Justin Dupre » affiliate managers

How to Pick an Offer to Promote

Justin Dupre — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:28:07 +0000

This is a follow-up post to a question asked in Ask Away Round 4. If you have any questions about affiliate marketing in general and want some answers, feel free to leave a comment there or shoot me an email.

So, you’re ready to fire up an affiliate campaign, but you’re absolutely stumped on what to run. It happens a lot more than you’d like it to, and I have the problem on a daily basis. There are a few steps I take to get around this and start thinking.

Hit Up the News

Start reading some popular English news sites. Browse through the different categories you see there and you might see a trend of posts talking about one niche or a product or something you can turn into an offer on your own. You can also start browsing gossip sites. Notice the advertisements. Anything being promoted on gossip sites would probably make for a great niche to promote, number 1, because if they’re making money spending huge on media buys there, they’re probably making a decent return. Also, the quality of traffic on celeb gossip sites is horrible, so again, if you can make money there, you can make money anywhere. Google Trends is also great for seeing whats hot.

Hit Up a Network You Can Trust

Affiliate networks are sleezy, but there are a few out there that know what they’re talking about. EWA, Qwik, A4D, C2M are all pretty decent in that they have affiliate managers that are or have at some time in their life been affiliates themselves. I really like checking out EWA as they have a leader board of best converting offers on their home page after logging in. This helps me not only pick niches, but offers as well.

Know Your Traffic

Another thing you’ll want to do is to know your traffic. What are the main demographics for it? Where is it coming from? Then, match the traffic source to the offer. Use demographic research tools like Google Ad Planner, Compete, Alexa, and Quantcast to really dig deep into your traffic demographics. Run the offers through those tools, as well, and see which one gives you the closest match!

Keep It Interesting

If you are still stumped, use what you are interested in and pick out an offer you’d sign up for yourself. Target people with similar interests and demographics as you and you might be able to build out a successful campaign.

For more in-depth tips and coverage on selecting and running an offer, you might be interested in joining my private forums. You’ll get one-on-one help from me, as well as from many others already in the community! Click here for more details.

Your Responsibility as My Affiliate Manager

Justin Dupre — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:10:39 +0000

Excuse me while I go off on a rant for a bit, but I’m sure many of you have been screwed over by your affiliate managers on more than one occasion, and if they have, this is how you probably feel.

Yesterday I was running an offer, and have been running it for over a month without a peep from the offer’s management. They decided to back out as the ROI on the offer just wasn’t worth it for them. That’s all fine and dandy, until you factor in that my affiliate manager who knows I’ve been running this offer failed to inform me in any way. So I found out for myself when my traffic was being redirected to another offer. Luckily, that offer was backing out for me with a slight drop in ROI, but still profitable.

I try not to check my stats too often and build other campaigns out, which I was doing. Eventually, I fell asleep.

I woke up to check my stats today to see something really funny. I was down about -80% ROI. They switched the offer on me again. I got no email, no warning, and the offer wasn’t even in the same niche as the traffic I was running to it. Let’s not forget the 300% decrease in payout.

I don’t care if my traffic wasn’t converting on your end, I don’t care if the quality was bad, and I don’t care if you have to switch offer links because of that, but your responsibility is to let me know when you have to do this, why, and what I can do to improve or get my quality back up. Don’t just say, aww he’ll figure it out himself. Don’t assume because I didn’t do $100,000 revenue last month, that I won’t do it this month. I don’t know if you’re trying to intentionally burn a bridge with me or not, but shit like this loses me a lot of money that just makes me wanna say, “You know what? I’m done sending you any kind of traffic.” There are too many other networks and affiliate manager that know what they’re doing to just let something like this slip by.

What’s Happening Where at ASW?

Justin Dupre — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:52:25 +0000

Affiliate Summit West is happening next month, and this will be my first time at the conference. Of course, there will be the mixing, mingling, and getting to know your affiliate managers (I will be avoiding Azoogle, though. I know you want my traffic, okay!?)

So, that being said, I don’t really know what is going on as far as parties and dinners and who is gonna be doing what. So, if you are a network, affiliate, attendee, whatever, that is interested in buying me a juicy ribeye steak and some nice champagne, I’ll be sure to repay the favor with a mention on the blog (if all you talk about is BS, though, I’ll be sure to mention that, too!)

January 19th is my birthday, so who is covering the bar tab on that? Haha.

I will post updates closer to the date of the conference.

What a Good Affiliate Manager Should Do Most

Justin Dupre — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:38:04 +0000

I’m writing this out of frustration. Frustration that one of my affiliate managers just doesn’t get it. Despite the number of times I’ve tried telling him that I’m not going to tell you where I run my traffic, what my landing page looks like, what keywords I’m bidding – There is NO WAY IN HELL I will ever give up that information. So just stop asking. The number 1 thing you can let me do is let me do my own thing.

I understand communication is an issue here, but if I don’t ask you a question, I probably don’t have any. I don’t mind you telling me what is hot, but don’t come and tell me that your latest Shamwow rip-off product is doing soooo hot because you can run Facebook traffic to it now. Show me some EPCs, show me how you think it would run, show me what your internal affiliate team is doing to make it profitable, but for the love of god, stop asking for all my personal campaign data. Anyways, if you know it’s doing so hot on Facebook, you probably wouldn’t need me to tell you my traffic sources and landing pages.

If you are a current affiliate manager, put some money down and try running your own offers (without jacking your affiliates ideas). Get some knowledge into the area you are working. Affiliate marketing isn’t just all about seeing what the EPCs are, its about knowing what makes those EPCs, and I don’t want to give up that data, nor does any other successful affiliate. Okay? So you can stop asking me now, k thx.

Eagle Web Assets

Justin Dupre — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:30:11 +0000

Welcome back to Monday, every full-time affiliate marketers favorite day! Why? Because they can stay home and sleep recovering from any crazy weekend plans they went through.

All joking aside, I want you guys to start hitting up my favorite affiliate network. EWA is run by none other than the Birdman himself, Ryan Eagle. This guy just hit his 22nd birthday so I thought I’d throw some rep. at him here. That’s not to say he doesn’t have enough already.

A little history on Ryan – he used some reallly, realllllly, realllllllllly bad publicity to get his name featured in the realm of affiliate marketing. It was so bad, that somehow it was good and now everyone knows who he is. Some love him, and some hate him. He’s bathes in his money, so I’m sure he doesn’t give a shit anyways. His motto: Money, Hos, Cars, Clothes. Ryan’s got his priorities straight.

So why do you want to join a network run by Ryan? Well, if you aren’t able to get a lot of cashflow going, Ryan will pay you weekly. You’ll get weekly checks if you make less than $1k, and if you are making more you’ll get it deposited straight into your bank account.

Want a bump. Ryan streets stuff higher than the bumps I’ve gotton on other networks. He doesn’t have 50 affiliate managers to pay, and most of his affiliates are very high volume ballers just like Ryan himself. So he’s got high streets, and he’ll still have room to bump you.

Need tips on offers to run? You don’t even have to ask when you work with EWA. I get a couple emails a week from them that will straight up tell me what offers to run, and even HOW and WHERE to run the offers. He’s handing out easy money for stupid affiliates! Get on that!

So are you ready to get on board with this kick ass, private network? Join EWA by clicking the link here.

Take Your Eggs Out of One Basket Through Multiple CPA Networks

Justin Dupre — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:13:06 +0000

One thing that you will hear in the affiliate and internet marketing industry is to never keep your eggs in one basket. If that basket drops, your eggs break and you are back to square one. I’ve been there and it wasn’t fun.

I was only just starting to get into affiliate marketing when I finally had a decent campaign running. I had it up for a month, and all I would do was sit on those eggs and try to optimize my ROI. I learned a lot about optimization from it, like how I could gain an extra .5% on conversions. While I was doing that, I could have been breaking into another niche, not worried about that extra .5% and probably have made more profit with two different campaigns. In the end the campaign I was running was dropped from the network and I was pretty screwed. Back to square one.

So we all know that you need to break in to multiple niches. But one thing a lot of people don’t talk about too much is splitting your traffic across multiple networks. Most of the time, people will do this to see which network will give them the best conversion rate, and I still do this at the beginning. Most of the time, I find there is never really much of a difference (but if there is I knock that network out of my rotator, of course). If not, I’ll always keep rotating. Why?

You need to keep your eggs in multiple baskets. The basket is the network, and networks like to do weird things. Sometimes an offer will be pulled from a network while you are sleeping. Leads get capped and your clicks get redirected to another offer that might not convert so well. Sometimes the whole damn network goes down (CX Digital anyone) and sometimes, the tracking provider of 100s of networks decides to go down, as well (DirectTrack!).

There are countless things that can happen. If I keep my clicks going to different networks A) I can constantly split test different sources B) I can constantly keep at least a few of my affiliate managers happy with a decent amount of traffic C) If one network takes the offer down (or the network goes down completely) while I’m not around my computer, I can still probably break even driving the traffic across a few other networks D) Who doesn’t love getting 5 wires in one day to their bank account?

Of course there are cons to what I do. Wires cost you money, and getting 5 wires might cost you 50 – 200$ depending on your bank or where you are. You might not be making enough to get wires if you aren’t sending enough traffic to each network (most require you make $1000 a week to get weekly wires). Also, it can be kind of time consuming to manage so many links and all your accounts.

What do you think about splitting your traffic like this? If you could get the volume, would you take 100% of your traffic and give it to the best converter despite the risk, or split it and perhaps lose 5-10% off your daily ROI (That’s what I am guesstimating I’m losing by doing this).

Congrats to the Winner

Justin Dupre — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:02:04 +0000

The winner of my contest is Nathan Hutchinson. I’ve talked to him already and he will be receiving a new netbook from Tatto Media. Nathan was one who actually came and asked me about different offers and how he could increase his income.I want to thank Mike Cataldo from Tatto Media for giving me the chance to hold this contest, and thanks to all the participants for trying to get their affiliate income up.

Overall, it wasn’t a spectacular show up with only about $700 being brought in over about 2 months, but I definitely could have done a better job promoting it. Hopefully, some of you continue to work with Mike ant Tatto Media because I know they are a real solid group that knows what they are doing. Most of the affiliate managers are already marketers themselves, and Mike is even an advertiser so you are getting some direct deals with them.

So You Had a Bad Day?

Justin Dupre — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:45:27 +0000

A Bad Day

Ever just have one of those days where nothing goes right for you. It sucks, especially when it comes to your internet marketing campaigns. Today was one such day. I expected it, as Mondays and Sundays have typically been the least profitable for me. I suppose with Father’s Day on Sunday, that made things ten times worse, because every campaign I had turned on today had conversion rates less than half of normal. Some of these I’ve had running for a few months.

All I can really do is ask my affiliate managers if there were some problems with the offers, if conversion rates were down across the network, or if this is ussually expected on most holidays. In some cases, it could be any one of these, or it coulda just been my unlucky day. If it continues for a few more days like this, I’ll know it has been a problem on the network rather than anything else.

Anyone else see bad things happen to their campaigns the past couple days?

Anyways, the Tatto Media contest is finally starting to pick up some steam. Nearly $100 has been generated by 24 affiliates now on board. That still isn’t enough money, though. I’ve decided that to make this worth while, we need to hit atleast $500 in commissions before we give out the prize. I already gave out a suggestion on what offers to run and how to run them, you just need to go out and try it!

How I Increased My Revenue by Over 5x Overnight!

Justin Dupre — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:41:55 +0000

Sounds like one of those scammy e-book titles you always hear about over at Digital Point, right? Thankfully, I’ m not gonna sell you anything. The past month has been pretty shitty for me. It was probably the worst month for marketing in my life. I decided enough was enough and I just had to kick up my profits. Here is how I got myself on the right track.

Set up the office

I set up my own home office. This makes me feel like while I’m at my desk, I’ve got to be on the job at all times. On top of this, I’ve got my designer that comes in and helps me get my tasks done. He’s what keeps me from searching for porn on Google. That’d be awkward if he caught me doing that, aye?

Talked to some friends

I use a private chat I’m part of with a small circle of friends that are also other affiliate marketers. I tried a little better to participage and ask some questions. They are all great people and helped point me in the right direction to get some motivation and make some profits. Without the other people I know in marketing, I’d probably still be a giant boat of fail. Just reaching out and contacting someone, anyone, you know in marketing can go a long way in helping you succeed.

Asked my affiliate managers

Your relationship with your affiliate manager is huge! Don’t underestimate them, and don’t let them underestimate you. You pay for their shiny new cars and $50 lunches, so why shouldn’t you be swamping them with questions? Anyways, I talked with one of my favorite AMs and one of the coolest cats I know, Ryan Eagle, from Eagle Web Assets. It’s a private network, but if you are buddies with me, him or Harrison, you can prolly find a way to sneak in.

Anyways, he knows what offers I like to run and how I promote everything, and this kid just asks me “What offer do you want and what payout do you want for it?” He goes out and gets whatever the hell you want to promote without shaking. You want to know how much money he took on that offer? The offer pays out 5 more cents on his end. I have to sent 1000 leads just for him to make $50. What a playa! He helped me snatch an offer that many other networks don’t have, and gave me a higher payout than anyone else will have for sure! On top of that, he gave me advice for generating traffic from areas I hadn’t heard of!

With all these working in connection, I’ve been able to raise my revenue over 5x of what I was pushing last week. It looks like it will be pretty consistent, too. So, get out there, sign up for some affiliate networks (My favorites: EWA, Tatto Media, Motive Interactive, Advaliant), split test some offers, ask me for advice, and make some money!

Odd Niches Make for Big Money

Justin Dupre — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:30:05 +0000

Sometimes, we all have to dip our toes into some yucky substance we’d much rather avoid as Internet marketers. However, those niches that other marketers look at and say yuck at are the niches where there is still money to be made.

Remember the colon cleansing “flogs” (fake blogs). That was an untapped niche, although I’ve seen products for cleaning your colon on Clickbank well before the whole “flog” fiasco came along. Too damn bad I was way too grossed out by the pictures I saw on Google to ever put together a mini-site on it and start promoting well before everyone else did. I would probably be laughing at everyone else with their fake blogs while I stood on top of the pack with a much stronger, heavier page in Google.

There are people out there with some odd and disgusting problems. It is our job to find their solution and market it to them. This is key to true and big untapped profits. Having a clue that there is an odd product out there waiting to be marketed helps. You can do the research yourself, or if you have kickass affiliate managers, they’ll send you an email when a unique offer comes on the network.

That is just how I got one offer that has just been killing as far as ROI for me. I’m bidding huge click costs on it just to generate impressions, however, it still pays off with 150% ROI back in my pocket. And that ain’t chump change at all! With further optimization I could bump that up another 25 – 50%.

If you are looking for an odd niche, look at yourself first. What kind of odd problems do you have that you don’t have a solution to yet? Always biting your nails? Have webbed toes? In Thailand and can’t get a decent girlfriend? (Ha!) There has got to be an affiliate product or offer to solve all these problems, and if not, you can always create your own! Think outside the box to put money in your box.