[AMA] $25m+ in affiliate mktg revenue & exiting the game: Ask me anything.

[Daedalus]

So I have the flash offer at $1.80 payout (Affiliati may not have a ton of intl offers but their payouts are the highest I've seen...if you're interested in joining let me know...full disclosure: 2% of the network's cut would go to me as a referral bonus).

I am having a hell of a time getting it approved on any traffic source though. TV doesn't allow it. I can't find anything on LI that says they don't allow it, all I see is no gambling targeted to US, Israel, Australia, but I'm apprehensive. Mediatraffic denied it (and these guys allow exit pops and all kinds of junk). Haven't tried 50onred but I heard they don't either.

Would you mind hinting me towards what PPV source lets this kind of thing run?

 

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[Gsuz]

You'll probably need to cloak, at least that's what I do

 

[Daedalus]

You'll probably need to close, at least that's what I do

You mean cloak? I have CPVLab and could do a bait and switch but I don't know if 1. They'd find it and 2. If they'd ban me for it or just shut it down and say hey staaaaahp

 

[Gsuz]

You mean cloak? I have CPVLab and could do a bait and switch but I don't know if 1. They'd find it and 2. If they'd ban me for it or just shut it down and say hey staaaaahp

Yeah, that's what I meant.

I've never used CPVLab as I'm using Bevomedia for tracking, so I don't know their cloaking process. What I'm doing is sending the traffic to an URL where the cloaking script resides. The script then decides if the visitor is a real user or someone from the traffic source. The real users are redirected to the money site, the other ones to a fake site where something unsuspicious like a blog related to the keywords you're bidding on.

Don't want to hijack this great ama, just thought I'd chime in.

 

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[apax999]

Cloaking offers and screwing ad networks is a great long term business plan. I'd be careful of "flash" offers. They are banned for a reason. Rumor has it the govt is about to jump in and put a lot of guys out of business.

 

[100k]

Yeah, that's what I meant.

I've never used CPVLab as I'm using Bevomedia for tracking, so I don't know their cloaking process. What I'm doing is sending the traffic to an URL where the cloaking script resides. The script then decides if the visitor is a real user or someone from the traffic source. The real users are redirected to the money site, the other ones to a fake site where something unsuspicious like a blog related to the keywords you're bidding on.

Don't want to hijack this great ama, just thought I'd chime in.

Care to share the cloaking script you are using?

Thanks

 

[Daedalus]

Can I do what you do on a smaller level or does it only work on that scale? I got a guy to get me the top 10k URLs, irrespective of what the site is about.

I was going to test these until I drop $1000-1500 (instead of your 10-15k) (talking about a net loss of 1000-1500...so the test will probably cost double this if it's converting a bit).

I've done some poking around and found two things:

1. When I go to these high traffic sites I get popups that are essentially just like larger versions of the ads you see everywhere on WRW and major websites. So a diet offer might pop on Facebook.com, but it 's a catchy ad that links to an advertorial that Pre- sells the product, then to the offer submit page.

2.. I've also seen alot of these survey incent offers with iPhones and iPads ( you're the 10,000th visitor !). Thing is there, that the payout is only 1.50 on those. Do they really convert so much better as to justify running that instead of a $76 payout rebill pairing?

 

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[Daedalus]

Something else I realized...

If you bid the minimum $.011 on trafficvance you're paying $11 cpm. One of my offers gets 1.5% clickthru from the PPV popup to my lander (flog), a 15% clickthru from the flog to the offer, and a 15 conversion rate at the offer. I'm losing about 75% on it. However, if I took it to sitescout or a similar platform and paid a reasonable $1 cpm, I'd be at a 2500% roi. Hell, let's be conservative and say my clickthru from flog to offer drops by a factor of 10...that's still a large ROI. I don't see how these figures would even be unrealistic to achieve. I'm definitely going to try media buying...I dunno about this PPV stuff.

I take it there is a certain way to use PPV/ certain type of offer to run and anything outside of that will fail? And for the rest use media buys/alternative ppc like clickbooth/wam?

 

[apax999]

Something else I realized...

If you bid the minimum $.011 on trafficvance you're paying $11 cpm. One of my offers gets 1.5% clickthru from the PPV popup to my lander (flog), a 15% clickthru from the flog to the offer, and a 15 conversion rate at the offer. I'm losing about 75% on it. However, if I took it to sitescout or a similar platform and paid a reasonable $1 cpm, I'd be at a 2500% roi. Hell, let's be conservative and say my clickthru from flog to offer drops by a factor of 10...that's still a large ROI. I don't see how these figures would even be unrealistic to achieve. I'm definitely going to try media buying...I dunno about this PPV stuff.

I take it there is a certain way to use PPV/ certain type of offer to run and anything outside of that will fail? And for the rest use media buys/alternative ppc like clickbooth/wam?

Couple things.

First, pick a traffic type and stick with it. Master it before you move on. PPV and media buying are totally different animals with totally different metrics.

Your comparison of PPV to media buys doesn't work. Yeah, you're paying a min of $11 CPM on TV. But that's for popups/unders -- not display banner traffic. You're also eliminating one whole "hop" or "click through" in the flow. Look:

Pop traffic at $11 CPM:

Pop the ppv popup to pre-qualify the traffic --> Flog --> Offer --> Conversion

Banner traffic:

Banner --> Flog --> Offer --> Conversion

Banners don't really pre-qualify the way a 800x600 popup window can.

Expect at best a 1% CTR on your banner on SiteScout. If you plan on paying $1 CPM's you'll get below the fold traffic that converts 10x worse. So plan on paying in the $3-5 range to get the better traffic.

Why not stick with TV but start testing their CPC/intext links? You can wet your feet testing 300x250 banners.

 

[Daedalus]

Couple things.

First, pick a traffic type and stick with it. Master it before you move on. PPV and media buying are totally different animals with totally different metrics.

Your comparison of PPV to media buys doesn't work. Yeah, you're paying a min of $11 CPM on TV. But that's for popups/unders -- not display banner traffic. You're also eliminating one whole "hop" or "click through" in the flow. Look:

Pop traffic at $11 CPM:

Pop the ppv popup to pre-qualify the traffic --> Flog --> Offer --> Conversion

Banner traffic:

Banner --> Flog --> Offer --> Conversion

Banners don't really pre-qualify the way a 800x600 popup window can.

Expect at best a 1% CTR on your banner on SiteScout. If you plan on paying $1 CPM's you'll get below the fold traffic that converts 10x worse. So plan on paying in the $3-5 range to get the better traffic.

Why not stick with TV but start testing their CPC/intext links? You can wet your feet testing 300x250 banners.

I'll give that a shot. Thanks for the idea. Maybe it's just rough for diet right now because its near thanksgiving. I suppose I won't find out til I've exhausted all options. Seems like alot of guys, probably including yourself, run diet year round successfully though.

 

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[apax999]

Did you do boxofads yet?

Spy around.

 

[Daedalus]

I did their trial and ripped a bunch of PPV landers. I found their target feature useless; maybe I was using it wrong, but it would show a bunch of really strange websites. I wasn't too impressed, so I actually installed gamevance on my comp.

My diet popup was taken directly from a popup when I googled garcinia. I built my own lander. It looks just like every other flog out there. Using a pair that pays out $38 each and an offer that beat out 3 others on conversions on LI traffic.

The other two ads I saw:

A credit report ad using scare tactics saying attention (site) visitor there has been a security breach blah blah check your credit now *this breach actually occurred 5 years ago. I have some credit offers I'm actually approved to run it with. My guy at trafficvance says they may or may not approve it, though...it's definitely sketchy. I'm assuming the one I saw was cloaked. Which pisses me off slightly. Is it possible to make money in this without resorting to cloaking and blackhat stuff?....yeeesh.

And a daily deal type offer saying congrats you're the 10,000th visitor, here do this survey...then at the end it's a free iPhone offer. On my network these offers have like $1.50 payouts. I don't understand how that could ever be profitable but I won't know until I test I guess.

Both of the above offers sound awesome for what you're suggesting I do with the huge list of high traffic URLs, as they can apply to anything.

Also I got a guy on odesk to give me the top 10k for $11...and he came through...and it's perfect. I was like :-0 . God bless india

 

[QtoBrooklyn]

Hey apax999. I've been doing affiliate marketing for the last 2 years, with mixed results. I did have one campaign that I banked hard with, but it's been gone for a while now. That was earlier in the year and I do still have that hefty sum that I haven't paid taxes on yet. Which leads me to my question: how the heck do affiliates do their taxes?? I know that we are supposed to pay estimated taxes, but there is no way to predict how much I'll make in the next year because the income stream is very unstable. For example, say I made $xx,xxx in the 1st quarter, $x,xxx in the 2nd, then 3rd and 4th were negative. I couldn't have estimated that!

Anyway, last time I sat down and tried to figure this out myself, I did narrow it down to form 2210AI, but in the end I still couldn't figure it out and just gave up. TurboTax was of no help either. It ended up being much harder than just subtracting what you've spent from what you've made..

What's your process for filing taxes? Do you just pay an accountant to take care of it all?

 

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[apax999]

Hey apax999. I've been doing affiliate marketing for the last 2 years, with mixed results. I did have one campaign that I banked hard with, but it's been gone for a while now. That was earlier in the year and I do still have that hefty sum that I haven't paid taxes on yet. Which leads me to my question: how the heck do affiliates do their taxes?? I know that we are supposed to pay estimated taxes, but there is no way to predict how much I'll make in the next year because the income stream is very unstable. For example, say I made $xx,xxx in the 1st quarter, $x,xxx in the 2nd, then 3rd and 4th were negative. I couldn't have estimated that!

Anyway, last time I sat down and tried to figure this out myself, I did narrow it down to form 2210AI, but in the end I still couldn't figure it out and just gave up. TurboTax was of no help either. It ended up being much harder than just subtracting what you've spent from what you've made..

What's your process for filing taxes? Do you just pay an accountant to take care of it all?

I use an accounting firm to manage my federal and state tax obligations. I honestly hate the entire topic.

Tax liabilities has nothing to do with future estimated earnings. You pay taxes based on what you profited from 1/1/2013 to 12/31/2013.

If you made $750,000 in profit this year, you get taxed at the highest brackets possible... 39.6% I believe now. If you make $60,000 next year, then you get taxed at whatever it is, 28%.

If you are an s-corp, like I am, you file Quarterly estimated returns based on that quarter's activity. Some accountants, like mine, increase my withholding each quarter so that I over-pay rather then under-pay. I would rather be owed my money back at the end of the year rather then owe more. Adjustments are then made on the annual return as needed.

I would talk to an accountant.

 

[QtoBrooklyn]

Tax liabilities has nothing to do with future estimated earnings. You pay taxes based on what you profited from 1/1/2013 to 12/31/2013.

I was under the impression that self-employed persons had to pay Estimated Taxes each quarter throughout the fiscal year in order to cover Medicare and Social Security obligations since those don't get withheld by anyone. Is this not correct?

But you're right, I gotta talk to an accountant about this since it's a giant pain in the butt. Any type of accountant you would recommend? Like H&R Block people or someone more local? I just don't think that any of the accountants in my neighborhood would be familiar with affiliate marketing..

I'm from NY also, Brooklyn to be exact.

 

[ddinnov]

Hi Apax,

Thanks so much for this AMA, it's really nice to have some true 'been there done that' info. Before reading all this thread I was very hopeful and bright eyed and bushy tailed about CPA, I'm not put off but certainly approaching very cautiously.

What I've picked up from reading so far is that advertorial LPs are good for conversion which I am going to use as my angle. I want to focus heavily in 1 niche which is super competitive but massively lucrative looking at the CPA offers - Forex.

With 4 years trading experience and a genuine passion I'm going to draw on that in trying to make catchy ads/LPs. My main concerns are that traffic will be costly and due to the big payouts I've no doubt the blackest of black hats are operating and snooping and ready to outbid/shut down anyone coming into their space.

My business model is a kind of hybrid affiliate/own list as I have a low ticket front end product/funnel/AR sequence and I want to promote CPA both on the back end and monetise it straight off from traffic that is not suitable for my product. I have several good and catchy domains and am thinking of creating brands with them and do some banner advertising.

What I really want from CPA (apart from killing off my alarm clock and a Mercedes E63/Big house/investments/budget to grow business etc) is to develop the skill, knowledge and experience in testing keywords/ads/traffic types/LPs etc.

Do you have any advice for going into such a massively competitive niche for CPA?

Do you think branding is a good idea?

Thanks!

 

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[akrtw]

Hey Apax,

Thanks for this wonderful AMA thread. I have tried AM for 1 year with medium to poor results. Spent most of my time on POF & dating and other stuff. Now I have stopped AM for a few months for school work but am ready to get back into the game. My budget is limited at $1000. I really want to focus on one traffic source and one kind of offer this time. What would you recommend?

I am thinking toolbar with PPV since testing budget is relatively low comparing to high payout offer (e.g. rebills). But I really want to know what you recommend.

Thank you!

 

[craig1928]

Don't touch PPV, I'd go back into POF, target women 40+

 

[akrtw]

Thanks. But may I know why's that?

 

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[ddinnov]

I have to say that setting up Prosper 202 is the most fun I've had since having my wisdom teeth out...

 

[fast40]

Hey apax999,

This is my first question here.

How much % traffic from these PPV are fraud? Especially LeadImpact?

Many Thanks.

 

[QtoBrooklyn]

Hey apax, any tips on running weightloss offers on PPV? which you mentioned is your specialty if I read that correctly.. I'm running Garcinia on leadimpact right now and, even though i have a very good CTR on the landers, i'm not getting much conversions.. Maybe 1 conversion every 2-3 days. I'm running the trial bottle version where the user only pays shipping and handling. My target keywords and URLs are all Garcinia related. I dont know, maybe I should be running the full purchase version of the offer instead of trial..

I know you can't say too much since you're still making money off of this, but any tips would be appreciated.

 

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[jatx]

If you had a business that could offer huge potential for affiliate marketers (both for them and for me), would you seek to build direct relationships with affiliates right away?

 

[NNR]

What do you know about adult affiliate marketing?

 

[apax999]

I disappeared for a while as I gear up for my first product launch as merchant (not affiliate!)... figured I'd answer these last few questions. After these questions I'll still poke my head back in this thread but really only to answer intermediate/advanced/theory questions not newbie/how-to (there are plenty of resources and other forums for that).

Hi Apax,

Thanks so much for this AMA, it's really nice to have some true 'been there done that' info. Before reading all this thread I was very hopeful and bright eyed and bushy tailed about CPA, I'm not put off but certainly approaching very cautiously.

What I've picked up from reading so far is that advertorial LPs are good for conversion which I am going to use as my angle. I want to focus heavily in 1 niche which is super competitive but massively lucrative looking at the CPA offers - Forex.

With 4 years trading experience and a genuine passion I'm going to draw on that in trying to make catchy ads/LPs. My main concerns are that traffic will be costly and due to the big payouts I've no doubt the blackest of black hats are operating and snooping and ready to outbid/shut down anyone coming into their space.

My business model is a kind of hybrid affiliate/own list as I have a low ticket front end product/funnel/AR sequence and I want to promote CPA both on the back end and monetise it straight off from traffic that is not suitable for my product. I have several good and catchy domains and am thinking of creating brands with them and do some banner advertising.

What I really want from CPA (apart from killing off my alarm clock and a Mercedes E63/Big house/investments/budget to grow business etc) is to develop the skill, knowledge and experience in testing keywords/ads/traffic types/LPs etc.

Do you have any advice for going into such a massively competitive niche for CPA?

Do you think branding is a good idea?

Thanks!

With regards to getting into a competitive niche: find a campaign that's working (e.g. it's been running on X ad network for YY number of days or months), copy it, launch it, gather data and tweak to make it more profitable for you.

Hey Apax,

Thanks for this wonderful AMA thread. I have tried AM for 1 year with medium to poor results. Spent most of my time on POF & dating and other stuff. Now I have stopped AM for a few months for school work but am ready to get back into the game. My budget is limited at $1000. I really want to focus on one traffic source and one kind of offer this time. What would you recommend?

I am thinking toolbar with PPV since testing budget is relatively low comparing to high payout offer (e.g. rebills). But I really want to know what you recommend.

Thank you!

Same answer as above. If you're new to AM, don't try getting creative right out of the gates and attempt to reinvent the wheel. Find campaigns that are working and copy them.

You can't run toolbars on the big, reputable PPV networks.

I have to say that setting up Prosper 202 is the most fun I've had since having my wisdom teeth out...

Setting up a MySQL db? You might want to re-evaluate your choice in AM. Not trying to be mean or anything but I spend a ton of time utilizing tracking platforms setting up campaigns, tweaking them and analyzing reports.

p202 and cpvlab are far and away the coke and pepsi of the AM world. don't hate on them.

Hey apax999,

This is my first question here.

How much % traffic from these PPV are fraud? Especially LeadImpact?

Many Thanks.

No clue. Stick with the big reputable networks and you'll be fine.

Hey apax, any tips on running weightloss offers on PPV? which you mentioned is your specialty if I read that correctly.. I'm running Garcinia on leadimpact right now and, even though i have a very good CTR on the landers, i'm not getting much conversions.. Maybe 1 conversion every 2-3 days. I'm running the trial bottle version where the user only pays shipping and handling. My target keywords and URLs are all Garcinia related. I dont know, maybe I should be running the full purchase version of the offer instead of trial..

I know you can't say too much since you're still making money off of this, but any tips would be appreciated.

Based on how you described the campaign setup I can offer 2 ideas:

- bad targets: you need to go wide, not deep. in other words you are going deep by targeting garcinia kw's that everyone and their grandma will be targeting. think of the demo and go wide by adding in 500-1000 domains that fit the demo... "walgreens.com qvc.com victoriasecret.com" you get the idea.

- bad offers: keeping testing.

If you had a business that could offer huge potential for affiliate marketers (both for them and for me), would you seek to build direct relationships with affiliates right away?

100% yes.

I think CPA networks/affiliate networks are a dying breed. They are middlemen that we don't really need so long as you privately acquire your own affiliates. Affiliates get paid more CPA since the middleman is gone, there is more transparency, better communication w/ no middleman network/managers/rep/sales/biz dev getting in the way. I think it's the way things are headed.

What do you know about adult affiliate marketing?

Zero.

Good luck.

 

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[QtoBrooklyn]

Hey, thanks for the responses, really learning a lot from reading this thread.

When i was poking around Dreamweaver with someone's PPV landing page that I got through boxofads, i saw that the person had a sitescout pixel in there. Have you ever tried retargeting in combination with your PPV campaigns? I'll give it a shot anyway, just wanna see if a successful PPV marketer like you uses retargeting as well.

 

[apax999]

Hey, thanks for the responses, really learning a lot from reading this thread.

When i was poking around Dreamweaver with someone's PPV landing page that I got through boxofads, i saw that the person had a sitescout pixel in there. Have you ever tried retargeting in combination with your PPV campaigns? I'll give it a shot anyway, just wanna see if a successful PPV marketer like you uses retargeting as well.

I've never personally tried it. Not sure how well it would work. You would be crossing mediums... popups being re-targeted to banners. The end-user might not even realize the correlation.

Makes me think of Ghostbusters ... "don't cross the streams".

 

[timlisten]

great thread, I learn a lot and thanks for doing this. I have a couple of questions regarding PPV.
1. where do you do demographic research? quantcast used to do the trick, but not anymore, it seems they hide all the data. Now I use alexa, but not sure if it is accurate.
2. When do you decide to go wide on a campaign? I mean after how many conversions? Every time I try to go wide, I always lose money.
I tried different angles and sometimes direct linking and it never worked out. Let's say I'm running a payday loan, I tried to bid
on bank sites. When I run background check offers like instant check mate (was highly recommended by my affiliate manager), I bid on mom's and nannie sites. How much do you spend before you decide to kill a campaign for an offer that pay around $25?
3. can you give any example on how you go wide? any niche is fine, diet, loan, debt, penny auction, coupon, credit report or anything. do you rotate offers and landing pages? and how much do you spend on each keyword or target before you kill the target?
4. do you use a full page landing page or 700x435 on trafficvance?
5. do you use both popup and in-text on trafficvance, which one do you have more success with going wide?

thanks a lot.

 

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[Boo Blizzi]

This was a great thread... and if you dont mind I would like to ask a few quick questions.

1. I noticed you said co-reg is your bread and butter... are u still running it?
2. And if so... which networks are u with? (silverpath, smiley, OI, etc)
3. Which countries are you seeing the highest RPUs and how much are they?

Awhile back I had a great idea for a front end but before I launched something else started working so I devoted all my attention to milking it.
Now Im in between campaigns and Im basically testing some lead gen idea but Im itching to monetize those optins immediately so I was thinking about sending them down a path or to an offer wall.

 

[Dan Willis]

Do you find demographics shift from country to country or that AMA is typically stable across demographics regardless of locale?