Now Affiliate Summit Central was a decent show because it held a different crowd than the traditional Las Vegas and New York event. The crowd was more mature and more for users who wanted to learn about internet marketing but not more so affiliate or performance marketing. I spoke to a couple of people and it seemed that is what they were more into. I only spoke to maybe 1 lead buyer at the show.

At this show, there was no show floor. It was just a meet market style and open tables for discussion. I literally walked the whole meet market in 1 minute. If you know how the Meet Markets are at the Las Vegas and New York Affiliate Summit, they do get compact.

Other than that I met up with several networks such as Neverblue, Clickbooth, Peerfly, and Mundo Media. I also met up with industry friends such as Logan Thompson, Jeremy Palmer, Shaz, Smax from Ads4Dough, Max from What Runs Where, Ted from EngageBDR and many others. Gladly there was enough performance marketers that I had a good time at the show.

I went to some sessions and it was very basic for me. The one sessions I wanted to go to but conflicted with Jeremy Palmer’s session was the BrainFluence. I saw some tweets and it received some good feedback. In any case the sessions isn’t the reason why I go to Affiliate Summit is all about the networking and meeting up with industry friends.

Since I am getting into my own offers, I was able to talk in-depth about new strategies with people and be more involve in the conversation. Being a smaller show, it definitely put me at ease from all the stimulants that does happen at an oversold Affiliate Summit. At Central, I was able to just sit and talk and expand with many of the performance marketers.

Some pictures from the show…

The show I thought was good for me because I hanged out with Shawn and Missy, Logan, Luke, my affiliate managers and got to know other networks and users as well. Even though it was small, I gained some new ideas and insights from this show. Will I attend the next Affiliate Summit Central show, that is up in the air. I am not even sure if Shawn and Missy will continue an Affiliate Summit Central in Texas. The turn around was pretty good I would say.

It is a good thing I am pretty open to everyone, I didn’t feel too much out of place but the show was enjoyable. The after show parties is what kept me going and I looked forward to going to all the show parties. I met up with Fluent and Mundo and attended a small gathering at Iron Cactus. I then met up with an advertiser to grab some food and we headed out to the ShareaSale party. I met and talked to Jeremy and others while I was there.

It was then off to Engage BDR party and then more drinking on 6th street. Even though the show was small, it seems everyone comes out for the parties and it felt more people were more open to talk with a bit of alcohol in their system. Affiliate Summit did it up with the parties and even though the show was small, the party experience wasn’t lacking.

Looking forward to Affiliate Summit East in New York!

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2. Affiliate Summit West is Next Week: Get Ready!
3. Affiliate Summit West 2012, Starting the Year Right!

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To first get an idea of how you need to properly scale your business, you need to actually map out your entire week. Even better, you actually take a whole week and write down every single thing that you do during your working hours. And I mean every single thing that you do!

You will be amazed at what you do each and every single day over and over and over again. On a side note, this is also an awesome time management exercise, as you can see where you can trim the fat of the day (such as refreshing stats all day maybe…).

Now, trim down the fat to where you can pinpoint exactly what you do each day in order to make money on the one specific area. Form a plan on the exact steps that you need to do. Say you want to make a huge network of personal niche sites and want to outsource it so that it grows faster. You need to outline exactly what the hired person will do so the sites can be scaled properly and efficiently.

There are many different levels of scaling your business. You can be involved and just not do the grunt work, or you can be totally hands off. Do you want to hire writers and designers and link builders yourself or do you want to hire a manager to take care of all of that for you? The less you do, the more time you have for higher paying opportunities, but you are also giving up control. You have to make sure you 100% trust your manager, especially in an online atmosphere.

So basically to do it properly, you need to make a real plan of what needs to be done and let someone execute it. Basically, you are trying to franchise your business while still owning the company. A lot of this can be interchangeable with outsourcing really, but as long as you are building on what you are already doing, it should be considered scaling since you are expanding on something you know is already profitable.

I do this with my local businesses and we are expanding rapidly. My main business model was to build it off the talents of good, strong, aggressive salespeople, who are doing a great job thus far. We hired them for basically commission only and my manager gets a small salary plus a nice percentage of the commissions. Of course we are profitable and busy, as our salespeople just visit local businesses and get contracts for the hundreds of services we can perform. It is amazing to see what they do. And because of this model, I have been able to open another store an hour away and be successful at it without having to be there every day.

Scaling can be hard and it is a daunting task at first, which is why people are afraid of it. The reason that I find most people are scared of is giving up control or the risk of being taken advantage of. Business is cutthroat, and even your employees, who you may treat like gold, are cutthroat. Employees are always looking for easier way out, and some think they can do things better then you. So you always run the risk of divulging your business model and trade secrets to people you think you can trust. That is downright scary, especially when you have spent years upon years learning and building your business. You don’t want to lose your entire business you have worked so hard to build to someone you hired.

While that can happen, it more then likely won’t. I hate to say it, but those people who are your employees will likely stay your employees or someone elses’ employees. Usually, an entrepreneur will always be one, as the employee is usually the one who lacks direction to be able to execute a plan properly. Don’t get me wrong, though. Plenty of us started working for someone else, but how many of you are working in the exact niche or area that your former employer did? I know I am not, and most of the people running businesses do not as well. I was a former finance guy at a new Honda dealership.

Finally, you may not see the actual opportunity in front of your face. Open up your eyes and do a bit of research in your industry, whether online or offline. I can guarantee you there is a niche for whatever you do somewhere that you can build upon. You love to blog about golf news? Why not start blogging about golf clubs? Golf courses? Golf shoes? Golf bags? Golf clothing? You see where I am going. Every industry can be broken down and expanded on even further. Figure it out and scale it out so that you can take it further. Or, say you have the golf industry taken care of. Why not move on to tennis? Less competitive then say NFL football, but again, you will always be able to find you niche in the grand scheme of things. Just search and press forward and don’t be scared about it.

I hate that I am not notified of these changes. I have spoke about these issues multiple times on my blog before. I was getting tired of this happening to me multiple times, that i figured other high volume affiliates are being affected as well. I even have an article written up in the FeedFront Magazine about theses issues.

Nothing out there was created to help monitor an affiliate link. So I decided to go ahead and get it developed for me. Then I soft launched it at ad-tech San Fran and saw people had interest. So I started to invite users to the program slowly and got a lot of great feedback.

Below is the 2nd revision of the backend, much cleaner that the previous design.

I am truly excited about this system since it has helped me multiple times with offers going down and even showing proof to a network that a change was made without being notified. I remember being in an argument with a network stating that my traffic was being redirected during different times of the day. What I did at the time without OfferSnitch was bitch and complain. I did take action by proving them my stats, the offer I was promoting, the landing page and traffic I was using. All I asked in return was quality reports to their logs. I wanted to see that they didn’t change the redirects themselves. They denied me access.

I was mad and basically just gave up at that point. Instead of fighting with the network, I went off and got OfferSnitch made. Now I have the exact time when an offer changes whether it be redirect links, IDs within the redirect links, landing page changes, offers going down, offers going to a offer wall, etc. I NOW have visibility and have control.

I essentially can stop my traffic or switch out a link, once I know the change has occurred. Every time an offer goes down, you essentially lose money. When a landing page has changed, you lose money – because you put your time and effort into your landing page to match and even adjust copy to match the advertisers LP. If the landing page changed, your strategy after the click is rendered useless – high bounce rate.

This is why I created this platform to help affiliates link myself be in control of their link. Prior, we didn’t have control. We only controlled our tracking link. We can switch out links from time to time and rotate, that is about the extent we as publishers have. With OfferSnitch being an affiliate link checker and the ability to detect web page changes, gives us more control.

Take a look at the video below, it gives a quick overview of Offer Snitch and what it can do.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now that we have more control over our links and offers, we can go back to the network and ask them to credit our traffic if need be. OfferSnitch is a solid platform and if the network does not want to show you their reports, then suspicion will arise. I let OfferSnitch monitor all my affiliate links, assuring no one (network or advertiser)  is using my traffic for their own benefit.

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Even though it rained a decent amount of entrepreneurs came out to the meetup. Affiliates from Portland even came out such as by buddy Kris from Xrev Media and Logan Thompson. Other familiar faces were James Seligman, Nate Whitehill, Tanner Vaughn, Chris Guthrie and many others.

The topic I decided to talk about is basically segmenting data to achieve high CTRs. I prep a campaign I was currently running and showed everyone my data, even spend. I wanted to show segmenting and deciphering data is crucial to any performance marketing campaign. The excel sheet I showed everyone is a custom dynamic report I use to look at my data.

It automatically segments my data. Base on specific criteria, it will organize the data and outputs it into a visual format for me to view. Some snapshot of the meetup.

This discussion was all about how to look at data and how to manipulate it to find amazing opportunities. With this PPC campaign, I have broke every aspect of this campaign. My excel sheet, literally breaks down almost every aspect of this campaign. I simply just load the raw data and it quickly breaks and tells me my strong areas vs my weak areas.

If you do not know excel, I suggest you take time to learn it. It is such an amazing program to manipulate data. I have made multiple tools to help with my own internal research. I posted 3 excel video tutorials about…

1. Keyword Dissection with Excel
2. Count How Many Words in a Keyword
3. Manipulating Aggregated Data from SEOMoz

Anyways, I created this dashboard to show me time of day, popular days, daily spend, total day spend, day spend, total hourly spend and I even broke it all by devices (tablets, mobile, PC). This is a lot of data to look at. Numbers can be annoying to look at from time to time, especially straining the eyes. So I also added some visuals to my excel sheet to show me where the peaks are and my down time are. This allowed me to see my whole campaign and analyse it in under 5 minutes by simply just looking at it.

From looking at the data, you have to then decide what time of day is best to run your traffic on what device on what day. This details are important, I even wrote a post about day parting a while back and explained its importance. But looking at the time of day isn’t just it, you have to also decide what day is the best. Is it better to run your day parted traffic on Sunday vs Tuesday? Then, specifically with this campaign – on what device?

As you can see there is a lot to go over and understand. Simply sending traffic to a landing page or offer without understanding traffic is just like walking in the dark. You are doing what you are suppose too but you still can’t see what you are doing. Traffic is a crucial part of performance marketing, what is even more important is how you are looking at the data.

Remember all traffic is not created equal and you have to put in the effort to understand that traffic. How users interact with the advertorials, simple looking at time of day sometimes may not be enough, seasonality also takes into effect. If you are not gathering data then you are lost, even worst if you are not gathering historical data, you can’t forecast.

My excel sheet, shows me 1 full year of data every time – if I run the offer that long – but in either case I keep the data, so I can see how each month differs. Spending money on traffic means you can easily lose your money. You want to be able to adjust the traffic to where it is beneficial to you.

Once you conquered the traffic, it automatically runs on auto pilot and you earn money on auto pilot. There are times you have to make minor adjustments, but you did all the analyzing upfront. With all the analytical and moving parts out of the way, you can easily generate income with ease, again with on going minute changes here and there.

I recommend you learn excel or have a program or software which can easily analyze your data. I like creating my own systems because I want to look at specific data, plus I know how my business operates. Utilizing other platforms is fine, but I also find something missing with what I need with my own campaigns.

Data manipulation is important and optimizing base on what the data gives you will increase your ROI, you just have to put in the time to analyze what the traffic gives you.

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2. Dissecting Aggregated Keywords from SEOMoz
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Just like any service you are selling, you need to create a real value and a need. If you don’t have that, you will never be able to sell a thing. So, how about I show you how I sold my toughest sale ever locally and break down exactly what I did in order to make the final sale.

Locally, I had a unique opportunity that was different then anything I have come across in my affiliate marketing career, but in the grand scheme of things, all products and services are the same. It is just a matter of relating them properly. Here in my area, we have a very popular Texas hot dog shop that had a website already and they were even selling their products on their site. While they made some sales, it wasn’t anything to be happy about. The only sales they really made were from customers who already knew about the restaurant locally. No outside sales were being made. And they wanted to change that, but they didn’t know that until we talked to them. Or should I say, they didn’t know it could be done or how to go about it.

One of my salespersons approached them and chatted up the owners of this long standing restaurant on their advertising and website. We already knew they advertise aggressivley in all the local clipper magazines and papers, so our first goal was to see how happy they were with that advertising. Not really a surprise to use, they had no clue really how well there avertsing was really working. The problem wasn’t the advertising so much, but more the type of advertising they were doing and the specials they offered.

While many people in the area enjoy this place, the main clientele is the older, retired people who they already give a 10% discount too. All of their coupons from their ads were a total of 10% off, as they didn’t want to over-complicate things in their register system (I know, really old fashioned). So their advertising locally wasn’t really helping the main portion of their demographic, and the specials weren’t really mind blowing specials that would bring people in just because of the coupon. People came in with coupons, sure, but they would come in anyways. They needed a way to increase their business else where without dropping too much more in advertising. That is where we came into play.

Our goal was to get people all across the country to try and order some of their famous chili. The bugers and the hot dogs are a dime a dozen, so that was not the selling point. The reason people come here is for the chili topping. So that is what we wanted to sell. Our whole focus was on how the chili could transform an ordinary meal into something amazing. We were betting everything on the chili, as that was the only thing that really stood out, but it was also what their reputation was built on.

We got rid of their 10 year old looking website and replaced it with a vibrant, modern look that hightlighted the chili immediately when they got there on the page. To boost the usability of the chili, we then set up a recipe portion of the site that was filled with YouTube videos we made of the chili being used for tons of different purposes. Our slogan was based around the many uses of this chili, so that is what we were showcasing. So, we had videos showing chili topping being used with eggs, chicken and so much more.

Then, we set up their product page. We sold the chili in different amounts and they were shipped all across the country in dry ice. Also, we included a small brochure with a couple recipes along with a QR code to go to the web site for more recipes and other fun stuff with chili.

The site was now set, now we needed to get the word out about this amazing chili and what you can do with it. We did a small promotion on Facebook to a 100 mile radius to start branding and testing. We focused on the videos and the recipes, and things went well. Each ad had their own landing page optimized so they would buy, along with the video and recipe for the video.

The next step that we took in our branding strategy was to contact a bunch of prominent food bloggers and send them some chili and a recipe to review. This was our biggest success to date, and we continue to employ it. The natural reviews from the bloggers seemed to just really sell their audience and the orders were non-stop. They had to actually stay late many nights in order to fill all of the orders they received. It was crazy!

So now that we had a good branding strategy in place and people talking about us, we thought it was time to implement the affiliate program so that those food bloggers and other with food traffic could help us spread the word about the chili without having to ship out chili in order to get reviews. The program was a good success, as it allowed those bloggers who had tried the chili already to really leverage the reviews they made and it also allowed new bloggers and marketers to come in and help expose the brand to even more people.

Long story short, you can sell affiliate marketing services to the local community, but you need to go at it the right way. You have to show them the bigger picture and have a strategy with clear goals on how to accomplish them. Most of all, you need to show patience and also undersstanding of the whole process, as only those who do it really can understand the larger picture. You need the company to be branded and have a large presence, and then people will want to promote them even more. The better the branding, the better the chance at landing some big affiliates in your niche.

Oh, and they barely do offline advertising anymore. Their entire advertising budget almost exclusively goes into their online marketing now, and profits are great, according to them. I assume it to be true, since they are still a happy customer of mine!

For example, the screenshot below is a month worth of organic rankings:

So in the beginning our internal SEO person started very strong. We did a bit of ‘dancing’ for a day or two but spiked up to page one for a key term and ranked on the second page. As you can see we were stable for the rest of the month. I told my SEO person to go ahead and make me number one, he said not until the next month.

He has a strong strategy and he does not rush the building of the links because then Google will see these backlinks in such a short amount of time which then I can be penalized. Being penalized in Google’s eye isn’t good because your site can get banned or you drop in rankings. Since I am on the second page, I am satisfied so far and I am looking at how my next month will be for this particular keyword.

As far as income, it only generated $100 of affiliate income. Not too pretty being that I am still on the second page for this keyword. I wonder if 1st page truly does make a difference and if  number 1 also does increase in huge sales.

For example, this blog by itself ranks pretty naturally for a lot of key terms and I do make affiliate income from these products I discuss and review. I am all about SEO, the only part is it did take a long time. Maybe Google sees this blog as an augmentative blog among others and ranks me higher, maybe the age of the blog, content surrounding the ranked content maybe? I am not sure, as I am not an expert in this organic stuff.

What I do know it does bring traffic and it does generate income. It just takes time. While my internal SEO person is doing the SEO rankings, I can concentrate on my other projects and campaigns.

In the end I am trying to get this specific blog to be making at least $1000. I also have about 25 other sites he is working on as well and I want them to be making $1000 a month as well. Right now, making $100 a month isn’t too bad. I def want to get these sites to do bigger volume and generate bigger income.

The goal is to turn these small sites into authoritative sites. If I can start benefiting off the SEO and then generating leads, then producing my own products for them, adding contextual ads, private banner buys, etc. Then this means that $1000 a month can be more over time and that is what I am looking for. I want to create something I can have for years to come, this is the reason why I am now all about having and owning something that is mine.

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The A4D meetup is a full day of training and sessions of tactics taught by actual affiliates and most underground affiliates at that. It started at 9am and NickyCakes was first to discuss his strategies on how he builds a campaign. Several strategies were discussed and even showed us some sites he monetizes and how he would go a bout doing so.

There were also other great speakers who talked about their specialities. One sessions I enjoyed was taking and growing your affiliate business and turning or growing into a bigger business with employees. Stefan from Zeetomax explained how he expanded from a 2 man shop into a 55 employee company. Very impressive.

The best part about this meetup is everyone at this meetup was an affiliate and a person that has done substantial amount in the industry. Ads4Dough meetup is totally different from the traditional adTech and Affiliate Summits. These shows are great but this meetup has a concentration of affiliates; no networks, vendors, agencies, etc. Everyone was an affiliate who has made a good amount within the affiliate industry.

Lots of topics were discussed from FTC cases to media buying strategies. There was a lot of great information, if you missed out this year I recommend going to the next one. I missed last year’s and I made sure I attend this years meetup. There was definitely a full house of affiliates ready to share information on how they make money with affiliate marketing or in some way within this industry.

There was a lot of discussion around testing, mobile, media buying, and conversions. I definitely took a lot away from this meetup and I def want to thank Jason for having such a meetup for affiliates to help us expand our ideas and putting us together once a year.

The best part is most of the speakers are heavy hitting affiliates or were affiliates and have branched off into their own property such as a network or a new business within the performance industry space. Each one of these speakers spoke with high strategy and I appreciate each and everyone of their talks.

Here are pictures from yesterday’s Ads4Dough Meetup:

I want to thank Jason again for having such a meetup. I talk about how having meetups and hangouts with your peers is very important because it helps you grow as a person and helps you grow your own business. Jason did a great job of getting top affiliates and putting them in one room to basically help expand their current affiliate business. Thanks again!

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