Looking at the current state of our economy right now, there seems to be no end to the reports that things are steadily going to worsen. Not since the Great Depression has the US Federal Government had to buy stock in American banks to raise cash (in direct relation to the $700 billion economic rescue bill). Stock prices also suffered heavy losses in Europe, Asia and in most major international markets.

As an affiliate, you may ask yourself how can I profit, no one seems to be spending right? Wrong! Money is still exchanging hands; it’s just in times like these consumers are looking for things that suit their needs, not necessarily their wants. Affiliates need to become “liquid” in order to adapt (the analogy is to flow with the rough water and not sink in it). Affiliates should look to either change and/or enhance what type of campaigns they promote and do so in conjunction with socio-economic trends. By being flexible and adjusting to market changers, you may be able to profit handsomely in these times.

Here is a list of offers that I recommend affiliates promote:

#1735 Data Entry Studio - Home-Business Opportunity

Landing page: http://www.valtrk.com/URL/track.aspx?AdID=1735&AffID=77

Payout: $28.00 

#1793 Lazy Wealth Guide

Landing Page: http://www.valtrk.com/URL/track.aspx?AdID=1793&AffID=77

Payout: $16.00

Easy Converting downloadable eBook on how to earn income at home.

 #1795 Cash For Gold USA - 1 Page Short Form

Landing Page: http://www.valtrk.com/URL/track.aspx?AdID=1795&AffID=77

Payout: $10.50

 #1890 **Advaliant EXCLUSIVE** - Mydebtworkshop.com  : Simple 4 Field Conversion

Landing Page: http://www.valtrk.com/URL/track.aspx?AdID=1920&AffID=77

Payout: $4.50

 #1920 Credit Report America - Free Credit Report Offer

Landing Page: http://www.valtrk.com/URL/track.aspx?AdID=1920&AffID=77

Payout: $35.00

 #1923 EZ Grant Source -When Wall Street Crashes, stay protected! Get your government grant today!

Landing Page: http://www.valtrk.com/URL/track.aspx?AdID=1924&AffID=77

Payout: $24.50

While some affiliates have seen a drop in revenue on their campaigns, others are thriving and experiencing solid returns. By adapting to changing economic trends, affiliates can make the most out of downturns and still generate steady ROI (return on investment).

Richard Okolo
Affiliate Manager, Advaliant
phone: 647-288-1643
email: rokolo@advaliant.com

The fourth quarter is nationally renowned as the gravy quarter, so it is only fitting that we capitalize on that. There are many factors that influence success, so it is vital as an affiliate marketer to plan your end of year strategically and thoroughly. Previous quarterly marketing tactics will not necessarily triumph in Q4, so here are some tips to incorporate in your gravy quarter planning!

Identify With and Become the Brand

Take the time to assess the active marketing initiatives of the brand you are looking to promote:

- What mediums is the brand actively using to market its product? (online, radio, etc)

- Current SEM promotion: is the brand marketing on all tier 1-3 search engines?

- Note the verbiage and graphics used in all of the promotions (is the message clear and marketable?)

- What is the value proposition to the user and is there a sense of urgency (seasonality/limited time offer)?

Determine the core demographic of the brand and identify who the online target audience is:

- Is there a similarity (brand demo and online target audience)?

- If so, draw the parallels and note the similarities. This will assist you with marketing to the most  conversion-prone audience.

- If not, be sure to target both audiences, as there may be an opportunity to capitalize on a new (unsaturated) market share.

Competitive Landscape Analysis

Conduct an extensive search to determine who the brands’ offline/online competitors are:

- Analyze each competitor’s campaigns by taking note of the features/benefits of the product and the value proposition to the user. Note the distribution channels that your competition is using to promote their campaigns (IE: SEM and social media, etc).

- Diversifying distribution channels allows for extensive reach, building brand awareness, and increasing your conversion rates. (e.g. SEM targets real-time purchasers while social media provides brand engagement/awareness).

- Do not simply mirror the competition but trump it through creative and savvy innovation!

- Identify what is marketable about the competitor’s campaign and finesse it, i.e. the value proposition to the customer must be unique and enticing.

Distribution Channel: En Route to Conversions

- Establish a marketing budget, which is flexible for the emerging media landscapes: SEM distribution: Be clear with what your ceiling and floor spends are but ensure you have the ability to inflate/deflate daily. Make sure you manage your spend as these costs inflate quickly.

- Institute a monthly test budget: If you’re monthly marketing budget is $1000 (SEM distribution), allocate $200 of that to test distribution via an alternative channel.

- Marketing your campaign through more than one distribution channel will assist with stabilizing your revenue streams and building your portfolio. Just like your investments in equities, diversification is critical to long-term success in online marketing.

Happy Marketing!

Chantelle S. White
MediaTrust – Business Development & Partnerships

If you read this blog, you know we don’t pimp offers very often. Don’t get me wrong, we have TONS of great stuff on the network, but we don’t want to clutter the blogosphere with offers you already know about. This offer just came online today. As the Agency of Record, we’re going to do everything we can to really blow this free credit report offer up.

First off, if you do well in the credit space, this offer is going to blow your mind. We’re offering a $35 minimum payout - $10 above market value! Additionally, this an “A+” advertiser, so you know the quality is there. In a nutshell, this offer converts as well as all the other credit offers, but pays like no other.

Check it out at: www.CreditReportAmerica.com and click on the “Become an Affiliate” link at the bottom of the page, or just head over to: www.advaliant.com to get started.

Advalaint offer #1920 - High paying credit offer on 12seconds.tv

“Superiority of numbers is the most common element of victory.”

– Military historian Carl von Clausewitz

Clauzwitz’s words apply to online performance marketing as well. Today the successful brand needs to generate traffic and convert it to sales quickly. Deriving branding and leads from advertising is critical. And testing is a sure path to top results.

There is a continuing shift in online advertising. Gone are the days of blanket institutional “big splash” campaigns. Advertisers want guaranteed results, and to that end, web publishers need to provide click-favorable real estate. But it’s a two-way street; advertisers have the responsibility of understanding their product and target audience thoroughly, working closely with their creative and publishing partners to prevent exorbitant customer acquisition costs.

The web is an interactive medium; a direct response channel used to offer and take action immediately. And every transaction a web visitor makes is a learning opportunity for a savvy marketer. Your site loyalists (repeat visitors, your primary revenue base) will tell you what they like…just ask them. Capturing the traffic from partner sites is the key to dominant market share. Do you have a viable sales process in place to tap into this traffic? If you can’t sell your offer on your own site…and show good conversion rates…. partner publishers will have a tough time promoting you to their visitors.

 Two steps in the right direction:

Step 1: Study behavior. Implement a tracking system to chart all visitor metrics on your site. And analyze the findings. What messaging elicits the most response? What pages or sections garner the majority of eyeballs? A/B test via email, display, etc. to increase your visitor knowledge base. And of course, add offers from co-marketing partners to extract additional dollars from your Web site audience.

Step 2: Plug your tested offer(s) into other web sites via ads based on performance, i.e., pay the publisher on completed actions (cost-per-action or cost-per-sale), not impressions. Your rate model can reflect per lead, per click or per sale, or a hybrid version of the three.

Effective affiliate network managers deliver ROI instantly, and collaboratively give a positive experience to existing and potential buyers. Progressive performance marketers realize affiliate networks strengthen brand identity by acting as media buyers, creative consultants, researchers and 24/7 virtual sales teams.

The Performance marketing landscape is a changing dynamic place and if you’re not arming your self with the leading tools, trust me, your competitors are!

-Erik Keller, Affiliate Manager, Advaliant

(ekeller@advaliant.com) tel:646 209-9339

Advaliant President, Jivan Manhas, will be on a panel tomorrow at Affiliate Summit Social Media. He’ll be talking about how Affiliate Marketers can better use the medium to drive targeted traffic and convert offers into sales. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are changing the game and how we think about the industry. If you’re in New York, we hope to see you at Jivan’s panel. Whether you attend or not, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments on your experience using social networks to drive revenue.

The new MySpace Ad Platform has opened up and it looks like we have a great new social media marketing platform. Facebook has been a very effective channel for our offers and affiliate partners. This now opens a new, large and significant social media channel for affiliates to market.

There is a great review done on Nicky Cakes blog called “MySpace Ads Beta: First Impressions”. I believe this is a “must read” for all social media affiliates. We have many offers that will perform well here and are in the process of bring on more for you to monetize. Please also speak with your Advaliant Affiliate Manager and let them know what offers are working and what new ones we can create for you.

We are continuing our MediaTrust expansion into the UK, NZ and AUS markets. Jivan Manhas and Julian Mossanen are at ad:tech UK developing affiliate, advertisier, lead gen, data and network partnerships. We have many great advertising programs and affiliate marketing contests coming soon and are building great partnerships in the UK performance marketing community. We also have a very good referral partner program for affiliate marketing bloggers and partner introductions.

Please reach out to us thru the comments or you can email Jivan and Julian

jmanhasATmediatrustDOTcom

jmossanenATmediatrustDOTcom

We ask this question all the time in our industry, but does anyone really listen? At Advaliant, we like to think that we do. Recently Bryn Youngblut had some questions about our network and we listened:

“I was first contacted by Peter Bordes, the CEO of MediaTrust. Advaliant is the online performance marketing division of MediaTrust. Peter is a very welcoming and friendly guy, especially since I haven’t done much using Advaliant he took the time to contact me and answer some questions I had about the network. Most companies will forward your e-mail off to their support people. It’s nice to see that people as important and busy as the CEO of a company still take the time to personally contact you.”

We like to think this isn’t an isolated example. We genuinely want to hear what our affiliates think - feedback is critical to our success.

Thanks for being a customer of Advaliant, Bryn and thanks for taking the time post about us!

…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?

Over the last couple of months we’ve been hearing rumblings about the need for an organization around performance marketing. After several starts and stops, the Performance Marketing Alliance is giving it a go. We caught up with Rebecca Madigan, the Founding Organizer as well as some folks from EPage and Vertive to talk about why the PMA matters and how they are going to gain some credibility.

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