Staying in the Game

Posted on October 10, 2009 by Josh Todd

Last night I was awake until 4am because every time I laid down to sleep, my lower back would revolt. My wife had been telling me that I needed to go to the Chiropractor, and for some reason I put it off until I was in a large amount of pain. I tend to do that… So today I went to the Chiropractor and he adjusted me, and we ended up talking for about 30 minutes about my situation. It turns out that my hours and hours upon hours of sitting at the computer and lack of exercise has led to a greatly curved lower spine, which is not good.

According to him, unless I turn things around quickly by doing core exercises and regular adjustments I will be in a world of hurt by the time I am 40. This especially sunk in because he said something similar the last time I saw him, about 6 years ago. Things are only worse now…

So now it’s time to shape up! No, Internet Marketing doesn’t compare physically to being a lumberjack, but it does take its own kind of toll on the body. I had already decided to give Weight Watchers a try, and I’m about 2 weeks into that so far. Now I’m going to add in some core exercises so that I’ll be ready when my son is born in January. I’ve got to be in shape so we can toss the ‘ol pigskin around in the yard, right?

I guess today was just kind of a wake up call for me. I want to stay in the game now, work hard, and crush it so that I can enjoy my later years. That means that I need to face facts and start taking better care of myself. It’s super easy in this industry to forget about everything but what is happening online, but until we can digitize our consciousness and upload it to the cloud, there’s still a little bit of physical maintenance that needs to be taken care of.

HasOffers: A Legit Review

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Josh Todd

Since HasOffers released their affiliate tracking platform, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the company and the product. Most of it has been stirred up either by DirectTrack competitors or people that use DirectTrack other platforms. I thought I would pitch in my 2 cents worth since I have been using HasOffers everyday for about 4 months now. This is not a paid post, and there are no affiliate links in this post.

Campaign Setup

A lot of a network’s time is spent setting up campaigns. Besides checking Stats, it’s the one activity that I do on a very regular basis, often daily. Since I’ve started using HasOffers they have updated the Campaign Setup a couple of times and added new features, but it is still very clean and to the point. You put in the name, description, tracking link, set your prices, geo-targeting, etc. and you are good to go. There are some unique features such as browser targeting (even including mobile browsers), Campaign Groups for geo-targeting multiple offers, and allowing campaigns to convert multiple times. Most of the time I don’t use these features but it is nice to have the option. Once you have it set up and hit submit, it takes you to the pixel where you can copy & paste it to send to the advertiser, or you can just click once and have it emailed to them automatically, which is very cool. Also, it creates a test link for you which saves a lot of time.

Tracking

Tracking is probably the most important aspect of a network platform. Does it track? In a word, yes. HasOffers is very accurate in tracking conversions. The default pixel type is an iFrame pixel, which seems to work better than the Script pixels that most other platforms use. It supports 3rd party pixels for Affiliates, and on my network I have it setup so that affiliates can place these themselves with automatic approval. Also, you can choose whether you want HasOffers to track All Clicks that come through an affiliate link, or just Unique Clicks. I have mine set to All, since affiliates always complain that their clicks aren’t tracking otherwise.

Creatives

The File Manager is where you upload creatives for your offers. It runs on a CDN server, and they host all your creatives so you don’t need to have a gallery somewhere else. It supports Image Banners, HTML Creatives, Flash Banners, and Offer Thumbnails (so that a picture appears next to the offer name in the interface, similar to LinkTrust). I particularly like the Flash Banner setup, it is super simple. All you need to do is upload your SWF file, tell it what the height and width are, and it does the rest. I’ve used some other setups that are a royal pain for Flash.

Reporting

I really, really like the reporting in HasOffers. First of all, it’s fast. I can tell it exactly what information I want to see, and it displays it quickly. Coming off of using DirectTrack, the difference is night and day. I used to spend a good hour or two a day just waiting for DirectTrack to load reports. I like it better than LinkTrust’s reporting as well, which I’ve always found a bit cumbersome to use. On the affiliate side, the reporting allows them to pass a “source” variable (such as Google or Yahoo) as well as 5 separate sub id variables if they choose, and they actually work. The #1 reason that affiliates login to a network is to check their stats, and this is one area that HasOffers really shines.

Affiliate Interface

HasOffers looks and feels very different than LinkTrust or DirectTrack. Both of those systems have been around for a while, and they are starting to show their age. On the contrary, HasOffers has a decidedly Web 2.0 feel to it, with soft edges and animated bar graphs for revenue and total leads generated right on the home page when affiliates log in. It looks great right out of the box, but network owners can use their own custom CSS & logos to give it their own look. Also, a new feature was added recently to select from a variety of different Themes to change up the look with one click. I have received quite a few compliments from affiliates who are logging in for the first time, it just looks a lot fresher than the other platforms.

Last Word

I think that a lot of the venom that has been spewed at HasOffers is due to the fact that they are offering their entry-level product for free. This means that the barrier of entry to creating a network has been lowered to almost nothing. I think there is some truth to this as well as some exaggeration. A network is based on trust and relationships above all else. It doesn’t matter what software they are using. Anybody who spends a lot of time and money promoting offers from an affiliate network that just popped up yesterday and has no reputation in the industry is just asking to get ripped off. Do your homework, run with people that you trust and you will have much less risk of things going wrong.

You may have heard that HasOffers’ parent company, Adapp Solutions, is owned by the owners of Tatto Media affiliate network. This is true. Does it mean that Tatto is going to steal all of your data? If you are using any 3rd party tracking platform at all, the security of your data is a concern, but the fact is that a large part of the networks in the industry are powered by them. These service providers all put a lot of work into making sure that your data is secure, and HasOffers is no exception.

I have used both DirectTrack and LinkTrust extensively, and I like HasOffers better, hands down. Sign up for a free account now!

When Inspiration Strikes

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Josh Todd

When inspiration strikes, it comes hard and fast. You have the idea, everything is clear. It’s like when you wake up from a dream and everything is so vivid in your mind. The problem is, much like when the dream starts to fade after a couple of hours of your morning routine, the killer idea can fade as well. Here’s what I like to do: document every single detail that you can about the idea while it’s fresh! This doesn’t sound like rocket science, and it’s not. That being said, I can’t tell you how many times I have neglected to do it because I was sure that I wouldn’t forget it and then the next day it’s *poof* gone.

This happened a lot back in my band days. If I was sitting down at the guitar just jamming away, minding my own business, a lot of times that’s when the next killer hook for a song would show up. Sometimes it was an accident, sometimes it was playing in a different tuning than I was used to, either way it would happen and then 9 times out of 10 I would tell myself that this hook was so awesome I would never forget it. Then I put my guitar down, went and had some dinner, went to bed, and the next day at practice time I couldn’t even remember what chord the killer hook started with. To this day I am convinced that I have written way too many monster songs and then forgotten them all. What was the solution? A simple tape recorder. If I hit record, got that idea on tape, then it was there forever. Maybe I wouldn’t even come back to it until months later, but it still rocked.

You can do the same thing with your marketing ideas. Get it on paper somehow. Maybe you carry a little notepad & pencil with you everywhere (you never know when inspiration will strike), or maybe you type it into your iPhone or Blackberry, or maybe you call your own voicemail and leave a verbal copy of the idea. Next time you don’t know what to do, go through your killer ideas file, you are almost guaranteed to get fired up about a concept that you forgot and voila! Time to make some money!

That’s all for today. I’m out.

The Hot Offer Chaser

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Josh Todd

The hot offer chaser is constantly looking for the next big thing. This affiliate will contact his Affiliate Managers on a weekly or daily basis to ask what the “hot offers” on the network are. The Affiliate Manager will give him a few arbitrary offers that are performing well on the network, it really doesn’t matter what they are. The hot offer chaser takes these recommendations, files them away somewhere, then goes along on his day of doing whatever it is the hot offer chaser does (it certainly isn’t marketing).

The hot offer chaser doesn’t create niches and new trends, he borrows, steals, or copies them. At least that’s what he should be doing. In all actuality he really doesn’t even do that. Why spend the time to create a landing page and a content network campaign for the offer he was just recommended when he can ask his Affiliate Manager for the new hot offers tomorrow morning?

In case you haven’t figured by now, the hot offer chaser doesn’t make any money. The hot offer chaser dreams of the day that he can have a $100 a day campaign. He is so focused on getting all of the information together so that when he finally launches that magic campaign, it can’t possibly fail. Problem is, he will never get around to it.

Don’t be a hot offer chaser. Create those hot niches. Pioneer those new marketing techniques. Be creative. Do some marketing.

Fraud Alert: Email/Zip Submit Freelancers

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Josh Todd

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.

The Paralysis of Analysis

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Josh Todd

There are many pitfalls that one must overcome when trying to make a living as a self-employed affiliate. One of the toughest is conquering the little voice in your head. You know, the one that says, “What’s the point of designing that new website, it’s just going to fail anyway.” It is very good at talking you out of each and every good idea that you come up with before you even get started. To be successful in business, not just Affiliate Marketing but any business, you must conquer the paralysis of analysis.

I can’t tell you how many times I have sat and stared at my LCD screen just waiting for something to magically happen. It’s not that I think I can’t pull off the idea that I have cranking in my head, it’s that I worry that it won’t work and the time I spent will be wasted. This is only reinforced each time an idea doesn’t pan out. We’ve all heard the story about how it took Edison over 1,000 different tries to invent the light bulb, but Edison I’m not. One failure can set me back days or even weeks.

One of the main reasons that this is fresh in my mind is because it happened to me just recently. I had put a bunch of work into a website that I thought had a lot of viral potential, and I was using eBay Partner Network to monetize it. It was fully designed, and I was just beginning to promote it and start doing the SEO work of link building and all that when I realized my mistake. Like an idiot, I had forgotten to read the Terms & Conditions for EPN to see if they were ok with an affiliate using a website with “ebay” in the domain. Little surprise, they are NOT ok with it…

Not a big deal right? Wrong. Mentally, it is a big deal because now I can’t get rid of that nagging feeling that it’s all pointless and that I’ll never recreate the success I have had with other similar sites. This is where I kill myself every time. I try to think about every possible way that it could fail, instead of thinking about every possible way that it could succeed. I visualize Cease & Desist letters instead of Commission Checks. It is almost impossible to turn everything around once you have dragged yourself through the mud like that.

However, one day you will wake up and lo and behold, there it is! The burn. The spark. The hunger. The idea. When that happens, don’t fold your arms and start picking it apart, fire up your favorite web design program (or good ‘ol Notepad) and get cracking! You’ll be glad you did.

Affiliate Jump (Off A Cliff)

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Josh Todd

There’s been a lot of talk going on in the industry lately about Affiliate Jump, a “CPA Network” from eBook slinger Mike Filsaime. It’s a bunch of garbage. If you’ve read a good review, it was by a paid Joint Venture partner. If you’ve read a bad review, it’s from someone who has either tried it or knows how ridiculous it is.

Do not pay to join Affiliate Jump or any other CPA Network. CPA Networks PAY YOU, not the other way around. Don’t believe the hype about the “automated website builder”. If you’ve ever used an automated website builder for anything (think Angelfire, TriPod, or GeoCities), then you know how sub-par the results are. Would you buy something from a GeoCities site? Nobody else would either.

The eBook bonuses are not worth the price of admission. There is plenty of advice for free on blogs and forums and by talking to your Affiliate Manager at a real network. That’s right, real CPA Networks have Affiliate Managers, somebody who is personally vested in your success. Someone that will give you payout increases and tips on marketing your offers. Someone that you can call on a Saturday when something goes wrong.

Long story short, don’t be a sucker. There is less opportunity for you to make money at Affiliate Jump then selling garage sale junk on eBay. Try joining a real affiliate network.

PPV Network Review: DirectCPV

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Josh Todd

If you’ve read my other posts on PPV, you know I’m a fan of Media Traffic and their PPV network. This is the place that 90% of the people I talk to start out with PPV. That being said, there are other options out there. A newer network that I heard about recently is DirectCPV. Since I had a few people asking me about it, I decided to give it a test run to see how it stacks up to the other guys.

First of all, the interface may look familiar to you when you log in and setup a campaign. This is due to the fact that DirectCPV is white labeling the CPView platform. This does not mean that DirectCPV is the same thing as CPView, they have a different user base with the adware installed so it is a completely different network.

It is relatively simple to get a campaign set up with the interface, you put in your Landing Page url (affiliate link), give it a name, and then you add in at least one type of targeting (URL, keyword, or category). I put in about 20 URLs from a quick Google search and decided to try out a couple keywords as well. One thing to note here is that DirectCPV does not have anywhere near the number of adware users that some of the bigger networks have, so you might be a bit safer testing out new keywords here (keywords on the big networks can mean your whole budget gone in the blink of an eye).

I let it run for a few days and when I came back to check my stats (using Prosper202) I was pleasantly surprised that my campaign was profitable right off the bat. It wasn’t a home run, but it did make money. I decided to make a couple of minor tweaks at that point. The first thing was checkout my Prosper202 to see what URLs were converting. As is often the case, all the conversions were coming from one URL. I noticed that some of them were coming from the Keyword that I had put in instead of the direct URL. The problem with that is that the bid price for the Keyword was 0.08 (8 cents) and the bid for the direct URL was 0.01 (1 cent). Simple fix there, I paused the Keyword and added the URL to my targeting. After that the profits were decent.

The main gripe I have about the DirectCPV interface is that you have to click “Check Bid” on each URL individually to see if you are in 1st position. Other networks have done this better, but you can take some of the hassle out of it by setting the bid mode to Auto and then setting it at 1st position. This will automatically increase your bid if somebody is above you. Also if you want to Geo Target your campaign, you have to do it after the campaign is setup, you can’t do it during the campaign creation. This stumped me the first time.

Final word? I like DirectCPV. I think it’s worth a shot especially if you have a profitable campaign on another network that you are looking to expand. It can also be good for testing out a new campaign to if it converts without blowing your budget since there is a smaller installed user base, there is less competition, and the bid prices start at 1 penny (at MT it is 1.5). It doesn’t have as much traffic as the bigger guys, but from what I saw it can definitely be a good source to add to your repertoire.

If you signup through my affiliate link here you can get a $25 credit by using the promo code “BR25”.

Disclosure: http://cmp.ly/5

SiteSnatcher Has Landed

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Josh Todd

If there’s one thing that Internet and Affiliate Marketers can’t get enough of, it is tools & shortcuts. Every process that can be automated gives us more time to focus on being creative and the next big idea. A good friend of mine launched his own set of tools this week, and it is called SiteSnatcher. I immediately signed up and gave it a test run, so I thought I would share my first impressions.

The first tool I tried was the Blog Commentor. When you are trying to get a new site indexed and get some link juice to it, one of the easiest ways to do that is to comment on related blogs using your URL to link back to your site. The Blog Commentor will take any keyword that you choose, such as “golf”, and come up with a bunch of direct links to the posts that you can comment on. It also has a built in iFrame so that you can just load the blog inside of SiteSnatcher, submit your comment, then hit “Next” and it loads the next blog into the window. This makes the blog commenting process a breeze, you can knock out 100 comments in short order.

Next I tried out the Site Targeting Tool. This is designed for PPC guys that are looking for specific sites to target for the Content Network in their niche. One of the best ways to make the Content Network profitable is to site target instead of just letting Google do it for you. This can be a tedious process of searching for sites in your niche that are running AdSense so that you can target them. This tool does it all for you. Simply put in your keyword, hit go, and it will grab anywhere from several hundred to 1,000 sites in your niche that AdSense on the page. This can also work as a URL scraper for finding sites to target with PPV.

One thing I will mention is that you need to wait a little bit for the results to come in. These tools are doing real-time scrapes of lots of data, so when you hit go it can take anywhere from 10-15 minutes to see the full results. It is all designed to run in the background, so you can set a couple different tools to run, or just work on something else and come back later.

The pricing is based on how much you want to use it. On the basic package, you get 50 “credits” per day. As you see in the screenshot above, the Site Targeting Tool take 25 credits to run. You can run it (or any other tool for 25 credits) twice per day on the basic package. I think it’s a cool way to test it out without spending a ton of cash. If you start using it a bunch on a daily basis, then you can get a bigger package with more credits.

All in all I think that this is definitely going to turn some heads. I don’t recommend products or services very often on this blog, so take it from me, this is a solid service that is only going to get better. If you do PPC on the Content Network, or PPV, or if you do any type of SEO including the EPN / McJiffy / BANS method, then SiteSnatcher is a tool you will want to check out.

P.S. If you click one of the SiteSnatcher links above, you will go through my affiliate link. If you don’t want to use my affiliate link, just go to http://sitesnatcher.com.