Advaliant Ultra Green Tea Lean Affiliate Contest

Up and coming affiliate network Advaliant, is holding a promotion this month to award top affiliates on their promotion with a very successful offer called Ultra Green Tea Lean. Original Advaliant was going to award the top SEVEN affiliates, based upon their leads sent for the month… I received an email yesterday letting me know that they are increasing their cash prizes award to 15 more affiliates… making it a total of 22 affiliate prizes. Here’s how the affiliate cash prizes are broken down.

In addition to hefty commissions, 22 affiliates will receive cash awards!

The prizes amounts will be awarded based on overall volume for the month on the Ultra Green Tea Lean offer. I’m doing fairly well with the offer, but I’m not pushing enough volume to rank in the FIVE award amounts, so I figured I would share this promotion with everyone else as well.

A quick test campaign shows this offer has a lot of potential!

Based off my current stats and ad groups, the offer is earning around .50 - .80 per click, which is pretty good. I didn’t do much at all with this campaign, as I just threw a couple ad groups together to see some initial stats and how it converts. With a high paying commission of $26 per lead, there is definitely room to test and improve on these numbers.

Advaliant Ultra Green Tea Lean Offer:
So what exactly is the Green Tea offer everyone is promoting? Well, first off, the campaign pays a $26 commission on every lead. A lead is anyone sent to your landing page and requests a free 30 day trial (cc required). The landing page is setup nicely and there are a bunch of different creatives for you to test and play with.

An Excellent Landing Page = Great Converting Offer

I’ve been an affiliate with Advaliant for several months now and met with them at Affiliate Summit West. If you aren’t already an affiliate with Advaliant, I recommend you join now and start promoting this offer. Even if you can’t push heavy volume, you can still make some good money with this offer. And for those of you heavy volume pushers, the month is still early!

Popularity: 17% [?]

31 Comments » subscribe to my feed

Low Cost Landing Pages from LPWhiz

Picking the right offer is key to a successful in pay per click campaign, but having a great landing page is nearly just as important. With more and more ad networks and search engines not allowing direct linking, you need to create a landing page or mini site. Even networks and advertisers themselves are requiring a middle page in between the search visitor and their offer page. Many affiliates out source their landing page design, and some actually create their own. Unfortunately, not all of us are graphic designers… and that’s where LPWhiz.com comes into play. By offering a membership service LPWhiz.com will provide you with new landing pages each month, along with ad creative, keywords and the networks you should join to promote your campaign.

HOW MUCH IS IT & WHAT DO YOU GET:
For a monthly cost of $29.95, you will have account access to 20 different landing pages each month. In addition to landing pages, LPWhiz also promises a list of master picked keyword lists, tested ad copies, a private member forum, occasional ebooks, scripts and exclusive design services.

INSIDE THE MEMBERS AREA:
Once you are logged in, you will see the current set of niche campaigns for you to download. Below is the current set for June, and any subscribed members, should see a new set of niche downloads available on the 1st and 15th of each month.

EXPLORING THE DOWNLOAD:
Each niche download has their own zip file and is broken down into several easy to read files. Ad Copies, Affiliate Programs, Keywords, Screenshot Image and the “landing page” folder, which is your actual landing page to upload and work with.

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS:
If you aren’t already signed up with a bunch of affiliate networks, or don’t want to search through them all for the best payout or to find a related offer to run with your niche landing page, LPWhiz has done the work for you. The “Affiliate-Programs.xls” file breaks down a few related offers, what networks you can find them on, action needed to obtain a lead, and it’s payout. There are a couple landing page downloads that don’t have any offers listed and instead, the excel file says “Please check separate section at NeverBlueAds and IncentaClick for good converting programs.” I would recommend that LPWhiz finds some relating offers for these landing pages to fill in these files, add more networks to their overall campaign lists, and if they want to make a few extra bucks, they could also make the network link names referral urls, this way they would receive commission on any new affiliate signups!

KEYWORDS:
The keywords files is a simple excel spreadsheet which listed a couple hundred keywords pertaining to the niche and campaign topic. This may be useful for any newbie, or lazy ppc marketers (that want to run a quick test campaign), as this same type of list can be obtained by using a “search suggestion” tool via MSN AdCenter, Yahoo Search or Google AdWords. As a last reference, you can run through the list to make sure that you haven’t missed any last keywords.

TESTED AD COPY:
In addition to the keywords, you are also provided with “tested” ad copy choices for your campaign. The campaign in red, is recommended as the performer over the others. If you were to actually setup a campaign using these ad copies, be sure to split test and see which works best.

AFFILIATE PROGRAM:
For paid members of LPWhiz, they also have an affiliate program. Members will earn 40% commission on all sales for LIFE. For each paid member, you would receive $12 per month, for every month they stay a member. If you are looking to join LPWhiz for the landing pages, then just refer two other members to the network, your monthly subscription bill would almost be paid for. A benefit of being a subscriber to the LPWhiz service, is that only paid members can take part in their affiliate program, so there won’t be much ad competition.

SITE SUGGESTION:
Inside the members area, there are a few banners available for the LPWhiz affiliate program. The banners are attractive, but the overall site of LPWhiz looks very simple. As a customer, I would like to see this web site with a better and cleaner design. There should also be some type of logo design or “.com” in the domain text graphic on top. Do you have any other suggestions for the site?

Summary:
For those affiliates and ppc marketers out there that aren’t currently designing their own landing pages and would like to test a new source, LPWhiz.com might be useful for you. I think most of the keywords and ad copy are pretty general information added to each niche landing page, but that’s what it is… something extra to sweeten the deal. Most freelance designers are charging anywhere from $30-$60 per landing page design, while through LPWhiz.com, you only pay $29.95 per month, which comes out to $1.50 per landing page. In the end I think it will really come down to how many people are using the site, as you wouldn’t want too many competitors using your same landing pages (Members can request custom landing page designs for $35 each, which won’t be shared by others).

Visit LPWhiz.com Landing Pages

Popularity: 15% [?]

25 Comments » subscribe to my feed

PepperJam Network “Meet the Affiliates”

Recently PepperJam Network started their own weekly series called, “Meet the Affiliates“, where they interview one of their top affiliates each week. This week, I was profiled as their affiliate. You can read the full interview below.

Welcome to Week #5 of the PepperJam Network “Meet the Affiliates” Interview Series! This week I interview Zac Johnson. Aside from being one of the most recognizable affiliate marketers because of his wildly popular blog - www.zacjohnson.com - as well as being a regular speaker at Affiliate Summit, Zac is one of the most open and transparent affiliate marketers in the biz! Through his blog and speaking engagements Zac shares step-by-step how he has become a successful affiliate marketer. At the same time Zac is a sincerely nice guy with an interest in making the affiliate marketing industry a better place to do business.

I am confident that you’ll enjoy Zac’s interview. If you don’t already, I hope that you’ll follow Zac through his blog and allow him to become a resource that will help you make more money!

- Kris Jones

Meet the Affiliates: Interview #5

Zac Johnson
MoneyReign, Inc. / ZacJohnson.com

Question #1

KRIS: Tell us the story of how and when your first got involved in affiliate marketing…

ZAC: I made my first “dollar” online when I was around the age of 14. At this time I was already playing around with some funny web sites I had created (on my free AOL web space) and also did some graphic designs for my pages. I was using AOL for internet access, and they had a chat room dedicated to people with web sites, called “The Web Diner”. Several people in the chat room had web sites, but didn’t know how to make graphics or anything, so I offered to make 468×60 banners for people for $1 each. I had a few people request banners here and there, and I would send them their banner and they would send me a dollar… well, sometimes they did. This was way before Paypal was around, so many people would never send payment. My first “dollar” made online, was actually a dollar that someone sent me in the mail!

I would eventually go on to join programs like AllAdvantage that would “pay you to surf”, and run the Pacific Coast pillow affiliate program banners on my sites (which paid only .01 per click, and a payment minimum of $100… so basically no one got paid . I even spent some time on Web Hosting affiliate programs, that I would pitch to companies in AOL Business Chat Rooms, which was successful! I would then go on to focus my efforts on the Amazon.com affiliate program and send them over $100,000 in sales, but only earn a low 5-15% commission on all sales. I did this by creating niche celebrity pages and sold books and movies relating to specific celebrities. As affiliate marketing kept expanding, so did my interest and dedication. After having made a decent amount of money in affiliate marketing, I decided to startup my own affiliate programs and merchant accounts with various networks, including Commission Junction. In 2000 I traveled across the country with my father to attend CJU 2000 and got my first real life networking experience. Not only did I get to finally meet all of the companies I had been working with for years, but it drove my dedication and passion that much more… and to this day I still love and focus on affiliate marketing.

Question #2

KRIS: Could you share Five (5) Tips for how to build readership and become a successful blogger…

ZAC: 1.) Be Personable: Everyone wants to see an real life success story. A face and personality gives so much more than a name or company logo.

2.) Be Different: So many people out there are doing the same thing, do something different to stand out of the crowd.

3.) Relate to Your Readers: Talk to your readers like you are having a regular conversation, and not trying to sell them something.

4.) Show Results & Examples: Anyone can proclaim to do anything… showing results and actual examples will help to inspire others.

5.) Communication is Key: Respond to readers comments, emails and try to network with other bloggers.

Question #3

KRIS: Where do you live? Are you married? Any children? Animals?

ZAC: I recently purchased a house in NJ and live with my beautiful girlfriend Reena, and our new dog Foxy.

Question #4

KRIS: One of the things you are known for is making $860,538.38 profit in 4 Months! Now that’s pretty awesome! Can you share for us the story behind how you made the money?

ZAC: My $860k profit story is pretty interesting to hear, but was even more amazing to live through it. For the longest time I knew there was a way to make money off the millions of people using MySpace everyday, but I just couldn’t figure out how. To make a long story short, I decided to create a new site which provided images and tools for people to use on their MySpace profile pages. The idea behind the site was to provide a service and resource to MySpace users and make it easy for others to add content to their pages. What started off as a couple hundred pages, turned into over 10,000 pages! (no programming at all I might add, all straight html!) I would host all of the content, create the sites, import content and tools for people to use… and the site would generate money from all of the page views and visitor interaction. Basically, the site went viral and as people kept grabbing content, it just kept getting bigger and bigger… to the point where the site was receiving over 180,000 unique visitors per day. (You can read the full story here.)

Question #5

KRIS: Can you share at least three tips for how an average affiliate can become a super affiliate like you?

ZAC: An average affiliate can make the jump to super affiliate status by pushing themselves and dedicating themselves to their goal. Three quick tips to help improve your earnings are:

1.) Adjust with the times and not always stick with the same concept or idea. I would not be where I am today if I continually tried to promote the Amazon.com affiliate program or made banners for $1.

2.) Dedicate yourself to something you enjoy. If you are selling or promoting diamonds online, you can make good money… but if you have no interest in jewelry or diamonds, your full effort won’t be there. Focus on your passions and it will be that much easier.

3.) Networking. It sounds easy and it sounds cliché… but it’s the honest truth. Once you start networking and establish yourself with other well known marketers, not only will you have a group of people to bounce ideas off of, but also people to keep you motivated.

Question #6

KRIS: All things being equal, what is the easiest way for an affiliate to increase revenue? Bid on Trademarks? Long-Tail ppc Arbitrage? Build a Facebook Application? Or something else?

ZAC: I would recommend that a current affiliate steps back and looks at what they are doing to generate the current revenue that they have. Once doing so, they should try and target any open source they aren’t currently acting on. If you are focusing on only paid search marketing and sending traffic to advertisers landing pages, you could then focus efforts to SEO or building a web site that will continually earn revenue, without having to pay per click for traffic. In this same example, with that same web site, you could build up a newsletter list and follow up with related products or blog posts on the topic. There are so many different ways to advertise a web site or product, make sure you are targeting them all.

Question #7

KRIS: What are some of your favorite online resources for learning more about affiliate marketing?

ZAC: Lately I’ve been focusing on blogs and forums for ideas and motivation. There are a lot of people complaining that there are too many “make money blogs” out there, but even the newbies bring new ideas to the table. It’s the affiliate bloggers that present real examples and results that will weed themselves out from the rest. Not to “toot” my own horn… but the feedback and contacts I get from running my own blog, has been an amazing resource. I highly recommend everyone start their own blog, no matter what niche market you are in.

Question #8

KRIS: Share with us what a typical “Day in the Life” of Zac Johnson is like…

ZAC: Super Affiliate by Day… Super Hero at Night… just kidding.

My whole life I’ve been a night owl and worked non-stop through the night pushing out new sites and ideas. Since moving into my new home, it’s almost a complete flip. Now I usually wake up early during the week (and see Reena off to work) and sleep in on the weekends. I usually start out my day by going through email and checking out how my campaigns performed over night. When possible and inspired, I try and make a new post to my blog before noon… but it seems that rarely happens. Depending on my work level that day, I might head off to the local LA Fitness and play basketball for a few hours. Once I return I check my email and campaigns again and might write a blog post then, if I hadn’t already. During the course of the day I like to talk with my affiliate managers and friends on Instant Messenger and Twitter. I much prefer talking with people over AIM than on the phone, and it makes for much better multi-tasking. My business day usually starts around 9am and could go till 6pm… Of course it’s much more fun when it evolves 3-4 hours of basketball, but with each day you never know what will you might be working on! It’s great and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else!

Question #9

KRIS: Have you ever had to overcome any obstacles that have helped define who you are as a person? If so, could you please share the story and tell us how you were able to address a challenging situation and make yourself stronger…

ZAC: I wouldn’t say it’s an obstacle, but my presence in affiliate marketing over the years has given me the reputation of being very passionate in this industry, and I am. There’s nothing worse than having to work your life away to make someone else rich, and losing time with your family. If you had to ask others in the industry, I think they would describe me as very dedicated and passionate.

As for an obstacle… I’ve always done everything myself. Ever since I started making money online when I was 14, I’ve always done all of my own work and never had another company employee. I’ve always wondered what it would be like if I was to take it to the next level and hire a staff and become a huge marketing company or whatever… I always found that it was too hard to trust anyone else to get the job done right, or that would be in the same effort. However… in the end, I’m pretty happy with where I’m at now and not sure if a full time company and staff is something I would want anyway. My point is… taking the leap, learning to let go and expand/outsource areas of the company to other people.

Question #10

KRIS: Who is the most important person in your life and why?

ZAC: Instead of just one, I would have to say my girlfriend Reena and my family. Without them, none of this would matter… and I would never trade them for anything.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend joining the PepperJam Network. In addition to a ton of exclusive advertisers and companies you won’t see anywhere else, PJN just recently added eBay to their list of merchants.

Popularity: 11% [?]

23 Comments » subscribe to my feed

New Business Development Contact at NeverBlueAds

One of my TOP 3 favorite networks, NeverBlueAds, just recently introduced a new feature to their affiliate network. Instead of just having an affiliate manager, you are now also assigned with a Business Developer as well. So what exactly does this mean?

YOUR AFFILIATE MANAGER:
Pretty much everything stays the same as always with you and your affiliate manager. They will continue to ask as your daily contact, who you go to for higher rates and new offers on the network.

YOUR BUSINESS DEVELOPER:
Think of your new business developer as your second affiliate manager, but who you would target any questions towards for long term relationships, or if you would like to see new offers on their network.

NeverBlueAds sent out an announcement email the other day to all affiliates and basically said, “The Business Development Department is an extra team that can help you to move your business forward. Your Business Development Manager should be contacted if there is an offer that NeverblueAds is not currently offering or an opportunity for growth you wish to pursue.”

Another point that was made was, “If your Affiliate Manager is away or you are unable to reach them, you are encouraged to contact the out-of-office contact specified in your Affiliate Managers return emails and voicemails.” I’m sure many affiliates, including myself, would attempt to contact their “Business Developer” if they were unable to contact their affiliate manager… as they seem to be your second contact, but that isn’t the case.

If you are currently an affiliate with NeverBlueAds, have you given any thought to the new “Business Developer” contact added to your account, and to take action on it? I have always contacted my Affiliate Manager directly with any “new offer” suggestions or questions, and usually they were taken care of. With the addition of the Business Developer contact, I wonder if NeverBlueAds will have a lot of new offers being added to the network, as I would think that is their main reason for adding the new contact.

Login or Join NeverBlueAds to see your new Business Development contact.

Popularity: 10% [?]

7 Comments » subscribe to my feed

Publisher Spot Ad Network Reviews

With so many affiliate programs and networks out there, how are you supposed to know which are best for you. Tyler Cruz has created a great looking affiliate network directory, called PublisherSpot. Not only does the site have a great setup for his reviews on networks, but the overall navigation and setup of the directory is easy enough as well. There are currently 39 affiliate network reviews on the site, with more to come. Here are a few highlights of PublisherSpot and why it’s worth your time to check out.

IN DEPTH NETWORK REVIEWS:
Reviews posted on PublisherSpot are in great detail. Tyler writes a decent amount on the following fields for each of his network reviews: Features, Control Panel (Main, Reports, Profile, Campaigns, Merchants, Mail), Registration, Publisher Support, Payment, Referral System and an ending Summary. Instead of having to browse through an actual affiliate network to find answers to your questions, you should be able to find everything and more in each network review.

How does your current ad network compare to the competition?
These Networks are ranked PublisherSpot’s “Editor’s Choice”

SEARCHING ABILITY:
Instead of just a search box like many other directories, PublisherSpot has some very detailed search fields. Search capabilities include Rating, Category, Minimum Payment, Payment Frequency, Payment Methods and Ad Creative. I think it would be out of the ordinary for many people using the site, to specifically search out programs based on their minimum payments, or frequency… but they are cool features to have. Better yet, at the bottom of each review, there is a full run down of the program and their pay out structure. Whether you are searching programs based on the specific fields above or just browsing through each review, you will see the key information you need about each network.

An Easy to Read Breakdown is Available on each Network Review.

YOU RATE THE NETWORKS:
With an affiliate directory, you are never sure if the reviews or listing are biased or not. PublisherSpot has gone beyond a flat text review, and implemented a voting system that takes an average from all votes for that specific network. Instead of just seeing the feedback from one person, you are given an overall review rating from others currently using the network. Should PublisherSpot become a player in the affiliate directory space, these rankings could give a nice scale on the best performing networks.

How was your network experience? VOTE for your network on a scale of 1 to 10.

PUBLISHERSPOT FORUMS:
In addition to the network reviews, PublisherSpot also has a forum. The current topics of the forum focus on affiliate marketing, network reviews and general discussion. The forum was just launched on May 22nd, so the activity is pretty minimal. No matter the site, the goal of running a successful forum is one of the hardest. I would recommend that Tyler tries to get some affiliate managers on board to possible answer any questions or give advice to active affiliates.

Network, Communicate and Share Ideas on the PublisherSpot Forum

IMPROVEMENTS FOR THE NETWORK:
So what will it take for PublisherSpot to become a major player in the affiliate market space? Tyler is already working on getting extra exposure to the site by ordering several reviews from popular blogs, which already focus on affiliate marketing. I would also recommend listing some active or current offers available through the networks. It nice to get a review on networks, but what’s inside also matters. One of the toughest factors will be focusing on growth efforts and participation for the PublisherSpot forum. Everyone wants to have their own active community, but how many do you actually want to join and be active in. Instead of putting full efforts into a forum, the option for user comments and feedback for each review might be a better choice. Feel free to list your comments, advice and opinions for the site as well.

When I first saw PublisherSpot several months ago, I thought it was a nice idea. With the recent updates in place, it could become a nice resource for anyone looking to get into affiliate marketing. With the establishment of PublisherSpot, Tyler is also lining himself up the possibility of a big sale in the future, should someone come along and want to purchase the site. The great thing about a site like this, is that once you build up the database and content, it continues to work for you and make money. I’m looking forward to seeing more improvements and growth down the road from PublisherSpot.

Popularity: 8% [?]

17 Comments » subscribe to my feed