Tag Archives: affiliate

Affiliate Marketing through WordPress plugins

eCommerce, Social Media, , , , , , , , ,

One of the keys to success in affiliate marketing is contextual relevance. Sure, there is no fixed cost associating with running your program through the thousands of coupon and deal related sites that exist to make a quick buck. Unfortunately, the time spent managing an extensive set of publishers and keeping an eye out for the ever present fraud, sucks the value out of the few leads or sales you might generate from a site that doesn’t reach your target audience.

Finding unique ways to reach your consumer pays off in dividends. Why not through blog plugins?

Mind you, I’m not talking about creating affiliate widgets or plugins to promote your business through blogs, I’m talking about reaching the blogger, a unique audience, through the plugin application. In a win for plugin developers, you can help them monetize their work without their needing to turn to the email spam or lead gen models that many use today. Offer a valuable product or service to the audience that consumes the plugin, and the developer has an unobtrusive, mutually valuable, revenue stream.

Consider the promotion of Omniture through Alex King’s Popularity Contest, MailChimp to bloggers who use Takayuki Miyoshi’s Contact Form 7, or SEO books and services from within Semper Fi’s fantastic All in One SEO Plugin. Don’t misunderstanding me, I don’t mean to suggest that those plugins are doing this, and I hope they don’t look to me unfavorably for suggesting the possibility, my point is those plugins reach bloggers with clear intent and interest in the products or services that could be promoted through the Admin pages of the WordPress dashboard. Truth be told, I’m fearful of commercializing WordPress; on the other hand, I’m a huge fan of the belief that targeted advertising is good content and affiliate programs only appear where they work – I can’t say I’m distasteful of valuable products and services recommended through tools I use.

Win/win
At Outright.com, we’re offering free income and expense tracking, simple bookkeeping, to help entrepreneurs earning some money take care of their taxes. My target audience? The AdSense or affiliate plugin user; the blogger with some revenue from their blog, the blogger who has income to track, expenses to deduct, and taxes to pay. Contextual relevance to an AdSense plugin? You bet. And the performance has been exceptional.

Manoj Thulasidas set up such a partnership with his fantastic AdSense plugins. Conversion rates are high, validating demand from bloggers using AdSense for an effective, efficient, and inexpensive means of tracking their income and expenses. Grab Easy Adsenser to add AdSense banners and widgets to your blog posts and sidebar or use AdSense Now for a turnkey, simple integration.

If you reach bloggers earning some income through your plugins. Come check out what we’re doing through our affiliate program. You can get started quickly with ShareASale or if a LinkShare publisher, jump into our program through their Lead Advantage Network. I’d love to hear from anyone trying this; I know there are a few and I expect to find more success stories to share.

T-shirts the ideal form of targeted marketing?

Advertising, Local, Startups, , , , , , , , ,

The CPM is low, though distribution costs a challenge. Consider that a simple t-shirt serves as an endorsement, while reaching the wearer’s peers – targeted, potential customers. After all, if said wearer loves your products or service, are his friends more likely to feel the same?

They can be locally targeted, serve as a cherished form of gratitude, and though the reporting is about as accurate as that of newspaper, one can thank Threadless and the revolution in t-shirt design for ensuring that most t-shirts are read.

How on earth did I turn to t-shirts when my brain usually focused on all things digital?? I couldn’t be more grateful to Jeremy Schoemaker than I am for his mere donning of an Outright.com shirt for last week’s ‘Free shirt Friday’

For those of you unfamiliar with Shoemoney, Jeremy is best known for earning a small fortune from Adsense years ago before arbitrage was all the rage. His foresight with SEO, SEM, and Affiliate programs pre-dated the era in which we live; he envisioned the simple math, the basic science, of both ends of the marketing funnel (the opportunity to market and the potential for income) while many were still in diapers.

Targeted Marketing
Ah… the point! Jeremy is the archetype Outright user. Outright.com is designed for the blogger, the affiliate publisher, the ebay seller, the freelance designer, the marketing consultant; the individual earning some income, either entirely or in part, through work on their own behalf. Heck, its me, doing this. We’re building Outright.com for you, my audience, for Jeremy’s audience, the WordPress / TypePad consumer, the Adsense consumer; the Adwords marketer.

Want a t-shirt? *grin* Come check it out

Peel Away Advertising for your Site or Blog

Advertising, , , , , , , , , , ,

ProfitPeelers has launched, in beta, an affiliate web service allowing publishers to easily add a script to their site that adds a peel away ad to the page. These unobtrusive ads are believed to convert at much higher rates meaning more dollars for publishers and more opportunity for marketers.

I’m excited about the ease of use and potential but this company seems a little spammy; they have the site set up on multiple domains and use one of those “Make Money From Home” or “Miracle Weight Loss Drug” site designs (see: peelawayadscript.com – edwinsoft.com/peelawayad – peelawayads.net – peelawaycorners.com). Another cause for concern is that most of their affiliates are in that same car salesman genre of wealth strategy, real estate millionaire, lotto secret get rich quick schemes. So why am I intrigued? ProfitPeelers appeared in a recent addition of Revenue magazine (October ’07; pg. 106) in an article by Affiliate Classroom CEO Anik Singal, I’m hoping their editors vetted the credibility of the company, and advertisers also include Netflix, Disney, Gevalia, and Columbia House. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt as the web service seems like a worthy business venture and I’m optimistic of the opportunity.

Should my experience change, you’ll be the first to know and if you are willing to give them a try (that is a referral link) keep me informed. If you are familiar with the company, I welcome your comments.

A Better Affiliate Model?

eCommerce,

On occasion, I stray from my expertise into the shady world of Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing remains one of the least understood and most valuable marketing opportunities. I’m wrapping up some research now that shows that of all online opportunities, affiliates are leveraged second only to search by customers who buy OFFLINE. (Is the all-caps too much?) I was shocked. A channel in which the publisher only gets paid for sales tracked online is in fact one of the most significant placements any advertiser could leverage to reach their customer.

Where I’m going today though, is to pose a question about commission structures, to solicit your opinion about an option I don’t believe anyone is considering or using now. Typically, advertisers pay affiliates on a revenue share or CPA (cost per acquisition) model with performance incentives. I may pay only 4% for all sales or add a bonus of $1000 or another 1% for new customers, specific products or services sold, etc. That model is easily translated to a CPA as a specific rate per registration.
The more complex model is a tiered commission intended to reward the most important affiliate partners; perhaps, 1% to any affiliate, increasing to 5% for only those that reach a threshold. Let’s use an example (I’m sure you’ve caught on that I always use examples):

  • 1% for affiliates driving up to $5k in sales per month
  • 2% from $5.1k-15k
  • 3% for 15.1k to $50k
This model serves to incent smaller affiliates to drive more business to reach the better payout.

Unfortunately, this model, though better than just a flat rate, is flawed in two ways.

First, loyalty programs (affiliates that give something back to the customer) and search affiliates (those who might buy keywords to promote your store) really require a fixed commission so they can determine what they can pay out to their respective partner (the customers in the loyalty program or the bids to a search engine). If one month, an affiliate earns 3% but, the next, only 1%, how much can they commit to those customers? How much can they plan to spend on search when not only are the sales and respective payout fluctuating, but the percent of the payout is inconsistent.

Second, this doesn’t account for seasonality which implies that during a gift giving holiday, more of your affiliates will sell more, reach the higher rate, increasing your costs when they, in reality, didn’t do anything more to drive that volume.

Is there a better way? (no, that’s not the question I want to ask)
What do you think about a Share of Volume based commission structure?

  • 1% for affiliates driving up to 3% of the volume for that month
  • 2% for 4-5% of the volume
  • 3% for 6-9%
Certainly, a drawback is that you would need to report total sales to affiliates giving them insight to the share for which they are responsible but this would maintain the incentive of a tiered structure, stimulate competition between affiliates, help sell your program to affilites unwilling to promote you, eliminate seasonality, and perhaps, work for loyalty partners.

Let me take one at a time and please, help me find the holes in this AND let me know of other pros/cons.

  • Maintain the incentive of tiers: Affiliates are presented with an opportunity to make more by driving more volume.
  • Stimulate competition between affiliates: The publishers now see where they fall and can compare that to their insight on their relative share with other advertisers. If they are lower than expected, they’ll know that (and hopefully do something about it). If higher than expected, they wouldn’t likely cease promotion to reduce payout.
  • Help sell your program to affiliates unwilling to promote you: Perhaps you have affiliates who favor one brand over another, this would give those affiliates insight to how well you really perform (and could perform for them)
  • Eliminate seasonality: Commissions aren’t based on a dollar amount but a share of total volume which wouldn’t change because of the holidays
  • Work for loyalty partners: This is where I pause with my own doubt… The commissions would still vary for those affiliates but they would be more stable than a tiered model, assuming that loyalty affiliate site wouldn’t fluctuate on share of volume to the degree dollars fluctuate.
Do me a favor? Poke holes. I think I’m on to something but I imagine I’m not considering everything. Is this a sound idea?