Imagine this:

The economy takes a dive, a leader nicknamed Bubba might be replaced by a guy with previous head surgeries, dogs and pigs are wearing lipstick and Tampa Bay is in the World Series. It’s a strange scenario to consider but you never know it could come true. Either way, it paints a picture that the world could be a strange place to live in. 

What is definitely true today loud and clear is that we are living in a challenging time – especially if you’re trying to make a buck. Consumers have tightened their belts, traditional businesses are failing and more and more advertisers and home based publishers are entering the affiliate pay-for-performance marketing field. That is why I want to help you be successful.  

To start, don’t fall into the trap of the classic success pitfall of Paralysis by Analysis. Being an affiliate in 2008 and 2009, you could literally spend all day logging in and out of networks, checking out campaigns and deciding what to spend your money on testing. Stop! Stop letting people waste your time. Stop wasting your own time. Instead, take stock and start talking! You wouldn’t get a job without highlighting your strengths to a potential employer and applying your energy and time to potential jobs that fit your unique skills. One that would stimulate you mentally and financially.  Right?

Right! So pick up the phone and talk with your favorite Affiliate Manager and tell them what you’re great at, what you’ve done in the past, what your specialty is, what you’re looking to run in 2008 and beyond and then they will highlight campaigns that you know that you could deliver quality conversions and volume on. Communication is the key to not getting paralyzed. At the end of the day, Advertisers want quality conversions, networks want affiliates that can deliver quality conversions and affiliates want, well…lots of money from running great offers. If we know what you can knock out of the park quality conversions and volume wise then we can get advertisers on board that have those offers.  Fewer offers, more money – it’s a noble concept that works.

 If you’re not the talkative type then ask your Affiliate Manager to email you our quick survey to get that information rolling. Be proactive, it pays well!

…Of course you do. Anybody who is anybody wants to take their affiliate marketing business to the next level. OK, so how do you do it? Tell me Mike, what’s the quickest way to strike it rich? Tell me, tell me, tell me NOW!!!

The first step in the creation of your “ladder to success” is, and this is coming straight from the advertiser’s mouth; “think like the client.” What helps them drive their business? Put yourself in their shoes and pretend you’re the VP of Marketing for a while. Be original and swim up-stream. The effort is worth it and besides, it’s not as crowded in that direction.

The reality of today’s online space (and kick me if I wrong) is that almost anybody can be an affiliate. Somewhere along the way you’ve become incredibly web-savvy, have a site or sites with ad space, have built an email database of opt-ins or you have the uncanny ability to create a search program while eating your Cheerios. With one or more of those skills and assets you’ve just earned your affiliate ID # and can now start promoting offers and cash-in on the CPL or CPA payout. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great affiliates out there, but there’s also no bar exam to pass, no affiliate designation to get. On top of that, unfortunately, that openness to join the affiliate fraternity allows a few rotten apples to ruin it for the bunch. What do you get when you build a pile of great apples and then surround them with a few rotten ones? - it’s not a pretty smell to advertisers. That smell means we have to self-regulate to clear the air.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across a new affiliate running a campaign whose conversion rates have been out of this world. When you see 5 clicks and 5 conversions, jackpot bells don’t ring, fraud sirens do. Wow, how did that affiliate get that great conversion rate? – don’t bother answering, we already know. With that kind of activity does the affiliate believe that those leads will turn into customers for the client? Do they think that the client won’t notice your AFFID # as the source of poor leads and ban you from future campaigns? The reality is the Aff ID# will be red-flagged and not allowed to run other high quality private ad campaigns.

Let’s get real here. If you think like the client and focus on finding and acquiring quality leads and quality conversions then you will be building your “ladder to success” – not with toothpicks but solid high quality rungs. The client will identify (and us too) that you are a professional marketer, and that your leads and conversions can be trusted. With honesty, effort and professionalism comes opportunity. Straight from the client’s mouth: “quality is the number one focus.” If the quality is there then the vault will open and everyone will get rich.

Which way are you going to swim?

The Olympics just finished up and what a show it was! You saw amazing athletes strive to be the best they could be and some like Usain Bolt establish new levels of excellence.

Being a hyper-competitive person, I loved watching the athletic beauty and quiet controlled effort that was put in by the top performers. Was it just me or did most of the elite performers always look calm and controlled and everyone behind them looked frantic and their faces were turning red? When you’re that good, you can calmly look around for your mom in the stands when approaching the finish line.

After viewing the results coming in event after event I became even more interested in finding out more about each person’s dedication, how they approached their craft and how they got to such high levels of success. One quote that I picked out that stuck with me was Usain Bolt who stated the following after his Gold winning and record shattering accomplishments: “I came out here prepared,” he said. “I worked hard, that’s all I can say. … I worked hard to get here. It wasn’t easy at all. It may look easy, but it was hard.”

To someone that loves the online industry and is dedicated to making it the best it can be, those are beautiful worlds to hear - I came out here prepared, I worked hard, it wasn’t easy at all. It may look was but it was hard. Great things can be accomplished by embracing these words. To start, we can throw out the status quo, the “that’s the way we’ve always done things.” Sebastian Coe’s father wasn’t a track coach, but he turned his son into a track star by ignoring the status quo. Roger Bannister (broke the 4 minute mile barrier) didn’t measure his success against the impossible 4 minute mile barrier, he prepared himself so that he could run as fast as humanly possible.

Speaking about making ourselves the best that we can be, what are we doing in the online industry to not only embrace these words, but more importantly embrace the attitude that generates them?

We should start our own Olympics of sorts. Instead of being a society that hands out participant ribbons to people that show up, we should reward the individuals that clearly come prepared, act with integrity and out-perform the rest of the competition – the top 3. In my experience in the online space, I’m seeing advertisers slowly move away from the participant award winners (cookie cutter run-of-site/section CPM publishers) to the podium finishers (interaction tracking Rich Media providers like Eyeblaster and EyeWonder to performance based marketing networks like Advaliant). These types of companies are clearly trying to help advertisers combat the economic crunch and the screams for a better marketing ROI. Starting and finishing the race with Usain Bolt is no longer an accomplishment. Coming to the final stretch and being Usain Bolt is all that counts. If you’re an advertiser, start doing your homework. Find out who is coming out prepared, who is working hard on the right solution for your needs and who is ready to claim that Gold Medal. Participant ribbons are eating your budget, don’t let them.

The Avalanche is coming, The Avalanche is coming.

I fondly remember a conversation that I had with a Sr. VP of Sales at a leading newspaper roughly five years ago (where I was employed as an online specialist). It went something like this:

What do you think will happen moving forward with the newspaper, the magazine and the sites?

You see the publisher of the paper was trying to figure out how to rescue print and magazine advertising dollars while online advertising was taking off. For decades clients were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in those mediums and now they just weren’t getting the ROI that they wanted.

My response was “watch out because the Avalanche is coming”. What I was referring to was that with online audiences growing steadily and newspaper and magazine ad revenue (and readership) dropping like a stone, it was pretty clear that any stagnant media source would be wiped out. It wouldn’t happen overnight but it would definitely happen, magazine by magazine, paper by paper, city by city.

“Readers” weren’t readers anymore, they’re now people. They didn’t like yesterday’s news or to be told what was happening. They no longer bought the media, they controlled it, they made it. They had voices and they reached out to places where they could be heard. Traditional media used to think we were nuts when we talked about places like YouTube or we blogged. Now, it’s called User Generated Content and these dark dungeons are now billion dollar companies.

With the mainstream’s immersion in the internet, we’ve taken media to an absolutely new level. That new shift has been incredibly fun for my peeps, my fellow webheads. On the other side of the fence, it’s been pretty scary for traditional media advertisers. They can’t find you anymore, they’re having difficulty learning how to speak WITH you instead of speaking AT you. Can’t you just congregate at the local newspaper like you used to? It was so much easier when one phone call would buy media for millions of people in a specific demographic.

To make things worse, the economy has gone to “the challenge area” and now Marketing Managers and agency folk are pressed to sell more products with each marketing dollar spent. That’s right, selling products is important again. Pass the Rogaine, people are losing their hair out there. The avalanche is here and the snowboarders are winning! It’s ok, we’ll help them out, right?

You never know, maybe they’re reading your blog right now, clicking on an ad and helping you make a few affiliate bucks.