The first PPV campaign spy tool has just hit the market. It’s call PPVSpy. That means that you can spy on the competition, see offers, landing pages, and targets. Whether you like it or not, this was bound to happen and Bevo Media is the first company to do it.
Then we can have a large debate in the comments over whether this is a godsend or the end of PPV marketing as we know it.
Last month Stackman did a really cool post about buying websites on Flippa and optimizing them for profit. I have created tons of websites from scratch, but I’ve never tried to buy one before. So I took his advice, went over to Flippa and started browsing around. Here’s what I found…
There’s a bunch of crappy websites for sale!
There are good ones as well but you have to really dig through a bunch of crap to find the good stuff. I don’t think I was prepared for all of the retarded sites for sale at outrageous prices, but I got used to it. I ended up bidding on two different sites that I thought had potential.
If you haven't ever been to Flippa.com, you should check it out!
The first site ended up being highly competitive, and went for $3,200. I didn’t want to spend that much my first time out, so I let that one go. The problem was it was already too far developed and had affiliate income already set up on it. Honestly I’m not sure why the guy was selling it, unless it had just been sandboxed or something… Anyways, on to the next one.
The second site had about 15 bids on it as well as a Buy It Now price of $500. After doing some due-diligence and researching the niche and the site’s traffic, I decided to go ahead and buy it. I’m sure I could have gotten a better deal by waiting for the auction to finish, but I’m pretty impulsive when I get an idea into my head so I just bought it for the $500 BIN price.
The reason I liked the site was that it had a lot of content already generated. It has over 2,000 pages in it. That saves me a lot of work on the front end so I can focus on getting it traffic and monetizing it. It doesn’t have a blog, so I will probably add one of those shortly and put some more content on it. It also had quite a few backlinks already going to it. It has a PR of 0, but the groundwork is still there. It should be fairly easy to get it up to PR 2 or PR 3 in the next couple of months.
AdSense was the only type of monetization on the site, and there weren’t very many ads at all. I went ahead and placed a 468×60 banner for an affiliate offer in the header, and spruced up the AdSense locations. I will most likely build an email list as well so I can mail offers to my users.
That’s all I’ve got to report for now. I’m excited about the project and hopefully it will be a good long-term source of income. It gets old doing the affiliate campaign grind after a while, so this has been a fresh breath of air.
According to my good friend Grayson Gold, TrafficVance is finally serving international pops as of now! That includes all the major english speaking countries: United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. They have been serving text links in these countries for a while now, but for those of us that are addicted to pops this is a massive announcement. Lead Impact had the edge internationally for a long time, but I guess all those GameVance installs you guys have been promoting have paid off.
Keep up the good work, and get those international campaigns up!
The news was dropped today by the legendary Nana Gilbert-Baffoe that a new version of Tracking202 / Prosper202 is on the horizon. I’ve been wondering when they would fire back with something new to answer all the new tracking systems released this year (primarily Bevo Media and CPV Lab). I don’t have any details about what new changes version 2.0 of 202 is going to include, but according to the beta signup website, it will be “a game-changing totally re-engineered version of Tracking202”.
My interest is definitely piqued. Sign up for the beta here if you want to check it out before the general public gets to see it.
UPDATE
Once I confirmed my email for the beta they gave a couple more teasers about functionality:
A lot of people that are just getting into PPV ask me what PPV network they should use or what’s the difference between the different networks. I decided to put together a handy comparison chart here so you can see which one is the best for your particular situation.
PPV Network Comparison (Click to enlarge)
The other night I was relaxing at home after work and watching a movie. I have my AIM forwarded to my cell phone in case anyone needs to get in touch with me in the evenings. So I get this text from a guy that went by “Nicky Noodle”. Check this out:
Nicky Noodle: Josh, my name is nick, I run a service for 17 networks currently, I’m not sure if getads shaves leads, however we provide a service
Nicky Noodle: if you are interested we can have you set up within 24hrs
Me: A lead shaving service?
Nicky Noodle: correct
Nicky Noodle: our system works on any platform and you can shave leads by offer by entering a %
Nicky Noodle: most networks using our service shave 15%-30%
Nicky Noodle: we recommend 20%
Me: How did you hear about us?
Nicky Noodle: When we are out of networks from word of mouth we go affiliatepaying and approch a few networks
Nicky Noodle: we never share our clients with anyone, or name names ever.
Nicky Noodle: set up time takes less then 24 hours
Me: Sorry, we are not interested.
Nicky Noodle: np
Now I’m not naive, I know that there are networks out there that shave leads. Even so, I never would have guessed that somebody has started up a 3rd party service to cater to these shady networks and provide a way for them to shave even more leads away from their affiliates. As an affiliate myself, this really pisses me off. Sort of like when Packet Stuffer came out. It never ceases to amaze me how people will try to cheat each other out of a buck instead of working together to make more money and legitimize the industry as a whole.
The most interesting part of this conversation to me was that he has already got 17 networks that are using this service. I wish I could have found a way to get his client list from him, but I felt like if I went any further in the conversation or showed any interest (just to lead him on) then people would accuse my network of trying to shave leads.
The moral of the story is this: know who you are doing business with. The best way that you can protect yourself from lead shaving and other shadiness is to build strong relationships with your Affiliate Managers and your networks so that you know you can trust them. Also, if you want to make sure you aren’t being shaved, just split test the offer that you are currently running with the same offer at another network. It doesn’t automatically mean that you are being shaved if there is a discrepancy, since offers will often convert differently across multiple networks. However, if you find that you are consistently seeing anywhere from 15-30% less conversions on a bunch of offers from a single network, run somewhere else.
I’m a firm believer that integrity will win in the long run. I hope that someday we won’t have to worry about this type of thing happening in our industry. But until then, keep an eye on your stats to make sure that you are getting paid as much as you deserve for your traffic.
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.
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.
It’s funny to see the different cycles that affiliate marketers go through when it comes to traffic sources. One thing will be hot for a while, then it’s dead and the next big thing is the only way to make money. As you know I personally love PPV and use it to promote things every day. But whatever happened to that old stalwart of traffic sources, PPC?
I work at an affiliate network, and I know from experience that there are very few affiliates running PPC these days. It’s true that Google hates affiliates, for the most part. They made it extremely hard for people to make money on their platform. There are some people running offers on Google, but certainly a lot less.
This steampunk iMac has nothing to do with PPC or PPV. It's just awesome.
So why am I bringing this up? It may be time to take a second look at PPC (yes the title of this post is sarcastic). I’m not saying to drop PPV, but there is still lots of money to be made on Google and also Bing/Yahoo. These are some of the largest traffic sources in the world. Their sheer volume trumps all the PPV networks put together. It’s going to take more work. You will have to build quality landing pages and deal with the possibility of a Google slap. But for those who persevere, the rewards can be great.
Don’t count the PPC engines out. They aren’t down for the count just yet. While the majority of affiliates have moved on to greener easier pastures, that leaves a lot of inventory out there for the open-minded and experienced affiliate. Go get it.
Location based services have been all the rage lately. What was started by Foursquare and others has been expanded upon by Twitter and now Facebook. Now it seems like every social media website out there wants to know where you are located at all times. Personally I think it’s a bit odd that people are willing to share all that info with the general public. How long until thieves just sit on Foursquare and wait for people to check in at the local bar for the evening then head straight over to their house to rob the place? But that’s neither here nor there.
Remember playing the actual game of four square when you were a kid? Good times at recess.
All of the coverage about these services and seeing the shiny Check-In button on my Facebook Mobile app has got me thinking: will we soon see Affiliate Programs that take advantage of these services? Right now mobile and local advertising are still trying to gain traction with a larger number of advertisers in the industry. We have mobile pay-per-call campaigns like those provided by RingRevenue, so the check-in based offers can’t be far behind.
It would definitely lead to an interesting challenge. Not only do you have to get the consumer to click on an ad, but also follow through by going to a physical location and checking in? It all seems like a lot of work. But it could be worth it if advertisers are willing to pay for that kind of user engagement. Current ad campaigns that stores are running on Facebook Places and Foursquare are offering things like 20% of your total purchase at an H & M store if you check-in first. That’s a pretty significant value for the consumer as well as the store.
To me this just illustrates why I love this industry so much. There is always so much going on right at the cutting edge of technology that can give us new and exciting ways to make money and market products. Some may see this new location-based world as being a little too similar to the ads that Tom Cruise experienced in Minority Report, but I think we are a long way off from that. Besides, who cares? I’d rather see ads about things that are actually targeted to me and my interests any day.