Affiliates and Merchants Working Together

I’d like to relate a story, that was actually part of the inspiration to write about split-testing affiliate pages a few days ago. One of the previous merchant’s programs I was managing was doing pretty well as far as sales. We had solid growth across the program with productive value-adding affiliates.

One of those affiliates however, one who I had a prior relationship with, felt that we could be doing better. He’d observed that the traffic he was sending us should probably be converting at a higher level. It WAS converting, but he was expecting a >5% conversion rate, since the traffic he sent was highly qualified and he wasn’t just pushing anyone and everyone our way. Many affiliates in this situation would dump the merchant, pick up a competitor, or deprecate the page and links on their main site. Nothing wrong with that, it’s the path of least resistance and will probably put the affiliate in a position for better earnings.

However, this particular affiliate took a different path. He liked our program and liked the merchant’s products. Also, his having a relationship with me probably helped as well :) He took a look at the merchant site and had a few ideas on how conversions might be improved. He reached out to me to let me know he had some ideas. I immediately offered a commission boost to our top-line commission in exchange for ideas. This was a total win-win for him. If his ideas did help conversions, he’ll benefit from the increased sales and conversion rate, and he’ll benefit doubly from the higher permanent commission boost.

Now, the more cynical amongst us might point out that IF his ideas did help merchant conversions, the merchant will benefit significantly more since conversions should improve across all their sales. It might be the difference of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is all true, there’s no sugar coating it. IF his ideas did help conversions, but that is a mighty big if, then the merchant will benefit significantly. But so will the affiliate, and when you get right down to it, it DOES benefit the affiliate more so than by keeping the knowledge to himself.

Yes, he could have gone to a competitor, but he had started promoting us first for a reason. He felt, for good reason, our stuff will do better in the long run. Also, keep in mind, there’s no reason as an affiliate you can’t go to the competitor anyway and offer competing products side by side. Let the customer decide with their purchases. Back to this affiliate now. So keeping this “conversion advice” knowledge to himself doesn’t add cash into his wallet, but by sharing it, it DOES potentially add cash to the wallet. It’s a pragmatic decision to share.

So let’s get back to this story. The affiliate shared his ideas with us, and we took them, implemented and split-test. Some of his ideas had no discernible impact at all, but one of them DID have an impact, And it was pretty big. Conversions improved by a significant margin across the whole site, and his conversions also improved right along side. The merchant was incredibly grateful, and with just a little bit of lobbying on my part, awarded that affiliate with a healthy cash bonus. Probably less that what the merchant might have paid by hiring a consultant, but the affiliate now has the top end commission rate in hand also to benefit for months and possibly years into the future.

So, affiliates and merchants keep this in mind. Affiliates, be receptive to building relationships with your affiliate managers, and merchants keep in mind that your affiliates can be very valuable partners and help your bottom line in many more ways than one.

Split Testing and What to Split Test for Easy and Highest Impact

You have undoubtedly come across an article or post that talks about the advantages of split testing for web site conversions and success. I think every marketing or e-commerce centric blog has a post about split-testing. It’s a fantastic technique that can produce measurable results. But how many of us actually do it? I’m betting the percentage would be on the low side.. Yeah sure, we’ll make changes to our pages, especially for a page that isn’t performing up to expectations. But pro-active split testing is a whole different ball game (even perhaps on a page that IS performing well).

Consider your 5 best converting pages or products, and imagine being able to increase their sales and performance by 5–10% with just a few tweaks. And these wouldn’t be guesses, these would be measurable quantifiable effects from tweaks. If you could increase your income by 5–10% (perhaps more) a month, isn’t that worth a little bit of elbow grease to do some split-testing?

It doesn’t have to be difficult either. Google offers a free tool, Google’s Content Experiments in Google Analytics allows you to conduct split testing easily. It enables you to:

• Compare how different web pages perform using a random sample of your visitors
• Define what percentage of your visitors are included in the experiment
• Choose which objective you’d like to test
• Get updates by email about how your experiment is doing

Now, do you have to make 2 completely different pages to test? No, not at all. I’ll give you a couple tips on a few of the easiest things to tweak that will give you the most impact:

1. Page headlines (which headlines attract the visitor to stay on the page).
2. Product images and copy on the page (which will keep the visitor on the page).
3. Button text (which text gets more people to click and buy or sign-up for a mailing list).

Thing about the series of actions you want your site visitor and potential customer to take. First thing that happens is that they land on the page and take in the headline. Are they sticking around or bailing out immediately? If you’re having an issue with people bouncing immediately, change around the headline a bit and split test to see the results.

Once they’ve taken in the headline, and they’re deciding to stick around, now they delve into the content and pictures on your page. Now, are they staying long enough? Are they taking in your content and your value proposition? Perhaps your content is too long. Maybe the bullets aren’t snappy enough. Perhaps it’ll just take a few different product pictures. Is your affiliate video helping enhance their post-lunch food coma? :) Make a change, split test, and see for yourself if the change encourages people to stay longer and get through to your value proposition.

Ok, so now you have your audience sticking around and taking in your whole page. Are they clicking where you want them to click? If not, then it’s time to tweak and test your offer and/or your call to action. Don’t be afraid to experiment either. Every situation and every page is different, and sometimes what the marketing guru’s prescribe isn’t always the right answer. I’ve seen situations where toning down the call to action button lead to more clicks and conversions. I’ve seen situations where lowering a banner or ad on a page led to more click throughs.

But, in any situation, you’ll never really know unless you try it and you test. Test, test, test, and see the results for yourself.

Affiliate Marketing Education and Learning Resources

To be a really successful affiliate marketer, one must have to have a fair bit of understanding of many different skill sets. I say understanding because you need not necessarily be at an expert level at all skills yourself. You do have the option of outsourcing. However, to be an effective “manager” of outsourced work, you must have an understanding of all skills.

To be an effective affiliate manager, does one have to be an outstanding affiliate? Not necessarily. But you certainly must understand what’s involved to be an outstanding affiliate, and also have a keen knowledge of “black hat” tactics that might damage your program and/or the merchant brand in the long run. Also, you must be able to grasp the “big picture” on the merchant’s objectives.

This all leads me to my main topic. I wanted to write a brief piece to highlight some great resources out there that can really help beginning and also experience affiliates and prospective affiliate managers get a solid understanding in many aspects of affiliate marketing.

Let’s start with a couple great books written by Geno Prussakov. First his most recent book, Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day a solid update to his first book, A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Quick Reference for Affiliate Managers & Merchants. Just look at those Amazon reviews! As of my writing this, 52 five star reviews, and 1 four star and no reviews below that. That is one well-regarded book!

I have an actual physical copy of his first book, , and found it to be an incredible resource. It was published in 2007, but much of the material still holds up today. Especially relevant are the sections on launching an affiliate program, key mistakes made in affiliate management, and ideas for affiliate program promotion. I know his more recent edition will even be more jam-packed with useful info, both for the manager just starting out, and the seasoned experience pro.

If “listening” is more in your preferred wheelhouse for consuming content, you must check out Affiliate ABCs. Debbie and Vinny (the hosts of AffiliateABCs) put together some great interviews with 1st hand perspectives and valuable insights relevant to both affiliate managers and to affiliates. Mixed in for good measure are quote a few interesting interviews with Kindle/iBook/Nook/PDF authors telling about their experiences writing, publishing and marketing their books.

Affiliate Summit, organized by Sean Collins and Missy Ward, is THE go to conference series for affiliates, merchants and vendors. 50% of the value is the networking and relationship building that takes place at the conference, but the other 50% are the informative sessions. Sean and Missy are gracious enough to release videos and slides from these presentation for public consumption (for those who aren’t able to attend. Check out the Affiliate Summit Youtube channel for videos of these great sessions.

Now, most of affiliate marketing is done online though websites, so we shouldn’t neglect forums and blogs.

First, let’s talk about Abestweb, one of the oldest and most legendary affiliate forums. Abestweb built it’s reputation on taking a firm stance against parasitic marketing tactics and helped shape current industry opinions toward the positive. It’s gone through a lot of transitions over the years, shake-ups with older users leaving, new users emerging and even older users returning. There’s still a tremendous amount of content there, and anything “moving and shaking” in the industry will get discussed and you’ll be exposed to a variety of viewpoints by reading the threads. A great place to start consuming some of the Abestweb content would be the (newbie and helpful article section][http://www.abestweb.com/forums/newbie-faqs-helpful-articles–156/].

Revenews is a great multi-author blog to catch write-ups on current industry issues and opinions. Some of those most valuable content comes from the comments on articles, so don’t neglect reading those.

Last, but certainly not least, I want to call out Sugarrae’s Affiliate Marketing Blog. When I first came across Suggarrae’s blog, I slotted it into the top spot of my reading priority list. Her forthright style is such a great contrast to some of the typical, “glossy” and bland style of other blogs (especially regarding marketing and marketing techniques). She’s a great affiliate marketer, and the views and tips she writes about really give tremendous insight into “real” affiliate marketing.

There are hundreds of other resources I can put here. After all, an affiliate should keep up to date on general marketing and sales techniques, copywriting, web page design and conversion blogs, analytics, SEO, paid search tactics and social media best practices. Yep, there’s a lot involved in creating a successful online web business. It’s both a credit and a curse to our industry that non-industry folks will never truly understand the tremendous work, knowledge and skills we must develop to maintain a relevant online business.

Google Ad Planner for Link Ideas

Have Panda and Penguin shaken you up in regard to link building for your sites? While many affiliates did suffer devastating effects from the Google algorithm changes, and Google has changed the weighting on how they judge and value links, there is still tremendous SEO benefit to be had from building trusted and related links.

Going out to link farms and filling up comments on random non-related blogs could bring the hammer down, but a solid link from a content-related site still brings benefit. One of the best tools you can utilize to find solid content similar sites is provided by Google itself. Have you dipped into the Google Ad Planner yet? According to Google itself, the Ad Planner is:

DoubleClick Ad Planner is a free media planning tool that can help you identify websites your audience is likely to visit so you can make better-informed advertising decisions.

There's a wealth of information in the Ad Planner, but I want to focus on a method of finding related sites that you could approach and possibly gain links from that are related to your own content. The first thing you have to do is log into the Ad Planner). If you've never done this before, all it takes is a Google / Gmail ID.

One logged in, you'll see the green theme of the Google Doubleclick Ad Planner. You'll be in the research tab (which is exactly where you'll want to be). Don't be afraid to click around and get a feel and familiarity with this great tool. There's a wealth of traffic information for site, but I tend not to believe that in a literal sense. It's fairly good for relative traffic information, but as absolute I think Google under represents traffic. See the picture below:

What we're looking for are other domains you can approach for a link building campaign. The Ad Planner will provide a wealth of sites that have content similar to what you define (or even an audience as you define). Click on the "Search for Placements" tab under "Research" heading. Under this tab, you'll see 2 rows: Audience and Content. I prefer to focus on the Content row to define sites for links. There are several categories to make selections under: Site Language, Site Content, Topics, Exclude Topics and Target Sites.

In the picture below you'll see I've set language to English and I've entered several sites that I'd like similar sites for along with content keywords keywords.

With simply these few criteria defined, you'll get a significant list of domains/sites with related content to what is specified. You can further define your criteria and also add exclusions, targeted site domains (for example if you wanted UK specific domains you could target *.co.uk). Once you're happy with the list you've created, it's easy to export to Excel or CSV to begin plugging away at your outreach for link building. Check it out:

I hope you find this useful, and for other general and getting started affiliate marketing tips do check out our AMWSO Affiliate Marketing Help page. Also, if you have found this useful, please do throw us a Like via Facebook or a +1 via Google+ (widget below).

Advertising with a Local Connection - Affiliate Tips

If given the option, most people would prefer to make a purchase from a business they believe has a local connection to the community. People shop online for convenience, for the ability to research and view many different options, and for lower prices and deals.

With the plethora of online advertising choices businesses have today, there’s no reason an online business in Petaluma, California can’t create a local connection to Flatbush, North Carolina. Let’s consider some ideas on how to build that connection.

Suppose you are reading the news, and you come across a story where a particular city, let’s say Austin, Tx. is having a big festival, or won a big award, or perhaps a local team won a sports championship. (It can be something big like the Superbowl, or it can be small like a Double-A Minor League Division win, or a University NCAA title in 2nd tier sport). With ad targeting on Google or Bing (and even Facebook now allows you to specify location), you can title your ad to directly address that even in that locality.

“Tea for AA Eastern Champs”

Now these aren’t keywords for the ad, this is the actual ad heading text. Your keywords would be your typical keywords you use in a campaign, and the ad would geo-targeted to the specific area. Set-up a quick landing page on your site with the heading text directed to your target audience. Point that ad at your landing page, and voila! You have built an instant local connection. You should definitely be able to catch the eye of anyone searching for Tea from that local area, and your local hook should bring them in.

The cost would be nominal, as you’re targeting a very specific audience, but conversions will be high (provided your keyword text is still targeting interested buyers). Anyone interested in Tea and from that locale would have that extra incentive tugging at them of, “hey, this company is recognizing my town!”

Consider all the huge number of local newspapers, dailies and classified ads that are available out there for another local tactic. Typically the cost to put an add in a local paper is relatively low, but the response could have a definite impact on your business. (By the way, if the affiliate program offers pay-per-call, this is a tremendous way to promote). Even without pay per call, just make a very easy to remember URL, or use a Q-Code that they can easily scan with their mobile phone. Another option could be to offer an email address. The message being: send us an email, and we’ll send you back a coupon and offer details. This tactic is also easy to do from a mobile phone, and you’ll be able to capture their email address and send them the direct offer with your affiliate link.

Local, geo-targeted advertising is a powerful tool, if you take the time and effort to localize the ad. Don’t be overwhelmed with the idea you have to localize hundreds of ads. Experiment, try a few different locations on different days. Learn for yourself locations respond best to what kind of offers. But consider the impact on your business if you’re able to get 5–10% increase in sales coming from one specific area just because you put in a little bit of time and effort in creating a local headline and tweaked a landing page with a local message.

To check out some other additional affiliate tips and help feel free to friends us on the AMWSO Facebook page, or circle us on Google+ for affiliate marketing.

Videos for Building Traffic - Why?

You’ve probably already heard (via other blogs/sites/book) that videos can be great traffic building tools, and they that are wonderful at keeping visitors engaged to your site. One of the key factors that Google measures in ranking sites is the on-page time factor. The assumption is the longer people stay looking at a site, the better chance that site is relevant and important to the search they just conducted.

Also, there are tons of people out there that just don’t like reading a whole lot. They’d much rather sit and watch several minutes of video rather than take a minute or so to read a paragraph. If you mix in videos with your other content, you can reach and capture several different “types” of people. I want to really stress this point, without any videos you might not have any opportunity at all to reach a whole segment of potential buyers.

And of course, look at the traffic rankings for the biggest video sites. Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Flickr, Facebook just to name a few. BTW, Flickr is mostly a photo hosting service, but they also host videos. Not everyone takes advantage of Flickr for their videos (great domain authority linking strength).

You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to make a great compelling video. You don’t even need a video camera. The video I created to advertise AMWSO Affiliate Program Management Services was done completely in Apple Keynote, and the music was a stock piece purchased for a few dollars. Not tot bad for my initial attempt at creating a video, right?

There are several types of videos you can make:

Talking Head Video
This is where you film yourself simply talking and explaining about a product or service (or better yet telling a story that relates to your product). If you’re aim is to build a real community with your site, and you are looking to have returning visitors, using a couple talking head videos can really help build a connection with your audience. If they can see you and hear you, it lends more credibility and trust for your proposition.

Powerpoint or Keynote Type of Video
This is what I did with our AMWSO video. Using Keynote (and I believe for Windows users Powerpoint has similar functions), I put together a presentation with animations and recorded it as a movie. I then found some compelling stock music and edited that in to the movie.

Screen Capture Video
Using screen capture software such as Camtasia or Screenflow (there are other options out there, Google and Bing are your friends), you can walk a viewer through an onscreen process or website. These are great for digital products!

Any Combination of the Three
Don’t limit yourself to one type! You can open up with yourself introducing the video, edit in a presentation/animation, and then close out with a screen capture to explain clearly how a visitor can order the product or service you’re promoting.

There are low cost options to outsource if you don’t feel confident to do the work yourself. Check out Fivver.com. There’s a whole section on Fivver dedicated to video. These jobs go for $5, so definitely manage your expectations, but you can find some real gems and segments that you can add in to your videos to really help convey your message or polish it up.

If you don’t want to take the time and effort to learn how to edit videos, check out Elance.com or Odesk.com to find someone to help out with editing. I’ve know people to get some really great editing work for as little as $15. Hey, if the video helps to drive a few more sales, and helps to generate more quality traffic to your site, that $15 is well worth it.

It’s important not to get too wrapped up into making a perfect video for your first try. Jump in and have a bit of fun with it. Two key points:

• Make sure your sound is the best it can be. People can sit through a glitchy video, but if the sound is bad, they will kill it instantly.
• If you’re demonstrating a product or talking, make sure you have good lighting and can be seen clearly in your video.

In a few days we’ll talk about some more specifics on making a video, post-processing and then promoting it once you have it all wrapped up.

Is Facebook a Viable Advertising Platform

Is Facebook a Viable Advertising Platform

I posted a link on the AMWSO Facebook page suggesting that the majority of clicks on Facebook ads were being generated by bots. The comment thread got me really thinking about Facebook being a viable advertising platform.

First, let’s take on the proposition made by the linked story we were discussing. The claim is that a vast majority of clicks to Facebook ads are being generated by bots. IF True there are a couple implications to consider:

1. The only party to profit directly from Facebook ads is Facebook itself. Unlike Google Adwords, there isn’t any revenue split with publishers. Facebook takes ALL of the ad revenue. So the only party to directly benefit from bot networks creating ad clicks, is Facebook. Wow, consider, if this is the case, that’s a pretty massive level of shenanigans.
2. The other possibility for motive behind creating ad clicks, would be competitors trying to drive up the costs of their competition. If I’m selling XYZ widgets, and there are 2 or 3 other merchants selling the same on Facebook, I would benefit if they had inflated ad costs (clicks) with no resulting sales increases. In fact, my competitors at some point would probably get wise and dump FB as an ad platform all together, leaving me as the sole advertiser of widget XYZ.

In either of the above cases, it is wholly Facebook’s responsibility to take action and correct this situation. Of course again, that is if the ad clicks are indeed being generated mostly by bots. Interestingly, in various discussions about this story, there wasn’t a great deal of surprise at the figure. Why?

Well, let’s consider the platform of Facebook. As Nancy suggested on our Facebook comment thread, people don’t come to Facebook to shop…or even really search for things. They come to socialize, see what their friends are up to, look at pictures friends are posting and to play games. Of course Google, where people are coming to specifically search for something (often times a solution/product), should perform better directly as an ad platform. That is where an ad can generate an immediate and measurable result.

That being said, immediate measurable results still haven’t stopped companies from advertising on TV during shows, sporting events, billboards, subway tunnels, and all manner of things. People aren’t searching specifically for a solution in those circumstances either. But they get an image/idea planted in a person’s head, and hope that the idea will be followed up on or acted upon later.

I would suggest Facebook can be a bit in-between both of these concepts. Some people will see an ad, spark an immediate interest and click through and onward for some action. Also, ideas might get planted to be acted upon later. However I can see some immediate difficulties for Facebook as it stands now.

1. Their ads just don’t seem visible to me. They are off on the side and in most cases I don’t even notice or pay any attention to them.
2. They are very limited in what they can show/tell. A TV ad or radio spot, and even a billboard can “tell a story” to interest someone. I haven’t seen many good Facebook ads that “convey a story” yet.
3. I think Facebook is hesitant to move the location of ads more to the center of a person’s vision, since I imagine this would annoy a great many people, and they’ll start to leave the platform. Especially now with growing competition from Google + and even Twitter (and perhaps Foursquare).

The Future Potential for Facebook Ad Interest

All this being said, I don’t think display ads on the Facebook site will be of any consequence in the future. I see the future is all about mobile and location. Imagine:

• You walk into a mall, and the Facebook app “knows” this. It can then present you with promos, sales, information from the merchants in that mall to entice you to visit their stores.
• You’re on a commute home and stuck in traffic. The Facebook app knows you’re near a favorite restaurant, and that restaurant can push an offer out to you, come in now to wait out the traffic and get a free dessert with your meal (or something to that effect).
• You’re on vacation in France or in Florida, and the Facebook app presents you with, “Hey stop into XYZ restaurant, it’s right around the corner and some folks from your hometown just came here last week and this is what they said….”

Facebook right now has the critical mass of people to do well in this space. They just have to keep those people engaged to Facebook until the future arrives.