It would be simpler if they would all just say that their network/system/widget was the best thing since…..

But they’re not.  A network is nothing but a tracking system.  An OPM is just a management company.  A “method/system/formula” is nothing but an outline, and it seems that the only thing new I see out of most of these is the hype surrounding them.

And it really doesn’t and shouldn’t be this way.  If a new network is truly different then they should clearly say why they are different.  “Bigger Better Offers with High Conversions and Fast Payouts” doesn’t cut it.  OPMs need to distinguish what it is about their firm that is different and better.  People selling SEO software should make it clear about how using their product is an advantage.  Otherwise, they’re just celebrating the 82nd anniversary of the invention that all other inventions are measured against.

I firmly believe that by evidence and action that some networks are far superior to others.  I also know for a fact that some OPM firms bring tangible results for their Merchants and Affiliates in superior ways.  I have historical tracking to show that some tools I use for SEO and organic ranking simply work better.  And in every case not one of them told me why they were superior outside of self promotion equating to the equivalent of comparing themselves to the invention that all other inventions are measured against.

Soon…  And I think sooner rather than later, we’re going to see serious consolidation in the OPM arena.  And it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it’s a network that starts rolling up OPM firms in order to distinguish themselves from other networks.  And it is my hope that this will be heralded for the competitive advantage it would give both Affiliates/Publishers and Merchant/Advertisers instead of the usual hype.

Because on July 7, 1928 the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri introduced Sliced Bread.  And although many inventions can be said to be “The Biggest Thing Since Sliced Bread”.  The equevalent hype in our industry simply cannot stand up to just simply telling what you have and why it’s better.  Even if it is the biggest thing since sliced bread.

Are you using “Human Herding” techniques in your Affiliate Marketing efforts?  What’s that?  A simple concept really.  And more than likely your using Human Herding without realizing it.  But it’s a powerful way to generate sales, clicks, and there’s nothing wrong with the concept.

As an experienced Cattleman there is an analogy that fits.  If a cattleman is out checking his herd and there are a bunch of calfs with their mothers it isn’t unusual for most (if not all) of the “momma” cows to head on out to the pond for a drink.  And all the calfs are left with the rancher.  Kind’ve like the herd deciding that the cattleman is the designated babysitter.  Which is essentially how Human Herding techniques work for Online Performance Marketers.

Implementation, however, can be problematic.  You see, in order to use Human Herding techniques you need to first identify who you are and what your about.  In detail.  Then you give freely on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Ning, etc. and slowly build your “herds”.  It takes time, patience, and hard work.   And here’s the part that’s difficult for most.  You have to inspire and trust your “herd” to work on your behalf for nothing more than their desire to share with others what you are sharing.  Simple Word of Mouth advertising with the goal being to increase the herd.  Not to generate instant sales.

But there is a big payoff.  As your various social media, blog, and website “herds” begin to grow it is essential that you change NOTHING about how you continue to give to the herd.  Keep pumping out the articles, posts, e-book giveaways, tips, tricks, advice, whatever it is just keep doing it.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a good herd of cattle so don’t expect anything different when your employing Human Herding strategy.  The temptation is strong to make everything about you and generating money for you.  But herds are full of skittish flighty animals so don’t spook them.  Nothing is worse than being caught either in the path of a stampeding herd, or, having your herd run away from you.

In other words, monitize intelligently.  Use paid contests (where an advertiser pays you to give their stuff away).  Mix your affiliate links in just as you would with a blog (only products and services that will be of interest and benefit your “herd”.  Don’t slow down the giving of your time, attention, and interest in your “herd” and at some point they will trust you rather than simply follow you.  And you’ll see that in your performance advertising commissions.  When there is a big spike that stays up for more than a month…  your most likely there.

But something else happens as well.  Opportunity.  As your “herds” grow, follow, and then trust you for what you do for them they may wander off…  And leave behind something they love and trust themselves…  their friends that they introduced into your “herd”.  Which acts first as a reason for someone that’s losing interest to stay…  And then if they wander over to the pond a reason to return to the “herd”.  A built in mechanism for maintaining a large group of people that trust you in your chosen niches and that will do more than click a link and go on their way.

They’ll “return to the trough” over, and over, and over again.  Which is what you want, isn’t it?  solid, dependable, repeat business.

How are you building and maintaining your herds?

Strange things pop into your head when your mind is on business and you see something pop up to interrupt you.  Like a world map broken down by which Social Networks are dominant where…

Which is pretty important data if your focusing some effort outside of the US and Canada…  In an article on Gawker today they’ve identified some trends:

• Orkut leads in the Indian subcontinent, as well as Brazil;
• Facebook is stronger, internationally, than Myspace, with surprising strongholds in the Middle East;
• hi5.com is the most international of all the social networks, leading in Peru, Colombia, Central America, and other, scattered countries such as Mongolia, Romania, and Tunisia;
• both Bebo and Skyblog follow colonial patterns, the first strong in smaller English-speaking countries such as Ireland and New Zealand, and the latter in Francophone countries;
• and Friendster, the original social network, leads all across Southeast Asia.
• Fotolog, a photo service defeated in the US by Friendster, has re-emerged as the dominant social network in Argentina and Chile.

Pretty cool stuff.  With this (and their handy dandy map,  you could just about identify the least path of resistance to focused landing pages for links on social media outlets country by country.

How’s that for a “thought out of nowhere”?  It’s not a complete strategy.  But it’s a good start and sure saves alot of time wasted testing various social media outlets in each country.

It never seems to amaze me with the extent some will go to monitize their blogs.  Sure, there are exactly TWO (2) advertisements on this blog (rotating).  And they do fairly well.  But I digress….

I submit for your approval the following screenshot of an article aptly named “WhatYou Don’t Know About Affiliate Marketing” (Site Name and URL removed to protect the #FAIL):

Now, I’m no stranger to cattle (I raided cattle in my youth), but when your subject is Affiliate Marketing it seemed a little odd to have AdSense placements of Miniature Cattle and Cattle Management Software on the page.  The dating ad on the right is a little goofy as well.

But Wait, it gets better…..

The “author” of the article touts themselves as being  “a Mobile Marketer, an Internet Marketer, Publisher and Entrepreneur.”  Which appears to be true.  But obviously in need of help.  Selfishly, I would say if they submitted their site to the AffSpot Performance Marketing Affiliate Forum that an equal share of “What the Hell are You Doing” and “Try this to Fix Your Site” would be offered.  And most of the advice would be pretty good.

Maybe I need to put this together for a presentation I’m doing later this summer…  But really, having advertising everywhere isn’t monitization…  It’s just counter productive.  And although I love AdSense for certain sites, not testing your site and seeing if the advertisments are relevant to your content is just plain lazy.

Here’s what this poor soul should do to fix their site.  The content isn’t bad.  It’s not the greatest, but it’s not bad.  But the conversion rate must be horrid.  I would get rid of the AdSense and change the offers to be relevant to the content.  An advert for a Wordpress plugin, a hosting company, a network and/or affiliate programs themselves would convert at a much higher rate.

But the shame of it all is that technically the site is build fairly well.  A reasonable template, the site is connected to Twitter and Facebook.  An admirable effort at in-site SEO was done.  With the right niche targeting and relevant offers this would be a good site.

But as it is now…  This is a Blog Monitization #Fail which equals Poor Affiliate Marketing.

]]> http://blog.affspot.com/2010/05/blog-monitization-fail-poor-affiliate-marketing/feed/ 7 http://blog.affspot.com/2010/04/google-patent-on-status-updates-raises-affiliate-questions/ http://blog.affspot.com/2010/04/google-patent-on-status-updates-raises-affiliate-questions/#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:13:58 +0000 scottm http://blog.affspot.com/?p=379

Aardvark is a service that lets you ask a question, then various forms of Social Media are queried to elicit a response from a person with the answer.  Basically, a social media powered search engine.  Founded by former Google employees (well, former, now employees again) Google bought the company about a month or so ago.  And they’ve filed for a patent.

The patent covers automated status updates when you join a service.  So, for example, if I enabled the AffSpot Affiliate Marketing Forum with a couple lines of code I could have the AffSpot Facebook, Twitter, etc. drop in a status update that says “SuperAffiliate Clark Kent Just Joined AffSpot!”.  And this patent (if approved) would mean that I would either need Google’s permission (or pay a license fee) in order to do this.

Perhaps the most obvious form of this is “Share This”, “Tell a Friend”, and “Refer a Friend” type links on your Affiliate Websites.  Think about it.  The ability for your customers to refer your affiliate sites to friends would be potentially restricted by Google.  And you know just how valuable word of mouth advertising is.

You see, software and process patents are a double edged sword.  And although things that are obvious (for example, the man that invented the WeedEater lost his patent because it was declared obvious that having a motor spin a string around would cut grass) are generally not patentable…  Many “obvious” things in the software/process world are allowed patents.  For example, “One Click Buying” at Amazon.com.  Which is where the double edge of the sword comes in.

If this particular patent is approved it would be possible for Google to declare “Share this Post” and “Tell a Friend” refferal mechanisms violate their patent.  Which could hinder your ability to make it easy for your customers to refer their friends to your sites/offers.   And the result would be that Affiliate Marketers could lose a valuable tool and a terrific source of word of mouth advertising.  It may also be that Google is just trying to protect their investment in Aardvark and that your promotional activities would just be left alone too.

Patents of this type raise serious questions for Affiliates..  And software and process patents of this nature need to be paid attention to closely.

I gave a webinar on this very subject last Sunday evening.  Basically I covered three points (each with their own subset of points).

• Your Customers are Everywhere – Go where they are and bring them back to your site/store/blogs
• Use automation to put routine updates in the locations you need in the formats best suited (via RSS)
• Be Like Dr Pepper – Log in at 10, 2, and 4 spending 5-15mins tops to personally engage (or 12 / 4 / 7, whatever)

I saw on Google Buzz this week where the very same subject came up.  How to be more efficient but still actively engage.  My thoughts were duplicated in that thread and have been received quite well.  Then I saw an article today on TechCrunch about why Google released Buzz so quickly and this single point got my attention:

The other reason Google needed to establish its own social stream pronto is that links passed through social sharing are beginning to rival search as a primary driver of traffic for many sites.   (article is HERE)

A point I really didn’t bring out in my webinar session (kicking myself now) is just how powerful a traffic driver it really is.  Social Engagement can bring big traffic.  Targeted traffic.  Traffic from people that have consented to follow your posts, have become familiar with you and your personal side.  And have CHOSEN to do business with you.

Here is the full recorded Webinar for you…

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AffSpot went to Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas this past week.  My first representing AffSpot.  And about the umpteenth event of this type I’ve attended over the past 20+ years or so.  After you’ve gone to more than a few of these things there is alot that’s the same… And alot that is different.

For me this was both a good and awful trip.  A printer messing up a flyer for AffSpot (but they look fabulous on cardstock instead of catalog slick), the worlds worst flight cancellation in history (I will NEVER fly with United ever again) and staying awake for nearly 37 hours so I could do a little charity thing called “Bowling for Boobs” notwithstanding.  The pluses far outweighed the minuses.

I had the opportunity to meet in person with many of the AffSpotters that contribute most to AffSpot.  Renewed friendships with a few people I’ve known for years.  And was able to meet many more people in much less time that would be possible in any other way.  And was able to articulate my own personal vision for AffSpot that I’ve been holding “close to the vest” while all the pieces were put into place over the past six months or so.  And no, I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t already know about AffSpot quite yet..  But very soon.

The biggest lesson for you that I can provide is that you MUST HAVE A PLAN for an event of this type.  There is too much going on to just let yourself drift and go with the flow.  I had made appointments with many, some more “loose” plans with others.  And, a list of people that I hadn’t made appointments with but I would be able to introduce myself to when the opportunity arose.

The high points?  Dinner with Sara and Brooke from Hayneedle, meeting Simon with Spotcher, getting to spend some seriously good time with Brad of Marketlite Affiliates, Wade Tonkin of GTO Management, Jamie Birch of JEB Commerce, Heather Paulson of PMG, Jivan Manhas of MediaTrust, Jen Goode (an AffSpot Moderator BTW, Michael Vorel of VastPlanet, Roger Snow and Randy Norton of Snow Consulting, and on, and on, and on….  And yes, there is no way I could namedrop everyone…  With the exception of Trisha Lyn Fawver.  She was everywhere and always busy, and always laughing.  Maybe that something I need to tell her in person will wait for ASE10.

Another thing was that Greg Hoffman (of Greg Hoffman Consulting), Matt Enders (of MGE), and Todd Crawford (who just announced ImpactRadius) and I kept running into each other all over the place.  Greg Hoffman accused me of stalking…  I attribute it to “Great Minds Think Alike”.  And we all kept laughing at the absurdity of it all and introducing each other to other people we know.  Kinda like “old home week”.

Some things are always the same.  Everyone is constantly contemplating everybody else’s navel.  ID Badges tend to hang a little low, and they’re really big, and they end up covering your navel.  When your looking for someone you tend to look at badges (as not to embaress yourself) and end up embarassing yourself because your looking at peoples navels instead of their faces.

Different?  No matter how big Affiliate Summit seems to get, there is a familiarity, and intimacy, that Affiliate Summit hangs onto that other events just can’t pull off.  Only one other event I’ve attended has been able to maintain “the feel”.  And it went away along time ago.  Affiliate Summit is special this way.

It was a good event for AffSpot.  And for me personally as well.

Last evening I had a long discussion with an AffSpot member that needed a little help.  This AffSpotter has been active for only a few months and was feeling a little overwhelmed with all the “do this”, “is hot now”, “do this”, “don’t do that”, advice from blogs, etc.

So, what does he do?  He digs out my email and offers himself to be my own personal “Internet Marketing Slave” for the next three months so he can learn the business.  Smart…  Very, very smart.  So I offered to chat on the phone and we talked.  And we’re going to keep talking.  I turned down his offer to work for nothing…  With a little guidance and work on his part he’ll do just fine.  He’s got skills, he’s smart, and he’s not afraid to ask for help.  And although he (like nearly all in the Performance Marketing Industry) wants to build his own business he understands that this is a team sport.  Everyone needs people they can ask questions of.  Whether it’s just a review my site kind’ve thing or a hey how’d you do this? or what CMS do you use.

This got me to thinking about our own network of people we can call on when we’re having issues, needing to vent, etc.  And if you know it or not there is a whole team of people out there that your a part of.  The structure of Affiliate Marketing (in the traditional sense) is very straightforward:

Affiliate Marketer  ==>OPM/AM ==> Network ==> Merchant

Affiliate Marketers have other Affiliate Marketers and many OPM/AM’s that work together thru a network to produce sales for a Merchant.  There are places like AffSpot where people interact (as well as Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

We all have relationships with each of these entities.  OPM/AMs, Networks, Merchants, other Affiliate Marketers.  And few of us leverage these relationships.  You see, it PAYS to become acquainted with the people who (in their own best interest) want you to succeed.  But just like you, they’re busy people.  So not everyone can reach out to everyone all the time.  If you need help, you need to ask for it.  If you’ve developed relationships with the real people at your favorite Network, OPM, Merchant, etc. more than likely you won’t be lost in the pile of stuff they all have to do every day.  Since you have built a relationship with them you won’t be forgotten.  Since you help them out when they need help they’ll help you out when your in need.

Take a little time and get to know people.  People who want to help you, whose job it is to help you.  You’ll be very surprised at how large a “support network” you can build for your business and how much happier you’ll be making friends in the industry.

Maybe this is the very piece your missing for your next step up in the world of Affiliate Marketing.

As usual I’ve been looking at SEO while coding up some programatic goodies for AffSpot.  And the world is about to get very interesting indeed.  For example, the bruhaha over Google Realtime Results and Security.

In a USA Today Article Rae Hoffman expounds (quite accurately) that giving Twitter results in realtime could be a big security issue.    As well as a liability issue for Google.  These things not withstanding there is also a built in “Google Penalty” if your not on Twitter.  You see, twitter is feeding data directly to Google for realtime results.  Which is a good thing if your on Twitter…  And a bad thing if your not.  Here’s why.

If you do a search for “AffSpot” on Google we naturally hold the #1 position…  And if you give the page a few seconds out latest “tweets” show up as well.  Now, that’s a good thing.  AffSpot is a brand and we always want to be #1 for our own name.  And showing some of our “tweets” works to our advantage.

But let’s say your primary Affiliate Marketing site is focused on Classic Portraits..  And you hold #1 on Google for the phrase.  But one of your competitors is active on Twitter, has a number of followers, and “tweets” on a regular basis.  Now search for Classic Portraits and you’ll still show #1…  Until the realtime result shows up (which can take a few seconds)….  And your competitor has now pushed you down the page with a listing of their tweets!

And if that’s not enough to get you to Twittering…  Take a look at what Dell is doing..  6 million in sales from it decided to put an effort into selling via Twitter (ARTICLE HERE).  If you do the math that’s $100,000.00+ per Twitter account.  So even a little effort into Twitter can be a big boost for your affiliate marketing efforts.

Two morals to this story…  If your not active in the Social Web you should be…  Your SERPS could end up depending on it.  And the second moral of this story is that it’s important to establish not only your own personal accounts for your own personal use…  But accounts for your brands/sites as well.  And you need to keep up with them (hint, read our blog entries here, we talk about automation alot).

In the land of misfit experiments I wanted to see just how measurable results from the social web (Web2.0) were measurable.  The short answer…  not so much.

But in the words of the great Billy Mays – “But Wait, There’s More”

I took one of the local niche sites I built in the Building an Affiliate Marketing Powerhouse series  and applied some of the techniques of Affiliate Marketing Strategery with RSS with the site.  In short, I built online accounts for the site at Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, appropriate Ning communities, etc. and fed each of those accounts with RSS from the site itself.  So every update to the site, microblogpost, news update, special sale, etc. was automatically posted to all those accounts via RSS.  Totally Hands Off.

I used Twitterfeed to feed twitter, then used the twitter RSS to feed everything else.  The advantage is that Twitterfeed is using bit.ly and they provide linking data (i.e. clickthru) for each link shortened.  And I didn’t have to write any new code!  Now, if this were for real production, I would have gotten a bit.ly API key and bought or written a little code.  But for testing this worked out great.

The funny thing is…  everything Google Analytics didn’t track…  bit.ly did.  And I can see the source of the clicks based on the shortened URL’s statistics.  And here’s what I found.

Twitter is WAY more powerful than you think.  With only 400 followers at the end of the test the AVERAGE clickthru on a twitter post was 8.  Eight clickthrus on a twitter post with only 400 followers?

Facebook sucks in the beginning and kicks butt with time.  I took out an ad to get fans on Facebook.  Had 200+ Fans within four weeks.  For the first three weeks…  Nothing.  The last week resulted in 14 clicks per posting average.

Everybody else was floating from 2-12 clicks per linkout.  All from RSS feeds automatically posting.

Here’s the kicker…  In the last week I started spending time on all the Web2.0 sites.  Making comments, clicking the Like button on Facebook, ReTweeting posts I liked on Twitter, etc.  In general, participating as a human being.  It takes about 2 minutes per day per site.  I split it up between late morning and again around 6pm.  I just loaded each of the sites into a browser tab and went for it.  I NEVER waited for a screen to reload, I would simply multitask and bebop around the tabs til I’d done a couple actions on each site.  And the results went up dramatically.

And so did sales…  That particular sites sales went up 200% in the last week of the test period.  And it was already making some decent returns.  So, what can we get out of this little experiement?  An action list that you can all use to strengthen your existing sites.  And here’s what you need to do.

• Every Site Needs it’s Own Social Accounts – You can use KnowEm which is  a service to mass build Web2.0 logins
  
• Update Your Site News Promos etc. Daily – Use your PR skills and make newsworthy posts
  
• Use RSS to Autofeed Your Updates – Twitterfeed and other services will do this for you.
  
• Take 2-4 Minutes per Site per Day to Socialize – Don’t Waste Time, You can be Social and Reap the Benefits without getting lost in Facebook and wasting your day.

For the entire network of sites we built in Building an Affiliate Marketing Powerhouse it would take about 100 minutes per day (let’s just call it 2 hours) if we implemented this strategy for every site.  It sounds like a ton of work (well, it is work), but the returns are quite high.  In SEO, SALES, and overall profitability I’m thinking I can at least double the income the network of sites is bringing in.  I’m expanding the efforts here and will report back how it goes in a month or so.