We may as well all just bust out Mosaic and get it over with.

Embrace the 21st Century

Mod Features

• Larger Campaign Name field. (More room to edit!)
• Larger Affiliate URL field. (The better to see those big-ass tracking links.)
• Some Sweet Subid Injection Buttons. No more copy/paste means less room for error and way less 1994.

Doing the Mod

EDIT FILE: tracking202/setup/aff_campaigns.php

Note: these specific line numbers refer to Prosper 1.5.1 stable release. If you have a newer version, the mod should work fine, just be sure to double-check where you’re inserting the code.

Change 1/3

Line 209: Comment out the existing input field, then paste the new line directly below it as shown.

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<!-- <input type="text" name="aff_campaign_name" value="<? echo $html['aff_campaign_name']; ?>" style="display: inline;"/> -->
<textarea name="aff_campaign_name" rows="1" cols="30" style="display: inline;"/><? echo $html['aff_campaign_name']; ?></textarea>

Change 2/3

Line 243: Again, comment out the existing input field, then paste the new code as shown.

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<!-- <input type="text" name="aff_campaign_url" value="<? echo $html['aff_campaign_url']; ?>" style="width: 200px; display: inline;"/> -->
<textarea name="aff_campaign_url" rows="3" cols="30" id="aff_campaign_url" style="width: 260px; display: inline;"/><? echo $html['aff_campaign_url']; ?></textarea>
<div>
    <!-- Part of CtrTard's Subid Injection Button Mod, 8-12-2010, http://ctrtard.com --> 
    <input type="button" value="[[subid]]" onclick="insertAtCaret('aff_campaign_url','[[subid]]');" />
    <input type="button" value="[[c1]]" onclick="insertAtCaret('aff_campaign_url','[[c1]]');" /> 
    <input type="button" value="[[c2]]" onclick="insertAtCaret('aff_campaign_url','[[c2]]');" /> 
    <input type="button" value="[[c3]]" onclick="insertAtCaret('aff_campaign_url','[[c3]]');" /> 
    <input type="button" value="[[c4]]" onclick="insertAtCaret('aff_campaign_url','[[c4]]');" />
    <br>  
    The following tracking placeholders can be used:<br/>
    [[subid]], [[c1]], [[c2]], [[c3]], [[c4]]

Change 3/3

Line 351: Between </table> and <? template_bottom(); paste this block of code as shown.

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</table>
 
<script>
// Part of CtrTard's Subid Injection Button Mod
// 8-12-2010 http://ctrtard.com 
// Function from: http://www.scottklarr.com/topic/425/how-to-insert-text-into-a-textarea-where-the-cursor-is/
// As is, this code didn't work with stupid IE. So caret function has been added, and code adjusted. Works on IE8!
function insertAtCaret(areaId, text) {
    var txtarea = document.getElementById(areaId);
    var scrollPos = txtarea.scrollTop;
    var strPos = 0;
    var br = ((txtarea.selectionStart || txtarea.selectionStart == '0') ? "ff" : (document.selection ? "ie" : false));
    txtarea.focus();
    strPos = caret(txtarea);
    var front = (txtarea.value).substring(0, strPos);
    var back = (txtarea.value).substring(strPos, txtarea.value.length);
    txtarea.value = front + text + back;
    strPos = strPos + text.length;
    if (br == "ie") {
        txtarea.focus();
        var range = document.selection.createRange();
        range.moveStart('character', -txtarea.value.length);
        range.moveStart('character', strPos);
        range.moveEnd('character', 0);
        range.select();
    } else {
        txtarea.selectionStart = strPos;
        txtarea.selectionEnd = strPos;
        txtarea.focus();
    }
    txtarea.scrollTop = scrollPos;
}
//Function from: http://web.archive.org/web/20080214051356/http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~b88039/html/jslib/caret.html
// Thank you sir, you're a damn genius!  This solution works great on IE8!
function caret(node) {
 //node.focus(); 
 /* without node.focus() IE will returns -1 when focus is not on node */
 if(node.selectionStart) return node.selectionStart;
 else if(!document.selection) return 0;
 var c        = "\001";
 var sel    = document.selection.createRange();
 var dul    = sel.duplicate();
 var len    = 0;
 dul.moveToElementText(node);
 sel.text    = c;
 len        = (dul.text.indexOf(c));
 sel.moveStart('character',-1);
 sel.text    = "";
 return len;
}
</script>
 
<? template_bottom();

Final Thoughts

At first, this mod took me about 10 minutes to do. It worked just fine in Firefox, and I felt really smart… until I tested it in IE8. Piece of shit! It turns out, Firefox, Safari, and Opera all support some simple JavaScript ’selectionStart’ calls. But stupid Internet Explorer does not. The solution I came up with is cobbled together from two different scripts I found. For those interested, I’ve added comments in the code so you can find the original sources.

And now, I’d like to ask a favor of my blog readers… If you’ve found this or any of the other mods/scripts/posts on my blog useful, a great way to say thanks would be to help me out with a fundraising campaign I’m working on for the The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS). This is fully tax deductible (info is on the page) and it’s for a great cause. If you do make a donation, please let me know so I can give you a proper thank you.

And finally….

Do you have any ideas for a Prosper202 mod you’d like to see? Post it in the comments below. If it sounds good and feasible, I’ll probably do it!

A new campaign I am about to run requires me to pass a zip code as a get variable in the url. For example:

http://offerpage.com?id=666&zip=12345

This is also known as a pre-pop, as in “pre-populating” an offer.

The Problem:

So my landing page is all set up.  I have a form on there that let’s the user enter his zip code and I have my Prosper202 javascript tracking code in place.   Everything’s great until I have to actually pass that zip code through Prosper and then to my offer page.

When you “Get LP Code” in Prosper202, you get outbound links like this:

$tracking202outbound = ‘http://yourProsperDomain/tracking202/redirect/off.php?acip=123&pci=’.$_COOKIE['tracking202pci'];

Even if you modify this URL, any additional variables you add will get ignored and lost during the redirection process.

The Solution:

There are a few ways to fix this, one of them is by using cookies.  I haven’t test this solution here, but it looks like it would work. However, it would not allow you to use Prosper202’s cloaking feature. That kind of sucks

My fix is a hack.  You will need to edit one file in your Prosper202 install.  But once you’ve done the mod, it will allow you to pass any variables you want in a simple, elegant way.  No need for multiple files, cookies, or other bullshit that I will never remember to do.

The Mod:

Edit: tracking202/redirect/off.php

Change 1/3:
Add the following code directly below the open php tag, like so:

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<? 
/* Get Variable Pass-thru Mod, by Mark -- http://ctrtard.com -- added 8-3-2010
This mod will allow you to pass additional variables to the P202 redirect. E.g.
$tracking202outbound = 'http://your202.com/tracking202/redirect/off.php?acip=123&pci='.$_COOKIE['tracking202pci'] . '&zip=10010';
*/
foreach($_GET as $key => $value) {
    if ($key !== "acip" AND $key !== "pci")
    $stack .= "&$key=" . urlencode($value);
}
/* End Get Variable Pass-thru Mod */
 
#only allow numeric acip's

Change 2/3:

Add the following code on line 98. Directly below the line that reads: “$redirect_site_url = replaceTrackerPlaceholders($redirect_site_url,$click_id);”

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    $redirect_site_url = replaceTrackerPlaceholders($redirect_site_url,$click_id);
 
    /* Get Variable Pass-thru Mod */
    $redirect_site_url .= $stack;
    /* End Variable Pass-thru Mod */

Change 3/3:

Add the following code on line 373. Directly below the comment that reads: “//NOW LETS REDIRECT”

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//NOW LETS REDIRECT  
 
/* Get Variable Pass-thru Mod */
$redirect_site_url .= $stack;
/* End Variable Pass-thru Mod */

Note, line numbers for the off.php file are from Prosper 1.5.1. If you have a different version, the line numbers might be in slightly different places.

Usage:

Once the mod is in place, passing any variable you need to is simple and elegant.  All you need to do is append it.  Here is a chunk of code to show how this can be done. We will pass a zip and color variable:

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<?php
$color = "red";
$zip = "12345"; 
 
// paste our outbound link Prosper gave us in "Get LP Code"
$tracking202outbound = 'http://yourProsperDomain/tracking202/redirect/off.php?acip=123&pci='.$_COOKIE['tracking202pci']; 
 
// now let's append our variables
$tracking202outbound .= "&zip=$zip&color=$color";
 
// make a link
echo "<a href=\"$tracking202outbound\">click here</a>";
?>

Assuming our offer link was “http://offerpage.com?id=666″, the user would be redirected to:

http://offerpage.com?id=666&zip=12345&color=red

Yay!

Please comment and ReTweet if you found this useful.

This interview kicks some serious ass. So far I have listened to it twice and learned something each time.

Check it out here:

Ruck Interviewed By Scott Rewick

Page Building Strategies

Once you’ve selected your feed, you need to present it in a way that is going to help you convert.  Here are some tips for how you should lay out your data feed site:

1. Use Wordpress as the framework for your data feed site. Wordpress ranks quickly and there are quite a few tools available that will let you load up your Wordpress blog with products from data feeds.

2. Use multiple calls to action and link everything on product pages. E.g. ‘Buy Now’, ‘Add to Cart’, ‘More Details ‘, etc.   Stick an ‘Enlarge Photo’ link below the product photo that links to the item’s page.  Remember, the name of the game is getting them to click through to the merchant.  That cookie needs to drop before you can get paid.  So, link everything.  Be clever.

3. Avoid duplicate content by mixing things up a little. Rename categories when possible. For example, a pet supplies merchant might have a category called ‘Just for Cats’.   Change it to ‘Cat Toys & Accessories’.   You can also group multiple items together on the same page.  Most merchants will have 1 item per page.  You can put 2 items per page and avoid duplicating their site structure.   To get even more advanced, you could even blend two related data feeds from two different merchants.

4. Look legit. Make business pages. ‘About’, ‘Privacy Policy’, etc.  Check out the merchant’s site and get some ideas for more pages.   If they have a ‘Shipping Policy’ page and a ‘Returns’ page, don’t copy the pages exactly.  Instead, combine these two pages on your site.  Mix it up a little bit.  The goal here is to make your data feed site look like a real, e-commerce web site.  By adding pages that a “real” online store would have, you just might be helping your site get ranked a little better and get linked to organically.

5. Link to industry related web sites. If you’re selling golf clubs, link to golf.com, pga.com, etc.   You can also add a sitemap – this is especially a good idea for data feed sites since they may ultimately have thousands of pages.  The idea of linking to related/authority sites and using site maps are both basic SEO tactics.

6. Use redirects. Don’t link directly to the merchant’s site.  Use redirects to “cloak” your affiliate links. The idea here is to look less like an affiliate site and more like a real merchant.  Using redirects (a.k.a. cloaking affiliate links) has been shown to increase CTR and ranking.

7. Advanced Tactic: download all product pictures and host them locally. When you do host them locally, rename the files based on product names (making sure you use URL-safe filenames.).   By doing this, you are distancing yourself from the competition and removing direct links to the merchant’s page.  You will also get the benefit of getting clicks from image searches.  Obviously this is something you need to automate with code.  But doing it is trivial and should be implemented if you have the skill.

8.  Add other content such as user comments, ratings, etc. You can auto-generate this (e.g. fake user reviews) or scrape and mix/spin from other sources like Amazon or Ebay.   There are some tools that can do this, but I recommend you code this yourself or hire a coder to pull content according to your specs.   This is frontloaded work, but once you get some tools to do this, you can use it over and over on all of your sites.

Maximizing ROI on Data Feed Sites

1. Don’t build one, build many. This is especially true if you are relying solely on organic traffic for results.   Even if you get indexed quickly, ranking for multiple pages and keywords will take time.   It could be months before you find out if a site/niche is doing well or sucking hard.  Because of this time delay, you need to have multiple irons in the fire or you’re going to get discouraged.   Make a commitment to put up at least 5 sites at a time, and you’ll increase your chances of success dramatically.

2. Use the feed strategically. Let’s say you find a feed with 5,000 sports related products.  With the right tool, you could easily build out a 5,000 page Wordpress site in a few minutes.  But is that the best use of the feed?  Why not split up the feed to multiple sites with 1,000 pages each?  One site could have sports apparel, another exercise equipment, and others with hunting and fishing gear, etc.   Not all feeds can be separated into logical segments like this, but it you should always at least try and think about ways you could use the data feed for more than one site.

3. Leverage your data feed sites to help rank other sites. Once your data feed sites  get indexed, they are good for a little bit of link juice.  Just don’t be dumb and interlink all of your sites with reciprocal links.  Use one way links and only link to sites that make sense.    You can link to your other data feed sites and any other sites you own.   Let basic SEO and common sense be your guide.

4. Monetize more. Lots of people build out data feed sites and rely solely on the affiliate feed itself for income.  That’s a mistake.  You should monetize in other ways too.   Add some CPA banners or text ads.  Add related links to other affiliate programs (e.g. insert related products that click through to Amazon or Ebay using your affiliate I.D.)  You can even sell links text links through a link broker or by posting in the classifieds on forums.  As an affiliate, you are always looking to buy ads.  Try to remember to look at your site from a publisher’s perspective.   That will help you come up with other ways to monetize.   Going Big Tip: install an ad server (OpenX is free) and hook up all your data feed sites. This will let you roll out new banners and ads across your whole network easily.

5. Build an email list. Throw up an aweber form and invite them to join your mailing list.  ’Join our newsletter to receive special discounts every month’.  You can mail them later with related offers.  Most of the time merchant’s themselves have a newsletter with these types of specials.  Subscribe to it.  Then you can just copy & paste, do a quick edit, and re-mail the info to your list.  Adding your own affiliate link, of course.  It will take a little bit of work to do each month, but if you’re organized it’s simple and can even be outsourced to an assistant.

Stay tuned for Part 3….

A data feed is basically a database of products that is put together by a merchant. For example, a merchant that sells bridal/wedding related items will create a database with all of the products they sell. This database will include item numbers, item names, descriptions, etc. It will also include a tracking link for each item. This tracking link is routed through the affiliate network which records you as the referrer. If the visitor buys the item through your link, you get a percentage of the sale.

Why

So why use data feeds? Because they are a huge time saver and offer free content you can use to build out a web site quickly and easily. A good data feed allows you to offer a huge variety of products for sale. More products means more pages and more chances for you to make a sale. Think: instant e-commerce store.
You’re not going to get rich from putting up data feed sites, but you can make some long term income. Some niches/sites will be winners, some will be dogs. This is a numbers game. Once you get it down, these sites are easy to throw up. So put up a bunch in a variety of niche. Then, continue to build out more sites in the niches that are working for you.

Down Sides

Surprisingly, one of the biggest downsides to putting up data feed sites is finding quality feeds. Many merchants do a poor job of creating their feeds. The feeds will lack proper categorization, have poorly worded or non-existent descriptions, have missing images, etc. This means you will have to take the time to scrutinize each feed a bit before you can use it.

The other big downside of using data feeds is that other affiliates are using them too. This can lead to issues with duplicate content. Google in particular has gotten really good at detecting duplicate content and can penalize your site in the SERP’s. We’ll look at some ways to help avoid this problem a bit later.

Selecting a Feed

There are a few places to get feeds: Linkshare, Shareasale, Commission Junction, etc. I favor Shareasale for a couple of reasons. First, they make it simple to see what merchants offer data feeds. Second, they don’t charge for the feeds. Linkshare charges $250 just to be able to use feeds. The only way to get around this fee is if ‘you have been active in the network for at least 3 months and you generated at least 50 orders in the most recent calendar month’. As far as I know, Commission Junction also charges. Shareasale wins.

When you pick your feed, make sure you evaluate it for quality.  Download the CSV file and pop it into Excel.   All of the items should be properly categorized.  As I already mentioned, many merchants are lazy or stupid and leave everything under a single category.  Move on to the next merchant if you see that.  You should also take a cursory look at the product titles, descriptions, and photos.  Make sure they look OK.  Also check out the merchant’s site itself.  Does it look like a place you might buy from?  If the site you’re sending visitors to is hard to navigate or just plain retarded—  pass.  You don’t want to waste time sending them traffic that won’t convert.  Just use your best judgment.

Read Data Feed Sites – Part 2 >>>

What it Does

This script will connect to your Wordpress database and change the post dates on all of your posts to random dates.  You can define the range of dates by setting the two variables: $min_days_old, and $max_days_old.   For example: if you set $min_days_old = 1 and $max_days_old = 30, the script will go through and change all of the post dates to be within the past 30 days.

How to Use It

Edit the MySQL connection info at the top. (Also be sure to change $wp_table to the name of your Wordpress posts table if it is different.)  Next, set the min and max days old.  Now all you need to do is visit the script URL in your browser.

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<?php
// define mysql connect
$dbname = "name";
$dbuser = "user";
$dbpass = "pass";
$dbhost = "localhost"; // this can usually stay 'localhost'
 
$wp_table = "wp_posts"; // define wordpress table name  
 
$gmt_offset = '-8'; // -8 for California, -5 New York, +8 Hong Kong, etc.
 
$min_days_old = 1; // the minimum number of days old
$max_days_old = 90; // the maximum number of days old
 
// connect to db
mysql_connect($dbhost,$dbuser,$dbpass);
mysql_select_db($dbname);
 
 
$result = mysql_query("SELECT ID FROM $wp_table WHERE post_type = 'post'") or die(mysql_error()); 
while ($l = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
    $post_id = $l['ID'];
    echo "Updating: $post_id <br>";
 
    $day = rand($min_days_old, $max_days_old);
    $hour = rand(0, 23);
 
    $new_date = date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime("-$day day -$hour hour") );  
    $gmt_new_date = date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime("-$day day -$hour hour -$gmt_offset hour") );
 
    mysql_query("UPDATE $wp_table SET post_date='$new_date', post_date_gmt='$gmt_new_date',
    post_modified='$new_date', post_modified_gmt='$gmt_new_date' WHERE ID='$post_id'")
    or die(mysql_error()); 
 
}
 
echo "<hr>DONE!";
 
?>

Enjoy!

Mike Powell

In my opinion, Mike gave the best presentation of all.  It was interesting, well organized, and evident the guy really knows his stuff.   His style is also fast and to the point which is great and kept my mind from wandering.  The topic of his presentation was PPV and most of the time he focused on TrafficVance and regarded them as having the best traffic quality.

Mike explained how traffic gets divided up: the #1 bidder on a given URL always gets 100% of the impressions.  However, lower bidders will see some traffic once the frequency cap for bidder #1 kicks in.  That makes perfect sense and clears up questions many people have had about why lower bidders still see some traffic.

He went on to mention that PPV is not cheap like everyone seems to think.  If you really look at the CPM’s, it’s not cheap at all.  What it is, is targeted.  The true value of PPV, is that you can target sites that don’t normally sell advertising.   He also said that to get a higher ROI, you typically need a higher frequency cap.  By higher frequency cap, I am pretty sure he means that 1/72 hours gives a better ROI than 1/24 hours.

Another tip:  Many people think they need to bid on a site with a large number of visitors.  This is wrong.  Instead, you want to bid on sites with a large ratio of your target demographic.   Again, makes perfect sense.  It will lower your CPM’s and may make you more profitable.

For landing pages, he recommended doing site emulation. Model your LP after the target site’s design. Do this on sites with a loyal readership to leverage the authority and trust of that site.  This is something I used to do in my software publishing days.  Emulating (but not outright copying) the look and feel of packaging used by established brands allowed me to outsell all of my competition by a 3 to 1 margin.   Even when people know it’s not really Brand X product, they are conditioned to associate the design with trust.  An extension of this idea is what affiliates are already doing.  You have probably seen the landers that pretend to be television news sites.  These were pretty popular and used to promote rebills.  Again, the idea is to create trust.

He also recommended targeting shopping cart URL’s.  The idea being they are largely ignored by most marketers but can work well because people are literally in buy mode at the very moment they see your pop-up.

Mike said he always uses a landing page when doing PPV.  He uses a big benefit, and a big call to action. He then uses the interaction with the LP to gage profitability.   He showed a spreadsheet he normally uses to figure out CPC after he has sent some traffic to his landers.  He doesn’t use Tracking202 and basically only uses pixel tracking from networks. He stressed how page speed is crucial in PPV.  This is because if your page load is too long, people will have time to close the pop-up.  There was some discussion about using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) and he agreed it was a good idea.  Some of the attendees in the audience mentioned that Amazon S3 can work well.  For those that don’t know, a CDN specializes in handling large volumes of traffic and uses mirrors around the world so that a site visitor  gets pages served from servers that are geographically close to them.  This speeds things up tremendously.

He mentioned LeadImpact bids are determined by the category you select.  Bryn Youngblut made a post about this awhile ago.  He said on MediaTraffic he likes using the RON feature.   He said quality can be a bit lower than TrafficVance but he also finds that they are less caring about what you run (think: site emulation as discussed above).  He also said they are OK with resizing the pop-up window.

Mike also touched on Adbrite.   He agreed, overall the traffic quality is crap, but it offers a way for you to easily retarget users.  This is done by putting a cookie on your pop  under.  Now you can retarget with the same pop under when a user goes to a different site.   You can retarget with any offer you want.  He suggested  Adware Removal offers.  At which time, the guy from TrafficVance sitting 2 rows in front of me shifted uncomfortably in his seat

For LP content, he said he has had good results with using audio and animation.  He recommended some sites:  istockphoto.com has some good pre-made audio.  He also recommended voices.com It’s like 99designs.com in that you can put post your job and a professional voice over artist will do the work for you.  Using audio calls to action can increase profits.

Wes Mahler

Blog

Wes was an impromptu speaker.   You probably already know him as the creator of Tracking202.  His talk centered around referrer cloaking.   He pointed out that there is a lot of misinformation on the forums and elsewhere about  what works and what doesn’t.   PHP redirects do nothing.  And despite what many people say, double meta refreshes don’t work either.  Even triple meta refreshes do not stop referrer leaks in all cases.  He pointed out that after a huge amount of testing across all browsers, the most effective way is to use a form submit followed by another javascript redirect.

His talk was technical but interesting.  Bottom line, the current version of Prosper/Tracking202 employs this technique, so you should be using that if you are concerned about leaks.   One of these days, I may get around to ripping that bit of code and posting it here so we can all use it outside of Prosper202.

The other interesting thing he found is that hashmarks get trunctated in the referrer string. For example:

http://yourdomain.com/link.php#somethinghere

Will show up as a referrer like this:

http://yourdomain.com/link.php

As you can see, everything after the hash mark (#) gets truncated.   So you can effectively use this to hide data.  He noted that currently works.  But it is something that may change in future browser versions.

Jason Akatiff (Smaxor)

Blog

The final speaker was to be Jason Akatiff, the owner of Ads4Dough, but since we ran long, he decided to jump to the Q&A Panel.  Someone in the audience did ask him to do a brief summary of what his presentation would have been and he obliged.    He focused on helping everyone to understand how important data is.  By data, he means the info used in list building.  He said on offer LP’s, all the data on page 1 gets sold.  That is a powerful idea if you think about it.  The networks and advertisers use every scrap of data.  And that is what affiliates should be doing as well.  He said to think about this: “How do I put data collection into what I am doing?”  He said to think about list building paths, like IQ offers for example.   Lots of these types of offers are designed to capture leads and as affiliates we should be collecting as much data as possible too.  Building your own list is key.

The rest of the Q&A panel was sort of uninteresting. Dr. Ngo joined the group of Jason, Nicky Cakes, and Mike Powell.   Not many people asked questions, and for some reason I stopped taking notes.  So that’s it.

Overall this was a really great meetup. If you were not there you really missed out.  A huge thank you to Jason and A4D for hosting this.  The fact that it was free was awesome.  The venue was great, the speakers were top notch, and the content was valuable.   Be there next year!

DK from PurposeInc.com

DK spoke about Facebook advertising.   The main tip he gave was about the types of images that get the best CTR.  In his testing of the dating niche, he found that ads that look like snapshots of real people do better than ads with pics that look more professional.  Slick photos of pretty models do worse than candid photos of regular people.  The other tip he gave was always be testing; you never know what will work.  Not new advice, but good just the same.  Be aggressive in your testing. Test everything: pics, ad copy, landers…. everything.

The rest of DK’s presentation was what interested me most: local lead gen.  I remember reading about this on Shoemoney’s blog a long time ago.  Why is this so interesting?  Easy: even newbies that read this blog know more about online advertising than 95% of small business owners.  So, boom, you’re an expert.  On top of that, all businesses need leads and most have no clue how to make online advertising really work for them.

Think about it: most businesses first hired a retarded web designer  who didn’t know anything about SEO.  Then they hired a shady SEO company who promised them top ranking and ended up charging them way too much for tweaking meta tags and some shitty links from Squidoo.  The vast majority of these business owners have never really made any decent money from the internet.  Why?   These people have not met a real marketer.

That’s where you can come in.  With little or no competition you can approach them with the idea of performance based advertising.   They pay you per lead.  What’s that? An honest deal ? Shocking!  Compared to the bottom feeder  SEO guys you’re going to look like Abraham Lincoln.

When speaking to business owners, DK said distilled his pitch down to this: “Would it be OK if I send you some free customers for a week?”   When the guy says “yes”, you can do a test run. Get a handful of leads, and hand them over.  Then ask them how much each of those leads is worth to him.  If you can sell the leads at a profit, you’re in business.

The beauty again is: local = low competition and steady campaigns.  And you will actually be helping people make money while you make some for yourself.  The only hitch in my mind is that it may be difficult for some business owners to figure out what a lead is worth.  I posed this question to DK and he basically recommended you stick with marketing savvy owners like plastic surgeons, dentists, lawyers, etc.  That makes sense but leaves a ton of industries and money on the table.  It also means that you will be more likely to run into competitors who are also focusing on these industries.  I would love to hear, in detail, how we as marketers could help the average business owners put a price on his leads. That would open up even more customers in low competition industries.  (Maybe if DK’s Google Alert fires he can chime in on some comments here.)

In my mind, local lead gen has an awesome potential to generate some money.  It’s another way for you bring your marketing skills to bear and really be able to kill it in niches that aren’t full of dickheads driving up bid prices.

More reading on this topic: How to Make Money with Local Affiliate Programs

Hagan Major

By far, he had the most entertaining presentation. His power point had jokes throughout and it was pretty funny.  He spoke on the advantages and disadvantages of lead gen.  Advantages:  everyone wants leads, it’s much easier to fill out a form than use a credit card, lifespan of the niche can be very long, advertisers are more reputable, you can work with name brands, and there is less pushback from traffic sources since offers are reputable.  The disadvantages: lower payouts, ROI is not like acai, you’re depending on the advertiser to convert, and the barrier to entry for competitors is very low.

His “FTW cheat sheet”:

Experiment with different ad text.

Customize the pitch to the offer & payout.

Low payouts  (zip/email submits):  Direct link. Pitch and pray.

Medium Payouts  (short lead forms):  Use a bridge page with a simple, refined message.  Use good calls to action, and multiple links to get as little drop-off as possible.

Higher Payouts  (Credit cards, Mortages):  Use full scale landing page.  News page, flog, etc. can work.

He recommended you become an expert on a few ad systems. Advice I have seen echoed time and time again by other successful marketers.

He also recommended leveraging Facebook to find the demographic that responds best to your offer. Then do direct media buys using sites with those demos.

Hagan also found that ads perform differently on every traffic source, but landers seem to work the same across all traffic sources.  Interesting…

And finally, he recommended a few books that are good read:

CA$HVERTISING: How to Use More than 100 Secrets of Ad-Agency Psychology to Make Big Money Selling Anything to Anyone

Simple & Direct

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds

Read Part 2…

Overview

This passed Saturday I went to Meetup202: Los Angeles. Organized by the people at Tracking202/Bloosky, these meet-ups are simply to allow affiliate marketers to network and learn from each other face to face.

I got there about an hour and half  late due to traffic, but overall the meet-up was cool. About 30 people attended and we all met at a coffee shop in Pasadena.  It was a really nice day, about 78 degrees, and that was perfect since we were outside on the patio.  As you would expect, there were a lot of newbies there.  I heard quite a few conversations about basic topics.   People tended to talk in groups of 3-5.  This actually works well because it keeps things moving along quickly.  It’s also better than 1 on 1 conversations because you can sort of peel off and move somewhere else if you don’t want to talk about that particular subject.

Fat Brides Can Make You Rich

This meet-up’s organizer is Jasper Pangilinan.  He writes the blog NerdyAffiliate.com and is an experienced and successful affiliate.  If you don’t read his blog, you should. There is some good stuff there.  (In particular, check out: Prosper202 LP CTR Mod).  Jasper gave a short talk… a recap of the talk he gave at the Tracking202 Meetup at this passed Affiliate Summit West. I was actually glad to hear it again because after all those vodka Red Bulls, it was hard to remember everything.

The subject was about “thinking outside the box”.  Everyone throws this phrase around and not many people give you concrete examples.  Jasper gave an example of selling a weight loss offer.  He said to think of specific reasons why people would want to or need to lose weight.  Besides the generic/broad reasons like “to look better” or “for health reasons” he said to drill down.  For example: a woman will want to lose weight when she is getting married.  So you could target keywords or sites for selling wedding dresses, wedding planners, wedding cake makers, etc.   You can take this example farther by drilling down on the “for health reasons” angle.  Target sites about diabetes, etc.  Anyway the talk was only about 5 minutes, but I think it’s pretty good advice.

Tracking202 News

I also ran into Nana Gilbert-Baffoe.  He works in marketing for Tracking202/Bloosky.  I met him at the Tracking202 Meet-up in Las Vegas this passed January.  During that presentation, Wes Mahler announced that a new version of Tracking202/Prosper202 would be released in a few months.  It’s now been a few months and it’s nowhere to be seen.  I asked Nana about this. He said it’s pretty much all done, but there is no firm release date yet.   I asked about what kind of new features we could look forward to and he told me a few things:

He said the reporting would be greatly improved.   There would not be any real improvement to handle landing page rotations.  There would be support for additional user defined variables.

This additional variable functionality is going to be really cool and allow you to track at a way more granular level.  It will allow you to go way beyond the network, offer, and keyword tracking you are currently limited to.  Nana also said after the upcoming upgrade release, the next release will be a fully rewritten code base.  Hopefully that will result in an even better, faster, product.  I could not wring too much more out of him, but it does suck that the new versions is still quite a ways off.

That’s about it.  If you have a chance to go to a Meetup202 I recommend you do. Especially if you are a newbie.