Tag Archives: cpa networks

The Secret To Getting Killer CTR

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Let’s face it: Click Through Rate (CTR) can either make or break your campaign. Whether you are doing PPC, PPV, or especially with CPM & Media Buys, your CTR is often the determining factor in whether you make money or not. Since this is the case, it never ceases to amaze me how many affiliates (myself included) forget to put hard work and thought into the #1 thing that affects your CTR: your ad copy.

Putting together a campaign usually goes something like this:

  • Spend several hours doing niche research
  • Spend a couple of hours finding the best keywords
  • Spend a few more hours creating your landing page
  • Ready to launch!
  • Oh wait, I have to put some ads up here… I’ll just copy & paste what the other guys or doing, or just throw in some text off the top of my head

And then you wonder why nobody is clicking through to see your awesomely designed landing page and your super-targeted offer… Guess what?  Ad copy has a massively huge part to play in your campaign’s success. Coming up with consistently killer ad copy and images is probably the most important skill you can have as a marketer. If you can’t do that, then what can you really do? Copy campaigns? Put tracking together? Load keywords into Google? That’s great, but that could all be outsourced to a monkey.

The real value that affiliates bring to the table is in our creative approach to campaigns and ad copy. You think that the company whose service or product you are promoting hasn’t tried direct-linking their website on the major search engines for their primary keywords? They have. They either have that on lock and therefore have those keywords blacklisted from you, or it doesn’t work and they turned to CPA Networks and Affiliates to think outside the box and get them leads from sources that they don’t know about or don’t understand well enough to do themselves.

Take some time to educate yourself on the basics of sales, marketing and advertising. All of the knowledge you can get from studying the fundamentals will go straight to your ad copy, and your CTR.  Even if some of the principles were created for print advertising, it still applies online. I don’t care if it seems like homework. If you want this to be a serious business for you then you need to treat it like one.  Read some books on marketing & advertising. There are literally thousands of them written. You will not regret the time you put into bettering yourself as a marketer.

Here are a few of my favorites to get you started (not affiliate links):

Read These Books

Hydra Dumps 100% Of Their Credibility

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I got an email this morning with an article from mThink (Revenue Magazine) about how Hydra is dumping 15,000 affiliates off of their network.  I’m sure that every network goes through a phase where they want to tighten up their ranks and get rid of the fraud affiliates that have penetrated the approval process, but isn’t this a bit excessive?  It seems to me that the only reason Hydra would do something like this is to get some free publicity.  Hydra (Sinking Ship)

The best part about all of this is that Hydra states they are doing it to separate themselves from “ad networks peddling nutraceutical diet remedies, cash grant opportunities, tooth whiteners and other non-branded campaigns of low consumer value.”  Oh, you mean the exact same type of offers that you made hundreds of millions of dollars on?  The offers that established Hydra as a force in the industry?  And now that the rug has been pulled out from under the rebill market you are focusing on other things?  How valiant of you Mr. Brandenburg!

I don’t usually post about things like this but the way that Hydra is positioning itself right now combined with their ongoing legal battles and the arrogance of their CEO has just really rubbed me the wrong way for a while now, and this new move is the icing on the cake.  I had to say something.

I feel much better now.  Back to the grind!

Fraud Alert: Email/Zip Submit Freelancers

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We had a surge of bad leads on Email & Zip Submit offers on my network in August, so I’ve been digging into where this traffic is coming from.  The thing that was puzzling me is that some of the fraud leads were coming from established affiliates that we know and have done business with for a long time.  Weird, right?

Upon further examination & questioning, the truth came out.  My affiliates were suckered into hiring freelancers that promised that they could “get lots of email & zip submit leads” for them.  Of course all the freelancers were doing is submitting fake email addresses & zip codes into these offers on a massive scale.  I’m assuming that they were paid up front for their services, so they don’t care what happens to the affiliate once the advertiser discovers the bad leads.

So… If you are cruising eLance or BlackHatWorld and find someone selling their “excellent” email & zip submit marketing services to you, don’t fall for it.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Long story short, here’s what will happen: you will not be paid for the fake leads, you will most likely be terminated from your affiliate network, you will scar your reputation in the industry so it will be harder to get into other networks, and you will be out the money that you paid to the freelance scammer.  There are plenty of legitimate ways to promote email & zip submit offers, if you need help just ask your affiliate manager or listen to my podcast with Andrew Wee where I discuss a promotion method.

Stay classy San Diego.