So I haven’t posted in forever, I know, and I’m sorry. It’s because I’ve been having so much fun with PPC and affiliate marketing. I always considered myself (and still do) an SEO. I knew some PPC stuff and did well with affiliate programs through SEO, but I prefer natural traffic on principle. One thing I always tell my brother/mom/family/friends when they ask about my business is that “I don’t want to have a job. I want to build things that make money while I’m not working.” The less maintenance required, the more I like it. It’s not because I don’t want to work, it’s just because it’s so cool to go out with your friends on Friday night and come home a few hours later to find you’ve made money while you were having fun. With PPC, I doubt many would argue that there’s a lot more “maintaining” to do than there is with SEO. That’s not to say you can just let an SEO project sit and expect it to do well forever, but it’s not as dependent on your day to day attention as PPC. Anyway, back to the point of this post.

Despite what I said above, I find PPC very fun or even entertaining. And I really love building tools that automate tasks and give me an advantage over my competition (I don’t even have anything fancy, but what I have built makes 1 hour of my work equivalent to 10 hours of work the way I was doing it a month ago).

Although I’ve been enjoying myself, there’s one thing that kills me. With MSN AdCenter, it is SO hard to modify your keywords once you get them online. I love the people at AdCenter (actually just got off a 2 hour phone conversation with them) and I don’t think their platform is half bad, but one thing it really needs is some tool that will allow advertisers to modify their keywords in bulk (and yes, I know they have a bulk edit option, but it’s almost completely useless).

Specifically, there needs to be an advanced way to delete keywords from a campaign. When you have 450 pages of keywords, going through them one by one and deleting isn’t realistic. You should be able to enter a SQL-esque query. For example, I would love to be able to enter a command like “DELETE FROM adgroupname WHERE status=’rejected’” or “DELETE FROM adgroupname WHERE LEN(keyword) > 25″

I can’t imagine it would be that hard to implement. The only reason I can think of for not having such functionality is they are afraid users would misunderstand it and destroy their campaigns with small typos. If that’s the case, MSN could just require a user to go to a special section of his/her account and “enable” advanced queries or something like that. The “filters” are a start, but much more is needed, and, IMO, it’s really not that complex.

Back to work :).

  

  

Well, the guys over at Elite Retreat were holding a contest for a free ticket to attend the event. I decided to participate, but lost :). I wasn’t very confident in my submission, and struggled because I felt that the question was hard to answer concisely and I didn’t want to spend more than a two-page-writing amount of time on it.

Anyway, since I lost, I now have a page and a half long writeup of my thoughts on the future of affiliate marketing that I’m not using for anything, so even though I’m not particularly proud of it, I thought I’d post my submission here in case anyone’s interested in my opinion

The question I chose to answer was “What do you feel the future of affiliate marketing holds for affiliates?”

The bell will never toll for affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing, after all, is simply a new moniker for an age-old business concept: paying on commission. To suggest that affiliate marketing “is dying” or “will die” is no different than arguing that “the end is near for car salesmen, real estate agents, insurance agents and countless other professionals who depend upon commission payments.” Less sweeping laments might, however, be more accurate. Affiliate marketing will undoubtedly become more challenging and require its devotees to stay on the frontier by “thinking outside of the box.” There is no question—this is already taking place.

As markets mature, it becomes more difficult to earn a profit. This is economics 101 and is largely based on the principle of a barrier to entry. For a new marketplace, such as the internet, or to go further, affiliate marketing online, there is a huge conceptual barrier to entry. Despite the seemingly obvious business models used, the reality is that the vast majority of the population doesn’t understand affiliate marketing. Perhaps they are intimidated by the jargon—maybe it’s just that business on the internet carries complex connotations that scare people away—I don’t know, because I can’t personally understand it. By I do know that when I explain to an acquaintance or friend, as I have done hundreds of times over the past few years, how I make money online, it is a very rare occasion when I feel the listener really understands what I’m talking about. The difficulty nearly everyone has in comprehending the business model itself is the primary barrier to entry. These are smart people, but they aren’t competing in this amazingly lucrative marketplace because they just don’t understand how it works. It isn’t a business they learned about in school. It isn’t a market their dad, mom, or uncle was involved in.

Over the years, however, I have seen more and more of these smart people begin to “get it.” They come in to compete, and the availability and ease of profit declines. It is still present, but with every new affiliate the market grows increasingly saturated. After these entrepreneur 2.0s, as I’ll call this “new wave” of affiliates, has entered the space, the next heat is the companies/corporations themselves. As most of us experienced with the corporate world already know, these are the guys that really take a long time to “get it.” They are slow to catch up, but eventually many of them do. And when they do, they are able to leverage their immense resources and are willing to lose money in the pursuit of future profits (e.g. branding, lifetime value of a customer, etc.). When these companies enter the market in force and starting throwing their money around, competition increases even further, and once again the profit available to individual affiliates decreases. Naturally there are some affiliates that are still able to profit in this market place, but the ease with which they are able to do so, and the availability of profit is significantly reduced as compared to when the market was in its infancy.

In no area is this process more apparent than with PPC arbitrage. Why? Again, the reason has to do with barriers to entry. Although complex in its advanced forms, it is possible to start a PPC campaign and begin competing within minutes. Furthermore, PPC campaigns have results that are tangible and easy to delineate—as compared to SEO, for example, where results may come sporadically and months down the road. These factors, along with many others, have made PPC an appealing entrance point for individuals and companies alike.

It’s not that PPC is easy. PPC is difficult—and the ranking algorithm is, depending on who you ask, nearly as complex, or perhaps even more so, than it is for organic listings. Still, PPC is extremely attractive to new entrants. Results from an SEO campaign, as mentioned previously, are difficult to gauge and because it takes so long to see real results, inexperienced users are hesitant to give SEO a shot. Ultimately this has caused (and will continue to cause) a disproportionately large influx of competition in the pay per click and arbitrage markets. Yet again, the increased competition has made affiliate marketing more challenging within this sphere—unless, of course, an affiliate is able to think outside the box, innovate, and in this manner separate him/her self from the crowd (at the risk of being overly repetitive, I must mention again that this differentiation through innovation, or thinking beyond the ‘normal,’ is a barrier to entry in the sense that a lot of people just can’t do it).

Ultimately, affiliate marketing is here to stay. The only change will be where the affiliates position themselves—be it at a car dealership, a real estate agency, online, in the pay per click market place, in the organic results, or in any of a thousand other locations. With regard to affiliate marketing online in the forms of PPC and SEO, I’m comfortable making a few predictions. There will be a pronounced decline in the aggregate profit of affiliates utilizing PPC techniques due to rapidly increasing competition and discriminatory attitudes of search engines, which are often blatantly anti-affiliate and anti-arbitrage (think Quality Score). Creative affiliates capable of thinking innovatively will still find success, but the growing difficulty will persist. For SEO, the same is true, particularly with regard to spam/questionable sites created by myopic SEOs. As search engines improve their algorithms, these methods will become less successful, particularly because many of these tactics are easily replicated by competitors. In the organic results, however, well entrenched sites with established authority and useful content will continue to profit via affiliate marketing for many years to come. They are protected by a unique and very strong barrier to entry: the head start they enjoy in link development. When considering the bigger picture for affiliates—as opposed to obsessing over one explicitly defined category—it is clear that affiliate marketing will continue to be both effective and lucrative. The landscape will change—the principles will not.

——

PS: Does anyone know if they posted the winning submission anywhere? I’d love to read it as this is definitely an interesting question (if the winner even chose this one–there were two options).

  

  

I saved yesterday’s Shoemoney show for today, knowing that I’d be in the car for a few hours. Shoe’s guest was Scott Jangro, the founder of BumpZee – a very cool and, in my mind, promising social networking project. The guys discussed a number of topics, mainly news (I wish I’d listened live and called in as I’d loved to have heard this very knowledgeable and successful duo discuss some more ‘precise’ / applicable affiliate strategies), but toward the end of the show they discussed conferences like PubCon, Affiliate Summit, Ad Tech, and SES. Scott’s favorite was, not surprisingly as he’s a long time affiliate marketer, the Affiliate Summit. I agreed with his sentiments in that the atmosphere at the Affiliate Summit was really unique, welcoming and fun.

One of Scott’s comments reminded me of a phenomenon I’d thought of blogging about in the past but apparently forgot, and that is the incredibly “tight lipped, big paranoia fest” (borrowing Scott’s perfect description) that is so prevalent at these shows. Basically, many attendees feel there is an unwritten rule–separating the wise from the ignorant–that you don’t talk about things that make you money. If you do, the idea is that others will copy, compete and ultimately conquer you.

The fact is, however, ’secrets’ that the elite or even the losers can share about how they’re making money online—for example, which programs they use and how they are promoting affiliate offers—are not likely (with a very few exceptions) to hurt or benefit anyone to a significant extent. While talking to a few guys attending the PubCon conference outside my hotel, I remember one of them asking me “so what affiliate programs are you doing well with?” My response was something like “mortgage leads are making me a lot right now” and both of the guys looked at each other with a poorly disguised expression of victory. When I saw their reaction I immediately attained a fairly certain guess of what they were thinking: “Dude, we got him! This idiot must have had a little too much to drink and gave away a secret!”

“DEAR GOD NO! Now they know I make money off a mortgage affiliate program. I’m ruined! And they’re gonna be rich!” Reality check guys–this just isn’t how it works. Go ahead, “bring it!”

If you disagree with me that’s great, because then I can give you one piece of advice that’ll get you a ton of these ’secrets’ and you don’t even have to get anyone drunk: call your affiliate manager and ask him which programs people are making money with. Ask for conversion data, keyword lists, etc. They’ll give you stacks of spreadsheets and other information in a matter of minutes with no questions asked.
Sure, there are a (very) few cases I can think of where a person might have discovered some incredibly easy maneuver that earns big bucks. But for the most part income of that type is short-lived and usually isn’t the part of your portfolio that’s going to make you rich.

In my opinion it’s more ignorant to think you’ve tricked some ‘fool’ into giving away the bank than it is to tell someone about an affiliate program that makes you money. We’ll see how people are at SES, but I’m hoping the ‘paranoia fest’ isn’t quite so pronounced. It’s fun to talk to people about online business, particularly at these shows. But it’s not fun when people naively assume substantive discussion automatically means idiocy.

  

  

One humorous experience I had time and again at Affiliate Summit West involved employees of affiliate networks trying to sell me.

This is meant as advice, not criticism, but I have a tendency to come across as aggressive or critical in my blog posts from time to time, so this is my disclaimer. That’s really not what I’m trying to do here.

First of all, at least be straight up about it and get to the point ASAP. You aren’t going to trick affiliates—we recognize a pitch when we see one. Think about how we make our money. We sell things to other people, and we do it all the time. It’s no secret that you make money every time we sell your product, so we know why you’re in this. And, because the affiliate industry does have its sleazy elements, we’re exposed to scams and deceptive marketing all the time—a decent percentage of affiliates even participate in this themselves. Really, you’re not going to trick us. We get it. We know what you’re doing, and it creates an awkward situation when you try to sell us while pretending that’s not what’s going on because we stand there trying to be polite while you run through your spiel. Really, it’s like going up to a car salesman and trying to sell them a car. Often times I was embarrassed for the person talking to me, because the pitch was so transparent.

I think the best way—and with me, the only way—you have a chance of getting me on your network or promoting your product is to “SHOW ME THE MONEY.” I know I talk about Shoemoney a lot here, and it’s because I think his advice is really solid and to-the-point. So I’ll borrow one of his stories here and because I’m mixing it with my own thoughts, the story is italicized, and keep in mind the quotes are basically what was said but not word for word.

Shoemoney promotes ring tones, as most of my readers probably know, and he’s good at it. In the story I’m thinking of, an affiliate network (I believe) called him up and tried to get him to promote a ring tone offer of his.

The first feeling going through an affiliate in this situation is “ugh.” It’s because we’re so used to this, and there’s usually nothing you’re going to tell me over the phone that I haven’t heard before or that isn’t available on your site.

In his situation, Shoe cut to the chase by saying “how much do you pay per lead? And how do you convert?”

Tip: Please, please don’t reply with “we pay the highest” or “we guarantee the largest commissions” or one of the hundred other oft-made claims. It sounds to us like BS and because everyone says that, it’s meaningless. Very few affiliates would think “Wow, sweet, the highest payouts?!” What we want is NUMBERS or PROOF. Not jargon, but real information. How much do you pay? What’s the conversion rate? Those are the first two questions that come to my mind, and I’m looking for actual data-style numbers, not hype or marketing talk.

Back to the story—the guy on the phone said something like $14. Well Shoe was already at $18 or $20, I can’t remember the specifics) so things didn’t sound too good. But, because the guy was persistent, Shoe humored him with what I thought was a great offer. “Look, you approached me” Shoe explained, “so you know who I am and that I can deliver. On the other hand, I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know if you’ll really pay me. So I’ll tell you what, give me a $50,000 deposit to ensure that I can trust your guarantee and I’ll give you a chance.”

Not surprisingly, there were stutters and the conversation ended without any kind of deal. To sum up, my advice (as an affiliate) to people trying to sell to affiliates is to make it quick and don’t do anything that could possibly be interpreted as being deceptive. We’ll see through it very quickly and you lose your credibility and end up looking like a schmuck, often without even realizing it.

  

  

I apologize for not posting frequent, live Affiliate Summit West event coverage as I meant to. After a late, exhausted arrival I was playing catch up the whole time and didn’t get to blog as much as I’d hoped–I’ll try my best to do a better job of this at future events.

My adventure in Las Vegas ended on a great note—Kris Jones from Pepperjam gave an awesome presentation that was, without question, my favorite of the event. And I’m not just saying that because he mentioned my blog on one of his slides, although I admit that surprise did make my day (I know, I’m a loser) :).

Although things have been hectic, this event has caused me to reflect and think about what makes a presentation good—at least in my eyes. I came to the conclusion that the main reason I liked Kris’ session so much was because you could tell he does not ‘have a job.’ At these events, I find there’s a big difference between a speaker who is a creator / entrepreneur as compared to a speaker who is an employee. Why? A number of reasons, but I think the most important is that these are the people who give you something to take home—something you can’t find in a hundred business books. Not to mention that these presenters are, understandably, more comfortable speaking because they aren’t being judged or restricted by an employer.

Kris’ session reminded me a lot of Roger Montii’s at the last PubCon—it had my mind racing with ideas and made me take notes I’ll actually read and act on as soon as I get home, which is very rare for me :). I can appreciate and understand that other ‘employed’ speakers might be very intelligent, qualified, etc., but for me personally, hearing creators discuss the things they know so intimately is priceless—not to mention extremely fun and motivating. It’s always more interesting to have a conversation about something a person loves than something they feel forced to do as a ‘job’—and while I don’t know this as fact, I’d be willing to guess the majority (if not all) of the speakers I’ve enjoyed most don’t consider working on their projects or businesses to be ‘work,’ even if they might use the word.

I tried to find a transcript or audio file of Kris’ session (and some of the others) without success. If anyone knows where these are located please comment :).

I’ve never been a note taker because I feel like writing keeps me from truly listening to speakers, but I did jot down a few things. As soon as I find the slides / audio / transcripts I’ll give a more in depth write up of the points I found most enlightening. In the mean time, here are the few notes I didn’t want to forget (these are all from Kris):

Google Quality Score: Kris has found that having a privacy policy seems to improve the quality score a page is given by Google (Kris also mentions the more frequently cited concerns of substantial, quality content, navigable link structure, etc.).

Digital River (to be honest I can’t remember what they do and all I wrote down was “Digital River,” so I’ll have to elaborate on this point later or maybe we’ll get some comments with more info).

Keyword Tools – Kris recommends: Rapid Keyword, Keyword Discovery, Keycompete (Kris says this one is the best. If I understood him correctly, the tool somehow lets you identify what keywords competitors are bidding on. Wow, that makes work sound like a waste of time – just let someone else do it), Google Suggest and Yahoo Suggest.

Rejected Keywords: With Yahoo, Kris has found that they’ll reject about a third of any list for no apparent reason. Once you get the list of rejected keywords, just upload that one, and they’ll reject another third, and so on. I haven’t had a problem with this yet, because to be honest I haven’t played with Yahoo Search Marketing in three years or so (Overture back then).

Duplicate Clicks / Click Fraud: I actually asked this question near the end, and Kris’ reply was really helpful. Basically, I understood how I could detect the duplicate clicks, etc., but I had no idea how I could present that information to MSN/Yahoo/Google/etc. to get a refund. Do I put it in a spreadsheet or send server logs or..? Kris answered that the first step is, of course, to analyze the clicks yourself and identify any suspicious activity. If the damage appears to be substantial and worth pursuing, you should send an e-mail to the network explaining that you’ve found what appears to be duplicate clicking and make your case. Not surprisingly, Kris says the first reply is usually something along the lines of “We don’t see what you’re seeing,” so you will have to get a dialogue going and continue to make your case. Often times they will refund you for invalid clicks based on this communication. But if they don’t, the next step Kris recommends is to tell them you’re going to blog about this experience. Try not to make it sound like a threat, Kris warns, but let them know that blogging is the next step on your end if you can’t get this worked out. Apparently they appreciate the power of blogging and might acquiesce at this point.

* Please keep in mind that this is my recollection of Kris’ words and not an exact representation of what was said.

  

It took me about two years to actually give Webmaster Radio a try, but when I did I was really impressed by some of the shows–particularly Shoemoney’s show (Net Income) and SEO Rockstars.

As far as I can tell from the archives, I’ve listened to every single episode of Net Income several times (it’s good commuting material :)). The other day I was on a plane with my iPod and didn’t feel like listening to music, so I started up an old episode of Net Income; more specifically, the July 18th show with Kris Jones, CEO of Pepperjamsearch.com. Shoemoney and Kris discuss PPC and affiliate strategies.

While this is the second installment of a two part-series, you should be able to understand everything without listening to the preceding episode (although if you have time, I’d definitely recommend it). Kris really puts forward some quality, fundamental advice that applies to everyone from the total newbie to the super affiliate. My favorite segment is one I agree with wholeheartedly and that really screams to me “This guy GETS IT!” When asked about starting out on a limited budget (as an affiliate), Kris responds:

This is IT! This is all there is to it, and Kris does a great job laying it out. I really love and passionately relate to / support his thought process when he remembers his reaction to his first paycheck: “WOW, if I could make a $100… I knew at that time this was back you know 5 or 6 years ago I knew at that time there were more than 1,000 merchants who had affiliate programs, so I figured if I could make $50 or $100 per merchant program, per month, you know, you’re talking about a lot of money.”

Later Kris reiterates this concept:

Once you could perfect a concept that makes you money…. You know, take it back to my initial philosophy. If you could figure out how to make $100 doing one thing, why not try to replicate that 500 or 1,000 times? Right?

Anyway, I won’t repeat the whole thing here, and I know it’s an old episode, but I just listened to it again and was really struck by how good Kris’ advice is. I’m really looking forward to hearing him speak at Affiliate Summit West.

Tags: kris, jones,, pepperjam,, pepper, jam,, affiliate, marketing,, affiliates,, tips,, net, income,, webmaster, radio,, shoemoney,, affiliate, summit,, affiliate, summit, west