WeiChen Marketing Group

I have been promoting Garcinia Cambogia for over a month.  Here I would like to summarize this project in this post. Overall, I set up three campaigns in my Trafficvance International account for Canada, and two campaigns for Australia; I also set up two campaigns in Trafficvance US account and five campaigns in LeadImpact for US only.

Any kind of marketing operation comprises three key elements.  The first is to package your product or service so as to give a good presentation to the public.  For internet marketing, a landing page is the major platform for such kind of presentation.  It can directly make or kill a campaign.  The second step is to find the customers or the right group of people who are interested in your product/service and can be a potential buyer.  Carefully choosing your keyword targets is critical for pin-pointing the audience precisely, which can greatly reduce your advertising cost.  When you have a good landing page and right targets, the final elements towards a successful campaign is how to handle the competition.  For PPV marketing, the battlefield of competition mainly happens at the bidding stage.   Now I am going to talk about three stealth bidding strategies that can help you to win the bid war in LeadImpact.

In Leadimpact, ads are organized by category and sub-category.  For the same keyword, the bids in one category usually cannot be seen in another category.  However, when LeadImpact decides on which ad to be delivered, it compares all bids globally and gives priority to the highest bid regardless of which category.  So this creates one opportunity to do stealth bidding.  For example, for a campaign promoting dating offers, you could choose the Lifestyle –> Dating category, which most people will choose; however, you could also choose the Adult –> Dating category, and you can even manage into the Computers and Internet –> Net Communities and Chat category.  By choosing the latter two categories, especially the third one, most of your competitors will not be able to see your bid price.  You can create a shell campaign under the correct category just for the purpose of monitoring actual bids.  In this way, you can bid in a stealth mode.

The second bidding strategy is related to the keyword-matching mechanisms adopted by LeadImpact system.  LeadImpact is based on “string” match.  Assuming bids are the same, a shorter keyword wins the most impressions.  For example, the keyword of insurance is very hot, with lots of competitions.  If someone bids on insurance at $0.12, you want to win over his bid.  The usual thinking is to increase your bid to $0.13. By doing this, you will receive more traffic; but you will also get two adverse effects.  First, increasing bids also increases your cost, which reduces your profit margin.  Second, your competitor will see your bid increase; and they will increase their bid accordingly, which will drag everybody into a bidding war.  Eventually, there will be no winner.  Now remember the “shorter-string-win” principle.  Instead of increasing your bid on insurance, you should bid on insuranc – without an “e”.  By setting your bid at $0.12, you will be drawing most of the traffic away from the original keyword, and your enemy will not see it.  This is the second stealth bidding approach.

The third tactic is to ambush your competitors in temporal domain.  This approach is most effective only in a very violent bidding war.  When everybody is increasing their bids and using up their daily budget quickly, you better hold your expense at the beginning and wait until their budgets mostly run out.  Then, you can join the battlefield to harvest most of the traffic throughout the rest of day, but with a much reduced price.  In one word, you need to learn how to take charge in an appropriate time window.

Last week one of my friends got banned by an affiliate network for being found promoting their offer on a porn website.  He was very shocked and felt innocent as he never ran any campaigns targeting toward porn sites.  The only traffic source that he had used to promote that offer was LeadImpact.  So he contacted LeadImpact asking how this could happen.  What he learned from LeadImpact is quite disturbing.  LeadImpact was testing a new technology that allows them to search within the content of a webpage to find matches to keywords.  They were testing the top 10,000 keywords used in their network; and “credit*cards”, a keyword my friend had used, is one of them.  According to the Leadimpact’s explanation, the situation might be that one of Leadimpact users was paying for services on a porn site, and so the words “credit*card” probably showed up somewhere on the webpage, triggering a popup of my friend’s ad at a porn site.

This is completely unethical!  LeadImpact were essentially using publishers as guinea pig to test their new technology and traffic.  They did this even without notifying us.  They ran the experiments at the publishers’ cost and put publisher’s affiliate accounts at risk.  Actually, I have learned from several other people that last week they all experienced a huge drop in quality from the LeadImpact traffic in relation to credit card campaigns.  Their used-to-be profitable campaigns suddenly turned into bleeding – losing a huge amount of money.  It is quite a shame that LeadImpact used affiliates’ money to do their own test without asking first.  At the very least, they should send out a notification, informing people what the test is and what potential risks could be.

Any lesson from this incident?  If you have been running some profitable campaigns on LeadImpact, you should write to ask them to remove your account from their test, and indicate that they are doing the wrong thing to put publishers’ accounts and campaigns in jeopardy.

For most Pay-Per-View marketers, bidding on targets is a very complicated and actually rather confusing process.  We often hear such kind of questions and complains:  I am the top bidder on a keyword, but why am I not receiving any traffic?  Someone is bidding $2 on a url, how can he make a profit of it?  Well, there are a lot of tricks and cautions about bidding.  Here are some.

Be aware of fake bids!

In order to push the competitors out of market, some people play fake bids.  That’s why you see some unreasonably high bids in Leadimpact and Trafficvance.  Don’t they get burned up with such a high bid?  No, it actually costs them nothing.  I’m now giving you an example of how they do it.  Let’s say I am targeting a domain name of “loan.com”.  To scare away my competitors, I set up a campaign with “loan.com” as the target.  I use the day parting approach to remove every day except one and then to remove every hour except one.  So say today is Monday I would set the campaign to run on Sunday at 5am and bid $2.00 on it.  Then the following Sunday I would change it to Saturday.  This $2.00 bid will show as the highest bid for every day of the week.  All the newbies will be either scared away or trying to outbid it and lose their money.  By doing this my fake campaign actually never gets any traffic and suffers no cost at all, but it kills off all the competitors.  In the mean time I am bidding in second or third place with a bid of $0.025 and soaking up all the traffic.  So watch out for fake bids.  If you see a bid list like $0.98, $0.94, $0.58, $0.06, $0.05, $0.049…, the first three bids are fake.  You should bid at $0.061 – just above the bid that appears to be real.

How can the # 1 bidder not receiving any traffic?

There are at least two scenarios that can cause this situation.  Firstly, if one keyword has 10 people all bid at $0.015, then everyone is listed as #1 bidder but you only get one tenth of the traffic.  Then how to make sure that you are the only top bidder?  Increase your bid slightly to see if anyone spins out behind you.  Secondly, bids for the same keyword are actually separated for different categories.  You won’t see other people’s bids for the same keyword but from a different category.  This problem happens when you are in category A with a bid of $0.015 and you are showing at the #1 position.  But someone else is in category B where the minimum bid starts at $0.025.  In this case, he will be getting most of the traffic – even without your awareness.  In other words, someone who is use the same keyword but in another category is beating you.  Because of different categories you won’t see such kind of competition.  So you might think your target is crappy and throw it away.  Actually it’s not.  The correct practice should be increasing your bid gradually to see if it starts generating traffic even though you are ranked as #1.

Use target variations to low your bidding cost

You always have competition on those targets that convert.  Strong competition will eventually make these targets no longer profitable.  One way around this is to use the variations of these targets.  If someone is bidding you out of profit, you should pause the keyword or just set it at break-even point, and then you go get traffic on the domain variations.  In PPV campaigns that have bidding wars on domains, 99% of the time people are only bidding the main domain without variation.

You should bid for profit not for top spot

When you start a new campaign, you should always set your targets at minimum bids for 24 hours to see where the traffic is, and then you can step up gradually.  For each step you should increase your bid only by one cent and then monitor for 24 hours to see if traffic increases.  You need to wait for 24 hours each time because it can take a few hours for the new bid to filter through the PPV system.  If still no traffic, repeat the process until traffic kicks in and then evaluate the quality.  In many cases keywords are not profitable at top bid, but instead are profitable at minimum or intermediate bid.  So you just sit on these low bids and pick up the loose ends of the traffic.  Always remember that you are bidding for profit, not for the top position.  One final suggestion: never use auto-bid functions provided by PPV networks.  It may save you time but will cost you quite a big fortune.

Bidding can be quite different games for different PPV networks

Trafficvance, Leadimpact and Media Traffic are three major PPV networks. The bidding strategies for each of them can be quite different.  As a rule of thumb, you should refuse to bid more than $0.90 for any keyword in Leadimpact.  Nothing can be that profitable to bid that high.  Trafficvance is a different animal, and some of your bids can be up to $2.00 on there.  For Media Traffic, never exceed $0.05 as their traffic quality is very low.

Calculate your profit margin before you go into a bidding war

Whether or not you can win a bidding war depends on if your profit margins are higher than those of your competitors.  So the most important thing you should be focusing on is to increase your profit margins.  Higher CTR ads, better landing page, better offer, higher payout on the offer, better lead quality etc. are all important determinants for how high you will be able to bid.

Have you ever heard or read the phrase “multiple streams of income” before?  Do you know what this phrase means?  For many businessmen, creating multiple streams of income online or offline is one way of securing themselves as well as their businesses in the future.  They also believe that it can also save them from the so-called famine effect in the business industry.  Once you are engaged in affiliate marketing business, it is advisable if you have multiple streams of affiliate marketing income so that if one of those income streams vanished, it will not upset you the way losing your sole stream would.  If you depend on just one source of income and this single stream has been downsized or has lain off, you’ll surely find yourself bankrupted and hopeless.  Try to ask the most successful online entrepreneurs, and you’ll discover that they have established multiple streams of online income.

Being involved in affiliate marketing is one of the most desirable ways to make multiple sources of income.  It is because affiliate marketing programs come in various shapes and forms.  There are a large number of affiliate marketing programs that you can sign on with and start gaining bucks right away.  In affiliate marketing, you can make money by promoting and reselling your affiliate products and by recruiting new affiliates.  What’s good about this is that you can find widest array of training materials that can enhance your marketing abilities.  In affiliate marketing, you can be sure that there are genuine products to promote and sell and there is real income to make.

Either part time or full time, being an affiliate marketer is an excellent way to create multiple income streams by means of promoting products and services from web merchants.  Here, you can get affiliate commission without investing big bucks in making your own product and without worrying about book keeping, customer support and ecommerce.  All you have to do is to promote and resell the products and services in your site and pass on potential customers to the merchant’s site.

In affiliate marketing, it is advisable to promote more merchants in your site so that your visitors will have variety of destinations to choose from.  Using multiple merchants in the same site or niche means only one thing – you have multiple streams of affiliate income.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this business strategy because this is one of the best ways to protect your business and expanding your horizons.  Through this, you can be assured that you won’t experience crisis if ever one of your web merchants closed his/her program.

However, you should choose only those affiliate programs that interest you so that you can effectively advertise and promote them.  Don’t ever be tempted into signing up for numerous affiliate programs in the hope that one of them will bring income.  Select wisely and don’t be engaged in selling products you know nothing about.  Go with the stuff that jives with your enthusiasm; your passion can capture your client by the nose and guide him/her to your affiliate link.

You should also work hard to make your multiple streams of income more stable.  You can do this by embracing some strategies and tactics and by developing within yourself, some traits that can help you become successful in any kind of business such as patience, persistence and thirst for knowledge.

Lastly, just remember the adage that says “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”  So that if one of them is lost, you can still have some to make omelets.  And what do these eggs have to do with multiple streams of affiliate income?  Well, it goes without saying that the more streams of income you possess, the bigger and better your money lake becomes.

Recently I tried to become an affiliate marketer with the online retailer giant – Amazon.  However, when I was setting up an account at the Amazon website, there was a note saying that “Residents of Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina or Rhode Island are not eligible to participate in the Associate program”.  I also got rejected by BuyCostumes.com when I tried to promote their Halloween costumes.  Through communicating with BuyCostumes program manager, I realized that the rejection was due to the Affiliate Nexus Tax Law of Connecticut.

There are totally nine states across the country that have passed such kind of “affiliate nexus tax” Law:

• Arkansas
• California (the law has been suspended for a year but went back into effect on September, 15, 2012)
• Connecticut
• Georgia
• Illinois (The Performance Marketing Associate won its lawsuit against the state, but Illinois has refused to suspend enforcement of the law during the appeals process)
• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania (the law was suspended early this year, but got back into effect on September 1, 2012)
• Rhode Island

The so-called “affiliate nexus tax” laws that have devastated affiliate marketers state that companies would have nexus, and the obligation to collect sales tax, if they have agreements with affiliate marketers in the state.  The overwhelming response to those laws has been that about 1,000 online advertisers have terminated their advertising agreements with affiliate marketers in these 9 states, to avoid having to collect sales tax.  This has devastated the income of 76,000 affiliate marketers.

Some analysts and journalists have used the term “affiliate nexus tax” to describe a different scenario that does not have an impact on the performance marketing industry.  The term “affiliate” has a legal meaning that often defines two companies with shared ownership or a contractual relationship to sell or be an agent of another company.  It does not define an affiliate marketing company.  In this scenario, a company would have ‘nexus’ (a physical presence that requires collection of sales tax) if they have an affiliated corporation in the state, like a sister company or subsidiary or agent.  This type of scheme does not impact affiliate marketing companies.  We should support this clarification because Hawaii recently passed what reporters have called an “affiliate nexus tax” law, but which in fact describes this other scheme and does not impact affiliate marketers in Hawaii.

Writing Articles is a great way to promote your home business website and it’s very easy to do.  You can write articles that are related to your business and submit them to article directories.  All it takes is take time to create the article and submit them.  The pay off though can be an increase in website traffic and more sales opportunities.

The article process is as follows: You create the article, proof read and correct the article, and submit the article.

One way articles create traffic to your website is from the reader.  The reader can find your website address from a link in your article resource box.  You have to make sure the article resource box contains a link to your website.

Article marketing is also known to be a method of viral marketing.  Meaning popularity of your article has the potential to grow.  For example, webmasters from other sites can use your articles to use as content on their websites.  In return for allowing the webmaster for using your article, your article will include the resource box you created containing a link back to your site.

As you create more articles and more sites keep using them, the total number of links to your site increases also.  Search engines place value on incoming links to your website.  This determines how relevant your website is.  The more relevant your site becomes, the higher it may place in the search engine results.

Articles can also build trust between your business and potential customers.  For example, with more people buying online, writing articles gives you an opportunity to present yourself as an expert on the product people are looking for.

I consider an article as a warm lead generator.  You see, people are actually looking for the information you are writing about.

Article marketing is a great way of having your site on the search engines.  When writing articles, you must understand that the propagation of the article takes time.  While no marketing method is guaranteed, in time you may see desirable results from this method of marketing.

There are many advantages to marketing your home business on the internet by writing articles.  The best part about article writing is that it doesn’t cost anything.  It does take time to write the article correctly and submit them to your favorite article directories.  When done correctly, the payoff will benefit your home business.

Each year around this time we should start to think about all of the insane money that is to be spent in the 4^th quarter of the year.  Even though now it is just the end of September, everyone is already getting ready for the massive spending that is going to take place just for Halloween alone.  According to last year’s reports, the Halloween related products have become a business with $7-billion volume.  Halloween costumes are the biggest seller and when it comes to finding that perfect costume for your party or even for your kids, there is no lack of money they will be spent. Obviously the best way to make money from Halloween is through the promotion of Halloween costumes.  We should register as an affiliate of an online Halloween costume store.  In this way, we can just send customers to their websites and earn a nice commission on every sale.

Listed below are some of the top affiliate programs online for promoting Halloween costumes.  Each of the programs has different costumes and other Halloween merchandise, along with affiliate payout rates and where they host their affiliate programs.

1. BuyCostumes.com.  This is the largest online store for buying costumes online, with over 10 billion costume combinations!  If you are going to be promoting costumes throughout the year and looking for the largest selection, BuyCostumes is a must to checkout.  The BuyCostumes affiliate program stands out from others as they also offer affiliate promotions and contests for big cash prizes.  They host their affiliate program at Commission Junction: 10% commission per sale / 25% commission on costume of the week.
2. SpiritHalloween.AffiliateTechnology.com.  Spirit Halloween is one of the sites and brand names that you simply cannot ignore.  These are the same people that usually set up the local Halloween stores in your area and malls.  Check out their excellent site and massive inventory for everything relating to Halloween.  Spirit Halloween also boasts one of the largest affiliate payouts in the Halloween niche!  Their affiliate program is also hosted at Commission Junction: 13% commission per sale.
3. CostumeCraze.com.  Costume Craze is another excellent site that has seen amazing growth over the years.  Just like BuyCostumes, they have an amazing collection of costumes and accessories and they also boast some of the best prices online.  Hosted at Commission Junction: 12% commission per sale.
4. FrightCatalog.com.  Fright Catalog has an excellent and fast loading online store that allows you to quickly run through their site and inventory, while they also have great sorting options for finding the best costumes for men, women and children.  In addition to their great site navigation they also have thousands of costumes, decorations and props for any occasion.  They host their affiliate program at ShareASale: 12% commission per sale.
5. HalloweenExpress.com.  Halloween Express is another very large site for finding and buying Halloween costumes and merchandise online.  However, with so much competition in the Halloween costume niche, it would be tough to promote their affiliate program when they pay 8% on most orders, and 5% on the rest, while other affiliate programs pay in the 10-12% range which is almost double.  Hosted at ShareASale: 5-8% commission per sale.
6. HalloweenMart.com.  Halloween Mart is one of the oldest online stores for selling Halloween costumes, as they say they have been in business since 1994!  Much like the other online stores for Halloween costumes, they have a selection of thousands of costumes and an easy-to-navigation store.  Hosted at ShareASale: 10% commission per sale.

As for which affiliate programs you are going to promote, there are two networks that you need to sign up, Commission Junction and ShareASale.  While Commission Junction might have the bigger name brands like BuyCostumes and Costume Craze on their network, ShareASale makes up for it in volume.  When performing a search for “Halloween” on Commission Junction you will get 42 relevant advertisers.  The same search on ShareASale will result in more than 200 related merchants/services to promote.  Be sure to create an account with both so that you can view all of the affiliate program options that are available.

As an affiliate, your main objective is to sell the products and services offered by your partner merchants.  Unless you can do this, you can never hope to make a significant amount of money with affiliate marketing programs.  So how do you boost sales?  All things being equal, you will need to increase your site traffic before you can experience more sales.

Here are a few tips that can help you boost your site traffic:

1. Optimize for the search engines.  The most successful sites on the internet are the most visible ones.  Now there are various ways to achieve increased visibility on the internet, but the foremost method is that of search engine optimization.  The details are too technical to discuss here, but the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) is to help your site achieve higher rankings on the search engines.  If you have used a search engine, you will notice that any particular keyword search will return thousands, if not millions of results.  Most people will not bother to browse through all those results; they will prefer to look into the sites already displayed.  Statistically speaking, the sites listed on the first results page will garner the highest amount of traffic, putting those sites in a better position to make money.

2. Joining internet directories.  While internet directories are no longer as widely used as search engines, some people do use them.  It is important that you do not overlook the potential customers that these directories can bring to your site.  To join an internet directory, you will have to submit your site for approval, and you will be categorized accordingly.

3. Provide fresh content.  Your site must continually be updated if you expect your visitors to keep coming back.  Your site must have useful content, as well as tools that will help your target audience.  Make your site as easy to navigate as possible, and be sure that your links work the way that they should.  There is nothing that frustrates people more than a “broken” website, and once your site has been labeled as such, chances are slim that many people will want to come back.

4. Build an online community. In other words, build relationships with your potential customers. Make your visitors feel welcome and appreciated, and they are likely to come back. Be interested in solving their problems and they will thank you with their business.
Making your affiliate marketing program work is really not that much different from operating a traditional business. The only way you can keep your customers is to treat them right. The Japanese have a saying: The customer is God. As long as you treat your customers with respect and exert effort in trying to meet their needs, you will find that they will be more than willing to help you with yours.