Them….                                                             Us……

I am sure by now you all have heard what is going on with our US economy. And if you haven’t where have you been? Some of the biggest companies in United States history have been sold, bought, downsized, or shut down completely.

So everyone is asking the question: “What is going to happen to my job/my future?”

I have talked to several affiliates the last month and they have all said the same thing, “I haven’t felt the hit of the stock marketing with my affiliate business.” 

Performance marketing is the wave of the future. When you are able to offer consumers the best of everything, at anytime, and from anywhere you can’t lose. Life will go on for America and the rest of the world. Consumers will still buy products. The reason why affiliate marketing is still going strong is because we have positioned ourselves as the best and most efficient way to deliver products and information at the click of a mouse. 

Traditional marketing can not compete with performance marketing any longer. It creates a vested interest between both the merchants and the affiliates. Merchants have to create the best products and affiliates have to deliver the best traffic. It is a win win solution for producers and consumers. 

So sit back and relax…wait don’t relax keep working and build your affiliate business empire.

Any feedback?

Chris Mello

As many of us watched the VP debates last week and are making it a priority to watch the Presidential debates tonight, we can’t help ignore that there is a lot going on in the world that is in the unknown. Who will our next President be?  Will the bail out plan be passed? Will Wall Street turn to the upside? What bank is going to close next?  All these things are very important, but they are pretty much out of our control, which can be quite stressful. Although, one thing we can control is the effort we put forth into making the most of ourselves - whether it be in the workplace or our personal lives.

For myself, in stressful times I find it most important to keep myself busy and focus on others, because for starters, it takes the focus off of “me” and secondly, it makes me more productive in all areas of my life. By focusing on others at work, I find it interesting to learn about my affiliates. What I mean by this is what offers work best for them, what do they do away from work, when are their birthdays, do they have any large plans coming up, who is their favorite NFL team, etc.  I know for myself, it is necessary to have a personal interest in my side of work or it just seems like… WORK.

What I’m trying to say is even in these unknown times, it is your best bet to put the most effort into whatever you’re doing, whether it be in work or fun, because at the end the day the one thing we can control and change is ourselves.  I know for myself it is a great feeling to walk away from something saying,  ”I did the best I could do and I had fun doing it.”

What about you?  How do you get through these stressful times?  If you want to talk politics, go ahead… If you want just talk, then feel free to talk…

Here at AKMG, we require secure pixels (https) for affiliates that wish to piggyback.

What do you do when you have a tracking/reporting system that requires unsecured (http) pixel or postback URLs?

See our solution on my Prosper202 Guest Blog - “SSL Workaround for Non-Secure Pixels from AKMG”!

So you’ve got your killer product that you’re going to sell on a CPA…you have your merchant accounts set up…your marketing collateral is ready to go…now it’s time to sit back and watch the sales come in! Right? Well this is true but it only lasts so long. As an advertiser, you need to constantly tweak and refresh your landing pages in order to keep consumers interested and excited about the product. You need to give them a compelling reason to fork over money on the Internet and in this tough economy.

I’ve come up with a few ways to improve your landing pages.

1. Add video to the page to engage the consumer and help them understand the benefits of your product or service
2. Improve load time so that the consumer experience is enjoyable
3. Change up the marketing copy and product benefits to see what works best for your target audience
4. Eliminate unnecessary items on the page - avoid clutter!
5. Have consistent creative and an integrated approach to your marketing
6. Make sure your forms function properly
7. Test, test, test to see what works best!

It’s usually the little things that can really make the difference like increasing the size of your call to action button which will lead to increased conversions. Take the time to review these ways to improve landing pages listed above and you’ll be on your way to the top of your vertical!

AKMG journeyed to ad:tech London this week to attend our first ad:tech outside of the United States and experience UK affiliate marketing. It was an experience from day one which started with 30 minutes of sleep the entire night on the way to London and ended with Kim White, AKMG President, and me running to our gate at Heathrow. It was our own version of National Lampoon’s European Vacation!

It was an interesting experience to immerse ourselves in the culture for a few days to see how the average consumer is bombarded with advertising. There is much more advertising there than in the United States. They cover entire taxi’s with advertisements that are every color of the rainbow, digital advertisements line the walls of the underground stations, even the bottom of the seat covers that flip down in the taxi’s have ads on them. You can’t walk more than a few steps in London without seeing some sort of ad. It makes sense that advertisers need to have an integrated approach to their marketing plan to include outdoor, print, TV and online. Affiliate marketing campaigns across the pond are in luck to have such offline support to the campaigns being run online.

The show itself was a mix of US and European networks so we saw a lot of familiar faces. But many of the UK networks were extensions of existing US networks. The offline advertising is abundant but it seems like affiliate marketing is still in its infancy. This was evident at the show because it was mainly networks and we were told that the show was half as large as last year. But it was a great experience nonetheless.

If there are any UK advertisers that do affiliate marketing, please get in touch as we’d like to test the waters!

In my time spent as an Affiliate Manager, I am learning more about what affiliates deem as an amazing offer vs a mediocre one, based on conversion rate, epc or just plain old money.  As we all know, epc is often the proven winner, but that is not always the case.  For example, in the affiliate manager’s role, we can easily assume if an offer that pays out $20 has a 5% conversion rate with a $2 epc - it is a true winner.  I am finding out there is much more than just epc and conversion rates.

For an affiliate that promotes via email, the most important part is the offer getting in the user’s inbox…. then the open….. and of course, the lead/purchase.  The part we don’t see on our end is how many emails were sent out, how much money was put into the specific drop or what the affiliates are expecting for their ROI.  We just have what is in front of us - what we can’t see is what else was put into it - that is until we get an idea from the affiliates.  This is why it is so important to know what your metrics are - what you look for and how many emails were sent on a specific drop.  By understanding what was put into an offer, we can have a true understanding if an offer performed well for our affiliates or what else is required to turn it into a profitable campaign.

I want to make it an effort to find out what works for you - whether you want an offer that has tons of clicks, you want a high epc or you want to earn $2,000 per drop.  By knowing this I will do my best to follow the offer’s true performance according to your metrics and know if it was a hit or a miss.  Of course my goal is always to give you a offer that will be a success.

Here at AKMG we like to keep the lines of communication wide open between us and our Affiliates. We take the “Help Me Help You” philosophy. All of us here work very hard to provide you with the best offers, client services, payouts, incentives, etc. Sometimes it can be hard for us to know exactly what specific help may be needed to help you succeed . Allow this to be your opportunity to help us raise the bar by providing us with your latest feedback to result in helping you make more money:

-Tell us what you like about us.

-Tell us what you would like us to improve on.

-How does our back end system work for you?

We will consider the validity of every suggestion. We understand the success of any business has many components working at one time to make it run smoothly and the intention of this blog will reflect that. 

Please post your comments.

Talk to me,

Chris Mello

I was searching the world wide web last night and I came across an interesting blog. It discusses how you as a leader of your business treats your tribe(customers), as the author puts it.  At AKMG our tribe is more than your customers, clients, or affiliates they are our family. We understand they are some big time networks out there so what is going to separate us from the big doggs? Simply, we care. We care about being available at anytime day or night. We care about resolving tracking issues (which rarely ever happens). We care about paying everyone on-time every-time. We care about making our Affiliates feel like kings. Here is an article about the 101 ways to kill your tribe: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/101WaystoDestroyYourTribe.pdf

You have anything to add?

Let me know,

Chris Mello

We are now in largest financial realignment since the 1930’s - a time when banks are scrambling to avoid bankruptcy, housing is dropping to an all time low and individuals are feeling the hard hit of the “economic recession.”  We can easily see how the effects of our economy is trickling down to other areas of business, yet the internet business is still booming.

We are fortunate to be in a business that is not largely effected by what goes on around us, what we usually have to do is find the hot ticket item and hit it hard.  Housing is suffering?… Find foreclosure offers.  Gas prices are too high?… Find an offer on how to save gas.  Our constant goal is to find the next big offer.  What are people in search for?  What is the hot Christmas item?  If we find what people want, we will keep trucking along - ever so strong - even during the economy’s hard times.

AKMG is always looking for the next best thing to come along, but one thing we make sure of is that in the process we are having fun doing it!  Now that winter is quickly approaching, what do you think the next offer will be?  Will it be the hot  RC Helicopters?  The flying monkeys??  Feel free to share any of your ideas!  We have many resources to get the next hot item out there.

Mastering SEO, SEM and PPC tactics can be a daunting task. Companies tend to either ignore it completely & hope for the best or outsource to the experts. For a large scale project, it makes sense to outsource but there are things that you can implement that will go a long way. SEO is a long term investment and is well worth it when you see your website land above the fold on a Google search results page.

As an advertiser, there are basic things that you can do to help the organic search results for your landing pages & website. To start with, always make sure to have your title tag, keyword and meta data for each page. Then, be sure to update your website regularly so that Google will view your site as an authority in your vertical. You can do this with fresh content in the form of articles or a blog. Finally, you’ll want to regularly do keyword research that is relevant to your site. There are a bunch of great, free keyword research tools out there like Trellian.

CKMG, our internet brand development and SEO company, has taught us these simple steps that really go a long way. It’s been a great learning process for us working along side with CKMG on optimizing landing pages and developing brands. Be on the lookout soon for the brands that we’re developing and will be launching later this year!