It seems like time moves so much slower during the summer months and everything & everyone are just at their own relaxed pace. Weekends seem longer…lunches turn into all day affairs and floating in the pool is your day’s physical activity. It’s a great time of the year all around. Who doesn’t love sunshine and summer vacations?! Life, though, doesn’t seem slower over here in the affiliate marketing world. It feels as busy and hectic as ever which is a good thing. Weekend summer days wouldn’t be as enjoyable without the hustle and bustle of the work week.

We’ve all been working hard around here at AKMG and are continually adding new exclusive offers, new publishers and further solidifying relationships. We are continuing to see great success with our brand name lead gen campaigns and continuity programs so people out there really are still spending online (in between pool time, of course)! So publishers, be sure to log in frequently to AKMG to see the latest and greatest campaigns we’re running (contact your affiliate manager with any questions). Advertisers, don’t miss out on high quality traffic from the AKMG pubs. Contact me today to get things set up.

Enjoy the upcoming weekend!

I spend most of my day evaluating various offers and landing pages. So I’ve developed a bit of a keen eye in terms of what to look for on web pages and what works. The whole purpose of a landing page is to quickly “sell” someone on your product or service. People online, more than other mediums, only give a landing page an instant to check it out and make a decision either to fill out the form/purchase something or click over to another web page. So you’ve got to make the page that consumers see the best it can possibly be in order to catch their attention in that first instant.

Here are some general helpful tips…these might seem obvious but so many of the pages that I come across do the exact opposite:

1) Keep the design simple and uncluttered
2) Have a clear call-to-action
3) Keep as much pertinent info above the fold
4) Put the data form field on the right hand side of the page - people’s eyes naturally start reading from the left and gradually move to the right side
5) Have a kick butt offer that people want!

If you want to learn more about effective landing page optimization, I recommend the “Landing Page Optimization” book by Tim Ash. We consider Tim a friend of AKMG and the foremost leader in the field. Don’t be a cheapo….go get the book

Having multiple email partners is a topic that has been coming up a lot in the past few weeks with my advertisers and potential new advertisers. While I understand the logic that having a ton of email partners equals the maximum number of leads, there is the other side to that school of thought. As an example, just because you have 20 emails partners, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll hit your capacity or goal each month in terms of volume. Some of our most successful campaigns were when we were the only email partner and were able to greatly exceed their monthly sales goals.

It makes sense if you think of it from a publisher’s perspective. There are many networks out there and they are all hounding the publishers on a daily basis to run their “fantastic” offers. But if a mailer logs into a bunch of networks and sees the same campaign over and over again, the offer loses its appeal. Mailers are looking for offers that are unique and different from the status quo so that they can give their audience something special…leading to higher conversions and more money! If an offer is everywhere, it means it is already saturated in the marketplace and people have most likely come across at it some point so fewer people will convert. If this was another kind of marketing, that might not be a bad thing but we’re PERFORMANCE BASED MARKETING. So conversions are all we really care about!

Let’s keep the unique offers with limited distribution rolling onto AKMG and we’ll all be much happier! We’ll even forget this debate about which is better: multiple or limited email partners.

In my life before affiliate marketing and AKMG, I used to do marketing and sales for a large brand name company where we sold ad space on a CPM basis (cost per thousand impressions, which means you pay based on the number of times your ad appears on a website). I remember the good old days when we would sit around the conference room table figuring out how to “pitch” advertisers on buying our ad space at a really high CPM. We would dig around and find the best stats possible about our audience in support of the CPM price. Then we would take away impressions from the internal house account to make the CPM price go down so it would be a great deal for the client. Now, this brand is one of the most reputable companies out there so it wasn’t that difficult to come up with great stats about their audience and brand loyalty. They have done studies that show that consumers trust a brand more if it is associated with this company. But looking at it from the advertiser’s perspective, I would want more out of my CPM buy than just a loyal audience that holds my brand on a pedestal. I would want results. I would want new customers and new sales.

Beyond just banner placement, email drops can be bought on a CPM basis. I also worked at a non-profit where I bought emails on a CPM basis. I laid out a big portion of my annual marketing budget and got nothing in return - no new leads, just money out the window and I had no stats to support why I spent that money. Not a fun predicament when I had to justify my spend.

Enter CPA (cost per action where you only pay when a new sale or lead is generated) to the rescue. What a change of pace this world is compared to CPM. We don’t have to sit around figuring out how to pitch clients, we just have to show results. Totally different mind frame. Clients are much more willing to work with you if they’re only paying for performance; it’s much easier for them to sell internally and the return-on-investment is as clear as day. The results are there so it’s NOT a matter of hoping that once people see an ad, they will remember your brand, go to your website and purchase something. We know within a day or two whether an offer works and if the media buy worked.

CPM media buys are beneficial for branding but in a tight economy, advertisers need to show results and prove that they are spending marketing money wisely. So there may be some uncertainty about when emails will be dropped when buying on CPA but the upside is that you’re only paying for leads or sales and not just when people view your ad or email creative. This is money better spent!

It seems like every time you turn on the news and browse any news websites, all you hear about is the recession and the terrible state of the U.S. economy. It seems as the though the CPA world is booming despite all of the doom-and-gloom in our economy. It makes sense that consumers cut their respective budgets in a recession, but that just opens up the window for advertisers to offer coupons and other discounts to entice those budget conscious consumers to continue to buy. From an online perspective, we know that marketers will move dollars from more expensive traditional media like TV to the web which leaves us in a great position to capitalize on this shift.

The news isn’t all doom and gloom which is another reason we’re seeing an upswing in the performance-based advertising business. Just today I read a story titled “The Strangest Recession in Economic History” which said that everyone is talking about the recession but we have had two straight quarters of positive GDP growth so far this year which doesn’t quite make you think of a recession. This is contrary to everything you hear about the current real estate market & housing crisis, credit card problems and constantly increasing oil prices.

We’re happy to report that our advertisers are seeing great ROI with their campaigns they are running with us even during this slowdown period. Makes me happy I’m in this business, versus the real estate business here in Miami (yuck)….

Not many people are lucky enough to work in such a mobile industry. We can literally work from anywhere in the world as long as we’re connected, of course…to our cell phone…email…and AIM! Taking advantage of this mobility, I packed my bags last night for a trip home. My entire “work related luggage” was a small Apple computer bag with my computer, charger and flash drive. Not a bad way to live. Most people are basically tied to their gray cubicle with a clunky desktop. Sigh, what a sad existence for those people.

So I’m here in Pittsburgh for my sister’s wedding and the best part of it that I don’t really have to skip a beat since I can work from here without a problem. The wedding festivities will begin tomorrow and what a production that is going to be. Over 350 people were invited and 295 have said yes. It will be an Italian version of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”! My Italian family is huge with a gazillion family members and my sister is marrying someone with an identical kind of family. And guess who will be giving the speech in front of 300 people?! You got it, ME. Great…wish me luck!

Keep those exclusive offers coming!!

I can’t think of a time in recent memory when I didn’t obsessively think about pixels firing, conversion metrics & EPCs. It feels like I’ve entered this parallel universe where my brain is only programmed to think about these things…I even dream about them. I’ve been in online marketing for over 8 years but it’s only been since I started doing affiliate marketing that I actually found myself in this interesting corner of the universe. I constantly evaluate every piece of advertising I see whether it be on TV, in print, online or other random methods and my first thought is how we could make that work for AKMG. When I’m not working and with friends, I sometimes want to say something that only other affiliate marketing people would understand. Like, “oh that campaign would be great for a 1st page submit”. Um, what?! Lord help me and my conversation skills lately!

I know so many people in this industry are just like this so they can relate to what I’m saying…which is why we’re able to get along and have such a social industry. People looking in from the outside definitely think we are a bunch of nerds, but I guess they are not capable of envisioning dollar signs in the sky from just about any type of advertising we’re exposed to.

I never knew how much I valued free time until now that I barely have any of it. I know most of us in our industry can empathize and are in the same situation as I am. I literally haven’t stopped or had a night off for the entire month of April..not sure how it’s already April 25th by the way. So tonight will be my first night with “free time” and I plan on doing absolutely nothing. I can’t wait for it it start! Most people would think I’m crazy when I say it’s tiring sitting in front of a computer all day but it has finally caught up with me plus the travel really did me in. So it’s time for a little “me” time without my computer. I hope everyone else can have a little of the same this weekend.

Anyway, here’s a quick list of what I’ll be doing with my free time:

1) Nothing
2) Staring at the TV
3) Nothing
4) Sitting by the pool
5) Nothing
6) Sipping sangria on Lincoln Road

Ok, I won’t be able to stay away all weekend…of course Ill be checking revenue numbers but only once a day instead of obsessive compulsively like usual!

Fifteen days later and I’m back in Miami at last. I started the month off at LeadsCon in Las Vegas, then headed to work out of the Santa Monica office, then to Napa for some wine tasting with the AKMG crew and finally to San Francisco for adtech. What a crazy few weeks but it was worth it with the new business we drummed up plus the relationships we’ve further solidified. Once again…the AKMG skate decks were a huge hit! We heard people were auctioning them off in the lounge area and they were going to the highest bidder. If you didn’t get a chance to stop by and pick one up, be sure to catch us at Affiliate Summit in August where we’ll have a new Boston board.

This trip made me realize (again) what a great industry we work in. I don’t know many other people that get to hang out with smart, funny, innovative people on a daily basis. People that you genuinely like. It feels like we spent half of adtech laughing with our advertisers and affiliates…just having a good time while doing business. I don’t think you could ask for more in a job. Unless of course you’re partial to grey cubicle walls and long, serious meetings that accomplish nothing. I prefer the quick, to-the-point meetings in our booth followed by cocktails at the W Hotel.

Now, more importantly, it’s almost time for the weekend here in Miami which means I can finally relax and catch up on some necessary sleep…

Weird title, I know. But the phrase “fat and lame” came up twice this week in conversations with two different advertisers…so of course I had to blog about it. Fat and lame is what happens when a company gets too big that they are at the point of becoming inefficient, slow, cumbersome and bogged down with red tape and unproductive B.S. The actions taken by fat & lame companies are the exact opposite of everything that a start up stands for and represents - innovation, growth, hungry, quick moving and streamlined. The absolute antithesis of fat & lame.

When the picture is painted like that, who in their right mind who want to work for a “fat and lame” enterprise? Not me! I figured that out a while ago that I’ll only work for small start ups since I can’t deal with slow moving people and companies. I have lived on the east coast for too long to tolerate slow…no thank you! Life is too short to deal with extra, unnecessary stress…especially in our fast-paced industry with non-stop trade shows and months that fly by. It seems from the conversations I had this week with colleagues, most think along the same lines that fat and lame is something to avoid!

On that note, if you’ll be at ad:tech San Francisco, be sure to stop by our booth #5984. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll snag one of our fabulous AKMG skate decks. Be sure to get there early…they were a huge hit at Affiliate Summit and I’m sure this event will be no different. No fat and lame allowed!