20 Questions and Answers from Behind the Scenes
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This presentation is from Affiliate Summit East 2015 (August 2-4, 2015 in New York, NY). Session description: I’m the person who spills the beans about everything from tracking to increased commissions to FTC disclosure. Learn from 10 years of my mistakes and successes in blogging, networking and marketing.
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20 Questions and Answers from Behind the Scenes
- 1. Affiliate Summit East 2015 20 Questions and Answers from Behind the Scenes Tricia Meyer, MeyerTech, LLC, @SunshineTricia
- 2. #1: What Is a VIP Commission?
- 3. #1: What Is a VIP Commission?
- 4. #2: How Do I Get Higher Commissions from a Merchant/OPM/Affiliate Manager?
- 5. #2: How Do I Get Higher Commissions? • Homepage Placement • Featured Merchant on Site • Featured Merchant in Newsletter • Social Media Exposure • Video Review • What is Unique to YOUR Site?
- 6. #3: What Is the Best Affiliate Network?
- 7. #3: What Is the Best Affiliate Network?
- 8. #4: What Is the Fastest Way for Bloggers to Get Into Affiliate Marketing?
- 9. #4: What Is the Fastest Way for Bloggers to Get Into Affiliate Marketing?
- 10. #5: What Is an Appropriate FTC Disclosure?
- 11. #5: What Is an Appropriate FTC Disclosure? • Clear Language • Obvious to the Reader • Before Any Links
- 12. #6: What Is One Thing You MUST Do at Affiliate Summit?
- 13. #6: What Is One Thing You Must Do at Affiliate Summit?
- 14. #7: What Do You Do When Sales Do Not Track Properly?
- 15. #7: What Do You Do When Sales Do Not Track Properly? • Keep an eye on merchant stats for your biggest or newest merchants (including EPC and date of last transaction) • Make test purchase yourself • Get to know others in your niche or that promote the same merchant and compare notes • Visit ABW and start a dialog about the merchant
- 16. #8: Which Merchants Might Be Stealing My Customers and Sales from Me?
- 17. #8: Which Merchants Might Be Stealing My Sales?
- 18. #9: What Are the Different Levels of Coupon Codes?
- 19. #9: What are the Different Levels of Coupon Codes?
- 20. #10: What is SubID Tracking and How Should I Be Using It?
- 21. #10: What is SubID Tracking and How Should I Be Using It?
- 22. #11: How Do You Get to Inbox Zero?
- 23. #11: How Do You Get to Inbox Zero?
- 24. #12: How Do You Decide if a Niche is Worthwhile?
- 25. #12: How Do You Decide if a Niche is Worthwhile?
- 26. #13: How Can a Merchant Be Helpful Besides Commissions?
- 27. #13: How Can a Merchant Be Helpful Besides Commissions? • Custom Creatives • Dedicated Landing Pages • Products to Review • Contest Sponsorships • Seasonal Trends and Calendars • Top Selling Products • Press Releases and Company News • Other Advertising Pushes • Read the Newsletters!
- 28. #14: What Are Some of Your Automation Cheats?
- 29. #14: What Are Some of Your Automation Cheats?
- 30. #15: How/Why Do You Redirect Your Affiliate Links?
- 31. #15: How/Why Do You Redirect Your Affiliate Links? • Looks pretty! • Merchant changes networks • Merchant closes • Extra tracking • Use for social sharing • Easy to remember
- 32. #16: If You Were Going to Get a Tattoo, What Would It Be?
- 33. #16: If You Were Going to Get a Tattoo, What Would It Be?
- 34. #17: What Are the Benefits of Deep Linking?
- 35. #17: What Are the Benefits of Deep Linking? • Product Reviews Directly to Product • Add Product Directly to Cart • Bypass Homepages with Leaks • Category or Search Landing Pages • Content on Merchant Site
- 36. #18: Why Do You Work with CPA Networks?
- 37. #18: Why Do You Work with CPA Networks?
- 38. #19: How Do You Reconnect or Reaffirm Connections When You See People So Infrequently?
- 39. #19: How Do You Reconnect and Reaffirm Relationships?
- 40. #20: Why Should I Network with My Competition?
- 41. #20: Why Should I Network with My Competition? • Job/Role Changes Within Industry • Share Information About Bad Merchants • Guest Posting (Particularly for Bloggers) • Joint Ventures • White Label Solutions • Presenting at Conferences
- 42. Any time left for questions? Tricia Meyer Twitter: @SunshineTricia www.tricia.me
Editor's Notes
- What is it NOT? Not necessarily based on your sales volume or the size of your site. It IS based on your reputation within the network, your relationship with your affiliate manager, your niche, etc. MANY merchants will start affiliates at a base commission rate. This wades out affiliates who are not serious, do not have a great niche, don’t send incremental traffic, etc. It NEVER hurts to ask for this VIP rate. You can often see if they have one by checking ebates. Another way is to compare average sale and average commission to find the average commission rate.
- Figure out how YOU stand out. It might very well be volume for a specific product or product line. But it could also be featured placement on your site (homepage, header, intro to newsletter), making them a featured merchant in a shopping category, doing a product or merchant review.
- There are hidden treasures within every network, it just depends how hard you are willing to look and what you are hoping to find. Each has different tools, attribution, and merchants. Depending upon your niche, some will have more applicable merchants than others. How responsive is the network when you sign up or have a problem? Depending on your level of technical expertise, some might not work for you at all. MY experience…SAS tracks really well, which is an important consideration for any affiliate.
- Start with what you already know and use. Go through your day—hair products to favorite workout pants to tea. Go through your old blog posts—vacation destinations, book reviews, favorite gifts you were given. Then start finding merchants. It’s an easy way to learn about links and work them into your posts organically so you don’t feel like you are selling out.
- So much complicated language out there. But it boils down to a few very basic things. You have to disclose on every platform that you put affiliate links where you are endorsing a product or merchant.
- This is a trick question! It’s different for everyone. You’re attending sessions, meeting people, picking up free stuff. But before you leave, take just a few minutes to create a list of action items for yourself when you get home. People to connect with, programs to join, tools to buy…whatever. But give yourself a few actionable things to complete within a week of getting home so that you can feel a tangible sense of return on your investment. Don’t worry…the returns will keep coming! Need some accountability? Share your list over social media or write a quick blog post about it. (of course including affiliate summit affiliate links)
- Not all sales will track. Some are a tech issue on the merchant side. Some are customers blocking cookies. Some sales are overwritten by malware or toolbars. You are the only one watching out for your own commissions. It’s especially important when you start working with a merchant, a merchant changes their site, or you are heavily promoting one merchant over others. ShareASale has the best conversions of the merchants we work with. Also Impact Radius. Biggest culprits are CJ and Linkshare.
- A lot of merchants have started becoming affiliates themselves, so you have to be really careful which merchants you promote and how they then promote their affiliate offers. Coupon and deal sites are the worst. You have to evaluate whether they money you are making on a CPA lead gen is enough to outweigh any sales you might lose. It might be! Or it might not. You may get paid for a grocery coupon but they end up using an online coupon for a big purchase. Or you may be promoting their grocery coupons and they start marketing cash back to your customers.
- General codes, affiliate exclusive codes, vanity codes, exclusive codes. General codes are the easiest to get…up through exclusive codes for your site, which are the hardest. If you want something your audience cannot find anywhere else, you need a vanity code or an exclusive. If you just want to have deals to post, general codes are fine.
- Track user clicks to see where they come from. Track different campaigns that you are running (social networks or on your site). Compare different types of posts versus banners in different places. Include subnetwork information if you have people using your link.
- Boomerang is the best tool I have ever used. My second best tool is the word “no,” which I am reluctant to say but have found is necessary. I also use filters but sparingly because when I filter too much automatically, I just end up with a bunch of other folders that are full and need reviewed.
- 1) How can you monetize it? Available merchants and how they convert. 2) How much competition is there? And is that competition beatable? The best niche is the one with low competition and 2-3 high converting merchants. Beware if there is NO competition at all because there may be a reason for that.
- Although affiliate marketing is obviously about commissions, there are also a lot of other great benefits to having a good relationship with a merchant. Custom creatives, sponsoring contests and product reviews, seasonal trends and calendars, top selling products, news and press releases. Especially when you are working in a small niche it is important to know when a merchant is going to be in the news (Oprah, Dr. Phil, Jay Leno, Martha Stewart, etc) or even when they are doing a big PR push themselves.
- I guess this is affiliate marketing related? Sunshine McGiggles!
- Deep linking takes more time but can yield higher conversions. Use network tools like the ShareASale Bookmarklet and CJ Deep Link Generator.
- Not all CPA networks are good, but not all CPA networks are bad either. I’ve worked with around 80 of them at some point or another. There ARE benefits to working with CPA networks. There are some great lead generation products that you can only get through a CPA network. Sometimes the CPA Network fees are lower that other networks so you can get the same thing but at a higher commission. Some really strong offers for bloggers (like Pinecone Surveys, Disney Park maps, mobile deals, and various contests) are only available through CPA networks. The key is to find networks that are geared more toward working with your type of affiliate (loyalty, blogger, email), are transparent with their business, and are selective about who they work with. If offers are too good to be true, they probably are! Everyone should come out a winner (consumer, merchant, affiliate, network)
- Meeting in person at Affiliate Summit and other conferences is great and is a good way to start a strong business relationship. But there are a lot of easy ways to maintain that connection online until the next time you see someone (if ever!). Simple things like responding or RTing a Tweet. Commenting on a Facebook or blog post. Set yourself apart for really important relationships by sending an American Greetings online card or even a quick handwritten note with a reminder of what you two talked about. Mix it up so you are doing different things for different people depending upon what it looks like they respond to best.
- Although it might seem counterintuitive, you will find that you can grow your business quite a bit by working with your competitors in different ways.