Inside the Secret Life of a Super Affiliate - Zac Johnson dot Com Let the Reign Begin

This guest post was written by Eric Schechter, Social Media Manager at Clickbooth. With Affiliate Summit growing in audience every year, it’s still a first time event for many attendees. With such a massive event and agenda, how is a rook supposed to manage their time? Eric has written up a nice review sheet of “8 Ways to Get the Most out of Affiliate Summit East“.

Affiliate Summit East 2009 is right around the corner and will be here before you know it. Whether it’s your first conference (or your 1st time at Affiliate Summit) it’s important that you make the most out of your time there. Here are 8 ways you can do just that.

Connect Before the Show

Connecting with affiliates, networks, and other industry professionals before the conference can help you in a variety of ways. For one, many affiliates start putting together their schedules a few weeks before the conference, so reaching out to them early on and letting them know you would like to meet up will increase your chances of getting some face to face time and/or setting up a meeting.

Also, there are a ton of Network VIP (Invite-Only) parties going on at ASE this year, so make sure you get in touch with your Affiliate Manager before the conference, so you are in the know of any parties they are throwing and to make sure you are on the list.

Make a List of People/Companies You Want to Connect with.

Putting together a list (before the conference) of all the people and companies you want to meet, is a great way to stay productive at the show. There will be over 1500 companies, and over 3000 attendees at ASE 2009, so it will be very easy to get distracted. By having a list together, it will ensure that you stay organized, and that you actually meet everyone you planned on meeting up with. For a complete list of companies attending ASE 2009 go here and to see a list and also network with affiliates attending the conference check out ASE’s Ning Network and Facebook Fan Page.

“Don’t be a Networking Whore” - Neil Patel

If this is your first conference, your game plan might be to meet as many people and companies as possible and to leave ASE with very few of your own business cards. While expanding your network is a great goal to have, I encourage you to focus more on creating personal relationships with a few key people at the conference, rather than trying to meet every single person there. By doing so, you will leave the conference with some great contacts that will remember you and be willing to help you out when the time comes.

Face Time with Networks

While you are at ASE, it’s a good idea to make your rounds and get some face time in with your AM and/or the networks you’ve been working with. Not only does this give them a chance to put a face with the name and voice they’ve been talking to, it’s also a great way to enhance your relationship with the network and build even more trust.

Practice your Elevator Pitch

Bringing your A-game to ASE is crucial. You will be meeting some of the most important and influential people in the industry, and when the time comes, you need to be prepared. Having a brief introduction and elevator pitch ready (who you are, what you do, and why they should be interested in you or your product/service), will help you make a great first impression. Time is of the essence at conferences and the first minute you meet someone, is by far the most important - So make the most of it!

Following Up is Key

Chances are, you’re going to meet a variety of people at ASE 2009 that you will want to work with after the conference. While it’s nice to think that everyone you meet will remember you, chances are they probably won’t. That is why it is extremely important that you follow up within 24 hours of meeting them (as opposed to waiting until after the conference). A great way to remember important facts about the people you meet (for your follow up) is to take advantage of the space that most business cards give you by writing a few notes on there after you speak with them. This will help you include a personal touch in your follow up email the next day. For a great example on how to follow up via email, check out this great post by Neil Patel.

The Q&A Sessions and Panels

One of the biggest resources to take advantage of while you’re at ASE, are all the experts that are there to help you improve your sites, grow your business, and be even more successful in the affiliate marketing world. With that said, ASE has put together some great panels and Q and A sessions this year that you should definitely think about attending, especially if you are somewhat new to the industry. Here is a list of a few of them, straight from the ASE site.

SEO Site Clinic: Live Q&A, site audits and suggestions on how to help the internal site structure, as well as ideas how to build a better site for organic rankings. (Sunday at 3pm)

Ask the Experts: Ask the Experts will be an opportunity for merchants, networks and affiliates to ask questions about various specialties and issues. Hand picked experts will handle topics in their specialty, and conduct chats, answer questions and share opinions during this networking and education session. (Monday at 5pm)

Organic Site Review: Have your site reviewed for SEO by a panel of experts in the SEO industry. (Monday at 2pm)

Advertising on Facebook: Learn about advertising on Facebook and how affiliates can reach over 100 million members. Join us for a panel discussion including a Facebook advertising representative covering all you need to know. (Monday at 3:30pm)
- Featuring Zac Johnson & ShoeMoney on the panel

One thing I really want to stress is not to shy away from asking questions (not matter how basic you think they might be) or having your site reviewed. These conferences (and more specifically, these types of panels) were put together to help you learn, refine your skills and become even more successful. So make sure you take advantage of them!

Time to Partay!

If you’ve been to an Affiliate Marketing conference before, you know all about the parties. There are usually a variety of them going on (both Invite Only and ones that are open to all affiliates) and they are a definitely one of the best places to network, close deals, and hang out with other affiliates in a laid back atmosphere. Sometimes the expo hall can get a little crazy because everyone is trying to meet and talk to everyone else, so attending the parties can be a great way to get some more face time with other affiliates and build relationships that will last a life time.  For a complete list of parties going on at ASE, check out this post by ASE Founder, Missy Ward.

So what other advice can you give to people that are attending ASE 2009? I know I didn’t cover everything, so feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. Also, make sure you stop by the Clickbooth booth (#2217) at ASE and say hi!

This guest post was written by Dina Riccobono of MarketLeverage. Like most of the affiliate marketing industry, Dina and MarketLeverage will be at Affiliate Summit East next Weekend. Dina took the time to write up a nice post on some of the networking events parties and events taking place at this year’s ASE. Feel free to follow up with any events we may have missed and they will be added to the post.

If you’re headed to New York for Affiliate Summit East, you’ve probably already heard some of the buzz about the great networking opportunities. There are so many events taking place, and it can be difficult to choose which ones to attend. I’ve listed my personal picks for first time attendees, and for ASE veterans looking to shake up their show experience.

- Affiliate Summit’s Ning Network (http://affiliatesummit.ning.com)

Amy from the Affiliate Summit team put together a great community on Ning for ASE (and ASW) attendees to do some pre-networking online. With over 2,300 show attendees from the East and West coasts registered to the group, Ning’s a great place to develop solid business connections with Affiliate Summit speakers, exhibitors, and attendees. Keynote Chris Brogan and presenter Jay Berkowitz are two of the event headliners who can currently be found on Affiliate Summit’s Ning network.

- AffiliateTip.com, MissyWard.com, the Affiliate Thing podcast, and The Spew

Shawn Collins and Missy Ward, Affiliate Summit’s co-founders, have a list of invitations a mile long. For the most up-to-date information about the show, affiliate happenings, and key networking opportunities, visit their blogs and podcasts.

- The Meet Market

If you plan on sleeping in during exhibit hours, then the Meet Market is your best option to meet affiliate networks and online merchants. This popular event takes place on Sunday, August 9th, from Noon to 6pm, giving you plenty of time to enjoy the NY lifestyle Saturday, sleep in, grab some coffee, and hit the hall after. There’s also a silent auction with valuable items up for grabs, including travel and retailer gift cards, with proceeds going to Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC. The Meet Market is usually packed, so you’re likely to run into some familiar faces.

- The MarketLeverage A-List Yacht Party

I wouldn’t be a good marketer if I didn’t plug our own Affiliate Summit event! Tickets for the MarketLeverage Yacht Party are given by invitation only.  If you’ve already received an invite, be prepared to mingle with the best and the brightest in the industry. If you would like to join us on the yacht, you can register to win one of three pairs of tickets here: (http://marketleverage.com/YachtPartySweepstakes/). The party begins at 5:45pm with VIP limousine transportation from the Hilton NYC to the 97-foot yacht, Valiant, and returns you to the Hilton just in time for the Affiliate Summit TweetUp.

- Affiliate Summit TweetUp

If you’re a social networking fan, user, expert, or newbie, this is a great place to meet your fellow tweeps in person. Besides being the hosted event of the day, the TweetUp is a low-key alternative to the typical nightclub networking events.

- Ask the Experts

The largest gathering of industry experts who will answer your questions for free assembles towards the end of the first day of Affiliate Summit. This may very well be the only time you can ask for free feedback and advice about your landing pages, marketing strategies, and Google rules to name a few, so use your time wisely!

- Dot Com Pizza Party

Join John Chow and MLDina (that’s me!) for an official ‘Dot Com Pho’ Pizza edition from 6-8pm at Famous Original Ray’s on Broadway, just a few blocks from the show site. The pizza is free, the beer’s on you, and don’t be surprised if you end up in a pizza eating competition against John Chow. Hey - it’s great linkbait!

- Affiliate Summit Karaoke

Brett Petersel and Michael Gruen from TechKaraoke are setting up shop at the Sutton Complex to give you your 15 minutes of fame, and your friends some great blackmail footage. If you can sing well, or even if you can’t, stop by for a memorable social networking experience.

- The Blogger Room

Another limited access area is the Blogger Room. If you want to play Wii with Zac Johnson, pose for pictures with ShoeMoney, or steal swag with John Chow, a press pass is a great start. The Blogger Room is the perfect spot to catch up on some emails, grab exclusive interviews, and organize your agenda and session notes.

- GeekCast.fm Live and the Affiliate Triathlon

If you have a late flight or are sticking around for a long weekend, you don’t want to miss the live GeekCast.fm broadcast and the Affiliate Triathlon. Several GeekCast regulars, including Shawn Collins, Lisa Picarille, and Jim Kukral host an open discussion about the industry, and this is one of the few opportunities to sit in on a live broadcast.

The Affiliate Triathlon is a fun competition of unusual skills tests (last year’s event included a tricycle course) for talented athletes and less-active affiliates alike. Proceeds from this event go to Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC, and the grand prize winner takes home a 10×10 exhibit booth at ASW 2010 in Las Vegas. If you don’t plan on exhibiting, you can sell the booth space to the highest bidder.

This is just a sample of the dozens of great events where you can meet others in the industry and develop some solid business connections. Affiliate Summit is sold out, so you know the event is going to be huge! If you’re unable to attend this year’s show, then stay in the loop by reading the various blogs and joining the social networks mentioned above to get an idea of the topics discussed and the opportunities that are available to you and to your online business by attending Affiliate Summit conferences. Hope to see you at ASE, and as always, feel free to reach out with any questions!

**If you’d like to meet the MarketLeverage team in person, stop by Meet Market table #79 or booth #1306 at the exhibit hall. We’ll be giving away a VIP trip for 2 to Orlando!

Ever wonder why “As Seen on TV” products can be sold so cheap? Usually it’s because they are not only selling a product, for storing/selling the customer information as well. I recently received a check in the mail from Snuggie. Now, Snuggie has been all over the place. I actually bought one of these a while back… and even promoted the Snuggie affiliate program and made some sales. I get checks from different places all the time, so when I first saw a check from Snuggie, I figured it was from some affiliate sales or something… then I looked at it a bit closer.

As you can see, at first glance it looks like a regular check. Outside of being an affiliate marketer, and having promote the offer… I would have found it weird to just get a random check from Snuggie out of no where. However, with economic times the way they are, I’m sure a ton of these are getting deposited.

Now lets take a look at the back of the check, where you have to sign before cashing it in.

You know something is wrong when there is a big disclaimer/agreement on the back of a check… but then again, not all people are that bright. Not to mention how some people will cash the check, then say they will cancel within the 30 day trial… and never do. All for a lousy $8.25.

So once you sign the check, you are signed up to some crappy “Great Fun” credit card program that ends up costing you $149 annually! This is like taking weight loss / biz opp offers to a new level. I signed up to these “Great Fun” offers a while back when I got a free plasma TV for completing offers. In most cases… they suck to cancel, and it isn’t a fun process. The best part is at the end, ” I authorize Snuggie to securely transfer my credit card information to Great Fun for enrollment, billing and benefit processing“. This clearly tells you Snuggie is dealing you info and profiting from it. Nothing wrong with that… but a sleazy way to do business. Lots of seniors will probably get suckered into this scheme.

More than anything else… I thought this was pretty interesting and humorous. I’ve received fake “checks” like this from other places in the mail before, but this is the first that was affiliate offer related and made me want to write about it. With so many As Seen on TV offers being promoted, I wonder how many of these checks are being sent out, and for how many different products.

Did you buy a Snuggie and receive your check? What are your thoughts on this whole thing?

Since the last time we looked at Tatto Affiliate Network (3rd largest ad network!), we’ve also discussed how their opened up their ad platform for anyone to start their own ad network or affiliate program. We’re back to Tatto Affiliate Network again to take a look at new improvements to their network, helping affiliates make more from their campaigns. If you’re already an affiliate with Tatto, you’ll probably notice some of these updates right away, if not, here’s a quick breakdown.

New Design for Reporting and Statistics - The network now has a new color and look. Reports and Statistics are now faster and more efficient than before. Data view pages can easily be searched and sorted accurately even with multiple pages of data. Full stats tracking options include daily stats, hourly, api stats, and also include affiliate referral earnings.

Conversion Tracking Report – This report provides specific lead/sale information, including sub id, tracking info, transaction id, ip address, and payout, allowing you to quickly run sub id reports. While “info” in current tracking links will continue to work, it has been replaced with “aff_sub”.

Full Stats Report on all Lead Data from Campaigns

Updated Tracking Links - Updated tracking links that are easy to understand. Sub ID tracking has been updated as well as Source name added. Specify a Source name in the tracking url to easily drill-down and analyze performance in reports.

Offer Tiny URLs –You can shorten your tracking links with our own TinyURL. With the explosive use of Twitter, everyone is jumping on the “short url” bandwagon. Instead of setting up a  url, then heading over to a TinyURL source, you can just click “generate Tiny Url” in your campaign area, and it’s done instantly.

One Click and You have a “Tiny URL” redirect.

Browser Targeting – The Tatto Affiliate Network now can target offers to users based on their browser.  This will redirect users to receive offers designed for mobile devices including iPhones and thus increase your conversion rates.

Creative Manager – A valuable feature that quickly generates tracking code with creatives, making it simple for you to include the creative you prefer with the offer-specific tracking url. Also new features to browse and preview creatives.

Other upgrades to Tatto Affiliate Network include, the ability to setup Supresssion Lists, improved Refer a Friend (affiliates), updated functions in the API Stats and a Live Support function to better contact your affiliate manager.

Tatto Affiliate Network vs. HasOffers
This review was based on the improvements made to Tatto Affiliate Network, but also applies to the HasOffers platform. The Tatto affiliate network was created for affiliates to run offers and make money, while HasOffers was created to allow affiliates/marketers to create their own affiliate network/program without the high costs of other platforms like DirectTrack. Even if you only have a small affiliate program, it may be in your best interest to take the program inhouse, and run it off the HasOffers platform, vs. running with some other major ad networks and paying a 30% commission on all lead transactions. It’s free to setup an account, and it won’t cost you anything til you pass 250,000 clicks per month.

Check out the new improvements at TattoAffiliate Network and the HasOffers platform.

With Facebook now at over 250 million members, it’s never been a better time to take a stab at Facebook Advertising. I continually get requests through email on how to setup a Facebook Ads campaign, and what offers to work. Instead of writing back to everyone individually, it’s better to just write out a whole post. “Warning” - This is entry level stuff for Facebook Ads. If you’re already advertising on Facebook, you can probably skip this post… if not, learn something new and maybe make some money in the process.

For some reason, whenever you start talking to someone about Facebook Ads, you either get the response, “I just kept losing money, so I went away”, or “Facebook Ads is awesome! I love it!”. The truth is, Facebook Ads can make you money, just as easily as it can make you lose your shirt. It’s all about testing, setting your ads up correctly and managing your daily balance.

Let’s go forward with setting up a Facebook campaign. For this walkthrough, I’m going to use a “3G iPhone” email submit from Tatto Media, which pays $2 per submit. This will be a good example to use for when we go over targeting.

1.) Design Your Ad
- Destination URL: You can use your affiliate link, or a landing page. There are no quality scores, or full sites needed. In most cases, you can link directly to the affiliate url.
- Title: The title is what your user is going to see, and make them click. The better the title, the higher the click through rate.
- Body Text: This is usually the generic information that helps in deciding if Facebook will approve your ad. In this particular example, Facebook likes you to list the process needed for the viewer to take to receive their free iPhone. Again, the better the writing, the better the click through rate.
- Image: Usually more important than your title, is your image. Depending on the ad used, you can get creative with this. Draw attention to your ad by using a funny picture, or something out of the ordinary… but still relevant to the ad. Take some extra time to choose  a high quality image and do any necessary cropping so it fits correctly.

2.) TARGETING
The ad copy is the face of your ad campaign, but the targeting is where you setup who should see your ad. There is no reason why a single guy in Florida should see an advertisement for “Married Women in New York“. Thanks for Facebook Ads targeting, this will never be a problem again.

Most of the targeting options are self explanatory. Just for demonstration, I checked off that I want to target only “Married” “Males” interested in “iPhone” and living within the “United States” to see this ad. You can then see that 56,540 Facebook users match this description.

Keywords: The keywords are what will make or break your ad campaign. If you don’t place any keyword specifications, your advertisement will be shown to over 66 million Facebook users in the US. This will result in not only a horrible click through rate, but can also deplete your account of funds in no time.

As you can see in the picture below, I selected “iPhone“, “iphones“, and “Apple Iphone 8gb“. This means only people with these listed interests will see my ad. In addition to the keywords I selected, Facebook listed a few “Suggested Keywords“.

3.) Campaigns & Pricing
Now that your ad campaign is created, you just need to set everything up for going live and setting your ad pricing. The most important setting in this whole step, is your “Daily Budget“. The thing with Facebook, is that their audience is so huge, you can go through a few hundred or even thousands of dollars in just minutes. When setting up a campaign, you will need to test what CPC amount is right for you to spend. While testing, I would set the daily budget in the $5-$20 range. As for the CPC rate, I usually put 30-50% of what their actual suggestion is. Once you have some traffic flowing through the campaign, you will have a better idea on how to manage you CPC and daily budget.

4.) Review Your Ad
The last step is to simply review everything you have just setup. Once you verify everything is correct, you simply need to click “Place Order” and you campaign will go into que for approval.

Important Notices for Facebook Advertising:
- Your daily spend limit will increase in increments til you meet $1000, then you can contact an ads manager to get boosted to $5k+ daily range.
- Facebook ad team will deny your ads all time. Keep submitting new ad copies and resubmit whenever they are denied.
- Take advantage of NON-US traffic. Facebook is BIG worldwide, and these markets are less saturated then US.
- Facebook Coupons: For new accounts, several networks and sites offer $50-$100 coupons for Facebook advertisers.
(Visa used to offer $100, looks like they don’t anymore. Search around for the latest coupons to go live.)
- Setup multiple offers and ad copies. Keep higher CTR converting offers, and close out the others.
- The higher the CTR, the lower you will have to pay per click.
- Once you master CPC, move over to CPM advertising for better ROI results.

Give Facebook Ads a try.