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

Every couple of years there is a new marketing craze that just takes over, and is marketed every where. Years ago it was banner ads with games, to make the user click. Then it was email submits… now it’s the flog craze. A “flog” is a fake blog that is created to sell a product (usually CPA), and provides fake testimonials to entice the visitor to purchase the product. The flog craze is happening all over, because it is working so well. Affiliate marketers are building convincing sites, buying mass traffic on CPM/CPV, and making hefty ROI with commissions in the $40+ range. Whether you are personally promoting these types of offers or not, there are plenty of lessons to be learned… here are ten of them.

1.) You Can Get Away with Murder… but for how long?
Who would have thought you could promote a product endorsed by Oprah, Rachel Ray and Dr. Oz, without them ever knowing, granting permission or even having to pay for their picture use? It’s amazing, but it’s been going on strong for well over a year now on the flog scene. It all started with Oprah and Dr. Oz talking about the benefits of Acai on the Oprah show. Now clips and snippets from the show appear on blogs, making it look like these mentions actually endorse the products. To bring things to an even higher extreme, celebrities have actually been used in the ad copy for pushing these products. The result? Killer click through rates and conversions! The question is, how long will this last, and will action ever be taken? The value behind using these celebrities pictures and “fake” endorsements is priceless, and has played a big part in the massive growth and conversions on these offers.

2.) CPM & CPV Gets a Boost
Buying advertisement space on a pay per view basis has been around forever, but now that affiliates have created flogs which target to almost everyone, traffic can be purchased on a mass scale and will actually convert. There is a reason why you are seeing a million banner ads across nearly every ad serving site, they are making money! The media company is selling a massive amount of traffic/views, and the affiliates are cashing in. With the high conversions ans ROI affiliates are seeing from flogs, they can continually pay for a lot of traffic in advance, and in most cases, pay more than other advertisers.

3.) Everyone Loves a Success Story
You may ask why flogs are doing as well as they are. Simply put, everyone loves a success story and wishes they could experience the same. Flogs are mainly for weight loss and biz opp offers. Everyone wants to lose weight and make more money. Once a visitor comes across a convincing blog which tells how a single mom with 4 kids was able to lose 30 lbs in just a few months, just by taking some magic acai pills… who wouldn’t want that same success. Once everyone realized the weight loss flogs worked, the change to biz opp offers took place, and with perfect timing as well. Biz opp flogs are doing better than ever because we are in a tough economic time and everyone is looking to make some new money.

4.) Credit Card Rebills & Trust
With thousands of people signing up for grants, weight loss and biz opp offers daily, it’s just a reminder of how much people want to attain their dream (whatever the landing page is pushing). Even more though, is how willing customers are to use their credit cards online as well. There are two sides to customers now using a credit card online for a flog targeted purchase. First, with all of the news now covering flogs and the rebills, it’s potentially scaring people to use their CC online again (though I think it’s a very small amount). On a positive note, this has also taught us how willingly customers will purchase (or try) your product by submitting their credit card. If you can create a legitimate and wanted business product/model, you know the system works.

5.) Are Affiliate Protected by Networks
The flog business is a sleazy one, and every one knows that. It’s not just about the flogs being fake, but it’s also because of the nasty re-bills and how hard it is to cancel these payment subscriptions from your cards. With the nasty taste these offers leave in the customer’s mouth, it leads to complaints and more attention by the FTC and state attorney generals. But who is to blame? Is it the advertiser’s fault, the affiliate network, or the affiliate? In almost all cases, the testimonials, content and pictures are fake…. which are usually put together by the affiliate. On the other side, you have many networks turning their heads and not looking at how leads are being generated (but they really know). As long as the affiliates are protected by the affiliate network, the flog game will be around for a while. Affiliates use affiliate networks not only as a middle man, but also a security blanket for payments and direct contact.

6.) State Attorney Generals & the FTC
The FTC and attorney generals from multiple states are starting to crack down on flogs and going after the people who are running them. In most cases, the affiliate network will protect their affiliates, until it becomes a legal matter or are subpoenaed. However, in recent news, a few affiliates that were promoting acai related offers through flogs have been subpoenaed. With the FTC and state attorney generals coming into the pictures, and affiliates directly being contacted… it’s getting quite serious.

7.) Obama Grants
Action can be taken fast, when it’s important enough. Remember how a billion “Obama / Stimulus / Government Grants” offers quickly flooded the internet and were shown everywhere (especially on Facebook). These were the most convincing and attention grabbing of all. Obama was just placed into office, and everyone wanted part of their stimulus check. Unfortunately for them, it was just another flog/re-bill offer. The White House quickly got involved and we no longer see the Obama creatives and offers that we did. Will we ever see the same type of enforcement for Oprah and Rachel Ray?

8.) The Nasty Side of ReBill Offers
I’m sure there is are only a handful of affiliates that run flogs, that have actually went through the signup process, and tried to cancel their billing subscription. Luckily for us, we don’t have to. We have enough customer complaint stories to see how customers are billed just after a few days of requesting their free trials, and the complexity (impossible?) of canceling these re-occurring charges. If these re-bills weren’t so hard to cancel, we might not be seeing the extreme action which is starting to take place against these types of offers… but, if that was the case, they would also not be paying $40+ per signup. The advertiser knows they can make money on almost every signup after the $1.95 shipping charge for the free trial payment.

9.) Flog Monetization
Probably one of the most beneficial aspects of the flogging craze, is to see how everyone has been marketing them and how they evolve. The first few flogs were simple pages with a short story and a picture. Now flogs are loaded up with fake testimonials, comments with more fake pictures, fake endorsements from Oprah and Dr. Oz, and now some even with the person talking when you get to the site, telling you their full story. The transition is being made again from personal flogs, to news flogs. The more convincing the flog, the better the conversions. If you continually visit the flogs being advertised all over, you will be amazed at how much they are continually being monetized and improved. Weight loss blogs focus on weight loss stories and pictures, while biz opp flogs focus on check photos, and how the program has worked for other and show their checks in the comments section. (screenshots by DM)

10.) Are Flogs Ethical?
The last lessons learned isn’t so much a lesson, but how you look at the whole flog situation. The majority of people don’t like the idea behind flogs, and think they are misleading the buyer and giving affiliate marketing a bad name. Of course they are misleading, but on the same note, it falls upon the customer to do their research on what they are ordering (t&c). Are flogs any more misleading and unethical than late night infomercials that push get rich quick schemes, weight loss pills and government money programs? The internet is still the wild west, and no matter how legit or unethical a process is, people are still going to find new ways to make money. Ethical or not, the flog and rebill business is the latest web explosion.

Whar are your thoughts on the flogging scene? Will there ever be regulation, how many affiliates will be subpoened, and will any networks release their affiliates information on this matter? Only time will tell… but that time seems to be getting closer daily.

It’s not always the smartest, most funded or largest companies that succeed, but instead, those who do it better. Why are some affiliate networks better than others? The same reason why landing page A performs better than landing page B. To continually test and put forth the effort to do better than the competition, is the key to success.

iPhone 3G S vs. Flip Video
TechCrunch just wrote an article about how the new iPhone is going to destroy the Flip Video camcorder. The massive growth and attraction over the past couple years were phenomenal for the Flip Video. They found a way to make an awesome product, with a relatively low cost and people loved it. Their model was to make something small, simple and affordable… while being able to compete against the big guys like Canon and Nikon. Their business model has worked great, until the new iPhone 3G S just came out, which has it’s own built in video camera and editing capabilities. Now it’s Apple “doing it better“.

Flogs, Flogs and More Flogs
Whether you agree with the re-bill offers, or how they are being promoted, there is definitely a lot to learn from these marketers. In the beginning it was a few html pages with testimonials, now it’s full blogs with fake testimonials, with fake comments and pictures of their checks. With each new tweak, it slightly increases conversions that much more. Every week we are seeing brand new ways people are increasing conversions on these flog pages. Have you seen the new “newspaper” and “talking” flogs? Quite impressive!

The list goes on and on… but the key takeaway here, is that you don’t need to think of a new product or idea to make a few thousand, or even a couple hundred thousand dollars. You just need to find a way to DO IT BETTER! Look at your market, find your top competitors and see what you can do better and offer to your potential customers that they arent.

As the internet has rapidly changed over the years, so has the way we do affiliate marketing. In the early days (1997-2001 era) of online marketing, it wasn’t so easy to start up an affiliate network, and DirectTrack tracking systems weren’t yet available, so most networks needed to create their own tracking, which cost a lot of time and money. Though it wasn’t easy, it was the networks that strived to succeed in the beginning, that put us where we are today.

I thought it would be fun to take a look at a few of my first affiliate networks I worked with, and where they are today.

WebSponsors.com (WebClients)
WebSponsors was one of the main starting points for where I saw the potential in affiliate marketing. I had already been making money with the Amazon.com Associates Program, but that was on a percentage basis from sales. Once I came across WebSponsors, I found a whole new set of offers where I could start making money. I no longer had to make a sale to receive a commission, but instead could have someone join the MyPoints.com mailing list and earn .50. Through the offers on WebSponsors, I would go on to create several large free stuff sites and mailing lists.

Where are they now? While in their prime, WebSponsors seemed to be everywhere. I also met up with them occasionally at events like AffiliateForce. In 2005, ValueClick acquired WebSponsors for $141 million.

OnResponse (formerly Bach Systems)
One of my first and most successful affiliate networks was OnResponse. I was able to quickly generate some high numbers for the company on new lead/survey offers with the site, which then lead to meeting and becoming a good friend with the founder, Joe Auerbach. The company was started by Joe and his brother, then sold to ValueClick a couple years later.

Where are they now? I’m sure Joe and his brother are enjoying the good life, after selling to ValueClick. As for the site and domain, it’s just a redirect to ValueClick Media now. In 2000, ValueClick aquired OnResponse for $800,000 and 750,000 shares of VCLK for the company.

FineClicks & Shareasale
Two smaller networks that really helped me branch out in affiliate marketing were FineClicks and Shareasale. In addition to using both of these networks for CPA offers, I was also an advertiser on both networks with several offers. Both of these networks were new and came out at roughly the same time, and because affiliate marketing was so new, I was able to generate full demographic and geographic form leads for less than .15 each. I was then able to mail to these opt-in subscribers and manage their data for several years after.

Where are they now? Shareasale is now one of the largest and most successful networks around. Brian Littleton started the company and still has only a handful of employees running the company, which has thousands of merchants and affiliates. FineClicks was a fun network while it was around, but the founder of the company didn’t stick around too long, and sold the company to Shareasale.

CommissionJunction (CJ)
I always like to refer to CJ as my “turning point” company. Along with having offers and sites running on FineClicks and Sharesale, I also had them placed on CJ. While running as a merchant at CJ, I had paid out over $250,000 in commissions in less than two years. In 2000, CommissionJunction held their first conference, which was called CJU (Commission Junction University). Just a few days before the event, my father and I decided to fly across the country and see what happened. It was my first (and most memorable) internet marketing event. All of the big web site names were there, and for an internet marketer, it was like being at the Oscars in Hollywood. I went on to make some amazing contacts that helped me along the way, and the decision to attend that first CJU event jumpstared hundreds of new ideas and the dedication and inspiration that got me to where I am today.

Where are they now? Whenever I came across a successful affiliate networks, there was almost always a common tread… the company would get bought up by ValueClick. That is also what happened to CJ in 2003, when ValueClick bought he company for $58 million in cash. CJ still remains the same company and network site it was before the purchase.

With the ease of DirectTrack and new tracking solutions becoming available often, we are seeing new affiliate networks popup every week. It no longer takes investment money and a custom backend to build a network, but instead the ability to run a trusted network that makes money for affiliates and builds up a reputation to fly above the competition.

Did you get a chance to work with any of these networks in the early days? If not, what was the first affiliate network you signed up to?

From my previous NBA Finals post, you already know that I love basketball and the Orlando Magic. What you didn’t know, was that at the beginning of the season, I told Reena that we would head down to Florida for a game if the Orlando Magic made it to the finals. I quickly threw plans together and we headed down for Game 5 and also meet up with MarketLeverage and ClickBooth while we were in Florida. Even though the Magic lost the series, and the Lakers trophy ceremony was at the game we attended, it was still an amazing trip and event to attend!

The first night we arrived in Orlando, we met up with Dina Riccobono, Erick Bright and his wife for dinner at Maggiano’s Little Italy restruant. This place was amazing and had excellent food. It was great to meet up with my friends from MarketLeverage again, and without the stress of a conference type of envoirnment, we were able to relax and talk about how all of us got started in the industry. Dina and the ML team were also awesome enough to grab me the two tickets for the Orlando Magic Finals game!

Sunday was the big game day. For any of you that were watching the game, the Orlando Magic showed some strength in the first quarter… then just slacked off and got beat up by the Lakers for the rest of the game. We’ll see what happens next year… Even without the Magic winning the game, the envoirment of the Finals and excitement of the game was amazing. The arena was packed with Lakers fans and throughout the whole game, the cheering and yelling was so loud, you couldn’t even hear the whistle!

After the game, Reena and I headed to downtown Orlando to meet up with Eric Schechter from ClickBooth. The next day Eric drove us both down to Sarasota to ClickBooth headquarters and meet the ClickBooth team. Everyone we met at ClickBooth was awesome. During the course of the day, we went to CB headquarters, had lunch at a nice marina restruant, dinner at an amazing steakhouse, played some basketball and even went over to John Lemp’s house to close out the trip.

Just like MarketLeverage, ClickBooth went out of their way, and covered our airline tickets and the hotel (Hotel Indigo, which is excellent!) we stayed at while in Sarasota. Both companies made us feel really welcomed the whole time, and that’s what really makes the difference in this industry. It’s always great to meet up with individuals and companies you are working with online. This industry is like no other, and is the best there. Not only do we have business parties, conferences and the ability to work from home… but we all love what we do so much!

Here’s to the continuing growth of affiliate marketing!

This weekend Facebook will introduce vanity urls for their Facebook members. This means instead of having a facebook url with a million numbers on it, you could now have facebook.com/yourname. Unfortunately, something that sounds so simple, never is. How many people out there already have your name, and how many people are out there already trying to game the system for potential profit.

Protecting Your Trademark/Identity
We’ve already seen plenty of this on Twitter, and how several “fake” celebrities and accounts have been made. We are guaranteed to see the same thing happen all over again with Facebook. However, Facebook already knows this and they aren’t planning on letting this go unnoticed. If you already have a trademarked name that you want to use and protect, head over to this page and fill out this form. It’s best to try and get your name once the registrations go live, rather than have to deal with a legal battle later on.

Using Facebook Vanity URL for Profit
Just like a domain, have a facebook.com/keyword url can be very profitable. Think about how much more convincing your offer or page will look, if you have facebook.com/legal or facebook.com/ringtones. The average user would almost assume that was an offer or product endorse, or from Facebook direct.

When Vanity URLs Go Live & How
The flood gates will open at Saturday, June 13th, at 12:01am. http://www.facebook.com/username/ is the url you will need to access to create a vanity url for your facebook account. Once you’ve chosen a vanity name, there is no changing or going back… choose wisely!

Who will get some of the top paying “search phrases” as their facebook page, how many will lose out on having their own name as their vanity url, and how will people monetize these new urls for profit. Only time will tell…. but that time is less than 48 hours away.