Category Archives: Rants & Raves

Affiliate Marketing Is Dead, Everyone Move On

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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.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

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You’ve heard about them.  People that make their money entirely online.  A world of sleeping in until noon everyday, working in your underwear, and taking champagne baths bought with all of the money you are making in Affiliate Marketing.  But hold on just a sec cowboy…  While it’s true that many new affiliates jumping into the game right now will someday reach that level, it is not something that happens overnight.

champagne

Affiliate Marketing can be stressful.  You can spend hours, weeks, and months testing out offer after offer, trying to break through and find that first big campaign.  Then once you have found it, the network can take it right out from under you, or Google & Facebook can take away your traffic on a whim.  So now you are back at square one.

This all sounds very discouraging.  I’m not trying to talk anybody out of pursuing a career online, but I am trying to get you to take a realistic look at what you are getting yourself into.  You are starting a business.  Starting a business is hard.  You certainly don’t want to jump into the deep end of the pool before you have even learned the dog paddle.

The best advice I can keep you is this: don’t quit your day job! If you have the ability to absorb a few losses and keep yourself afloat while you are learning the ropes, you are going to have a much easier go of it than someone who needs a campaign to work in order to put food on the table for dinner.

Ask any successful affiliate how they got their start, and I would be willing to bet that most of them got into this as a hobby or a part-time thing while they were still working somewhere else.  When you are ready to go full-time, make sure that you have a bankroll saved up to float yourself for at least 3 months or so, in case things don’t quite go the way you wanted.

If you put in the extra work to set yourself up for success in your new business, that champagne will taste even sweeter when it comes.

Thoughts on Tracking202

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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.

Are Your Referral Commissions Getting Shaved?

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Here’s a quick history: Affiliate Networks have been doing Referral Programs forever.  The concept is simple, you send them affiliates that you know or from your blog, and they give you a percentage of their earnings as a referral commission. It’s usually between 2% to 5% of the gross payouts that are generated by the referred affiliate.

Networks started doing this because it was an effective way to promote their networks on a pay-for-performance basis.  It became immensely popular with the make money online bloggers, and they started making quite a nice bit of cash for their referrals.

Fast-forward to today, and the environment is quite different.  Affiliate Networks are dropping like flies, margins are tight due to the competition, and a lot of referral programs have been phased out.  In some cases, percentages have been dropped.  In other cases, rules have been implemented where the referring party must have a certain amount of earnings each month personally with the network, or else he forfeits his referral commission.  This keeps people from joining networks just to refer and not to promote offers themselves.

What seems to be happening now, however, is a bit different.  The new trick for networks to get around paying for referrals is to tell them to sign up for a second account (without the referral link) after they have been approved for the network.  They usually use the excuse that they won’t get the best payouts if they are working under a referral account.  Since the affiliates always want the best payouts, they comply.

That's ShadyGranted, margins are tight, but I think this is kinda shady.  If a network has reached out to an affiliate or a blogger for referrals, and they send them people, they should get paid for their volume.  If networks can’t afford to pay for their referrals because of their margins, then they should just cancel their referral program all together.

That’s my two cents.  Has this ever happened to any of you?

What If Affiliate Marketing Was Easy?

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Some of you reading this blog right now are huge successful affiliates. To you, affiliate marketing is like breathing, you just wake up in the morning and do it. But for everyone else, breaking into affiliate marketing can seem like the hardest thing they have ever done. If you’ve never done anything but work for someone else, it can be a major shift in your mindset to get the motivation and the sheer will necessary to be successful making money online.

But what if Affiliate Marketing was easy? What if all you had to do was sit down at a computer, press a few buttons and money would come falling out? Well, for one, I think the national unemployment rate would go down because people would just get money from their computers instead of welfare and the government. But also, we would see an even larger influx of people jumping into the market than we have now.

Lazy Affiliate Marketer

If Affiliate Marketing was easy, there wouldn’t be any ebooks or over-expensive training seminars and programs. Maybe all the gurus would go back to selling things on infomercials and leave the internet marketers alone? Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad after all…

More importantly, if Affiliate Marketing was easy, I wouldn’t be doing it. Neither would a lot of people I know. Why? Because if it was easy then it wouldn’t be as profitable. If it was easy, advertisers wouldn’t need affiliates at all. They could just direct link their campaigns on their top keywords and the leads would come pouring in.

The reason that we have value is that we are willing to do the things that other people are not. We are willing to test hundreds of creatives and up to thousands of keywords. We are willing to spend money to make money. We are willing to keep creating campaigns even after the last five in a row have been a complete and utter failure. We are willing to work 80 hours a week for ourselves so that we can avoid working 40 hours a week for someone else.

If Affiliate Marketing was easy, it wouldn’t be any fun.

Are You Serious Facebook?

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I know I’m a few days late in writing about this one, and I was going to let it go. But every time that I read or see a link to that recent letter from Facebook it just burns me up. You know, the one where they say, “CPM ads will continue to get impressions but may receive less clicks.”  Wait, what?!?

Here are my questions to you based on that letter, dear Facebook:

  1. How are you going to make CPM ads get less clicks? Does this mean that you are going to stop people from clicking on my ads somehow? I’d really like to know what you mean by that.
  2. What makes you think that other performance marketers and I are going to sit around and suddenly be okay with paying double the cost for our ads? There are plenty of other places out there to buy traffic, and now more than ever I am going to be moving campaigns over to them.
  3. Do you really compare yourself to Google as a traffic source now that you are the #1 site in the US for monthly visitors? I’ll make it easy for you: don’t. Google can charge $14 a click on top keywords because it’s worth it. People that are searching for a Mesothelioma Lawyer are worth thousands and thousands of dollars. People that are browsing a social media site looking for ways to waste the rest of the hours in their work day are not.

In conclusion, Facebook has made another major play to screw affiliate marketers and anyone that knows how to arbitrage traffic. Sooner or later, they are going to realize that it will hurt them in the long run when they have completely eliminated a massive source of advertising revenue. The real question is, by the time they figure this out, will affiliates have moved on?

This one has.

Google Still Hates Affiliates

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This is old news. We’ve all received a slap or two from Google. But does that make it hurt any less? If you prick us, do we not bleed? It had been a little while for me, and this last week I got another middle finger from Google. Must be on the right path with that campaign, just need to try other traffic sources.  But it brings it all back around for me. I’m still aghast at how Google treats Affiliate Marketers.

I don’t think it’s possible to figure out how much money Affiliates spend (or at least would spend if they were allowed) on Google Adwords. It’s definitely in the seven-to-eight-figures-per-month range.  With all of that revenue floating around, why would Google (and Facebook for that matter) just decide to turn it away?

Google, like Facebook, likes to chalk it up to something they call the “User Experience”. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good that Google cares about the results that people are finding on its Search Engine. You don’t want people to be searching for “skateboards” and getting pages selling wedding dresses. But what really burns me is how Google has outlawed “bridge pages”.  They define a bridge page as any page that leads to another website without adding any value.

In its very nature, Affiliate Marketing is taking a user and sending them through your affiliate link and to an advertiser’s page. In almost all cases, your affiliate link is going to be found on a website that you own. It could be a blog, website, or landing page. The problem is that Google won’t allow you to advertise these so-called bridge pages on Adwords. So if your website sends traffic to another website, you are the enemy to Google. Now it’s up to them to decide whether or not your landing page adds any value to the product or sales process.

Shouldn’t it be up to the customer to decide whether or not my landing page added any value? If they bought from me, to me that says I provided a valuable page to them. Too bad Google doesn’t agree.

R.I.P. Facebook Ads – April 2010

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Well we had a good run. When I first met you Facebook, you were just a kid. You didn’t know what the true potential of your platform was worth, and you let me put ads on you for cheap! Those were the days. We made lots of money together. But now, you are all grown up. You have decided that it’s not me, no, it’s you that’s changed. You think I’m a nice affiliate, but you would rather not take my ads and my money anymore. Where you are going to get advertising dollars from now, I’m not sure. But you must have someone better in mind because you certainly don’t want to hang out with the likes of me anymore.

All kidding aside, Facebook has effectively given the middle finger to affiliate marketers with its latest update to their advertising policy.  Let’s look at what was actually sent out to affiliates from Facebook, and I’ll do my best to translate…

Improving Ad Quality
Ad quality and user feedback have always been important considerations for Facebook Ads, and are significant factors in  determining which ads we accept and display on the site. We’ve recently taken a close look at the ads that drive the most negative feedback, and identified four key themes behind ads that are detrimental to the user experience. As a result, we’re strengthening our Advertising Guidelines in these key areas to ensure that all Facebook Ads meet our high quality standards.

Translation: “We have decided that we would rather piss off our advertisers than explain to our users that Facebook is a free-to-use, ad-driven website that they choose to visit.”

Unexpected User Experience
Advertised products may not generate any unanticipated user experience. This includes, but is not limited to:
1 Computer performance changes, such as the unexpected installation of any secondary software or the overlay of advertisements on the user’s browser or operating system
2 Unanticipated recurring charges
3 Undisclosed sale or distribution of requested user information. Any distribution of user information must be confirmed through
user consent.

This part is actually not that bad. I don’t disagree with the new guideline. Advertisers shouldn’t be messing with users’ computers.

Unclear Recurring End Product
Advertisements must be clear and straightforward in describing any recurring end product to the user. The advertised offer must directly match the service being sold, and ads should provide the user with a clear understanding of what he or she is purchasing.
Facebook Ads for products with recurring billing cycles should not:
1 Focus on an advertised “hook” without disclosing the core subscription-based service.
Example: “Take a quiz!” (for a service that includes ringtones, wallpaper, or other undisclosed services)
2 Position a subscription-based service as a single product or billing interval.
Example: ”Try now for $2.95” (for a service that includes monthly billing intervals)

Translation: “Advertising may no longer be phrased to try and excite the user, encouraging them to sign up. In fact, ad copy must now do everything possible to discourage the user from clicking the ad and, God forbid, signing up for the offer. We now know that our users are too stupid to make their own decisions, so we are going to decide for them what they should or should not do with their money.”

Unsubstantiated Claims
Ads must not include unsubstantiated claims. Ads must clearly represent the offer, company, product, or brand that is being advertised.
Unacceptable claims include, but are not limited to:
1 Unrealistic prices or rates.
Examples: “$0.50 LCD TVs,” “$10/month health insurance”
2 Use of current events or news reports to create false associations with the advertised product. Political events or images may not be used for an irrelevant commercial agenda.
Example: “Breaking News: Great car insurance rates”
3 Use of false qualifications to create a sense of relevancy
Example: “If you are right-handed, you qualify for low premiums”
4 Implication of dynamic ad content
Examples: “7 minutes remaining,” “only (3) available”
5 Implied knowledge or passing of user data
Examples: “See who searched for you,” “you have been chosen”

Translation: “Advertising must not be creative whatsoever. If it is worded in a way that makes a user want to click the ad, then it is probably not going to be allowed anymore. We now prefer to present them with a list of products and services resembling a page in the phone book, and if they happen to be looking for ‘Reasonably Priced But Not Too Cheap Health Insurance’ while they are browsing through pictures of their ex, then they will surely respond to that ad.”

Unacceptable Business Models
Ads will not be permitted in cases where a business model or practice is deemed unacceptable or contrary to Facebook’s overall advertising philosophy. Unacceptable business models include, but are not limited to:
1 Lead generation offers which sell or distribute a user’s information to larger extent than indicated by the landing page
2 Offers that require a user to complete several hidden steps or make additional purchases in order to receive the promised product
3 Offers that require the input of user information for complete access to offer or product details
4 Ads promoting deceptive recurring billing services
5 Downloadable software that may affect the user’s computer or browser performance in unexpected or undesirable ways

Translation: “No affiliate offers from any CPA network will ever be allowed again.”

So there you have it. Facebook has decided that it no longer needs the advertisers that are paying them to keep the doors open. I don’t know what their plans for the future are, but they certainly don’t include us.

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!