Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

What I Learned from Aweber (#ASCENDSUMMIT2014)

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Sometimes I get in a rut of talking to the same people all the time and doing the same things over and over. Last month I was given the opportunity to get out of that run by traveling to Philadelphia for the first ASCEND Summit, sponsored by Aweber.

I use Aweber for a number of my newsletters, and I was asked to moderate a panel about Affiliate Marketing. I viewed the conference as an opportunity to get a little more speaking experience and participate in a panel of really smart people in my industry. I didn’t expect to actually get a lot out of the conference because only a small part of my business is email.

I was absolutely, completely dead wrong. I got more out of the conference than I have in a long time. There were various reasons for that.

First, I was out of my element. The conference wasn’t about affiliate marketing. Everything I was learning was something new. Second, there was only one track of presentations and I didn’t feel comfortable skipping things. So I attended sessions I would not otherwise have attended (almost out of guilt!). Third, I was with a whole bunch of new people I had never been around before–never learned from or shared ideas with.

What I Learned About My Business

As much as I think I know, I still have a lot to learn. Ann Handley gave me ideas about generating better content. Wil Reynolds helped me understand the importance of branding on SEO. Andy Crestodina taught me that I am not using Google Analytics enough. Justine Jordan made me completely rethink the way that my emails appear on mobile devices. Oli Gardner and Brian Massey showed me that my landing pages are pretty much crap.

That’s all just the tip of the iceberg, but you can see how all of those things would greatly impact my affiliate marketing business. Did you know about 50% of people open their emails on mobile and 30% of people who unsubscribe do it because they just don’t like the LOOK of the email? Did you know that having social icons on your website just leads your customers AWAY from your website to a point that they will probably not come back? Or that telling people you will not SPAM them just makes you think about spamming them?

I also learned about some really cool stuff that Aweber is doing that I should have been paying attention to. If you have a mailing list and are serious about growing it and making it convert, you need to check out their tools.

What I Learned About Myself

I need to get back to the basics that got me where I am. I need to attend more sessions at Affiliate Summit instead of looking at it only as a networking event. And I need to go back and watch videos of sessions I didn’t get to. I need to attend more small conferences as well so that I can grow my network and learn from new people.

I consider my affiliate sites a business. I don’t just blog for fun (although I usually have fun doing it!). Yet I have really been missing some huge opportunities to learn and grow my business the last couple of years. I always think that I don’t have the time to spend listening to speakers or attending more conferences. But what if I were learning things that would 1) help me save time in my work, and 2) grow my business more so that I can hire more employees? Wouldn’t it be worth that time investment?

Two Challenges for You

I have two challenges for you.

Challenge One: Check out the ASCENDSummit2014 hashtag and either follow a couple of the speakers or click on some of the resources they provided. I guarantee you can learn something.

Challenge Two: Go learn something new this week. Either attend a webinar, watch an Affiliate Summit video, or find a local meetup. Spend just an hour learning something new that might help your business–even if it means one less hour you have to get work done!

Did you attend the conference and learn something that will change the way that you do business? When was the last time that you DID learn something like that?

Using Affiliate Links Over AdSense

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A lot of bloggers use AdSense to monetize their sites, and you can definitely make good money from it. Sometimes you have content that is difficult to monetize in any other way and the AdSense links blend in to provide you some revenue.

However, there are definitely down sides to using AdSense to monetize your blog as compared to affiliate marketing. Here’s a great example that I ran into on one of my own sites this week.

When AdSense Doesn’t Work

I wrote a blog post a long time ago about Champagne of the Month Clubs. It was a great post when I had a merchant who sold Champagne of the Month Clubs and was worthy of promoting. Since the time I wrote that post, the merchant stopped selling the clubs and I was unable to find a good replacement that converted. Because of that, we added an AdSense block to the post.

In reviewing AdSense revenue the other day, Eric and I realized that we were making NOTHING from the block on the post despite a fair amount of traffic. How could that be? I went to look at the post and saw this:

In the middle of my post about Champagne was an ad for Sears Parts Direct. And not just an ad but a totally random picture of a part called a Transaxle that I am not sure that I have ever seen or would ever buy.

If you know anything about AdSense, you know that a big part of their ads involve retargeting. That is, they will show you an ad for a site that you were previously on. If it had just so happened that I was on a site that sold wine clubs the day before, I may have gotten lucky and seen a picture of wine here and it would have looked great and maybe even made me a couple of pennies. But as is often the case with retargeting, the ad that is on your page will have absolutely nothing to do with the content of your page or site.

Sometimes AdSense is just plain ugly!

There ARE ways to ensure that you get better ads on your site through AdSense, but that is a post for another day and involves a lot of things that, quite frankly, won’t apply to a lot of my readers. There are a lot of settings involved as well as ensuring that you have a good deal of traffic. I’m not saying never use AdSense!

But if you were just planning on throwing some AdSense around your site and making money off of it, you might want to take a close look at how much you are making versus how it looks on your site to decide if sticking with affiliate links would be better for you.

What Was My Solution?

In this case we decided that the look of our site and the feel of our review pages was more important than the few pennies we might (might!) make off of the AdSense. Our ultimate goal is to sell wine clubs, not make pennies on the dollar with display or clickthru ads. So I removed the AdSense, created a new custom image with Picmonkey, and we are negotiating with the replacement merchant to figure out how to make the affiliate links convert better.

What’s the point of all of this, Tricia?

First, you should be checking analytics. You know how many people view your pages. You know how much you are making per view using AdSense or per click with your affiliate links.

Second, like Jessie J says, “It ‘s not about the money, money money.” Okay, maybe it is. But when you look at the big picture of your site and how you earn revenue, you have to figure out whether certain ads are not worth the money because they are causing you to lose other potential revenue.

Lastly, I’m using my own site as an example, but I’ve seen the same thing on a lot of your sites. I see what you are posting to make money with and question whether it is worth it considering the overall effect of how it makes your site look and function. Look hard at your numbers and figure out if your particular monetization strategy is worth it.

Are you a fan of AdSense? Do you use it because it makes you a lot of money or because you don’t know a better way to monetize?

10 Unexpected Takeaways from Affiliate Summit East #ASE14

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After attending over 15 Affiliate Summits, you would think that I would not be surprised at anything. I’ve attended sessions, networking events, parties, and more for over 8 years. And yet every time I leave a show, I end up coming away with things I didn’t anticipate.

  • I benefited a lot from my own session. That seems weird, but I probably benefited as much from the work I put into my own session as the people who attended did. First, I learned from Vanessa and Eric. They are both really smart, connected people. But second, I had to “practice what I preached.” You can’t be an expert on networking without actually DOING it. Over the last 4 months as we put together the presentation, I found myself really upping my own game and trying new tactics to see how they worked. I feel more connected now than ever before.
  • I actually like raw fish. I know that’s really random. But someone suggested at a dinner that I try it. I was skeptical but trying to be a good sport. And it was good.
  • People still are not taking advantage of some of the best opportunities at the conference. I sat by myself at a table in the VIP Snack on Sunday for almost 45 minutes. I was completely ready to meet new people, offer advice, make introductions, etc. Yet hardly anyone came in compared to the number of people with VIP passes. Even if you aren’t eating, it is a nice, quiet place to network.
  • A lot of people still don’t understand the benefit of networking before selling. They go right in for the pitch of their company without really having a conversation with you. If it were speed dating or a pitch session, I would understand. I’m talking about places like parties and meals. I am immediately turned off by people who sit down next to me and start pitching me right off the bat.
  • There are some REALLY awesome karaoke performers in our industry—including harmonica duets, back-up dancers, and Al from DealTaker’s wife!
  • After almost 10 years in the industry, I can still walk in a room and know almost no one. I attended a dinner with probably 50-60 people and I only knew around 5 of them. These were people in my same niches who worked with the same networks I work with. It just goes to show how much the industry continues to grow and how vast it really is.
  • Booth babes still exist. I thought we were past that. Apparently not because 2 cute girls approached a group of guys in the Exhibit Hall and awkwardly said to them “Do you do..um…internet…uh..marketing?” (Like they didn’t even know what that meant) The guys replied that they did and started to hit on the girls. The girls shoved flyers at them and took off for the next unsuspecting group of guys.
  • Giants Stadium is really cool. Even when your team loses the game. And people who take you to the game just to be nice are even cooler.
  • Too many people still do not know what the Performance Marketing Association is. Ask any lawyer what the American Bar Association is and they can tell you the basics. Ask performance marketers about the PMA and most will look at you funny. I know we are a young organization, but we still have a long way to go in educating and getting buy-in from the people in our industry. If you do not know what it is or are not involved, please talk to me!
  • No matter how many Affiliate Summits I attend, I still learn something new, meet new people, and come away energized after every single one. You may think that there is a point of diminishing returns on attending, but there shouldn’t be if you make the most of everything that is available to you there. I’m signing up with a new CPA network, picked up a few new merchants, made some new friends, secured commission increases for the holidays, and secured some PMA memberships. That’s on top of solidifying current relationships with OPMs, merchants, and fellow affiliates. Not to mention coming home ready to kick some butt in the 4th quarter!

Was there anything about Affiliate Summit East 2014 that was surprising to you? Did anything unexpected happen for which you are grateful?

(photo credits: Thanks for the random pictures, Kim Rowley, and for tagging me in them on Facebook from FMTC!)

EPC Zero? Affiliates Beware

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I was looking through some stats for one of my niches today on CJ. When I notice that we are not making much money off of a merchant that we have a lot of traffic for, the first thing I do is go into the network to see what their overall stats look like for other affiliates. What I saw for the merchant in question shouldn’t have surprised me given our lack of sales.

The 3 month EPC (Earnings Per 100 Clicks) for the merchant was $3.41. The 7 day EPC was ZERO. That’s ZERO commissionable sales in the last 7 days across ALL of their affiliates.

If it were March and the site sold Christmas trees, I might not worry. But I know that the EPC for their competitors that I promote is anywhere from $5-200. Houston, we have a problem.

There are a number of reasons that the EPC could be zero, none of them good for the affiliates.

  • Tracking is broken. Perhaps tech made a change to the site and didn’t replace a necessary tracking pixel. You would be surprised how often this happens.
  • The site itself is down. With a smaller merchant, the site could actually be completely down and you are still sending traffic. This is rare but has happened.
  • Products are sold out. It’s possible that all of the products are sold out. We had this happen once with a Daily Deal site. They just flat stopped putting deals up on the site, although the site was still up.
  • The site isn’t converting for some reason. Did the merchant make a change to the site that is making it undesirable to the customers? Did they change the shopping cart in some way that is making people abandon the cart 100% of the time?
  • The SKUs in the network are wrong. For some programs, the merchants only pay for specific SKUs on their site. If the merchant changes the SKUs of the products they are selling but does not update them in the network, there might be sales but they are tracked at 0% commission.
  • The merchant is “stealing” the sales. Has the merchant instituted some kind of pop-up deal on the site that overwrites the affiliate cookie by giving the customer a better deal if they click on it?
  • The products just aren’t any good. It’s possible that the site is fine but people just don’t like what they are selling.

I’m sure that there are even more than this, but ALL of these can be figured out by an affiliate manager worth their salt pretty quickly. The merchant can tell them whether sales are being made at all through other channels (which goes to the site conversion). They can also say whether affiliates are making sales but commissions are not working (SKU issue). The affiliate manager can make a test purchase to see if tracking is working.

Although it is true that stats are only one part of the story of every affiliate program, an EPC of $0 is a big red flag whether you are looking to join a program or are already working with a merchant. When you see it, contact the affiliate manager immediately and start running through the scenarios above to see if you can get to the bottom of it.

What do you do as an affiliate manager or an affiliate when you see a program with a zero EPC?

How To Say “No” to Affiliate Managers

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I am tired of having to explain myself to affiliate managers when I don’t want to join their programs. Ironically, I am typing this post while sitting right next to an affiliate manager, my mom Cindy Ballard. She’s tired of hearing me complain, so I’m going to express myself in a blog post.

In any given day I receive between 5 and 20 emails from merchants, affiliate managers, and OPMs asking me to add their programs to my site. I rank these in a certain priority order before I even respond:

  • Merchants I absolutely know I want based on brand reputation
  • Recommendations from people I really trust or who I will add anything for without question (like my mom)
  • Merchants I check out and decide that I want based on products, commissions, and the look of their site
  • Recommendations from people I know but only casually and who may not really have my best interests at stake
  • “Cold call” emails from people I don’t know at all but seem to have looked at my site
  • Spammy emails from people I don’t know who have never even looked at my site.

Based on where they fall in my priority list, I decide how quickly to respond to the requests. My dream brands get emails within 5 minutes. Trusted friends in the business usually get a response within a few hours. From there it only goes downhill to the bottom of the list which usually sit in my inbox about a week until I just delete them because I don’t know what to say or how to say it.

But affiliate managers are persistent. They use tricks like “Please Respond” in the subject line or “Can we set up a meeting on Tuesday?” to try to get you engaged. I feel guilty when I get these because I know that I do not want to join the program. So I let the emails sit even longer until I get the followup “We recently reached out to you and you have not responded” email. Sometimes I even get voicemail messages reminding me of the emails that they just sent.

How do you say “no” without feeling like a jerk? Here are some of my favorite tips.

  • Thank them for “reaching out” or “connecting” or some other social business lingo.
  • Use the word “unfortunately” at least once (Unfortunately we are not accepting new merchants at this time, adding new links, etc.).
  • Be honest. If you just don’t have time to add the merchant, say that. Tell them to follow up with you in a month. If you don’t like the merchant, say that it isn’t a “good fit” for your audience. If the commission isn’t good enough, tell them it isn’t “competitive” with other merchants you already have listed.
  • Promise to keep the merchant in mind for any future opportunities that you might come across. You never know when either the merchant actually WILL work for your niche or the affiliate manager might have a different merchant that does work for you. Don’t burn bridges!
  • Make it quick. You don’t have to explain yourself. Just give them a couple of sentences of acknowledgement so that they can cross you off their list and move on to other affiliates that they are more likely to be successful with.

Sometimes you will still get responses where they try to convince you that you are wrong. If that is the case, cut your losses and just delete the email or respond firmly “no.” But most times they will thank you for even taking the time to respond. People tend to ignore a lot of email. If you are one of the few people who respond thoughtfully with even a sentence or two, the goodwill generated will outweigh the 60 seconds it took you to respond.

Affiliate managers, can you help us out here? Try not to make us feel guilty, especially when you are only trying to get us to join the program for numbers and not really because we can make any sales. That doesn’t really help either of us. Be honest with us about how something would actually be good for us if you really want us to join. Try not to sound like a used car salesman who just wants to make the sale regardless of whether it’s the right thing to do. Affiliate marketing is not just about sales, it’s about relationships. We don’t want to have to avoid you when we see you at conferences because we can’t look you in the eye.

How do you respond to the different types of requests that you get? Do you respond to every email or just delete most of them?