better.

If you have two or more good posts on a topic, write an email that combines the ideas in those posts and links to them in context (you might be doing this with blog posts already). Or, just write a simple introduction and then provide a list of links to your posts on that topic.

3. Put Your Emails in an Autoresponder Series

Once you have your emails together, plug them into your autoresponder.

As you create each email, think about how much time you want to pass between those messages and schedule accordingly.

Remember, new subscribers will also be getting your new posts (right?), so don’t space the emails too close together.

As you create more quality posts, you can continue adding autoresponders or edit your existing ones to work those posts into the emails you’ve already created, and get even more clicks and traffic to your affiliate blog.

Justin Premick is the Director of Education Marketing for AWeber Communications, and you can follow him on Twitter @justinpremick.

Being Different Can Be Very Profitable – By Andrew Wee

FeedFront Staff — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:00:24 +0000

In the online marketing world, it can be a struggle to get your voice heard, especially since many marketers will be adopting similar tactics when it comes to promoting products to their prospects.

The proliferation of competitive intelligence and spy tools means that a new affiliate can create a clone copy of another affiliates campaign, often within a few hours.

The net result? A potentially profitable campaign, although with an uncertain lifespan.

Instead, affiliates who are planning to be in the industry for the long haul can better channel their energy to create a sustainable presence on the Internet. The following factors can help you shape the direction of your business

Improve on How Everyone Else is Running Their Business

Think of companies like Apple, FedEx and Twitter and see how they positioned themselves above the competition. Although personal computers, overnight delivery and social networks had been around before these companies were established, these new entrants looked at where the bar was set in their industry and moved it up a couple of notches.

Within the affiliate marketing context, most affiliates are promoting their campaigns primarily through text and graphics, thin affiliate sites, which may not provide much value beyond specifications lifted from the merchant’s site and product pricing.

Going the extra mile to create additional content, especially catering to buyers earlier in the sales cycle, can help boost your conversions.

Although there have been numerous presentations at trade events and seminars about the power of video in branding yourself and getting more sales conversions, there are just a handful of affiliates who use these services, and more importantly, use them well.

Always Be Testing

Department store pioneer John Wanamaker has been quoted as saying “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Although Wanamaker, considered the father of advertising, came up with the words in 19th century, the saying still hold true when it comes to online marketing today.

You won’t know what will or will not work when it comes to a traffic or conversion tactic in a campaign. I’ve heard more than my fair share of stories about marketers trying something wild and unexpected on a whim as they’re setting up a campaign, only to have it go gangbusters on them.

Unfortunately, you won’t often read blog posts or forum postings about these techniques because they’re some of the key tools of the trade. If you do hear about them, it’s usually after some time has passed and the affiliate has made a killing and moved on to something new.

The lesson here is to think about what you’re doing in your business and find ways to innovate. Creativity can pay off very handsomely in these circumstances.

Andrew Wee blogs about affiliate marketing at WhoIsAndrewWee.com and is co-founder of the InternetMarketingCookbook.com resource site.

The Quest for Social Marketing’s Holy Grail – By Larry Bailin

FeedFront Staff — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:00:23 +0000

Social networking giant Facebook recently surpassed Wikipedia as the fourth largest Web site in the world while micro-blogging powerhouse, Twitter, reportedly handled 5,000 tweets per minute when the king-of-pop passed. These announcements have businesses scrambling to social Web sites like they were, well, the Holy Grail of marketing success.

Here’s the thing about finding the Holy Grail: what do you do once you’ve found it? Companies large and small, although excited over the promise of social marketing, often have no idea what to do in this new and unfamiliar space.

Certainly, there is no shortage of social marketing gurus, experts and even ninjas (yes ninjas), but you can’t rely solely on these social Sherpa’s to achieve true success in your social quest.

A good or even average social media consultant can help you traverse an unforgiving social terrain by creating a sound social media strategy and implementing best practices.

However, you can only be catapulted to success if you have something worth flinging into the air.

Success is imminent when you realize that the knowledge necessary to succeed, no matter the marketing vehicle, comes from within. You have intimate knowledge of your offerings. You understand your customer’s wants and needs as they relate to your services.

Most importantly, you know how to speak to a customer, and that is what will ultimately deliver success in the social space.

Let the gurus obsess over the perfect formula of Re-Tweets to Tweets and which shortened URL gets clicked the most. You need to spend more time strategizing the creation of valuable dialogue.

Study your customer’s wants and needs, misconceptions and objections, then create shareable contributions that educate and subtly entice. Contributing, educating and subtly enticing – sounds a lot like selling. Despite popular opinion selling is not a bad thing.

There is nothing wrong with using social media to attract and convert customers, just learn to sell in a friendly non-disruptive way. Learn to join the conversation as opposed to interrupting it. You have to sell without selling.

You may be asking, how do you sell without selling? Let me share a little secret with you: it’s not so much a secret as an often overlooked resource.

I’m frequently asked to recommend books on social marketing. There’s no shortage of books about the intricacies of Facebook and Twitter, but the greatest book ever written on achieving success in the social space was written 70+ years ago.

In my opinion, Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is the Holy Grail, the secret to social nirvana. This book teaches you to speak, think and write with the intent to persuade. Carnegie’s book teaches you to think like a customer and provide value in order to evoke a desired outcome.

Social websites and ninjas come and go. When you master the skills to think like a customer and subtly entice, your next quest for marketing’s Holy Grail will be a short crusade. You’ll only need to look inside yourself.

Larry Bailin is the author of the bestselling Internet marketing book, Mommy, Where Do Customers come From? and CEO of Single Throw Internet Marketing.