Archives for February 2007

Q: Got any tips for being a full time affiliate at home?

A: The first thing I would suggest is to pick up a copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.

It’s a great book. It will give you lots of tips on streamlining the way you do things. I’ve found it to be incredibly helpful in increasing my productivity.

Second of all, since one of the great things about working from home is not being tethered to your desk, I’d say my Blackberry is invaluable. Get yourself a Blackberry or similar device, so you can go around and do your thing and still have access to e-mail, the Web, telephone and everything.

Lastly, one of my most important things is caffeine. I get that from two sources and I alternate them throughout the day.

One is my Keurig Elite 40 coffee maker. It enables me to have different gourmet coffees in single cups. It’s a great little machine.

And, of course, I need a nearby refrigerator to house a supply of my Diet Dr. Pepper.

Those are my secrets to being productive and efficient throughout the day. Good luck with being a full-time affiliate.

Q: What are some examples of affiliate sites that sell consumer products and are appealing to the eye?

A: One example I would mention is FlamingoWorld.com, an established coupon site, as well as ClubMom.com, a rewards site.

In the case of both of them, in my opinion, they are very clean, intuitive sites. I am, by no means, a usability expert, but I think they are easy to use.

I think that’s ultimately the most important thing. I’m not really sure what you are looking for aesthetically, but these are affiliate sites that a great many consumers are using to shop.

Q: How do I make money as an affiliate marketer?

I received this question from Mark of 45n5.com via a video on YouTube.

He went on to elaborate on his question with a scenario for a typical affiliate marketer. He poses the question from an affiliate described as the following:

• He’s a forklift driver worked eight to ten hours a day
• In a little bit of debt
• Has limited time on the weekends and evenings
• Lots of passion to make an affiliate marketing business work

He also has a general understanding of Web site, as he has put up a couple sites, but hasn’t been able to figure out how to convert visitors to buyers through affiliate links.

So if I was starting fresh tomorrow, how would I do it?

First of all, the most important commodity is passion, and that doesn’t cost a thing.

But there is a minimal amount of money I would suggest spending to get things started. You will need a domain and Web hosting, and you should also get an account with an e-mail service provider.

Check out 1&1 Internet for hosting. Their 1&1 Business account is $9.99 a month and it includes the registration of three domain names.

And for e-mail, get an account with AWeber. This will run you $14.95 a month (if you pay a year in advance).

Next up, 1&1 includes a lot of cool tools, one of which is a WordPress blog that’s really easy to set up for your account. I set one up at http://www.blogaff.com via 1&1 in less than five minutes.

This blog will be your Web site, and the home base for your affiliate earnings. Now you’ve got to brainstorm about the subject.

Write down a list of three or four things you really care about – sports team, book, make of car, movie, etc. Decide on one that is your true passion and commit to make this your focus.

Then search for the shortest domain name that evokes your passion, but doesn’t violate any trademarks. Don’t dwell on this too long – find something decent in ten minutes and go with it.

When you’ve got a topic and domain name, then it’s time to start writing. Don’t try to write like a scholar – write in your voice like you’re talking to friends.

I know your schedule is tight, and you can’t afford to sit around your computer on nights and weekends brainstorming about what to write in your blog.

Take advantage of other times. As a forklift driver, use time at work and during your commute to think about things for your blog. It will make your work and drive time go faster and save your precious time at home when you want to be productive.

One thing I do when I have an idea is to call myself on my cell phone and leave myself a message. No fussing with scraps of paper. Then go home, listen to your message and pump out some words.

Your blog posts don’t have to be articles – be consistent and short. Better to provide two to three paragraphs and new information daily than a long weekly post.

After you’ve posted five to ten times to your blog, check out the affiliate networks for some relevant offers to promote. Don’t fixate on the EPCs – rather look for what is most relevant to you.

Pick two to three merchants that you like and would endorse that relate to your topic and join their affiliate programs. Put up a couple or three ads on the blog and monitor which ones are getting clicks and sales. Test everything and if it’s not working out, try something else.

In addition to some banners and text links as ads, work an affiliate link into your posts if it comes natural – don’t force it.

When you’ve followed all of these steps, add your AWeber account into the mix. There are three things you should try out with AWeber: follow-up e-mails, broadcast e-mails and feed broadcast e-mails (the AWeber site details how to use these).

Also, two free resources to sign on with to help promote your blog and monitor the performance are FeedBurner (RSS feed distribution tool) and Openads (free ad server).

The key to all of this is to be patient and passionate. Don’t be discouraged if the checks don’t roll in right away. It takes some time to get traction for your site and build in audience.

In time, you’ll start getting noticed, and those past posts will get indexed in search engines. One last thing to do within your 1&1 account to help with this process – go into your control panel and click on Google Webmaster Tools and set up a Google Sitemap.

Give this all a couple months – if you don’t see some progress in your bank account, you’ve still got two domains available in your hosting account. Consider starting from scratch with a new idea or changing the angle of your existing blog.

Good luck.

Q: What is Web 2.0 and how can it be leveraged for affiliate marketing?

A: Web 2.0 is more than another meaningless marketing buzzword. It’s the next generation of Web-based resources, services and tools with a focus on collaboration and sharing among users.

There are a lot of things that fall under the umbrella of Web 2.0, such as wikis, social networks, widgets, video tools, and other applications tools being used online – some can help directly or indirectly with affiliate marketing.

Q: I keep hearing that people are stealing affiliate ID’s and people are not getting paid. Is this true, and if so, what can you do to protect yourself?

A: I’ve heard of this problem in the past with ClickBank links, but not really with any other affiliate network.

The issue with ClickBank links is that if somebody can take your link and edit it to insert their own affiliate ID before continuing on to make a purchase.

Below is the structure of a ClickBank link I just created with my account for an item on ClickBank called Day Job Killer:

http://babylounge.dayjobkill.hop.clickbank.net/

babylounge is the affiliate ID and dayjobkill is the merchant ID. So theoretically, somebody might just replace babylounge with their affiliate ID. Say their affiliate ID is cheater, then the new link would be:

http://cheater.dayjobkill.hop.clickbank.net/

There are lots of programs out there with the purpose of cloaking ClickBank links. Personally, I think those programs are unnecessary. If you are really concerned about the possibility of somebody hijacking your affiliate links in this fashion, try using a .htaccess file to redirect your links.

I don’t have any statistics on the incidences of affiliates replacing somebody else’s ID with their own, but honestly, I don’t see this as a big issue.

If somebody wants to purchase through their own link, it just takes a minute to login and generate a link from any network.

Don’t lose sleep over it.

Q: When measuring the success of an affiliate program that you manage, what do you consider to be successful? Doubling the sales of the program from the previous year… tripling it? I have some clients that are still unhappy, no matter how high sales amount to, because their profit margins are very small.

A: It’s important to set expectations at the start when you’re taking on the management of an affiliate program on an outsourced basis.

Success is defined markedly different from one company to another depending on their margins, expectations, and success or failure of other forms of marketing and advertising.

At this point, I’d say you have a couple choices. The easy way out would be to just not renew with this client. While you don’t want to make a habit of this, there are just some companies that refuse to be satisfied by any results.

Otherwise, I would suggest putting together documentation that demonstrates the success of the affiliate program.

Point out the growth of the affiliate program since you took over. Also, try to pull together data on the competitors. You can get some of this information easily if they share their EPC and other benchmarks, as well as their commission structure.

Otherwise, and this is much more of an investment on your part, become an affiliate of the competition and actively promote them to get a sense of their performance.

After gathering as much information as you can, work to extrapolate these numbers to create a side by side comparison with the affiliate program you are managing.

Maybe you’re paying more to affiliates than the competition, or perhaps you’re outperforming everybody else in the vertical and you have an unreasonable client.

In the future, I’d encourage you to ask for the past stats on the site – conversion rates, volume of transactions, satisfaction with other marketing and advertising channels, etc. Also, be sure to set expectations with them.