Affiliate Manager Blog

Let’s Talk About Landing Pages

Luke — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:11:56 +0000

It appears that everywhere you turn on the Internet you are graced with advertisements of all kinds. There are the more obtrusive pop-ups, subtle text links, and the trusted middle ground, the banner. It doesn’t matter if you are surfing the web hopping from random site to random site or we are searching topic specific keywords in the Google search engine, advertisements will be there. The majority of advertisements are running across multiple channels (i.e. social, search, etc.) to expand the overall reach of the campaign. Once an advertisement is clicked on, if the advertiser is doing his job, you should be directed to a landing page associated with the advertising campaign. So, let’s take a little bit about landing pages.

Landing Page Explanation

In a nutshell to keep this simple and concise, a landing page is a web page that is specifically designed and built to support the message of an advertising campaign. It acts as an extension by including the proper sales copy and images to entice the visitor to perform the desired action (which is usually fill out a form or purchase a product). Below is an example of a landing page that will be referred to throughout the post: According to Omniture, you can see an increase of up to 25% in conversion rate using a properly structured, promotion specific landing page. This type of page is rather simple to accomplish as long as you are able to take into consideration the following five components of a successful landing page…

1. Convincing, Concise Sales Copy

Think about this, According to Nielsen Norman Group, the average website visitor will bounce from your site within 10-20 seconds and the average page visit is less than a 60 seconds. On a well built landing page you can expect a bounce rate of 70-90%. This is direct proof that your sales copy, whether text or video, needs to instantly deliver your message and be relevant to your audience. There are a number of ways to write effective sales copy on landing pages. As a rule of thumb, keep these tips in mind:

Use bullets or numbers when possible- no one likes to read more than they have too
Write in the second person- it is about the web visitor not you
Use shorter sentences and paragraphs- no need for a block of 500 words
Focus writing language on action and value of the product or service you are offering- make people believe it will truly benefit them (and hopefully it does)
Make sure the copy relates to the advertisement or campaign that is driving them to this landing page

The landing page example portrays an effective use of sales copy because it is visually appealing and organized into bullet points.

2. Strong Call-to-Action

Imagine you are walking down a street and you see a sign that says “1 million dollars right this way”. You decide to start heading that direction. After about a mile you get to the end of the road where there is a cliff, and nothing else. You look around and see a bunch of information regarding this 1 million dollars that could be yours. You see beautiful signs, you see awesome images of people throwing money around in the air, but you aren’t told how to get this million dollars you were told about. This same situation is what can occur if your landing page doesn’t use a strong call-to-action. If you have the best advertisements in the world scattered all over the web for your campaign with click through rates of 90% (how awesome would that be), it won’t matter if people don’t know what to do when they get to your landing page. So the key is to inform website visitors exactly what the page is about and what you want them to do when they get there. And, it should always be focused on only one call-to-action, not multiple messages. You will notice on our TakeLessons landing page there is a one centralized message and one main call to action; private English lessons and getting started is easy. To make your call-to-action strong, just follow these pointers:

Be direct and to the point- you don’t want to waste someone’s time (remember you have 10 seconds)
Be demanding and create urgency- people are more likely to buy when they feel they will miss out
Be simple- don’t make your message overly creative, witty, or wordy (follow the K.I.S.S. principle)

3. Design and Color Choices

Over 70 years ago Hedwig von Restorff conducted and experiment on human memory. Basically she wrote down a list of 10 items where 9 out of the 10 were black. The other one was a different color. The conclusion of her experiment showed that people remembered the item that was a different color easier than the others. This same theory applies today and should be leveraged on your landing pages, particularly involving sign up form (assuming your landing page has one- which it should). The best way that successful marketers are able to exhibit this theory on their landing pages is by creating visual signals that allow the sign up form to stand out to visitors. There are a number of ways this can be accomplished, but I recommend these four strategies:

Place a border around your sign up form or have the background color/image of the form be a different color then the main background
Incorporate arrows or other directional design elements that point people toward the form where they enter their information
The call-to-action button the user clicks on to submit their information needs to be a bright color such as a red, blue, or green
The call-to-action button should always say something other than “submit”

You’ll see that in the landing page example the sign up form is exhibiting some of the mentioned points. The form has a dark grey top, light grey background, and the call-to-action button is bright blue: There have been a number of studies conducted on color theory in relation to its impact on increasing conversions. A study by ContentVerve.com shows an increase in sales by 35% simply by changing the button color from dark blue to bright green.

4. Trust Symbols

Trust is one of the single most important factors in any relationship. Without it, we lack substance. We trust our friends when they tell us to check out a movie. We trust our parents as kids when they tell us we can overcome some childhood obstacle. And we should trust in the product or service we are choosing to buy. It is that simple. Think about this from Tim Ash, adding trust symbols to your landing page can increase conversions by anywhere from 20-40% (although I feel this is a bit extreme and the landing page must have been terrible to begin with). There are a handful of different trust symbols that can be used on your website, but the most common are as follows:

Reviews, star ratings, and testimonials from authority sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, Google, etc.
Badges of membership from associations like the BBB or other industry specific memberships that carry authority
Security labels from sites like Verisign or McAfee show your website is secure and safe
Privacy policy so visitors know they can trust you and know what you are up to with their provided information
Miscellaneous badges that read “money back guarantee”, “doctor approved”, etc.

Our landing page example uses the privacy policy right below the submit button, membership badges, a security seal, and logos of legitimate businesses they have worked with.

5. Minimal Number of Sign Up Form fields

This is extremely simple and applies directly to your sign up form. Less is more. Only ask for the necessary information you require from a visitor to your landing page in order to convert them or qualify them accordingly. If all you require is an email address and the person is good to go, then ask for an email address only. As you can see, TakeLessons decided that they needed first name, email, and phone number to qualify people for a proper conversion. I’ve had numerous clients come to me for consulting services and they want to add a form to their landing page or website that includes like 12 fields. No one wants to fill out 12 fields unless you are in a specific industry where this is necessary and expected. A perfect example is Adobe. Every form you fill out for an Adobe report of some kind requires like 10 pieces of information. I am still confused why I sign up. QuickSprout provides an example where conversion rates increased by 120% from simply changing the number of form fields from 11 to 4. Interestingly enough, the same report notes that forms with 3 fields can expect a 25% conversion rate, 3 to 5 fields can see 20%, and forms with 6 plus will result in 15% conversion rate. Now I believe this to be an extreme case, but it is still interesting to see the impact subtle changes can have.

Money Making Conclusion about Landing Pages

I think the correlation here is very simple. By creating a landing page with great sales copy, a strong call-to-action, proper design and color selection, powerful trust symbols, and the correct number of sign up fields, you will undoubtedly see an increase in conversions. Even websites that are already highly successful like SEOMoz, were able to see a $1 million increase in sales from landing page changes when working with Conversion Rate Experts. No matter how large or small your business may be, if you implement these 5 guiding principles the money will start rolling in shortly after.

About the Author Michael is an entrepreneur and Internet marketing mentor who specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), social media, web development, paid advertising and other areas of Internet marketing. He’s had the pleasure of working with everything from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies in Southern California. Check out his tweets at @michaelgkeating.

The post Let’s Talk About Landing Pages appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.

Top 5 Facebook Page Image Sources

Luke — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:25:18 +0000

Once you have created a Facebook Page it is important that you have great content to post to it consistently so you keep your users happy and engaged with your Page. I have found that images usually get the most Likes, shares, and comments from users who Like my page so the majority of the posts I make on it are photos. An important thing to keep in mind when you are looking through the 5 different image content sources I have listed below is that the more Likes, shares, and comments the content you post on your Page get the more viral traffic you will get from it. Viral traffic comes from your friends mentioning your Page or any interaction they do on your Page that shows up on their friend’s News Feed. As I showed in my article on Optimized vs Manual Bidding, if your post goes viral you can literally reach millions of users for absolutely free! So, here is a list of my top 5 favorite sources for images I post on my Facebook Pages. I highly recommend you use them and consider posting images from them on your Pages!

Tumblr

Tumblr is my favorite and most used source for images to post on my Facebook Pages. There are over 50,000,000,000 posts on Tumblr and you can search them using the awesome Tumblr Search. You can search for tags used to describe posts on blogs within Tumblr and find thousands of great images for pretty much any topic. Sign up for Tumblr to use an improved search experience and make sure you check multiple tags based on your niche including the ones recommended by Tumblr.

Google Images

Of course, Google Images is also a great place to find images. I like to use Tumblr because I feel like the images are fresh, but if I don’t see anything that I want to post then I will start searching Google Images.

Depending on your niche, Pinterest can be an awesome source of images to post on your Facebook Page. I have found a lot of great stuff on there that I will often post because if it is popular on Pinterest more than likely your users will like it too. You do not need a Pinterest account to search images. Simply head over to the Pinterest All page.

Imgur

I have wasted so much of my life looking through the hilarious images and witty comments on imgur. Anyone can search imgur directly from the homepage and more than likely you will find some awesome images you can post on your Page.

deviantART

The image source I use the least, but the one that gets some of the best response is deviantART. They have a ton of great drawings and artwork for most any niche. Your users will find them interesting because they are unique and this will typically draw in a lot of engagement. I recommend giving any user’s image that you use credit for that image so you do not upset anyone. You can leave a note in the description of the image when you post it your Facebook Page with the original creator’s name and possibly a link to the picture on deviantART. Once you have created your Facebook Page and found some good content to post, you are ready to start building up your user base and getting users engaged. Your Page will not be worth anything without any traffic, but growing it is not as hard as it sounds. Build up content, try out some Facebook Ads for your Page, and get the ball rolling. Once you start getting Likes you will get viral traffic from those user’s friends and your Page should continue to grow on it’s own. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or would like suggestions. Let’s make some money!

The post Top 5 Facebook Page Image Sources appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.

How to Create a Facebook Page

Luke — Wed, 29 May 2013 00:49:59 +0000

Over the past year I have invested a lot of time and money into building Pages on Facebook. Facebook has grown tremendously over the past few years and Pages are a way you can use Facebook to build a community and reach people about any topic imaginable. I have several large Pages that I use to reach hundreds of thousands of people daily and it doesn’t cost me a dime! The first step in building your community is to create a Facebook Page. Below I will outline how you can create your Page and then teach you a few tricks I use to get my Page started and moving in the right direction. If you follow these steps you will have your first Page up in no time and then building more after that will only take you a few minutes.

Create a Page

Finding the link to create a Page on Facebook will change over time as they update their design so I recommend simply bookmarking/favoriting the following link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/create (click here) When you go to that link you are taken to the first step in creating your Facebook Page which is selecting the category your Page fits under. Once you click on your general category you will select the actual category from a drop down. You will enter your Page name and agree to Facebook’s terms.

Setup Your Facebook Page

The next step is to finish setting up the creation of your Facebook Page. There are 3 steps to complete this setup.

You can change any of these settings later, but I recommend filling them out when you create your page. The most important thing is probably your Profile Picture (step 2). The profile picture will display on your page as 160×160 (pixels), but the minimum size you can upload is 180×180. I recommend uploading a picture that is square and at least 200×200. Your profile picture is important because it is the image that represents your Page on every single post you make. Let’s take a look at some other important image sizes.

Facebook Page Image Sizes

There are a few different image sizes you should know when creating and adding content to your Facebook Pages. After I have setup my Facebook Page I usually will add a cover photo. The Cover Photo size is 851×315. Facebook is integrating Cover Photos deeper into Facebook than when they originally added them. It’s not only the big header image of your Facebook Page, but when your Page is shown on a News Feed it will also be displayed on hover or sometimes even on the feed itself. Here is an example: So, as you can see it’s important to choose good images for both your profile picture and cover photo. I recommend using creative images that will draw in user’s eyes. I attempted to do this with the Facebook Page for this blog: The two images that represent your Facebook Page are not the only two important ones. If you are going to get your users engaged with your content it’s important to keep the in mind how images will display on their News Feeds. It should come as no surprise that the most engaging type of post you can make on your Facebook Page is a photo. People love pictures and “a picture is worth 1,000 words.” So, I recommend posting pictures related to the niche of your page pretty frequently. Images will automatically be displayed on your Facebook Page as a maximum of 403×403 pixels. The maximum size you can upload is 2048×2048, but I recommend resizing your images to around 500×425 pixels. I have found that this size gets a great response from my Facebook Page users. It displays well on their News Feed and people are likely to Like, comment, and share. So, you should have your Facebook Page up and running. I typically add 2-3 posts a day to my active Facebook Pages. On average your content will get engagement for about 3 hours after you post it. So, unless it goes viral, it will stop getting new Likes, shares, and comments after about 3 hours. By posting 3 times a day you’re more likely to reach more of your users. If you are looking to get more Likes on your page I recommend reading my article on Optimized CPM Facebook Ad Bidding. I have made thousands and thousands of dollars from my Facebook Pages and I will be outlining the entire process over the next few weeks. Let me know if you have any questions. Let’s make some money!

The post How to Create a Facebook Page appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.

Surfing Affiliate Offers with GeoSurf

Luke — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:30:17 +0000

One of the most common questions that I get from my publishers at PeerFly is “how can I view the offer landing page?” or “why am I being taken to the wrong landing page when I try to view my affiliate link?” and those are very good questions because it is important that you know what you are promoting. Nearly every affiliate network and most smart advertisers have geographic redirect scripts setup on their landing pages so that if someone from outside of the countries they want to receive traffic from comes to that page they are redirected elsewhere. So, if you have a CPA offer that you are only looking for leads from the United States on and someone from Canada tries to go to it you redirect them to an offer that allows Canadian traffic. This makes a lot of sense to do, but if you are an affiliate that wants to promote that offer and you live outside of it’s allowed countries it can be really annoying to try to view the landing page for that offer. There are free browser based proxies available throughout the web, but they not very reliable. Instead, I recommend you use a premium proxy service like GeoSurf.

What is GeoSurf?

GeoSurf is an awesome proxy service that allows you to connect to their network of proxies to make it appear as if you are surfing the internet from that location. They have 110 proxy servers available to their members from all over the world and many ways you can connect to those GeoSurf servers (more information on that below in GeoSurf Features). GeoSurf’s 110 proxy servers are located in many different locations including 25 in specific designated marketing areas within the United States. For those looking specifically for proxies in the United States, here are the 25 cities they have proxy servers located in:

Atlanta (GA)
Austin (TX)
Boston (MA)
Charlotte (NC)
Chicago (IL)
Columbus (OH)
Dallas (TX)
Denver (CO)
Houston (TX)
Kansas City (MO)
Las Vegas (NV)
Los Angeles (CA)
Mclean (VA)
Miami (FL)
Minneapolis (MN)
New Orleans (LA)
New York (NY)
Philadelphia (PA)
Phoenix (AZ)
Portland (OR)
Raleigh (NC)
Sacramento (CA)
San Diego (CA)
San Francisco (CA)
Seattle (WA)
St Louis (MO)
Tampa (FL)
Washington DC

As you can see, they have a lot of great locations that are definitely needed. For international affiliates looking to view landing pages for offers that only allow traffic from the US, there are 25 different locations you can try. There are also international proxy servers for all the top countries there are offers on PeerFly for. So, what tools and features are available to allow you to surf the GeoSurf proxies?

GeoSurf Features

GeoSurf Toolbar The GeoSurf Toolbar is probably my favorite tool out of their nice collection. It allows you to easily surf using any of their proxy server locations directly from your browser. All you have to do is install the toolbar for whichever browser you prefer. They have one available for all the major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer).

GeoSurf Plus GeoSurf Plus is a pretty cool features that allows you to view display campaigns that are being run on sites, which advertisers are running where, and which ad networks are being used in the campaigns. You can find more information on GeoSurf Plus here.

GeoSurf VPN With the GeoSurf VPN you can change your entire computers IP to one of the proxy servers available from the various GeoSurf locations. This allows you to use applications on your computer from a different IP whereas the GeoSurf toolbar is simply for viewing sites within your browser.

GeoSurf for Android and iPhone The GeoSurf for Android phones, iPhones, and iPads is really cool. It allows you to use the GeoSurf proxy network from 98 locations directly on your phone. If you’re running mobile campaigns this is a great way to truly see and get the local perspective for your campaign.

GeoSurf Mobile Emulator The Mobile Emulator is a lot like the GeoSurf mobile application for iPhone and Android except it emulates those devices directly in your web browser rather than a native application.

GeoSurf Direct Connect API If you are a developer you may want to check out the GeoSurf Direct Connect API that allows you to connect to the gateways within the GeoSurf proxy network through an API.

For most affiliates the GeoSurf Premium Proxy Toolbar is a must. If you do a lot of mobile marketing you should definitely check out the native applications (iPhone or Android) and the Mobile Emulator. GeoSurf Plus is nice, but I’d recommend getting in touch with the support at GeoSurf and getting the free report they offer before you dive into that. The support at GeoSurf is fantastic so if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact them. If you are frustrated with viewing landing pages and media from outside of your country you need to check out GeoSurf and considering buying their proxy service. Let’s make some money!

The post Surfing Affiliate Offers with GeoSurf appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.

How to Install Prosper202

Luke — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:52:21 +0000

A common question I have received over the past 2 years from my readers on this blog is “how do I install Prosper202 on my server.” I have been using Prosper202 for a few years now and have installed it on numerous servers without any trouble, but I can see where someone who is not experienced in setting up a database or using an FTP client could get confused. So, I am going to explain the entire installation process from download to setup. This should answer many of the common questions that come up while installing Prosper202, but if you get to the end and you still are unsure do not hesitate to ask in the comments below. First off, we need to actually download Prosper202 to your computer.

Download Prosper202

To be able to upload Prosper202 to your web server you are first going to need to download it to your computer. You can download Prosper202 for free from the official Tracking202 page here. Make sure you download Prosper202 somewhere on your computer where you will be able to easily find it. I usually just download it directly to my desktop.

Create Subdomain or Setup Your Domain

Once you have Prosper202 downloaded you will need to setup the directory on your server where you will install it. There are two options I use:

Install directly in the public_html folder of the domain.
Create a subdomain and install on the subdomain directory.

If you are going to use your domain just for tracking your campaigns with Prosper202 then I recommend installing it directly in the public_html directory for that domain. If you are going to use that domain for other things then you may want to setup a subdomain to host Prosper202. I have had several people tell me they could not install Prosper202 on a subdomain, but I have done it a bunch of times and never had any issues. Now that you know where you’re going to install Prosper202 you need to setup your database.

Create a Database for Prosper202

Prosper202 is powered by a MySQL database so you will need to create one on your server. If you have cPanel then creating a database is a really simple three step process. If you do not have cPanel installed on your server you will need to search how to create a database. With cPanel simply:

Create a database
Create a user
Grant user permissions on database

Create Database Create a user Once you create your database and MySQL user you will need to grant permissions to that user. Now that you have granted permissions (privileges) to your MySQL database user and created your database, your Prosper202 database setup is complete. It’s time to upload Prosper202 to your server.

Upload Prosper202 to Your Server

If you have a FTP client that you already use then uploading Prosper202 to your server should be pretty simple. If you do not have a FTP client I recommend you download FileZilla. FileZilla is free and really easy to use. Upload the Prosper202 files to the directory for either your domain or the subdomain you created previously.

Install Prosper202

Once you have uploaded all the Prosper202 files you are ready to finish up your installation. Go to your domain or subdomain you installed Propser202 on and you should be promoted with a window that looks like this: Click to create a 202-config.php file so you can create your Prosper202 configuration file. Click let’s go and you will be prompted with the following form: You will need to complete the form with the information for the database you created earlier. The only things you should need to change are Database Name, User Name, and Password. Once you have entered your information push Submit. If you made a mistake on the form you will get an error message saying a database connection cannot be made. Otherwise, you will get this message:

All right sparky! You’ve made it through this part of the installation. Prosper202 can now communicate with your database. If you are ready, time now to run the install!

Click run the install and you will be taken to this form: Creating your account is the last step in the Prosper202 installation process. Once you click Install Prosper202 you are all set. You can login to your Prosper202 account and you are all done! Installing Prosper202 is not that hard and if you have everything in place you should be able to do it pretty easily. Once you have installed Propser202 make sure you check out my guide on how to setup your affiliate campaign using Prosper202. With the right tools you will make your job as an affiliate marketer a lot easier. Prosper202 is a great start and should definitely help you analyze your traffic. Please let me know if you have any questions. Let’s make some money!

The post How to Install Prosper202 appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.

PeerFly Banner Rotator

Luke — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:04:10 +0000

One of the goals at PeerFly is to provide our publishers with all the tools required in order for them to be successful. Not only is this a company mission, but it is my personal mission as well. The main reason I write in this blog is to share my knowledge and experience with affiliate marketing so you have an easier time being successful than I did. About a year and a half ago I made a site called PeerFlyBanners.com. The site provided a script that allowed you to easily rotate the banners available on our offers at PeerFly. Although it works pretty well, has been used by over 1,000 PeerFly publishers, and has generated nearly 20,000,000 banner impressions, a better option has finally been created. I am happy to announce that we have officially launched our own in-house rotator finally at PeerFly. It is much better than my script and here are a few reasons why.

The New Banner Rotator Features

The new PeerFly banner rotator, named Ads By PeerFly, is much more complex than the simple banner rotator I previously provided my publishers. Not only is it more stable because it is being hosted on our amazing servers at PeerFly, but it will also be updated more frequently because we have our in-house programming team working on it. Over time I expect this new tool to be more than you can even picture at the moment and I have no doubt it will help my publishers make a lot more money.

On-Page Rotation

The banner rotator is setup to automatically rotate banners while your users are on the page. After a banner has been displayed for 15 seconds it automatically rotates to the next best banner based on our automated optimization. This should help increase your CTR and that should help you make more money!

Keyword Search

You can now filter banners by keyword term. So, if you want to rotate the iPhone offers from PeerFly simply enter the keyword iPhone and the rotator will specifically look for iPhone offers to display. You can also break this down by vertical or verticals (iPhone email submits).

Country Specific Offers

One of the features missing most from PeerFlyBanners.com was the ability to only display banners for offers that allow traffic from the visitor’s country. This was the first thing we added to the new banner rotator. You do not have to worry about your visitors being redirected because they are clicking on banners for offers that do not allow traffic from their country anymore! This will help increase your conversion rate and revenue.

Display or Hide Adult Banners

Another feature not previously supported by PeerFlyBanners was the ability to hide or display adult banners. You can now choose to display all banners, never display adult banners, or only display adult banners.

WordPress Plugin

I have also created a WordPress Plugin you can download and install on your WordPress blog to easily add the banner rotator script without having to touch any code. Once you download and install the plugin on your blog you will see a new PeerFly Banners Rotator widget on your Widgets page. You can drag and drop that into any sidebar on your blog and create your rotator using a simple form (shown to the right). You can add this widget as many times as you want to as many sidebars as you want. I recommend a maximum of 5, but feel free to test out various locations to see what works best for you. I am hoping to get this plugin added to the WordPress Plugin Directory soon and once it is you will be able to update it directly from your WordPress admin area. Click the button above to download the latest version of the plugin from my Dropbox. I’m really excited to see how beneficial our new banner rotator is going to be for our publishers at PeerFly. We are already serving millions of impressions a day and I expect that as we continue to see this tool grow and we’re able to optimize it and add new features everyone is going to enjoy the amazing results it has to offer. If you have any questions about the new banner rotator or the WordPress plugin that goes with it please let me know. I’d also appreciate some feedback so don’t forget to comment once you get it all set up on your site. Let’s make some money!

The post PeerFly Banner Rotator appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.

LPF is Two Years Old!

Luke — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:20:14 +0000

Yesterday I got an alert on my iPhone that told me that today was going to be this blog’s birthday and to be honest, I thought it was a mistake. It seems like just last week that I was writing my article about LPF’s first birthday. Time really has flown by over the past year and that is probably because it has been such an amazing year. I got a new blog design that helped propel this blog forward in a way I never even thought was possible, I published a bunch of posts that have gotten an amazing response from my readers, and I have launched a few new projects that have helped me extend my reach throughout the affiliate marketing industry.

New Blog Design

Last year I decided that it was time to get a custom design done for this blog. I had been using a theme I purchased on ThemeForest and had modified it quite a bit. I knew a custom design was really necessary to take this blog to the next level so I got in touch with the guy that had made our new PeerFly design. After a few stressful weeks and about $1,000 I finally had the awesome new blog design you see today.

Amazing Blog Growth

As I predicted in last year’s birthday post, LPF has continued to see amazing growth over the past year and traffic has more than doubled. Although I published 27 less posts than the year before, my pageviews over the past year have tripled, the amount of comments posted has doubled, and Alexa shows this blog as one of the top 20,000 visited in the world. My Alexa rank is now better than one the blogs I admire most, ZacJohnson.com (who recently interviewed me).

Blog Stats since April 2012

60 posts
1,602 comments (92,000 spam)
1,500,000 pageviews
2,137 Likes (http://www.facebook.com/LukePeerFly)
Thousands of Affiliate Manager Exclusive subscribers

My top 10 posts list from last year included some of the posts below, but even the top post had less than 10,000 views. Now, my most read article, Setting up a 7Search Campaign, has had over 40,000 views and should hit 50,000 in the next month or so. I am hoping by next year my top post will have been viewed over 100,000 times!

POF Case Studies

For a few months my primary focus was setting up campaigns on Plenty of Fish (POF). Although I had previously published my 4 tips for a successful POF campaign, I had not been actively running any campaigns so I deposited some money on POF Ads and went to work. I published 3 different POF Case Studies that have been read over 40,000 times.

Product Reviews

I also tried out and reviewed quite a few different products and tools over the past year. Some of the reviews were paid, but I only accepted paid reviews for products that I knew would be useful to my publishers and any affiliate marketer in the space. Something I did not expect when I started writing these reviews is that I would rank so well in Google for the various product and tool names. It has definitely been a pleasant surprise and has helped generate thousands of pageviews for these product owners.

New Projects Launched

I can never seem to stop working on new projects. Over the past year I have added 4 new projects to my list:

I have also made a lot of updates to PeerFlyOffers.com, which has had over 300,000 searches since last April. LPF’s second year has been awesome and it has really changed my outlook and goals for this blog. I get compliments every single trade show I attend from people I have never met about how much they like my blog and how helpful it has been. It is my goal to keep building on that over the next year. I’m hopeful that I will start setting aside more time to write articles so I can publish them more frequently. I’m also hopeful that my newsletter will reach 10,000 subscribers and my Alexa rank will drop below 10,000. I appreciate everything this industry has given me and I’m thankful for being able to give back through this blog and my various projects. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any subjects you’d like me to cover or any questions you think I can answer for you. Together, we can both continue to grow. Let’s make some money!

The post LPF is Two Years Old! appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.

Facebook Fan Page Ads: Optimized Bidding or Manual?

Luke — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:41:14 +0000

Over the past year and a half or so one of my main interests has been building Facebook fan pages. It all started with a WSO I bought and promoted called Fanpage Commissions. Since then, I have started quite a few very successful fan pages and made well over $10,000 from them. During that time I have learned quite a bit about both what works and what does not work when building and advertising a fan page. For instance, which type of bidding you should use when advertising your fan page or fan page content: Optimized bidding or “Advanced” (manual) bidding? When you create an ad specifically for a fan page on Facebook you are given a few different options on what you would like to promote with that ad. You can get more page likes, promote page posts, or use advanced options to create your campaign. Get More Page Likes The Get More Page Likes option simply allows you to create a Facebook ad specifically for your fan page. This add will include the Like button below it to encourage people who view the ad to Like your page. Promote Page Posts The Promote Page Posts option is similar to the Get More Page Likes option, but instead of you creating the advertisement that is being displayed it will show an advertisement with a recent post you have made on your fan page. This optional also includes a Like This Page link below the post content to help encourage users seeing the ad to Like your page as well. Sponsored Stories Both of these ad types and the Advanced Options allow you to also create Sponsored Stories to help increase your reach. Sponsored Stories allow you to create ads that “Help people discover your business through their friends. No increase in budget is required.” Basically, it will create stories on your fan’s friends new feeds about:

People liking your Page post
People commenting on your Page post
People sharing your Page post

The cool thing about Sponsored Stories is that the CTR and engagement is usually really high and it can drive a ton of targeted traffic to your posts without raising the price of your traffic. You may not get as many new Likes to your fan page, but you will get a lot of Comments, Shares, and Post Likes (likes specifically on the post, not the page). So, now that you know about the different ad types and you have created your ad, what is the best bidding strategy?

Fan Page Ad Bidding

There are three different options you can choose from when deciding how you want to bid for traffic when setting up your Facebook Ads campaign for a fan page. The three options are:

Optimized CPM
CPC
CPM

The CPM and CPC are basic bidding models. You can bid a CPC (cost per click) or a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions). Facebook gives you suggested CPCs and CPMs if you choose these options, but you can bid whatever you want. The Optimized CPM is the option that I use most and recommend. You do not get to choose what you bid with this option, but Facebook will automatically bid the best price for you to get the most engagement possible. You do not have any control over the price, but over time is it usually the best option. With most Facebook ad campaigns you setup you should notice that over time if your CTR is good your CPM or CPC will drop. Well, the same is true for the Optimized CPM campaigns. I have noticed that it usually takes a little longer, but I have several campaigns that have been running for months and I’m only paying $0.03-0.05 CPM. Here is an example campaign I set up last week and the fluctuation on the CPM as time went on:

Day	Spend	Optimized CPM
1	$10	$6.08
2	$3	$0.84
3	$3	$1.26
4	$3	$0.56
5	$5	$0.80

With those 5 days worth of data you can see that my CPM started out really high. I knew that was going to happen, but I still made the mistake of leaving my daily budget at $10. I usually will start all my campaigns out at a $3 daily budget because this will be enough to give me some data on whether or not this campaign is going to be worthwhile. I like to run the campaigns over the course of a week or so to let the Optimized CPM drop and with a $3 daily budget you’re only going to spend $21 maximum. Well, with this campaign I started to see promising results so I went ahead and increased my budget on the 5th day. I will keep this one running as long as it’s producing new fans and engagement. I estimate that over the next week my Optimized CPM will drop to around $0.20 and then hopefully even more than that in the coming weeks. Now, if you have been paying attention you may be wondering why I don’t just setup the exact same campaign and bid a CPM lower than what my Optimized CPM is. If all the Optimized CPM is doing is letting Facebook figure out where my best CPM is then why can’t I just setup this exact same campaign with a set CPM of $0.56? I have already seen my Optimized CPM drop to that rate so if I manually bid that I should see traffic right? Well, I decided to do just that so we could take a look.

Optimized CPM vs Manual CPM Bidding

I created the same ad from the table above using standard set CPM bidding. I set the max CPM at $0.77 and let it run for a day. On the second day (which is also day 2 from the table above), I saw the following results for the same exact ad for the two different bidding types: After just 1 day my manual CPM dropped from the maximum CPM I was bidding, $0.77, to just $0.05. My CTR was not great ($0.054%), but I did get 30 clicks for $3.00 and 9 Page Likes. On the other hand, the Optimized CPM bidding campaign got 859 clicks (including Photo Views, Post Shares, Post Comments, etc) with a 24% CTR after just $3 spent. I also got 40 new Page Likes from this campaign. It’s easy to see from these campaigns that Facebook favors the Optimized CPM bidding campaigns. I only got a 10th of the exposure (reach), but the people I did reach were much more engaged. Although my CPM is quite a bit more, it’s already dropping and will continue to drop. I may not reach the $0.05 CPM, but the increased engagement will more than make up for the higher CPM. I recommend the next time you are creating a Facebook Ads campaign for your fan page that you split test this yourself. I think you will find similar results. I am going to stick to the Optimized CPM bidding because I have seen the amazing results it can give. Fan pages on Facebook can be powerful tools to reach a very large targeted audience. Knowing how to build, maintain, and advertise pages can lead to a very profitable and long term business. I have several large pages (including the one from the screenshot on the left) that I am doing all those things on and the results have been very promising. Over the next month I plan to post more about fan pages and will be releasing my own product to show you exactly what I am doing. If you’re interested in being first in line to give it a try join my mailing list. Until then, let’s make some money!

The post Facebook Fan Page Ads: Optimized Bidding or Manual? appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.

Create a Twitter Card

Luke — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:43:28 +0000

I have been an active Twitter user since 2007. When I first joined most people were laughing at Twitter saying it was worthless and stupid. I enjoyed using Twitter and saw the potential to use it for marketing purposes. How people market using Twitter has changed quite a bit over the past few years, but as Twitter has evolved so have the marketers using it. One cool feature you can use on Twitter to help make your website links stand out above the the rest and improve your marketing response is the Twitter Card. Twitter Cards are relatively new to Twitter. Basically, you add a piece of code to your website or blog and then Twitter will use that piece of code to generate a preview (Card) with details about your link and display those details on your tweet on Twitter. Sound complicated? It’s not really. Let’s take a look at two of my Twitter Cards. With the Twitter Card examples above, my blog is linked in the tweet on left and an offer on PeerFlyOffers.com is linked to on the right. First, let’s take a look at the one for my blog.

WordPress Twitter Card

Creating a Twitter Card for your WordPress blog is really easy. Most SEO plugins have the functionality built in. I use SEO Ultimate on this blog and it has the Twitter Card functionality feature built into the new post page. The more popular WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin makes setting up the Twitter Card a little more complicated. You have to enable it under the Social section of their SEO menu. Once enabled, either WordPress plugin will create the META tags required in order to create the Twitter Card. To see if you have it properly installed, setup, and enabled, you can use the preview Twitter Card tool.

Twitter Card META Tags

The Twitter Card META tags are pretty easy to understand and add to your site. I’ve added them to PeerFlyOffers.com offer pages which where the information in the tweet on the right in the screenshot above is coming from. Basically, you just create meta tags for:

URL
Title
Description
Image

There are a few other tags you can add as well. Here are the meta tags I’m using:

You would want to change the “content” to whatever content you want to show in your Twitter Card. Place those tags in the head of your HTML page and then preview your new Twitter Card to make sure it’s setup properly.

Submit Your Twitter Card

Once your Twitter Card is setup properly you will need to submit it to Twitter and get it approved before it will start showing up on tweets with your site links. It’s taken up to two weeks before my Twitter Card was reviewed and approved. Once submitted and reviewed you will get an email from Twitter letting you know whether your Card has been approved or not. It is important to stay ahead of the curve and I think as Twitter continues to evolve they’ll be integrating Twitter Card information more and more. So, if you have yours setup and ready to go when those changes go into effect you will be ahead of the competition. I decided to setup mine for the same reason I made sure to get my picture added to Google’s results, it’s good for branding and should help provide extra exposure. So, create your Twitter Card today and stay ahead of the competition. Let me know if you have any questions. Let’s make some money!

The post Create a Twitter Card appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.

Search Incent.ly Offers on IncentlyOffers.com

Luke — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:20:25 +0000

Last month PeerFly launched a new incentive based affiliate network called incent.ly. On the day of the launch and the following weeks one of the common questions I received was, “when is there going to be an IncentlyOffers.com?” Over the past 2+ years my PeerFly publishers have grown fond of my offer search at PeerFlyOffers.com. When I originally launched PeerFly Offers I assumed it would only be used by people that found it doing Google searches or people who were not approved yet by PeerFly, but what I have found is that a lot of affiliates still use it after they’re an approved PeerFly publisher. I often use it myself rather than the PeerFly offer search and last year there were over 300,000 searches performed on PeerFlyOffers.com so I know I’m not the only one. So, with the launch of incent.ly I knew I needed to put together IncentlyOffers.com and after a few short weeks of programming and tweaking code, I officially launched it yesterday!

Search Incent.ly Offers

The cool thing about PeerFlyOffers.com and IncentlyOffers.com is they have the exact same structure just like PeerFly and Incent.ly and they work the same, but obviously with different offers. With IncentlyOffers.com you can search through the 500+ incentive affiliate offers that are available at incent.ly. The search bar at the top of the page will search each offer’s:

Name
Description
Offer ID
Country
Vertical
Banner Sizes

It has a nice autocomplete (search as you type) feature as well.

Incent.ly Offer Lists

You can also use Incently Offers to view various offer lists. These include:

and the top offers for each marketing method allowed:

There are also lists for each offer vertical available on incent.ly. You can use these lists and offer search to find the best available offers to run for your specific incentive traffic.

Incent.ly Offers

Each offer found when searching Incent.ly Offers has it’s own offer page as well. On that offer page you can find all the details available for that offer. This includes offer description, vertical, allowed marketing, restricted marketing, banners, similar offers, and conversation rate history. IncentlyOffers.com is the only place you can find each offers conversion rate history! So, what do you think? I am planning to keep improving on PeerFlyOffers and IncentlyOffers. It should be easy to apply any new features or updates to both sites. If there’s anything you would like to see added or updated please let me know. Let’s make some money!

The post Search Incent.ly Offers on IncentlyOffers.com appeared first on Affiliate Manager, Marketer, Web Developer, and Entrepreneur.