I finally updated our photo gallery to include photos taken at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, Nevada.  I apologize as these were taken on our iPhones (we forgot our digital camera).  Enjoy

Happy Presidents Day everyone!  Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and a day that many affiliate marketers made a lot of money.  Over the year’s I’ve known affiliates that plan all of their campaigns on certain Holidays, tax season, etc.  They spend months analyzing data, preparing landing pages, and come into ‘attack’ once the Holiday hits.  Some of my pay-per-click friends come in and make $1,000+ an hour on the day before and the day of Valentine’s Day promoting flowers!

While the ideas for Holiday/special occasion campaigns are limitless, I’m personally glad to see this one go.  Over the year’s we’ve promoted some of these campaigns, however I’m personally not a huge fan.  While the money can certainly be rewarding, it really frustrates me to see it disappear a day later.  I would much rather spend my time and energy promoting several smaller-scale campaigns that make a few hundred each day consistently rather than promoting a handful of campaigns that have a very short lifespan.  Also while media buying, companies such as Pro Flowers, come in and suck up a lot of our impressions (they had a huge campaign running this year)!

If you’ve followed our blog, you probably know, I’m a huge fan of optimization.  I like to test several different variations of landing pages, creatives, etc to find the winning pair.  It’s a challenge to me to up the conversion rate just a few percent.  I get a rush out of it!  With campaigns such as Valentine’s Day you really don’t have much time to optimize.  You have to come in strong, base your data on your experience, and cash in while the time allows.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s very doable, but with a short lifespan.

With that said, I hope you all had an excellent Valentine’s Day and spent it with someone special.  I surprised my girlfriend with a cruise to Mexico for next month:).  Now it’s time to get back to making money!

If you’re a media buyer, chances are you’ve either ran beside, competed, or seen a site advertising Jillian Michaels’ website where she sells several of her dietary supplements, weight loss DVDs, and other products. Today, it was revealed to the media, that Jillian is being sued because “taking two pills before eating does not miraculously cause weight loss.”

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Christie Christensen of Lake Elsinore, California, claims that the product has failed to lessen her appetite or cause her to lose weight as advertised. Christensen is seeking damages that are not expected total more than $5 million and states in her filing that she has “struggled with weight loss her entire life” and bought “Calorie Control” because of Michaels’ endorsement.

Maybe Ms. Christensen could have had better luck combining Calorie Control with some Acai & Colon Cleanser for maximum results!  Be careful making false claims!

With all this talk of Super Bowl commercials, I was reminded of a textbook example of a terrible commercial that aired during Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000.  Although I personally can’t remember it nor would have even noticed it at the mere age of 11 years old, I still find it amusing that this particular commercial for OurBeginning.com was so horrible.  The website now is some kind of day care center in Seattle, which I was very disappointed to see considering the fact that the airtime cost them a couple million dollars.  The site used to be a website that produced, of all things… wedding invitations.  I just can’t understand what made these entrepreneurs think that this was good targeting.  Perhaps I was too young during this Super Bowl and only recently have all commercials been geared toward beer, Coke, and Hyundai cars…

Yet another example of my nerdiness became apparent to me when I was the only one in the room that was astounded after watching the Google commercial.  One of my friends commented, “Now John is going to text all his cyber friends”. Sadly, I did…

After thinking about the horrible wedding invitation targeting incident, I started to think of the blunders Ryan, Rich and I have made with our targeting in the past.  One particular example I had in mind was some of our first Facebook campaigns that we started with in the education niche.  In fact, they were so bad we couldn’t even use most of the data in order to turn the campaign profitable so it just had to be scrapped.  Have you made any particularly stupid targeting mistakes in your career? Surely not as stupid as the wedding invitation blunder, right?

Yesterday, I continued my Media Buying 101 series of posts talking about finding a good offer to promote besides a rebill (which have had a lot of trouble recently). With media buying, one of the most important things to keep in mind is your acquisition cost. This is pretty self explanatory, but sometimes overlooked by affiliates.

The acquisition cost to your media buy, is the amount you spend before receiving a conversion. Sometimes ad networks will abbreviate this as CPA (cost per acquisition). This is often tracked by placing a pixel on your offer provided by the ad network. It is completely normally to start off with a high acquisition cost as it takes some time to optimize out the sites that are spending but not converting. It’s very rare to have a campaign meet your CPA goal right off the bat.

This all plays a very important role when selecting your offer for your media buy. Believe it or not, I’ve known people that absolutely blow up email/zip submit offers on pay-per-click (a must before even thinking about a media buy) and are soon disappointed when it doesn’t work with a media buy. This boils down to the acquisition cost. Most ad networks/exchanges and sites are going to charge a CPM average anywhere $0.80 – $3.00 sometimes even more. Therefore a low paying offer to work (generally less than $5) you’re going to have to have one heck of a CTR (click through rate).

In conclusion, when selecting which winning offer (that’s already running successfully on PPC) to do a media buy with, keep the following in mind:

* How much does the offer pay?

* What is the CPM you’re paying for traffic?

* Given the conversion rate on your PPC campaign, what CTR is it going to take to work on a media buy?

* What is your acquisition goal (how much you’d like to spend before seeing a conversion)?

Once you are able to successfuly access these points, you’ll be well on your way to a successful media buy. Good luck!

For those of you that have been following our blog for the past few months, you have probably read at least one of my posts in my ‘Media Buying 101‘ series. First, I gave a basic introduction to media buying, second, I talked about finding sites that convert, and my last post talked about mastering your campaigns on a pay-per-click platform before taking them to a media buy.

During this installment, I want to talk about what kind of offers to promote using a media buy. While Richard and I were at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, many people were griping that with the recent problems in the rebill niche, that they were completely lost on what to do with their media buys. I’m not going to lie, the Acai/Colon offers were very aggressive (which is a must to work on a media buy) and were pretty easy to turn profitable. However, they are not the only affiliate offer that can be promoted successfully via media buying.

Once you have a winning campaign on your pay-per-click platform of choice, you can evaluate it to see if it’s eligible for a media buy. Let me use a real-life example. About a year or so ago the IQ Quiz became a really hot offer in the affiliate world. First, Google Adwords became covered with these ads. Facebook followed. Eventually affiliates were pushing tons of volume with media buys. While they eventually died down (there is still volume out there, but not like before) the ‘IQ Quiz’ was smoking hot, thus it provided a lot of affiliates with a good amount of revenue.

The ‘key factor’ in this was it was a new offer, it appealed to a large audience (I personally knew one lawyer and one medical doctor that took the BS quiz), and it converted like crazy. As the months past buy and regulations came (with displaying the price where people could actually read it) the conversions died down a good bit. However during this ‘buzz’ affiliates cashed in.

What is making a buzz right now in February? Valentines day is on the 14th, tax season is quickly coming up.  Where is the next winning media buy campaign for you? While I cannot provide a simple answer (as things vary from traffic quality to creatives), I can tell you the only way you’re going to find out is start testing! Get some offers converting like crazy on our pay-per-click platforms and see if it has potential for a media buy.

Unfortunately I have to cut this post a little short (I’m out of town with my grandmother in the hospital).  Feel free to ask any questions you have below, and I’ll try to answer them as quickly as I can.  Stay tuned to Super Affiliate Twins as I plan on expanding this series a lot more and will be covering many more aspects of choosing a winning offer! Good luck!

When I first got started promoting affiliate offers, people always told me to ‘think outside the box’ to make money.  They always said there is less competition and it’s much easier to see a return on investment.  While this seemed easy for them to say, I was always frustrated with what exactly they meant.

Now, looking back on my success over the past few years, I have come to realize what exactly they were talking about ‘thinking outside the box’.  Let me use a real-life example.  About two years ago it seemed like almost every affiliate marketer was pushing ringtones.  Every network I was a member of was pushing them hard and it seemed like anyone that was making a lot of cash via affiliate marketing had at least one profitable ringtone campaign.

The most obvious thing to do to begin pushing ringtones was to bid on keywords such as ‘50 Cent Ringtones’, ‘Eminem Ringtones’, ‘WWE Ringtones’, ‘American Idol Ringtones’, etc on every major search engine.  The problem with this method was the big fish with huge bank rolls were already perched up in the top 3-5 spots on every search engine and were willing to lose a considerable amount just to drive you out of business.  While there was definitely money to be made in these positions, this was thinking ‘inside the box’ and had a very high barrier of entry.

Thinking outside the box, I thought of other ways I could reach that same demographic, but for a lot cheaper.  I decided to go against the regular search campaigns, and setup campaigns on the content networks of Google, Yahoo, etc.  Instead of bidding on keywords like ‘50 cent ringtones’ I’d bid on terms such as ‘american idol news’, ‘hip hop news’, ‘50 cent girlfriend’, ‘kim mathers’, etc.  I’d then create a ’squeeze page’ that would push the traffic from these terms to ringtones.  I was hitting the same demographic, but for a lot cheaper.

This way I was not only able to make as much money as the ‘big guys’ bidding on 50 cent ringtones, I was able to do it without an intense bidding war.

Ryan’s Golden Tip: Affiliate marketers that ‘think outside the box’ are able to gain a considerable competitive advantage on other affiliates.  While, ‘thinking inside the box’ can still lead to a substantial income, it also comes with a lot more stress, slimmer margins, and higher-risk opticals.  Affiliates that succeed in thinking ‘outside the box’ are able to create more stable, more profitable, and more long-term campaigns that can lead to astronomical revenue.

When creating your next campaign, keep my image in mind (there’s more cash outside the box).  Good luck!

How’s it going, everyone?  I have been ghost lately on the blog but thankfully Ryan and Richard have been picking up the slack with quality posts.  I’m having trouble adapting to my new schedule here in school with 4 hours of straight class on Tuesday and Thursday.  Good thing they are all entrepreneur and marketing classes though!  Other than that I’ve been looking over some of the projects Ryan and I have been throwing together and trying to balance my life as best as possible without compromising too much.  I’ve been exposed to a lot of AWESOME entrepreneur articles and information in my classes that I am going to be sharing very soon.

I really debated talking about this next topic for fear of negative media attention but it’s so entertaining that I decided I might as well post it for everyone out there to see what their thoughts are on the whole mess.   As soon as I got to school, rush week started for all the incoming freshman of 2009.  As I said before, fraternities are huge at my school and I am also a member of one.  Hopefully you are a little familiar with what I’m talking about but on the last night of rush week we give a bid/invitation to the kids who we want.  The following night we then have what’s called “Kiss Night”…

Kiss Night described in two words… mass chaos.  Basically before the event every greek member who got a bid into a fraternity or sorority gets extremely drunk before the event and heads to a club where the object of the night is to kiss as many people as possible.  No shame, no holding back, all social rules are cut loose.  As a result, you have sloppy 18 and 19 year olds going around making out with 50-60 people, if not more.  As you may have guessed, authorities do not approve of this event very much due to underage drinking and etc. and this year it was cut short because all the ambulances in the area were in use due to the massive amount of ambulances in the area being used for alcohol poisoning.  Fortunately nobody on campus suffered any irreparable damage so we were lucky in that aspect.  The repercussions of the event have not been completely determined though so we are staying tuned.

So yeah, Kiss Night was my kick off to a new year two years in a row, maybe it will prove good luck this year too?  Definitely a unique experience that I will never forget for more reasons than one… (One reason that cost me 9 stitches, but we’ll save that for a rainy day!)   More relevant blog posts to affiliate marketing to come…

Earlier this month I wrote a blog titled “How Much Is Your Time Worth?“  I gave some examples how working on projects that were worth lower than my time could end up hurting my productivity. This week, I’ve experienced first hand, the real importance in outsourcing and time management.

Sunday I decided was the day I was going to get one of our upcoming projects at least 85% complete.  The project had been worked on by a team we hired a few months ago.  With all of their steps complete, I decided to dive in and put the finishing touches on myself.  Big mistake.  Before long, I found myself spending over an hour getting a javascript to function properly.  Then it was three hours writing an if/else statement in php to direct scripts in the proper sequence.

After talking to John, we both came to the conclusion, that this was silly not to outsource.  Time I was spending working on javascript, php, etc could have been time spent developing new campaigns, working on other projects, etc.  I was not properly evaluating how much my time was worth and therefore I was severely limiting my earning ability.

Especially when you’re running your own business it is very important to keep track of each hour you’re on the computer and how productive that hour is.  Are you doing something worth your time?

After four nights in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West 2010, Richard and I are now back in the office.  LOTS of catching up to do as I’m working on hour twelve right now with no break.  It was nice seeing everyone again as well as meeting several new faces.  I took some video footage from Vegas with the FlipVideo Camera Azoogle sent for Christmas.  I must warn you, I’m no cameraman, but i thought they would be more fun to watch than a simple photo gallery!  I want to thank Missy Ward & Shawn Collins for putting on another excellent show!

First Morning In Vegas:

Exhibit Hall At The Rio:

Azoogle’s Party in the Playboy Suite at the Palms (Richard and I got in an argument over if you were allowed to get in the pool or not. Did anyone get in?):

Our suite at the Wynn: