Macau Affiliate Convention Day Two

Okay I overslept and missed the first session, but certainly enjoyed the next few sessions which dealt with issues such as payment solutions in China, the China Lottery and online gaming in Greater China. The most topical for me being the presentation on payments, presented by Chen Yu from Yee Pay. A surprising fact that was raised was credit card penetration, which is a maximum of around 5 million cards, of which maybe 2 million are active, on the other hand Bank Debit cards have a penetration of 20 Billion (with a B) . The great distrust between buyers and sellers for online products is still very strong, but gradually being broken down by firms like YeePay, Alipay and 99Bill which are showing consumers that there are trustworthy payment solutions. As well as in areas where the purchase is for online services such as MMORPGs, electronic deliverables and the like.

The final event of the day an the show was the Beer Panel which featured 6 of us from a wide range of backgrounds and industries fielding questions on a wide range of topics, from fraud in Asia to what areas are affiliates in Asia doing well in, to affiliate training and what are the emerging markets in Asia, and in what commerce areas.

All in all it was a great event. A great job by Mark Lesnick and his team to put this first Macau affiliate event together and I certainly look forwards to the next one!

Macau Affiliate Convention Day One

Well my first surprise of the day was how many people are here, I guess I'd been expecting 50 or so, but there around 150 to 200 folks here from as far afield as the USA, Australia, Cyprus, Israel and all over Asia. A very solid turn out for the first event. A lot of the attendees and most of the exhibitors and gaming firms, but a lot of presentations are retail and general affiliate focused. An interesting mix for sure.

Certainly for me it was very educational to hear some of the China based presentations, especially from key note speaker, Shimizu Yoichi from Adways, getting an insight into what markets are working on in the region and what are not as well as how advertisers are using affiliate networks with the very slow change from CPM/CPC based ad runs towards CPL and CPA. Also regarding the restrictions in online gaming on the region that prevent the major gaming firms from moving very quickly into the market.

Mobile marketing has a very big roll in for networks and publishers , especially in Japan, apparently around 20% of all network Adway marketing is through mobile devices.

My 101 Session was not hugely packed, the majority of affiliates here being experienced folks who are already successful enough to fly from all corners of the world to join the event. I did have one heckler in the back row, who we almost had to throw out, I managed to fail to recognize David Wolf from Syntryx :-) , much to his amusement. Luckily I recognized everyone else that I have had chance to meet or talk with before.

Probably the best session of the day though (for me anyway) was the presentation by Monte Cahn of Moniker.com , it was an eye opening lesson in "domain real estate" and the reality that investing in a good domain is likely to bring in faster and better return than just about any other investment a person can make in any business. Looks like the new car is going to have to wait!

I finally found the river / canal that the hotel promotes as having "in" the hotel, much to my surprise and wonder, it is on the 3rd floor. You can take a gondola ride through the Venetian style shopping arcade of some 100+ shops. Pretty impressive!

Macau Affiliate Convention Day Zero

Well it's a nice easy 2 and half hour flight from Bangkok to Macau and this is also my first visit to Macau. And so far I'm well impressed. Landing early, it was a 30 to 40 metre walk from the planes steps to the customs counter, cleared in 10 minutes, and out to the shuttle bus in 5 more. The bus left 10 minutes later and the hotel is so close to the airport I could probably have walked there in that time. The hotel (The Venetian) is huge. It's not big, or large..it is huge..and busy..it took longer to queue to check in that it did to land clear customs and get to the hotel.

Then I got lost trying to find my room, the instructions were simple enough, go straight turn right before the casino floor and take the lift to the 10th floor. I must have taken an early right and did a tour of the out wings before finding the right lift. Discovered ABBA are playing here next week in the process though!

The rooms, are all suites and are lavish, you could put a family of 10 in one room and have room to spare for sports. Wireless Internet in all rooms, TVs, Giant Bed, bathroom (bigger than some rooms I've stayed in) the living room and bed room are split by a mezzanine floor style layout. The floor plan is on the left.

I think I'd need an extra day to just explore the hotel.

Anyway the event starts tomorrow, so I have this evening to track down a few fellow attendees and see who has lost their marketing budget playing games of Casino War, Baccarat, Fan Tan, Caribbean Stud, Sic Bo and Yee Hah Hai... games I'm sure everyone knows all too well, okay they have Black Jack, Roulette (US Style Tables), Three Card Poker (Called Bragg in the UK) as well as the slot machines.

Right enough for day zero, more tomorrow once the event starts!

The Difference Between a Super Affiliate and You

There really is none, other than a little bit of luck, experience, and action. Anyone who stakes a claim that they were able to develop a $1000+ net income stream from affiliate marketing is certainly a rare exception to the rule.

Right now, experienced affiliates are beginning to reap the whirlwind that comes with the holiday shopping frenzy. Time was spent preparing their sites, tweaking their SEO and building links, testing PPC ads and campaigns, and adding content to their sites all in preparation for Q4. Make no mistake about it, there's a lot of work involved. Don't be fooled by the get rich quick false sales pitches of earning thousands with no effort within days. There are exceptions to every rule, but you might as well play the lottery to pin your hopes on these kinds of expectations.

But you CAN get there,  You can reach a high level of income coming from affiliate marketing with patience. Experiment, try, build your first site and work with it to try and optimize it. Ask yourself the question, "What do people need?  What would you like to have?"  Even if you don't have any experience with building a webpage, there are so many tools now available to easily put something up.  Take a look at Weebly, Jimdo or Synthasite for easy on-screen site building. Start a blog through Blogger. Build a Squidoo lens or a Hubpage.

The super-affiliates got to where they are today because they put up their first page, and played with it, worked it, and built their site or sites into something meaningful and valuable.

Still lost?  Check out this page for other AMWSO Affiliate Marketing tips.

The point of all of this, is to start now and put up a page for affiliate marketing. You can of course learn from reading and analysis, but the quickest way to learn is through trial and error. Nothing gets earned until you put up that first page, build your content and then put up those first affiliate links, so why not do it today while you're reading up from the forums, blogs and books?

Duplicate Content Search Engine Penalties and Affiliate Marketing

Many merchants who run affiliate programs make available content for their affiliates to use on affiliate sites. A common question / concern asked of AMWSO is if this content is being distributed to all affiliates, and multiple affiliates are using the content, will this incur a search engine penalty?  It's a question asked of us both from the merchant perspective, as they redistribute content on their own pages, and also from the affiliate perspective, since the affiliates want to use that content.

First, having a page considered as a duplicate does not earn you a penalty in the search engines. Search engines aim to retrieve the best result for any given search, so if a page is considered a duplicate, it is simply filtered out of the results for that particular search query. Your site and domain do not receive any penalty once this happens. To quote from one source written by SEO expert Jill Whalen:

Reprinting someone's article on your site is not going to cause a penalty. At best, your page with the article will show up in a search related to it; at worst, it won't. No big deal either way.

If you are really concerned about duplicate content, and your objective is to get those pages with the content ranking in the search engines, then Webconfs.com provides an excellent article with tips how to get around the duplicate filters. Steps suggested are as simple as writing a brief editorial around the content, or simply changing the page structure around.

For the merchants out there, don't let the fear of duplicate content filters dissuade you from providing valuable content for your affiliates. After all, these affiliates are working to drive that traffic to your site in the end.

Affiliate Marketing and using PPC and Organic SEO as Traffic Driving Tactics

I know no valid reason for not using both tactics to drive traffic to an affiliate website other than fear (don't know PPC, might lose money) or laziness (I get traffic via PPC, why should I bother with organic SEO?). Organic search results are obtained through time, building quality links back to the site, and page optimization. Time is really a key factor with organic rankings, as it generally takes time to obtain high rankings for a wide range of search keywords. Paid search or PPC is simply a marketplace for visitors. An affiliate submits an ad to the search engines and bids for placement, and buys clicks/traffic/visits.

Organic search results are viewed by consumer searchers as more credible than paid search advertisements. From a consumer perspective (be it a truly valid or not), the search company is an objective party assigning credibility to top search results by ranking them highly. However, it's not likely that any affiliate can rank in the top 3 or top 5 for the majority of keyword searches for their target categories across all of the major search engines. This is where paid search comes into play. An affiliate is still able to get onto the first page of results through a paid search listing for keywords they might not otherwise rank for organically.

When first building an affiliate site, one effective strategy is to immediately jump in with PPC ads to drive traffic to the site. This allows an affiliate to test things out (is the page converting, how well is it being received, etc?) WHILE the organic search placements are being improved through time and through link building. The important factor, when using PPC ads to drive traffic to affiliate offers, is to track, measure and adjust. Make sure your ad costs are not exceeding what you are making via commissions. Kristy at AffiliateStuff just gave us a great formula for figuring this out:

Avg Order Value x Avg Conversion Rate = Avg Sales Per Hundred Clicks x Affiliate Commission = Avg Earnings Per Hundred Clicks

Once you have your average earning per 100 Clicks, compare that with your ad cost for 100 clicks, and if the earnings are higher, then you're making money! If it's lower, then it's time to do some analysis, figure out which keywords are costing the most and converting the least, and either optimize the ads, or get rid of those keywords. Successful PPC marketing is all about trying, measuring, analyzing, and reconfiguring; it's quite a simple process that only seems complex at first.

Now, back to the original topic at hand, paid search vs. organic search. I've tried to build the case for using paid search and even delved into a tactic on how to do paid search. Now, to address those who are just slapping up quick landing pages designed only to funnel the visitor as quickly as possible to the merchant page, There really is no reason not to build that landing page up for organic rankings as well other than laziness. Half the battle is finished, the page is there, online, the affiliate link is set. Now, simply build some original quality content for the page, and start working to get links back to that page or site. Organic results are free, an added bonus that costs nothing outside of effort and creativity.

A well-rounded, diversified affiliate will employ both tactics to make their affiliate business a success. If you're neglecting one or the other, there are some great free resources out there through forums and blogs to help you build up your skill set. However, don't try to over analyze and over educate, the important thing is to dip your foot in the water and try it yourself. Experience is always the best education.

Excellent Learning Resources for SEO and PPC:

• Abestweb Forum
• SEOmoz Community
• SEOBook Blog and Tools
• Webpronews
• WebmasterWorld
• Digital Point Forums
• PPC Ad Copy Article - Marketing Experiments

What Does OpenSocial Mean for Affiliate Marketing?

Within tech circles, there is a huge amount of buzz swirling around the Google OpenSocial initiative. Google has partnered up with Myspace, Hi5, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Oracle, Bebo, Ning and a host of others (however not Facebook yet) in support of an open API for social web mini-applications. What the OpenSocial initiative is really about is providing a common API, or common language for application developers to write mini-applications for the various OpenSocial participants.

What are the advantages or uses of applications?

Using mini-applications/apps/widgets, companies / affiliates can now efficiently extend their website experience to existing communities on popular social networks.

What are social networks?

An existing network or community where friends or people of similar interest share.

Facebook was the first social network to open up their API for application development. Applications sat on top of the Facebook platform, and were accessed and used by users through their Facebook profile pages. There are a few affiliate approaches with applications; from Social Shopping Mall which allows users to share / clip and use coupons through the app to iBought which allows product recommendations and purchases through the app.

The OpenSocial API takes the Facebook concept and transforms it to an open standard accessible to any social network. Now with the OpenSocial APIs, application writers can write one application and have it run on a variety of platforms, thereby opening up exposure to even more users. One interesting side note about the OpenSocial participants, Oracle, SalesForce and LinkedIn have chosen to join up, thereby leading one to believe we'll be seeing many more business related applications in the future.

I have listened to some affiliates complain that they've tried to market on Myspace or other social networks with very minimal success. The initial attempts were flawed; making a profile, adding as many people as possible as friends, and then trying to push a marketing message out to these people. This approach didn't fill a need or solve a problem. Now with the opportunity to be creative and innovative, and write an application that can fill some need or solve some problem, marketers have a  new world of opportunities before them.

Will this be the gateway to instant success, or lead to fast millions, probably not. We are potentially riding the very beginnings of a shift. A shift away from traffic being driven by open searches through search engines on the open web, to more defined niche based traffic coming through user selected applications and widgets. Why not be prepared for when this potential shift picks up furious momentum?

If you are a merchant, do you have a social web strategy? If not, one potential way to dip your foot in the water is through your affiliate program. Partnering with value adding affiliates who are already building social applications can give your business and products exposure to the social web while minimizing your risk with the new medium.