Stedb Video Tutorials
Here are a few video tutorials I made for the Stedb platform. I covered the basics in starting an email campaign. I’ll be doing some more advanced tutorials in the future. These are the only video tutorials for Stedb on the net. I placed them in order.
Enjoy!
Creating an Email List and Importing Data
(Step by step on how to create and manage multiple lists as well as how to import large amounts of data)
Adding Domains and DomainKeys
(Add all of your domains in the admin panel and make sure DomainKeys is enabled for all)
Adding IPs and RDNS
(Add your ips and rdns entries into the admin panel)
Create a Campaign
(Step by step on how to create a campaign from scratch in Stedb)
Unsubscribe Message and Inserting Suppression Lists
(How to change the unsubscribe message to be Can-Spam compliant and how to upload a suppression file)
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The Truth of Email/Zip Submits
Email and Zip submits have a nasty reputation within the industry, and rightfully so. The way they work is you click on an offer and place your email address or zip code to recieve your FREE product. Of course the product is never free and you have to fill out an ungodly number of pages to have the CHANCE to recieve that offer. In most cases you end up spending more money than theat particular product is worth! Futhermore the information you place in the fields is passed around from one marketing agency to another. You can expect a healthy number of spam emails in the future.
An example of an Email Submit is located here.
While these email submits can be very misleading, the truth of the matter is they proved very profitable from a marketers stand point. When email/zip submits first came out, all the user had to do was click fill out the first page (the email address or their zip code) and the marketer got paid anywhere from $1 - $2 a lead. Not a bad deal!. Eventually the market became much more saturated with these offers and the advertisers requested that 2-3 pages of information be filled out before you’d get paid.
I promoted these email submits up until about a year ago. While many people bashed them, I was able to make a serious amount of bank hawking the newest FREE (fill in the blank). In fact the way I went about winning that Lamo ( for a few days) and the Vegas trip was about 60-70% email/zip submits. Looking back it proably wasn’t the greatest offer in value to my users. I also ran into a bit of legal trouble through some of the offers I promoted as well. I heard stories within the industry about the advertiser receving hundreds of thousands of leads only to give away one free ipod, for example.
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Inbox Truth | No Comments »
Bot Clicks
A problem I am getting more and more of is “bot clicking”. Bot clicking is when a robot goes in and clicks on your link to make it look like an actual user clicked on your campaign. The purpose of bot clickers is for an outside source to monitor your traffic after you’ve been labeled as SPAM by a few users on the network. This has been going on for a few years now and explains why the statistics on my CTR and the CTR on the ad campaign don’t match up. Major ISPs actually have active bot networks out there that make these “hidden” clicks on your offers.
How to fix?
The best way is to keep an active monitor of the IPs that are clicking on your campaign. Bot networks operate in Ip ranges. I have ranges of known “bot clickers” that I block through my CMS. If your CMS doesn’t have the ability to block certain Ip ranges registering as clicks you need to block manually. They can be a pain in the ass to deal with if not taken cared of.
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Email news, ISP News, Inbox Truth | No Comments »
The Myth of CPC
I wanted to talk a little bit about the myth of CPC (Cost Per Click) as related to email marketing. The theory is that you can make more money on CPC, if traffic is solid, than you would getting paid on a per lead or CPA (Cost Per Action) basis. In my experience this isn’t true.
I’ve been in the affiliate marketing business for quite some time now and have seen first hand the problems of CPC. For example, Offer A on XYZ network is paying out 20 cents a unique click on a mortgage loan application (CPC). Offer B on the same network is paying out $20 a lead on the mortage loan application (CPA). (These numbers do not reflect an actual campaign, just an easy to follow example!). So,
Offer A: .20 a unique click
Offer B: $20 a lead
Which one to choose? These days I always go with the CPA, $20 a lead. In most cases, the CPC might actually earn more but in reality you will always lose. The reason is because the advertiser and/or affiliate network is ALWAYS looking at conversion numbers. If your traffic isn’t converting to their liking they will reduce your CPC amount to reflect what THEY think should be an ideal payout. Furthermore, if your traffic is great and they are happy, you probably could have made more mailing the CPA offer in the first place. You have to remember that on the advertiser side they are always fighting different forms of fraud, click fraud representing a huge portion of their prevention efforts. Suffice to say, it hurts the legit marketer mailing CPC when the issues are beyond their control.
In conclusion always go with CPA. I reserve the right to change my mind, however. If anyone can show me tangible proof that in the longrun CPC outperforms CPA, by all means fire away! I will update this post with evidence, only the tried and true facts though. Until then, Happy Marketing!
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Inbox Truth | No Comments »
Email Intelligence
This is more catered to the Affiliate Marketing industry but has revelance in other industries as well. Profitability in email marketing comes down to many factors, but one often overlooked component is the ad campaign itself.
For example, let’s look at two affiliate offers. We”ll call them Lead X and Lead Y. Lead X and Lead Y are the exact same lead with matching fields. Everything is identical except two small conditions, the leads are hosted on different advertising networks and vary in price. The advertiser on Lead X offers $20 per lead while the advertiser on Lead Y offers only $18 per. Natrually you want to go for Lead X, right? Not so fast!
Lead X | Emails Sent: 100,000 | Clicks: 3,000 | CTR: 3% | Leads 130 | Earnings: $2,600 |
Lead Y | Emails Sent: 100,000 | Clicks: 3,000 | CTR: 3% | Leads 160 | Earnings: $2,880 |
The above example is called Split A/B testing. I used basic examples to make the math easy for both you and me. Usually, Split A/B testing is done on a much smaller scale to test the conversion ratios of similar offers. Anywho, you might ask, “Why did Lead Y do better than Lead X eventhough Lead X has a higher payout and they are the exact same offer?!” One of the biggest factors to consider is the scrubbing of the lead. In an perfect world you would have generated the exact same amount of leads for both advertisers. However, Lead X has a larger database of leads they are scrubbing your traffic aganist than Lead Y. Even worse, I’ve experienced networks offering higher payouts, but they engaged in a practice called shaving. Shaving in a nutshell is stealing leads without paying for them.
Use your intelliegence and always test similar offers before you put your time and energy in promoting an offer. The example used above are very basic in nature. Email marketing is much more complicated than the example I provided. Do your research and your email intelligence will show in the form of increased profits.
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing | 1 Comment »
A Little Self-Indulgence
Affiliate Summit West is comming next week in Las Vegas. I won’t be attending this year because of prior commitments. After all, it will be hard to top one of the best trips I’ve ever been on from last year.
Affiliate Summit is the premier event for affiliate marketers. Some of the more important contacts I’ve made to date were met hanging out at the bar or at hosted parties during Affiliate Summit. I know AS 2009 will be just as great, probably better, than 2008. Here is a little video footage of my experience at AS West 2008, enjoy!
I did not actually get to KEEP that Lambo. I won, err earned, the trip to Vegas, 3 night suite stay, and the green “Money” Lambo for 2 days. We managed to pull out the victory for top revenue during the month of their promotion.
XY7 went completely overboard with their promotion of this, in the best way possible for me! Live camera crew, hired show girls, man oh man! Additonally, nothing secured a business relationship like taking clients for a spin in the ultra fast lambo. It was definately a great experience to live out while I still have my youth.
Anyway, hope to hear some great stories from AS 2009!
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing Events | 4 Comments »
How Affiliate Managers Can Help
Affiliate Managers get no love. In affiliate marketing the role of the affiliate manager is to bridge the gap between advertiser and marketer. A good affiliate manager will keep you informed of new offers, help you choose higher converting offers, and check in from time to time to see how business is going.
I make it no secret that I promote with many different CPA networks. I do have some I prefer over others but to me there really isn’t much difference between them all. The two bggest factors in determining if I stick around with a CPA network is trust and relations. When there is an issue between advertiser and affiliate, I want to trust that my CPA network will fight for me and get the payment I deserve, even if sometimes the CPA network takes a temporarily loss on an offer. Developing a good solid relationship is the other factor I look at when promoting with a CPA network. Does the company go out of the way to provide top notch service? Do they help the smaller affiliate or just focus on keeping the so called “super affiliates”?
Which leads us back to affiliate managers. I’ve seen the full spectrum when it comes to my affiliate managers. Some provide great service while contuially updating me with the latest offers why others only care about their cut and take my traffic for granted. Still on some networks I don’t even have an AM (tired of typing out the word affiliate manager). I absolutly do prefer quality service from an AM over no AM at all. Here is a guideline from an email marketer on how to be a good AM
- Listen to your affiliate. This isn’t realtionship advice, but if your affiliate is one who doesn’t like you bugging him on AIM or phone all day, LEAVE HIM ALONE! it’s your job to guage the personality. Most affiliates are going to be introverted by nature. Others like myself, don’t mind the occasional mid-day gab. However, be conscious of the time invested. Sometimes a quick hello and how ya doing is all that’s needed. The affiliate will contact you for offer advice so be ready and available.
- It’s never JUST business! That attitude will get you no where. Your job is to build good quality relationships. I’ve switched out AMs due to their unwillingness to invest time in helping my business grow. If you want to keep your affiliates around, big and small, be there for them.
- Be honest and don’t push crappy offers. The affiliate marketing industry is small and word travels fast. Do whatever you can to help the affiliate and be straight. Don’t push low converting offers to affiliates b/c of higher payouts to you, pressure from boss, etc. Your top affiliates will appreciate it in the long run.
- Find ways to provide value. This might take some creativity, but try and figure out ways that you can directly be an asset. If an affilaite is looking for hosting, maybe you know of a good reputable service. Providing services like that will make you an invaluable component to helping him grow his business.
- Provide payout increases whenever possible. Again, CPA/Affiliate networks are a dime a dozen. Knowing that I will be recieving increases motivates me to use more of my resources to promote a high converting offer. if you won’t provide higher payouts, I will move my traffic elsewhere.
- Referals are your friend. All it takes is a few good super affiliates to provide a nice source of income for the AM. If you follow the first 5 steps to the bone, the referals will start pouring in. As an email marketer, I talk with many other top performing email marketers on a daily basis. if a certain network is doing a real good job, I’ll refer other mailers to that AM. Don’t beg for referals. That shhows you only care about stuffing your pockets. Provide good service and referals are your friend.
The above listed points is a guideline I follow when looking for an AM. I proably missed a few keep points and I might add another version to this post at a later time. I believe that Am’s are a good thing for the industry as long as they stay in communicaton with you and your needs. If there’s anything I missed email me and I might consider revising this post.
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Email Marketing in Affiliate Marketing
I’ve been working in the Affiliate Marketing Industry for a couple of years now. As defined by Wikipedia:
Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliatesfor each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.
It really is a unique and interesting concept. Basically, these affiliate networks provide you with a menu of offers to choose from. They create the landing page, track the stats, and display approved creatives. The offers are recieved directly from the advertiser and a cut of your earnings goes to them. For example, affiliate network recieves a Business Oppurtunity offer from advertiser that pays them $20 per lead. Affiliate Network uploads offer to their site and displays that same $20 lead they got from advertiser for $17.50. You have a solid offer that you might otherwise not of had access to with no management on your end while the Affiliate Network takes their cut for providing the service. A win/win situation right??? Not always….
Looking deeper, I’ve seen it all. The biggest problems on the affiliate side is scrubbing and shaving. This industry is highly unregulated and fraud is common practice. Scrubbing, the lesser of the evils, happens when the advertiser or affiliate network doesn’t pay you on leads that are already in their system. I can understand this practice to a certain point. The leads are useless to advertiser if they can’t sell them. However, the frustrating part is, in the affilate marketing industry, a handful of advertisers domainate the market. Thus, it is very common to generate numerous leads that you won’t be paid for. Shaving is completly illegal and there needs to be federal laws in place to ban the practice. Shaving occurs mostly on the advertiser side. Whoever controls the advertisement has the ability to turn off the firing of the pixel. In other words, leads will come in, but they won’t pay you for them. Unfortunately, this has happened to me on more than a handful of occasions. The companies I work with now are very ethical in the way they do their business, but most are at the mercy of the advertiser. Advertising company wants to see quick boost in profits, turn off the pixel for an hour and watch the leads come in! Makes me cringe thinking about it. There needs to be some sort of 3rd party watch dog to hold the advertisers accountable for their actions. This is one of the few instances where federal legislation is needed to outlaw shaving.
The competition in the Affiliate Marketing industry is fierece. As one CPA network owner explained to me,
”Its a very simple business model that you can launch with under $1,000 in startup costs”
There isn’t a day that goes by that somebody somewhere isn’t hawking some sort of new offer to me. There really isn’t much difference between the hundreds of affiliate netowrks out there either. Most of the networks I work with are built on realtionships and trust. Knowing that the networks are in your corner when an issue arises shows commitment to developing a solid business relationship.
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