affiliate marketing

The way to maximize revenues is niche marketing.

Focus.

But is your business too reliant on one niche?

Traffic is subject to changes for a variety of reasons. Things like search engine positions & ppc ads are actionable & probably correctable - but changes of demand for the products in your industry require a different type of action.

Diversification.

For example, anyone marketing for Mortgage leads or any niche which is peripheral to housing has has already figured out that changes in the housing market will affect their business.

Today Google announced a Pay Per Action beta test destined for their adsense contextual advertising product. In essence, PPA does not incur a cost to the advertiser unless the visitor takes an "action". This could include a purchase or completing a form.

Needless to say, this has lots of Search Engine Marketers, Publishers, & Affiliates buzzing about what it means to the industries.

Nothing... yet.

However, it could become significant in a number of ways.

Some see an opportunity for smaller advertisers to begin advertising online as they would not have the risk of click fraud. Advertisers could determine what their profit per visitor is & then bid a percentage of that profit for a PPA advertisement. It's measurable.

Assuming PPA grows beyond the content network into the search network, the advantage over PPC still eludes me, though. Search engine marketers do this all day, every day with CPC (cost per click). The really scientific ones could tell you conversion rates & revenue per visitor by keyword & time of day. Most of the time this can be done without surrendering conversion rates to a third party like Google.

PPA requires conversion tracking in order to count an "action" (and charge the advertiser). Congratulations. Now another company has almost as much information about your online business as you do... and the resources better analyze the data.

While the PPA Advertising option is in beta & limited to the contextual network, I wouldn't bet on it staying there. If there is any indication that Google can increase profitability by expanding this, it will be scaled. Increase profitability... that's a clue.

Companies spend money to make money. The enhancements that Google has offered with Conversion Tracking, Web Analytics, etc. are given away for FREE (!) despite their development & maintenance costs. The true cost to advertisers is data. Nothing is free.

Some say this is the end for the Affiliate networks & aggregators or even the end of CPC - probably not... but truly it's too early to know if or how this will be adopted.

In the interim, I'm staying on the sidelines & building Content.

The Affiliate Marketing business is all about relationships.

For a number of reasons, including relationships, we tend to pursue independent affiliate programs. However, we still have accounts with some of the big affiliate networks.

Today, I decided to check the internal mail on crappyaffiliatenetworknamewithheld.com & noticed that we had been TERMINATED from 2 programs.

Actually seeing these emails requires logging in to their system. That would be problem number one. The likelihood of mail sent through the internal system being read in a timely manner is pretty low. I wouldn't bet money (or a relationship) on it.

Free Tip: Communicate directly.

Problem number two is that we actually do a big job, by any standard, with other companies in the same niche as the advertisers who terminated us as affiliates... and the traffic is squeaky clean. Is this the type of affiliate you want to alienate? Duh.

Free Tip: Communicate directly.

Granted, we were not actively pushing their particular programs but a direct email (not a form email... affiliates hate that crap.) or a quick phone call would have been enlightening for all parties involved. It may or may not have changed anything, but to just terminate an affiliate using the anonymity of the select box on the advertiser control panel is short-sighted & demonstrates a lack of willingness to address a problem directly. Don't be a girly-man. Communicate directly.

Affiliate marketers have good memories & top performers are in short supply. Additionally, a poor performer might GROW into a top performer given some time & guidance. Every top affiliate out there started out as a poor performer. I guarantee it.

To be fair, part of the problem is with the interface which displays network earnings. This can be remarkably misleading. For example, we do very little with that particular network so our 'network earnings' can be accurately described as unimpressive. We do a big job - just not within that network.

A question for affiliate managers: If there is no violation of TOS, what is the point of terminating an affiliate? What was really gained? Maybe there is some hidden cost of which I am not aware. I dunno.

The more effective affiliate managers understand that this business is about relationships. As many of the programs are competitive with each other - relationships are a key to acquiring & maintaining affiliate publishers. The more effective managers also recognize small achievements as what they are... stepping stones to larger ones.

It is hard work to develop and maintain relationships with your affiliates. If you want easy work, look elsewhere. If you want to grow your business, communicate directly.

Many Online Marketers are driven by competition as much as by income opportunity. In some cases, we might compete against a personal goal, sometimes against competitors (or even colleagues). There is always a number to be beat. Smashed, perhaps. When that goal is surpassed a new goal is set. Often, there are multiple goals.

As your business grows, you will be building relationships and have more exchanges with suppliers, customers, site visitors, affiliate managers, "friendly competitors", advertising reps, or colleagues.

Sooner or later some of these people will let some numbers slip out. Oops. I never forget a number. Do you?

Sometimes just one number can give you enormous insight into someone else's business... particularly if you are familiar with some of the average metrics for the niche.

One of the most effective tools to dramatically grow your business is effective goal setting. Believe it or not, some people in sales & marketing do not even set goals. There may be individual reasons for this, but one that I have heard most often is the fear of missing the goal. One possible solution could be to set a minimum goal which is within easy reach & an ideal goal which is more aggressive. To offer an opinion on this, nobody has ever suffered any harm from having high expectations of themselves. A slight miss on an aggressive goal is likely still a dramatic increase in business.

The easiest way to manage goals is to break them down in to smaller time frames. Annual goals can be overwhelming until they are broken down into quarterly, monthly, weekly, & daily goals. See this discussion on The Law of Large Numbers for some ideas on how to break a goal down to manageable & achievable numbers.

What separates top marketers from average marketers. Are they smarter? More experienced? ...or simply driven by goals.