5 Things I Love About PPV

After I wrote my post called 5 Things I Hate About PPV, some people asked me to write about what I love about it. So here it goes.

1. You Can Bid On Anything

Any keyword or website that exists, you can bid on it. There is no other traffic source that allows you this type of freedom. For example, if you want to advertise on Wikipedia.org, you can. There’s no ads on it, so you can’t buy media on it and Google can’t serve AdSense on it. The only way to do it is with PPV. This allows you to get really creative and think outside the box with your campaigns to break away from the pack.

2. There Is Less Competition

Even though PPV has been one of the most talked-about and blogged-about traffic sources of the last couple of years, there are still far fewer advertisers utilizing it than PPC or traditional Media Buys. Less competition means more inventory and lower bid prices for the rest of us.

3. You Can Direct Link All You Want

Direct Linking has been all but impossible on Google for a long time now. This makes it hard to throw up a quick test campaign and see how an offer will convert. Even though usually Landing Pages beat out Direct Linking in the long run, it is definitely nice to have the option. I always split test a Direct Link versus a Landing Page to see what does better for each offer. You can never be sure until you try it.

4. Incredible Freedom With Your Ads & Creatives

It is super easy to get your ads approved. The only reason they disapprove ads is if they have prohibited content (see the Terms for your PPV network). There are no character limits, or size limits on images (other than the size of the entire browser window that pops). This means you can do things you can’t do on any other traffic source. On Google or Facebook you are limited to a short headline, a short description, and a tiny image (on FB). With PPV you can make the entire ad a big image with all the words you want on it and make the whole thing clickable. You can also add audio and video, which is unique to PPV as well.

5. There Are Less Copycat Advertisers

Even though there are now tools available that let you spy on some PPV campaigns, there is still way less copycatting going on than on practically any other traffic source. On Google, Facebook, Plenty of Fish, or anything else I can think of, you can just go to the site and see the ads that other people are running. This is why dating ads are so often copied on Facebook and then re-submitted ad infinitum (see what I did there?). It is still quite difficult to systematically spy on PPV campaigns, and you will have things run for much longer without getting copied.

Affiliate Marketing Is Dead, Everyone Move On

How many times have you heard someone echoing this doomsday sentiment lately?  People act as if this has never happened before.  I can hear them now… “But Facebook ads are way harder to get approved now!  Plenty of Fish doesn’t have enough traffic!  Nobody believes offers anymore, they are getting too smart!  There are too many competitors on PPV!”

Oh noes! Aff mktg is dead!

Oh noes! Aff mktg is dead!

Maybe you got into affiliate marketing by accident.  Maybe you fell into your first profitable campaign and haven’t been able to duplicate it.  Maybe you’ve been sitting on autopilot spending all of your Acai money.  Whatever the case, these next few months are what separate the men from the boys.

This entire industry goes in cycles.  Much like the stock market.  There are bear markets and there are bull markets.  Can people make money in both?  Absolutely.  But not by doing the same thing.  Take a look around.  What are people talking about?  What are the fads now that you can make money off of?  What are the new traffic sources or affiliate offers that are popping up?

There is opportunity everywhere, but it is going to take some work to monetize it.  Let’s face it, the “work” that we have to do in this industry is not that bad.  We are not grabbing our shovels and pickaxes and going back into the coal mine.  We sit here in front of our computers every single day and make a lot of money for it.  The only thing that changes is you are actually doing work instead of screwing around on forums and wasting time all day.

To all the whiners out there, I hate to be harsh, but shut up and get back to work.

Thoughts on Tracking202

There have been plenty of posts about the re-acquisition of Tracking202 by Wes Mahler and Steven Truong, so I’m not going to rehash those here.  All the buzz and discussion about this topic, as well as the original sale to Bloosky, have made me think quite a bit about what was the cause of all this.

Fact is, there would never have been a sale to Bloosky or a re-acquisition in the first place if Wes & Steven hadn’t poured out their sweat and their wallets to create a truly original product.  Although there are competitors now, when 202 came out it was the first of its kind on the block.  They were able to capture almost the entire market for the affiliate tracking software niche with little trouble or competition.

Marketers can take this to heart the next time they are getting frustrated by the arbitrage game.  There is much more out there to making money online than buying traffic from someone and selling it to someone else for more money.  The true innovators in the online space (and in the business world in general) are the people who offered a solution for the needs of their clients in a new (or just better) way.

When you create your own product to promote, you are in control.  There are no advertisers to scrub leads or networks to withhold payment, you are the be-all and end-all of your online empire.  Granted, this is much easier said than done, but the rewards are evident everywhere you look.

Just look at Marcus from Plenty of Fish.  He now has Match.com demanding to know how POF gets more new users every month than they could dream of, and they’ve got huge funding behind them.  Markus Frind started POF all on his own, and kept it simple, and believed in it.  Now they are a force to be reckoned with in the dating industry.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: you have ideas all the time.  You know, the ones that get scribbled down on a piece or paper or just mentally filed back there in your brain with all the other things that will never come to fruition.  Take some time to develop these ideas.  They don’t have to be perfect when you start out, they just need to exist.  You can fine-tune things later.

If you create something that will be a long term asset today, you will be glad for it tomorrow when the next big affiliate industry shake up comes along.  Trust me.