Affiliate Marketing Articles
Ben Louie from Plenty of Fish shares how affiliates can target specific demographics on the largest free dating web site.
DK (Dr. David Klein) hosts the most important even in affiliate marketing every year. It’s called Think Tank and this year Health Converter has decided to sponsor the entire event. Come out for 3 days of open bar free drinks, free food, and lot’s of free events. Learn more about the Think Tank here
I just got back and all caught up from the trip to New York, so now it’s time for the obligatory wrap-up post. For those of you that were not able to make it, you should definitely put it on your calendar for next year. For pure value, contacts gained, and networking, this was the best show of the year for me so far. Ad-Tech in November would have to be pretty spectacular to beat it.
Right now I’m the most popular and most hated guy at the Jersey Beach Arcade. The owners of the arcade threw me out after I disclosed to 20+ teenagers how to optimize their strategy on the quarter game. By the time I was finished people were winning big prizes at a mere fraction of the retail price.
The game is really simple, yet very few people take the time to master it - just like affiliate marketing. The object is to have a quarter fall through the “spin” which gives you big points. You get an additional bonus for every quarter that falls over the side.
After observing the competition for 20 minutes I noticed a trend: when the handle moves around 1/2 an inch past the end of its swing, the probability of having the quarter fall in the spin was almost 100% – you just have to drop it at precisely the right moment. I stepped up to the plate with $100 in quarters and got started.
Out of the first 20 drops I hit the spin 3 times. I was able to calculate that the timing and position of the quarter were a little off, so I adjusted. Over the next 20 drops I hit the spin 8 times. By the third 20 drops my spin rate climbed to 17 out of 20.
By that time my daughter was standing by the coin dispenser filling the plastic cups at a slower rate than the machine was dispensing. Every teen in the building was huddling around us, watching as we CRUSHED IT. The owners of the arcade watched in disbelief as I cracked their code. These guys huddled around like the pit bosses do in Vegas when someone starts winning big, conspiring on how to take me out. Finally I got the tap on the shoulder – they needed to check the machine out to make sure it wasn’t malfunctioning. Instead of creating a big stink, I took my earnings and walked.
This, of course, got me thinking about affiliate marketing. In order to win big at this game you’ve got to be willing to lose along the way. There’s no other way around it. The idea is to learn as many mistakes as you can from others without committing them yourself. When you see a hot trend, do you due diligence before you jump in. IE When acai was crushing it on weather.com, several pubs jumped on and direct linked – causing an enourmous loss in profit. The ones that stuck around and utilized a strong presale page, cashed in on millions.
Whether it’s affiliate marketing, gaming, or just about anything in life, adopt the “refuse to lose” mentality and you’ll assuredly win. Take on projects in a methodical manner, and remember Seth Godin’s rules of failure:
FAIL OFTEN: Ideas that challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors.
FAIL FREQUENTLY: Prototypes. Spreadsheets. Sample ads and copy.
FAIL OCCASIONALLY: Working mockups. Playtesting sessions. Board meetings.
FAIL RARELY: Interactions with small groups of actual users and customers.
FAIL NEVER: Keeping promises to your constituents.
$129.97 iP97 Retail Price
$43 iP97 Health Converter Price
Maybe you find it too much of a hassle to include animation or some other sort of movement in your advertisements. Perhaps you’ve wondered if it increases the amount of click throughs? There was a study done in 2004, in tech years, that’s a couple of centuries, but it seems to provoke some interesting thought into the question of animated advertisements. You can read the full text here… and when you’re sick of all the complex mathematics and ridiculous symbols, you can just take my word for it when I say they did conclude that it is valuable, that it did grab attention better and increase click throughs. But there are a few caveats to this.
- After a while, they found, especially with U-shaped patterns, the test subjects began to get annoyed and irritated with the ad.
- Another limitation involved the fact that there was a short interval between the time the banner is displayed and the time that the researchers asked the subjects to identify the product. This article really said nothing about whether or not there was a longer term product recognition because of the ad.
- There was a small sample size involved in the study.
So, while there is limitations to the use of Animations in advertisements, it does seem like an altogether valuable piece of information.
So, you’ve heard what the scientists have said. What do all of you in affiliate-marketing-land have to say about animated ads?
I’ve mentioned Facebook a lot in the past couple of blog articles, mostly because most of my social networking experience comes from the ‘Book. I had joined up at the request of a friend in 2006, rarely checking it at first, but became addicted after a while. Now I check my Facebook at least three times daily, where about 100 of my more intimate friends are constantly chattering away. But I still have yet to play FarmVille…
Make no doubt about it. Countless people are in the same boat. Which makes it a powerhouse of marketing strategies, but also offers a megaton of blunders. It has been said that the person who fails to learn their history must repeat it… or at least repeat the 11th grade. Let’s try to NOT make the same mistakes as these guys. It’s possible to make gaffes and faux pas of apocalpytic proportions on Facebook, take, for instance:
- Molson Canadian wants to know if your school knows how to party. Molson Canadian offered a contest to see which school is the “Top Party School”, targeting 19-24 year old college kids. They were to send in photos showing the way they get the party started. Apparently, parents, universities and other concerned individuals called in to complain about this ad, saying that it promoted binge and/or underage drinking. They took the ad off a week early.
- Walmart’s Gaffe of Only Allowing Wall Posts. This article can be summed up by Walmart not understanding how Facebook worked, i.e. how users communicate with one another, and how to keep a conversation going on a page.
To sum up this post, perhaps it would be best to say, Facebook is a great tool, but it can also be damaging to yourself and your image. Be careful what you put up on the web, as it can bite you in the backside. With that said, with care, go get ‘em!
This past September, the BBC Reported that more money was spent on online advertising than on television advertising in the UK.
A number of factors contributed to that fact.
First, there is a direct response factor. Take this example, if you’re watching TV and you see a TV ad about an acai berry product, which will make you slimmer and give you more energy, now you have to go find the product in stores. However, you can act now with a direct response to an advertisement online. All you have to do is get out your wallet and charge your credit card.
If you have a good video camera, or some skills with Flash, making an ad that is interactive and lively is a great tool to help you out. The internet is far more engaging when there is animation used or if there is video involved, catching the attention of a buyer, which will make a conversion more likely.
Ecommerce sites are giving people the bargains they need in the tough economy. Bargain hunting is often regarded as a great tool to live a thriftier lifestyle. Walmart knows this, so do the countless ecommerce sites out there that advertise lower prices for a product.
Finally, broadband is cheaper and faster, which makes richer content available. Does anyone out there remember dial up modems? The obnoxious noise that it makes, the content that downloaded so slowly, and you still got very simple content. Now, you don’t need a dedicated phone line, all you need is a connection from one box to another and surfing the internet is faster and easier than ever!
That means that it’s not the guys that have millions of dollars to spend on TV ads that have the upper hand. Anyone with a good connection, a website, and the resources and tools (such as the ones Health Converter provides you with!) can make a successful internet marketing campaign. Now… Go Get Em. 