Archive for April, 2006
The $1 Million Affiliate…
Posted by Anik Singal in Affiliate Marketing, PPC, Website Development Wednesday, 26 April 2006 16:15 No Comments
We’ve been getting swamped with e-mails asking about the new book “High Performance Affiliate Marketing” by Jeremy Palmer.
Jeremy earned over $1 MILLION through just affiliate marketing and was won Commission Junction’s Horizon Award for Innovation…
If you want to read what I think about it, visit:
High Performance Affiliate Marketing
Just so you know, Jeremy reveals some neat things:
- Free keyword research tools to use
- Different kinds of websites to make
- Gives you templates you can model after
- Even shows you a few of his sites!
The full review…
High Performance Affiliate Marketing
Click Fraud, Bad But Maybe Less So
Posted by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Best Business Practices, Search Network, Tracking Tuesday, 25 April 2006 18:27 No Comments
With the judge agreeing to Google’s proposed settlement, click fraud is back in the news again. (It left for a while?) In essence, Google has agreed to allot up to $90 million in credits for advertisers who apply, claiming unreimbursed “invalid clicks”.
(Google uses the term “invalid clicks” rather than “fraudulent clicks” on the grounds that automatically detecting a click for which an advertiser should not be charged is one thing, while “it’s practically impossible to ‘prove’ that an impression or click was caused by deliberate deception.” I think they overstate the case, but they have a point.)
To date, one of the difficulties surrounding the whole subject is the fact that Google, Yahoo!, and others won’t release figures showing the real size of the problem. (I can’t say I entirely blame them here, either. But that’s a distraction I’ll go into another day.)
Thanks to at least one vendor, ClickFraudIndex, that may be less an issue in the future. According to the company, which offers a free service currently used by 400 advertisers, fraudulent clicks may be smaller than previously reported.
Most reports are admittedly anectdotal (or at least not statistically rigorous), but they hover in the 20-35% range. Click Forensic’s data suggests the figure may be far lower, in the low teens. Without a careful review of how they’re making the measurements it’s impossible to say who is right. And, in any case, they’re only one company. But their numbers look plausible.
Even 13.7% is still pretty troubling, of course. No advertiser wants their income artificially reduced by such a large amount. Even one percent would qualify as serious money in some circumstances, but one might be willing to consider that as the cost of doing business.
Still, it’s good news that at least one company is offering some hard data. And, since the service is free, many might find it helpful to investigate the worth of using it.
It also gives credence to Google’s claims that the problem is smaller than many others have claimed. There is the potential for conflict of interest in Google’s reports, of course. But the thought of that behemoth deliberately deceiving their customers would be troubling, if true. I stand by “innocent until proved guilty” as a valid principle, but reasonable people can disagree in this case.
In the upcoming issue of Affiliate Classroom magazine we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the subject of click fraud. So, stay tuned for more on a subject that affects everyone’s pocket book.
Shop-By-Phone Takes On New Meaning
Posted by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Web 2.0 Marketing Monday, 24 April 2006 17:10 1 Comment
According to an In-Stat study, as many as 25 million may be using their mobile phones as mobile wallets by 2011. Previous attempts to get users to shop-by-phone in a new way didn’t fare well.
(For those under 30, shopping by phone � i.e. buying from real paper catalogs used to be enormously popular. It still is, though it gets a lot less press in the 1st century AG (after-Google founding) Era. For example, one major retailer in the Northwest U.S. employs over 300 customer service reps just to take orders. Even for them, though, online purchases represent a third of sales these days.)
But with color-screen phones that have excellent resolution, along with a Google or Yahoo! Local, etc, the technology to make it work just might be there this time.
Most users resist the idea primarily due to added fees for mobile shopping services. But telecom vendors and merchants will soon get wise to the idea that those fees are foolish and unnecessary. Take a cut off the back end from the merchant and sales will rise to more than cover both parties’ costs.
At the same time, mobile phone users are increasing their browsing activity. (At least among the 18-34 crowd.) In Japan, for example. 40% of adults browse the net using their “wireless handset”. And more than 90% of households in Japan, Korea, and urban China have at least one mobile phone. In Western Europe, the figure is 80%.
Internet spending in non-U.S. countries is rising. In some cases, more than others, but in the UK, India, Germany, and Japan the numbers are rising fast.
Of course, even if when they’re not out and about they’ll still want to shop online. That may be occurring more in the near future with gas prices reaching record highs, after their last record‑highs, (which were higher than… well, you get the idea).
According to a recent Shopzilla survey 50% of consumers said higher gasoline prices will motivate them to shop more online.
So, affiliate marketers can expect a healthy year, provided they don’t have to spend all their profits at the pump. If they do, I’m sure they can find a use for that mobile phone.
eMarketer: Behavioral Targeting, Better Than Suspected
Posted by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Niches, Traffic Friday, 21 April 2006 17:53 2 Comments
Just when we were beginning to wonder if we were making it up…
eMarketer has provided data suggesting BT (Behavioral Targeting) is even more worthwhile than we claimed. (It’s good to be wrong in the right way….)
The research gurus estimate that “marketers will spend about $1.2 billion on behavioral targeted online advertising in 2006. And in only two years, behavioral targeting spending will surpass the $2 billion mark.”
They also say why:
1. Behavioral targeting helps marketers get better
results from fewer impressions.2. Publishers like the fact that behavioral targeting
delivers more revenue from lesser pages.3. Users tend to find ads targeted by their actions to be more relevant to their needs.
(Source: “Online Ad Targeting: Engaging The Audience” by David Hallerman.)
With technology assistance growing to help marketers identify who is buying and why, BT is becoming more than just a buzzword. It’s becoming an important way to increase conversions.
And with Internet advertising sharply on the rise, the double-whammy is � we predict � going to result in record sales in 2006. But, like record stock prices, that trend only does you good if you own one of the record-breakers.
In this case, the way to up the odds of that is to invest in using BT when crafting your emails and designing your sites. Affiliate Classroom will be giving members lots of concrete, useful tips on exactly how to do that over the coming months.
Use All Your (Marketing) Voices
Posted by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine in Affiliate Classroom Magazine, Affiliate Marketing, Niches Thursday, 20 April 2006 16:26 1 Comment
Marketers are always looking for new ways to attract attention. That’s their job after all. With attention comes sales. (Not every look leads to a purchase, of course, but few sales come without at least some prior nudge.)
But attention-getting techniques are limited, especially online. Once you’ve done the obvious, what next? Two options are techniques called Behavioral Targeting and Demographic Analysis.
As with any marketing technique, there are debates about how effective either is. One study suggests only 18% of users respond to behavioral targeting, with demographic coming in at 28%. Compared to 62% who are more likely to purchase based on a contextual ad, that doesn’t seem like much.
That may well be the case, but 18% or 28% represent significant chunks of users and after you’ve done contextual, then what?
Demographic techniques � using zip codes, income levels, gender, and other data � to target users is also helpful. However, the effectiveness varies with all those criteria (and more). Users in the North East US respond differently than those in the West, as do users of different income levels.
Getting that sort of data, even when it isn’t ethically questionable, can be difficult and expensive though, especially for online marketers. Useful as part of the toolbox, but not for the faint of heart.
More than just a buzzword, BT describes a method of tracking and analyzing user behavior in order to encourage higher conversions. Online behavior is monitored, then ads are presented that match a profile built from the data.
There are several concrete ways to do that. Among them are clickstream analysis (recording and viewing what a user clicks on within a site), recording a cookie and matching clicks against purchases, reviewing RSS subscriber lists, and a host of others.
The moral of the story is this. Paraphrasing a line from The Lion In Winter said by Henry II: “Use all your voices. When I bellow, bellow back.”
That ought to get their attention.
