Tag Archives: Offers & Campaigns

Tired of CPA Offers? Try Promoting Shopify Instead

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You know the drill: Email submits; Dating offers; Rebills. We’ve all been promoting the same types of cost-per-action (CPA) offers for ages now. I’m not saying they aren’t worth promoting, but sometimes you need to try something different to get the creative juices flowing again. For example: cost-per-sale (CPS) offers. As opposed to CPA offers, CPS offers only pay out when the customer makes a purchase. While it does take a little bit more selling to get them to take action, the nice part is that you never have to worry about not getting paid for your traffic (which is a common issue with CPA offers). There are other benefits to CPS offers as well, such as the possibility for monthly recurring commissions.

Shopify Home Page

One of more interesting CPS programs I’ve seen lately is called Shopify. Shopify is an e-commerce service that creates online stores for their customers. They’ve got several different pricing tiers, targeted at small business and hobbyists all the way up to custom, enterprise-level solutions. If you are used to targeting consumers for your affiliate campaigns, Shopify will give you the opportunity to try your hand at targeting business owners instead. This is a huge niche right now, with sites like Etsy and eBay getting people interested in selling their wares online. Shopify is for people who want to take their online store to the next level.

There are several benefits to being an affiliate of Shopify:

  • They are a very well known brand in their niche
  • Campaigns can be targeted as B2B but also C2B
  • Unsaturated affiliate program and niche
  • All traffic sources are accepted
  • 2 commission options:
    • 20% lifetime revenue share on all customers (Recurring income!)
    • -or-
    • 200% of customers first bill. Per sale commission varies depending on what plan customer chooses (Up to $358 a sale)
  • Commissions can increase depending on volume

It would definitely be worth doing a split test to see if you make more money by doing the lifetime revenue share option or the 200% of the first bill option. Either way, it’s a very generous commission. For promotion tactics, I would try doing a review-style landing page. Perhaps you could compare Shopify to having an Etsy store, or the hassle of managing your own shopping cart solution. If you’ve ever tried to set up an e-commerce site, you know that it’s a lot of work. Your average mom that does knitting in her free time and wants to sell her wares online is probably going to be overwhelmed with something like that. There’s a perfect target for you.

With a little research, your potential targeting options and promotion angles are vast. Promoting a campaign like this could also be a good place to work on from the SEO angle. It’s hard to promote CPA offers with SEO because it is more of a long-term play than paid traffic. With a program like Shopify, you can have confidence that it is going to be around for long enough to reap the benefits of an organic search campaign.

Bottom line, give Shopify a try. If you spend some time getting used to the flow of a CPS campaign, you will find that it can be a great way to smooth out the ups and downs of your CPA campaigns. You can sign up to be a Shopify affiliate here. Let me know how it goes in the comments!

How To Cherry Pick The Best Offers For PPV

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This is a guest post by the UK affiliate sensation, Finch. In case you’ve been living under a rock, he blogs at FinchSells.com. I can honestly say he is one of the smartest guys in our industry. Do yourself a favor and add him to your RSS reader ASAP.

Hello Victim

There’s only one serious problem I’ve found with PPV marketing. It offers too much freedom.

As an affiliate marketer who’s accustomed to working within the confines of what a Facebook intern deems acceptable for publishing, taking the leap to PPV can be a little daunting. I’m so used to covering skin in my dating ads, or being careful not to call out user attributes, that I don’t always know what to do with a clean slate. I’m like a starved kid in a sweet shop when I sit down to ponder the possibilities.

I think many affiliates are in the same boat. We know PPV is one of the few remaining advertising platforms for our last generation ads. But without imposing any strict limitations on the affiliate’s campaigns, it can be hard to find a starting point.

If you’re looking for the motivation to get stuck in to PPV, you obviously need to select an offer first.

As a guy who’s established a reputation for working heavily in the dating niche, I regularly get asked if I promote dating offers on the main PPV networks. The answer is yes, but very selectively. It’s not as easy to promote dating with PPV for one simple reason. You have very primitive control over your demographic targeting.

A lot of experts in the field will tell you that demographic targeting is as simple as taking your ass to Quantcast, running a few searches, pretending to soak up the information and then launching the same campaign you had in mind anyway. Well, nice work if that’s the case. You really should have been a scientist.

My problem with using even the most sophisticated demographic analysis tools for a dating offer is that the percentages are still against me. Even if 75% of the audience on a given URL is male and single, 25% is a huge waste of eyeballs. PPV can be a cheap marketing vehicle, but don’t let anybody fool you. For a niche like dating, it’s NEVER as cost-efficient as a well planned CPM campaign.

The secret to success with dating ads on PPV is to take one of two paths:

1. Only targets URLs and keywords where you have sufficient assurance that the large majority of users are going to be in the boundaries that are accepted on your offer. Here’s a tip, hot shot. Don’t go trying to promote an offer like Mate1 25-30 year old female users only. You’re digging your grave by narrowing the goalposts.

2. Produce creatives that are unisex, suitable for most ages, and targeted to most needs. If you’re going to target a broad selection of URLs, you’ve got to be able to pop a creative that captures and hooks as many of the demographics as possible. Now there are ways you can do this. My personal favourite is to capture the user’s information, rather than sending them directly to an offer. Use a dropdown box to allow the user to select his/her age then perform some quick PHP “if else’ing” behind the scenes to match said user to an appropriate offer.

The third option would be to avoid dating ads altogether. And this is actually what I would recommend for most newbie PPV marketers.

In my opinion, the easiest way to succeed with PPV is to work with niche offers where the user’s demand for a solution is at the “ready to buy, just get rid of my damn problem” stage.

We could use the recent bed bug repellent offers as an example. Now I don’t live in America so I can’t honestly report whether my sleep has been disturbed by bugs in the night, or whether it’s as big a problem as the international media has made out. But from my understanding, bed bugs are becoming a pain in the arse across the pond.

The reasons I would choose something like a bed bug repellent for a PPV campaign are three-fold.

1. Where there’s a demand, there’s an affiliate marketer. If somebody thinks they have bedbugs, they’re going to flip out and buy something in a hurry. Nobody wants their blood sucked from them in the night. Not even Finch is that kinky. So it’s the kind of campaign where you really don’t have to do much work to inspire the user to whip out a Mastercard. Target, fire, reload. Just the way we like it.

2. It’s pretty easy to target the users who are actively searching for a solution. How many other reasons do you have for Googling pages about bed bugs? It’s not something I’ve been forced to add to my LeechBlock.

3. The offer is not tied to demographics. The beauty of bed bugs is that they’ll bite the crap out of anyone. It’s an affiliate marketer’s sweetest dream! We should be welcoming them in to our neighbourhoods with open arms. No more demographic targeting. The only targeting you need is “Hello, Victim… Want To Stop Itching Tonight?”

I’m using pretty niche examples here, but the idea is simple. The best way to deem an offer’s suitability for PPV is to weigh up those two important factors. Is it an impulsive buy? And more importantly, can you guarantee enough interested eyeballs from your targeted URLs? If you’ve got no control over your demographic, you’ll become a sucker of your own creative license. PPV offers a lot of freedom. But it makes no sense to lack discipline with your efforts. This is a platform that punishes bad marketers and sloppy marketing.


The Campaign Is Over, What Now?

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When you’ve got a hot campaign rolling, it’s the best feeling in the biz.  You are making money.  Your hard work is paying off.  Time to take it easy and spend some money right?  Wrong!  That’s what you might be tempted to do, but in fact it’s time to buckle down.  Sooner or later you are going to get that dreaded email from your network: “The offer is paused”.  But how could this happen?!? It happens to every campaign sooner or later.  If you are lucky, there are other offers in the niche that you can switch over to.  With ringtones, for example, there are always a bunch of different offers to test against each other.  But if you are in something very specialized, then you might not be so lucky.  So since you need to get the gears turning again, let’s see what we can do to find the next campaign.

1. Ask your AMs for Advice

Affiliate Managers can be a huge asset to you when you are open to new ideas.  They will be far more helpful when you approach them looking for suggestions.  They don’t just want to sit there all day pushing offers to non-interested affiliates.  Put them to work! Tell them what you’ve been running.  Not everything of course, but tell them what offers are working so that they can give you more suggestions.

2. Test, test, test

This is where you put all of your inhibitions aside and try out things that you were too scared to try before you had some success.  You’ve had at least one successful campaign already, so there is nothing stopping you from doing it again.  You would be surprised how many of the most profitable campaigns came from things that marketers just tried on a whim, not thinking that they would be successful.  You can never predict what’s going to hit and what’s not.  Be a little more creative, think outside the box, try it out!

3. Find new Traffic Sources

There are so many traffic sources out there you would have a full time job just trying to test them all.  This might be a good time to try your hand at one or two new ones and see how they work.  You never know, maybe something about it will open up a whole new niche or campaign for you that had previously stumped you.  Different platforms have different targeting options and possibilities for you to exploit.  This ties back in to #2: be creative with your Traffic Sources as well!

4. Analyze your success

What was it about that successful campaign that made it a winner?  At what point did you really break through?  Was it profitable from the beginning or did you have to tweak it?  Did you use a landing page or direct link?  Where did you hear about that campaign?  Did you think it was going to be successful when you tried it?  Asking yourself these questions will bring you to some very interesting answers.  A lot of times you will completely forget how you actually stumbled onto a profitable campaign and just how easy it was to do.  There wasn’t anything magical about it.  In most cases you were just following a simple process of testing and exploring that led to a profit.  The good news is, this can be repeated!

Define Measure Analyze Improve Control

The Six Sigma DMAIC Method applies to our industry perfectly

This should all encourage you to put yourself out there and try new things.  The best part of being your own boss in this business is that you can do whatever you want!  Try new campaigns, try more of the same campaigns, try anything that strikes your fancy.  Just make sure that when your hit campaign dries up, you will still have a paycheck at the end of the month.

What Offers Are Still Working?

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Since the rebill crash there has been a general sense of panic among affiliates.  It’s as if there was only one way to make money in the industry, and now that it’s practically dried up, everyone is scrambling.  Funny thing is, that’s absolutely untrue!  There were affiliate offers long before Acai Berries came on to the scene, and there will continue to be offers that make money.

Conversion Van

Official Vehicle of Affiliate Marketing: The Conversion Van

So what are some of the things that are making money still?  Here’s what I’m seeing do very well right now.

1. Education

As a vertical, EDU has had its ups and downs.  Right now is definitely an up.  Not only has it always been a strong performer on email, but lately social media marketers and PPV guys have been seeing the allure of getting paid $30+ for a lead (no credit card required).  There are many different flavors out there such as Criminal Justice, Nursing, Massage, Video Game Design, and Web Design.  This makes it easy to break down your campaigns and target people that will actually convert.

2. Dating

Dating is one of the oldest verticals there is in all of CPA marketing.  It will never go away.  Why?  Simple: people need companionship.  If you’ve read Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman, dating and companionship ties directly into one of the “Life Force 8”.  This means that it is hard-wired into our psyche to want it.  You don’t have to sell it to people, they already want it.  You just have to convince them that the site you are promoting is the best way for them to get it.

3. Gaming

Gaming can include a lot of different things such as downloads and Facebook apps.  There’s money in all of them.  The lead gen type offers and Facebook apps are great for social media traffic and PPV, and the download games are great for display and media buy traffic.  These offers have lower payouts, but they convert like crazy, especially the apps.  All the user has to do is press “Allow” and then you get credited.

4. Email and Zip Submits

Yes, they can scrub hard. And yes, the payouts are low.  But these things are still around for a reason: they work.  Ruck from Convert2Media has posted a couple of awesome tips about how to promote these for low bid prices and competition.  You may need to rotate a few to find some that will stay alive for longer, but trust me, they exist.  I’ve seen affiliates do 20,000 leads on one single email submit offer over 3 weeks with no scrub in sight.  For real.

These are just some examples to get you started.  There are many more offers and verticals out there that are alive and well.  Take some time to test out some new things you wouldn’t normally consider, like offers with lower payouts.  They may surprise you.