Archive for January, 2010

As diverse as the industry of affiliate marketing is, it’s always interesting to hear how people came to it, what they did before. Lots of people in the more traditional side of advertising and marketing get a taste of affiliate marketing in their regular work. For them, the shift is mostly about learning methods and technology. Some people come from web development when they start to wonder where all the money is coming from. There are college programs now that try to teach affiliate marketing, too (the do-it-yourselfers who learn the game on their own to put themselves through college seem to do better, but never mind). The skills, tendencies and prejudices people bring to the industry are as diverse as the people themselves. I come from a background of computer graphics and simulation (the picture above is a building I helped design the special image bearing screen for). My tendency is to be very cautious about taking financial risks, while a friend who also works as an affiliate marketer used to play poker professionally. He is still coming to terms with the lack of risk he sees in the new job.
Anyhow, I find this vast diversity interesting and I’d be happy to hear more stories about what marketers used to do.

For those who have been exposed to the idea for awhile, it seems natural and normal, but as a new concept,internet affiliate marketing can be baffling. At the simplest level, an affiliate marketer finds ways to display advertisements on the internet for a merchant’s product. This is a lot trickier than it sounds because it’s usually not enough to just make sure the ads are seen by many people; it’s far more effective and efficient to show the ads to the right demographic.

It is a myth that people dislike advertisements. What people really mean when they say they “hate ads” is that they don’t want to be bothered with ads that don’t interest them. On the other hand, the merchant generally doesn’t want the burden of the financial cost or the possible damage to his reputation from showing lots of advertising to the wrong targets. In a perfect situation, the consumer would see only ads that interest them and the merchant would only pay for advertising that targeted the right demographic.

Interesting. But What Do You Do?

The internet allows us to target ads more precisely than ever before. The job of the affiliate marketer is complicated, but basically, it involves determining who will be interested in an offer, figuring out what sites they are likely to visit, what services or software they are likely to use and, finally how to place ads in those exact spots. It might be as simple as targeting all people in Nevada who use Google to search for a specific term related to the merchant’s product. Or the situation might call for placing ads with a service that displays to customers via a toolbar, or their iPhone.

Each job is different from the last; it is an industry that thrives on creativity and it is growing as fast as the internet.

For more specific information about affiliate marketing, check out this blog for posts in the Free Traffic, Google, Pay-Per-Click, Pay-Per-View, and General Affiliate Marketing sections.

Originally, my plan was to use earnings from affiliate marketing to facilitate a move from my native Canada to live somewhere along the west coast of the USA. I’ve traveled in that region and it’s beautiful; the people are generally fantastic. In years past it was also economically and politically spectacular. Unfortunately, the irresponsible reaction to the recent financial troubles has made the United States a fair bit less attractive. For now, I’m satisfied to enjoy Canada with all it’s warts and limit my exposure to the US to a few visits now and then.
Who knows? Perhaps if the economic recovery sneaks by and happens despite the best efforts of the ruling Democrats I’ll be lucky enough to see a return to some degree of sanity south of the border.

AFTCoachReview.com is a site I made before the launch of AFTCoach.com. As with all review sites, the idea is that a surfer will often seek positive reinforcement before making a decision to buy. A generally positive review site can help the consumer make a decision by offering a different point of view than they’d get by just visiting the site’s homepage.

The other advantage a review-style site offers is that of catching lots of organic traffic. If you can make good SEO decisions for the site you can rank a review site near the top of page one for the target site topic+review. With luck that is a lot of very targeted traffic (who searches for a review of something if they aren’t considering a purchase?)

With all the affiliate networks out there it can get confusing looking for offers, especially for people new to the game. Affiliate Fleet  works hard to cater to new affiliates with an ever-expanding set of guides, hands-on help, and carefully considered offers. With many networks the affiliates must be on their toes at all times to be certain the offers they select are completely legit. It’s not that the networks intentionally run fraudulent offers, but they will sometimes rely heavily on the merchant to ensure their offers are compliant.

Affiliate Fleet is extra-careful to scrutinize offer details to make sure affiliates don’t end up running something shady. The responsibility still lies with the affiliate about how to promote the various offers, but as long as they disclose information properly on their landing pages, they can rest easy with Affiliate Fleet’s offers.

PPC-Coach.com is the internet’s premiere affiliate marketing training site dealing with Pay-Per-Click techniques. The advice offered there in the form of video tutorials, written guides and massive amounts of forum posts is unequaled. Unlike other large training sites and affiliate marketing forums, questionable advice is not tolerated. If someone posts something that is misleading or incorrect, it is corrected right away. I’ve been with the site since the beginning (look for Kraggy) and have watched it build and develop while other sites flopped or became stagnant.

The contacts you can meet in the forum are also invaluable. I’ve lost count of how many different exclusive tools are offered (certainly more than a dozen), but the site is based on coaching, so members are taught how to do for themselves before they turn to automatic tools to save time. By the same token, the site on its own does not automatically make you money – you must work at it, but it is definitely the place to go when you find yourself asking, “now what?”