Diorex

In response to some recent Twitter comments (@Diorex if you care to follow along at home…) about trying to disintermiediate networks and working directly with the advertiser I was surprised at the number or DMs, IMs and Emails that I received from people about how they are having a hard time finding contact information for the offer they are running.

This got me thinking… Advertisers are in the business of finding affiliates. If they are making it tough to find and contact them it really makes me question why?

If an advertiser is hiding behind a private whois, is unwilling to post an email or phone number for customer service or will not give a customer service call center a contact number for legitimate queries - what are they hiding from?

Sure lots of advertisers are afraid of the FTC because they are running offers of questionable legality - but the FTC can pierce these minor veils almost immediately if they want - going after payment processors or server hosting facilities or tracing credit cards or other financial transactions to the source. And if an advertiser is seriously worried about the FTC, then why aren’t you? You think if the FTC knocks on his door that you are gonna get paid?

Other advertisers try to keep a low profile because they don’t have a real business presence. Setting up an office, getting a phone and having someone to answer it are pretty basic principles of those serious about running a business. Some successful internet businesses are run out of garages and off cellphones, but not that many. I can see not being terribly proud of working out of your mom’s basement but as an affiliate why would you work with someone who is unwilling to make even the slightest investment in their business? What makes you think they care at all about yours?

The main reason I see advertisers hiding is because they are up to no good - they dont want people to know they are the same guys who skipped out on another network and owe hundreds of thousands. Just rebrand, relaunch and you are on your way again. Every successful affiliate I know of has been screwed at least once by an advertiser not paying a network and then the network not paying them.

In essence the real question in my mind is why would you even consider running traffic and spending money investing in someone elses business if they are hiding or making it hard to have a business conversation with them?

Maybe there is a very legitimate reason an advertiser has for staying in the shadows, but for the life of me I cannot figure it out.

Had an issue with Google today that pissed me off so much, I decided to blog about it so that others can avoid the problem.

Basically we had a server issue this morning and while everything was being sorted out, we went to all of our PPC campaigns and paused the traffic so we were not paying for clicks that were gonna go nowhere. Google makes this very easy, you can click the little white button under pause on the summary page which selects all of your campaigns and then click on pause and it is basically a quick way to pause lots of campaigns.

Once the problem was fixed we reversed the process by clicking the white button and clicking on resume, quick 30 second restart to the account.

About an hour later, one of my analysts noticed that an ad campaign that we had not run traffic to in over 2.5 years was getting clicks. We then saw that half a dozen or more of our Deleted campaigns had somehow received clicks and impressions - one campaign at almost $10 per click. To make it worse, our tracking link scheme had changed and all of these clicks were either going to dead pages or to websites we dont even own or have relationships with anymore.

We quickly paused all of these campaigns and sent a note to our Google reps letting them know about the problem with their system and asking for a credit for the $3200 or so in clicks we got on these deleted campaigns due to their system error.

A few hours later, we got a nicely worded note that said in the event of “user error” Google would offer us a one time credit of half of the problem.

Hold on a second - User Error? From the campaign summary screen the status of each of these campaigns reads in big red letters as it did before, during and after the issue - DELETED, from the ad group summary screen each adgroup had a status of “Ad Group Deleted” once again in red letters, and from the individual adgroup pages, right next to the ad box, it once again said Deleted in red letters. So on three screens I see prominently displayed in red a notice that the campaign, adgroup and ad are all deleted. I am very definetly not seeing user error here.

Google explained that since I had selected all campaigns and hit resume that they interpreted the request to apply to all ads in the entire account regardless of campaign, adgroup or ad status.

Quick aside on Webster’s dictionary definitions of certain words -

Deleted : to eliminate especially by blotting out, cutting out, or erasing

Resume: to return to or begin again after interruption

The first word clearly implies permanent, the second clearly implies restarting after a break (which could also be considered to be a pause).

Google does not allow users to actually DELETE a campaign, despite flagging campaigns as such, in fact for their purposes there is little real difference between Delete and Pause.

The money means almost nothing, it was a tiny fraction of my spend with them today and will hardly affect my profits at all. The principle on the other hand means quite a bit.

Here is a company that holds itself out as holier than thou, yet at every turn seems to be willing to compromise its principles, which is a big part of the reason most advertisers I know are rooting for Yahoo, or Facebook, or Microsoft or pretty much anyone to actually compete with Google. They are a monopoly and act like one frequently.

In closing (and the reason for the post in the first place - other than to vent some frustration), how can you prevent this from happening to you?

First off find all the deleted campaigns or adgroups in your account, then go and change the maximum bid to $.01. That way if you accidentally resume something you have deleted you will probably get very few impressions or clicks.

Pretty easy actually but it should not be required.

They basically tricked us out of $3200 from in a few hours and who knows how much from others over time, by being intentionally deceptive about the function that is pretty universally understood to not mean temporarily. When was the last time you thought, I ought to hold on to this item in case I need it again, I will just delete it.

Have yet to really see anyone screaming about this, but then again I have not been looking that hard…

I was in SF this week meeting with both Google and Facebook and as a throwaway Google dropped the bomb that they are no longer allowing multiple domains in the same adgroup. Adwords Blog talks about it here.

What this means to the average affiliate marketer is that you no longer can test which Display URL (DURL) works best for you.

Lets take an extreme made up example of a dating site with the goal of a credit card sign-up.

If your DURL is FreeSex.com then you will get lots and lots of clicks which Google loves and thus your CPC will go way down but your conversion rate will be horrible since the DURL implies free when a sign-up is required.

What about a DURL of FatUglyChicks.com? You probably get very few clicks, meaning your CPC goes up, but someone desperate enough to click on that ad is probably pretty likely to convert since they have been somewhat pre-qualified.

This is nothing more complicated than an algebra problem - does lots of cheap clicks with a bad conversion work better than more expensive clicks with great conversion. As a marketer you really only care about the bottom line here.

This is an extreme example, but for a dating site there are literally millions of different possible combinations for URLs - some of which are naturally more likely to succeed than others.

Google used to allow you to test lots of URLs in a single adgroup and rotate those ads to get equal impression so that you could determine which URL worked best for your metrics.

The new revised version of the DURL policy now requires you to set up different URLs in different adgroups - meaning that even though you might be bidding on the same keyword that Google’s algorithm now decides your quality score and will not evenly rotate them and ultimately end up serving the ad that meets Google’s best interest.

Unfortunately this is short sighted for Google. I have a URL that is awful - no one would think it would win in a test, yet for some reason it resonates well with consumers and qualifies them and induces them to click frequently as well as convert - great combination.  Without testing, we never would have found this hidden gem that allows us to pay Google millions of dollars per month. Without testing, Google would have chosen a better clicking DURL and I would have never optimized my business - which ultimately optimizes Google’s business.

Any one else concerned about this change?

I was out of the country for a week and when I got back my Facebook account was covered with hundreds of deceptive “Get Rich Make Money Online” schemes. I started reporting them just to get them off the screen and stopped after about 20 minutes as I kept getting new ads to replace the ones I flagged as spam i gave up.

I have no doubt that these ads work and are making affiliates, networks and the advertiser a pile of cash and Facebook is probably giddy with the cash, but there is a very real downside to this kind of saturation - It attracts unwanted attention!

The very reason Google is so successful is because of their depth of advertisers and the focus on relevancy. Facebook provides neither of these and in the interim is setting itself up to be the asset the FTC will go after once these less than truthful ads are come to their attention.

There are truth in advertising laws and I suspect that many of them are being broken and repeatedly and blatantly.

In the interim, Facebook is probably losing the faith of consumers who are being inundated with irrelevant and somewhat offensive ads.

Don’t get me wrong, I am jealous I did not come up with the idea, because a few people are absolutely banking on this stuff, but with this blatantly deceptive type of ad the big bad wolf will come knocking on their door. Either in the form of a trial lawyer or the FTC - not entirely sure which is worse, but neither is good.

I really think the ultimate losers in this deal are the networks who are not vetting the advertisers - more and more totally hollow offers with little to no product fulfillment are showing up. Both the affiliates and the advertisers can pretty much close up shop and be in another country tomorrow(if they are not already) - not the case with the networks - they have assets and I strongly believe that their claim of middle man/broker is pretty thin. Not to mention that as soon as the FTC shuts em down, the advertiser may just walk on a few million in payables, which ultimately will mean a lot of affiliates wont get paid either.

Long run I think this does Facebook more harm than good and a few networks go out of business… Just my thoughts, not a lawyer and dont know the relevant laws, but just cannot imagine this is all legit.

Well I finally made it back home from Affiliate Summit, had a good time and glad I was finally able to meet some of you guys. Lots more asked to meet-up but I just ran out of time. Hopefully next time.

I spent very little time at the conference and attended exactly zero sessions so I dont have much to comment on there - I basically spent 5 minutes walking around the show floor and then went back to meetings.

If you went to this (or any) conference with the idea of what were the best parties to attend or who are the coolest people to hang out with, I would suggest that your focus is a little off. Yet almost every one of my blog readers I met with or talked to was intent on trying to see what parties I would be attending etc.

Interestingly in the 15-20 other meetings I had that were about real business this did not come up a single time!

Not suggesting you should not attend parties etc, but I had 2 or 3 conversations about how great this or that party was or how they wished they could get invited to X party followed up with how much someone was struggling in the business.

I try not to be critical, but it is hard to have a lot of sympathy for someone who comes to these conferences and their primary concern is getting party invites. Several of the struggling “party” people had zero business meetings other than a few forum-type meet-ups.

Conferences like Ad-tech and Affiliate Summit can and should be fun, but the primary purpose of them is to meet as many people as you can who can help to make you more money. Sometimes that will happen at a party, more often that is a scheduled meeting.

Just my $.02 but that was one of the insights of my experience at the conference, those I met who were banking were far less concerned with partying than those I met that were struggling.

It has been so long since I have had a new account at Google, that I have not had to deal with many of the day to day hassles that many new marketers have to deal with. My team starts a new account, or a new ad group or make some changes and they get approved immediately, for as bad as my customer support level is compared to my spend it is world’s better than what the average marketer is getting.

Recently, I had an idea that led to us starting a test that produced low volumes of very high converting keywords at CPCs about 10% of what we normally pay because there is virtually no competition for those ads. It is worth high 5 figures annually to us, worth bending over and picking up, but not a home run. For most starting advertisers it would be a gold mine.

I took a look at the idea and realized it should work for other really long tail stuff outside of our particular niche and with the extraordianrily low CPCs I could probably make it work on standard affiliate commission payouts and maybe make some real money by automating and scaling it.

So I fired up a brand new Google account, paid my $5 and then uploaded a bunch of keywords as a test. Got an initial burst of traffic, then had the ads frozen by Google. I have seen this before, it typically means the ads are under review. So I did not panic, and waited.

3 weeks later, the account has not gotten a single impression since the first day.

I know google’s rules better than they do, all my ads are fully compliant, I am in programs that allow me to use search etc etc. My ad quality score is 8 or 9 across the board with a very few 7’s and nothing lower. I am not doing anything other than what Google wants advertisers to do - bid on keywords that are specific to the product and land customers on relevant pages about that product.

I can almost certainly get this fixed with a single phone call linking this account to my corporate ones, but since this is a side project I am hesitant to do so.

This post is not really about the fact that this is not working - it is that I know I have jumped through Google’s hoops and it is not working. I can only imagine how many countless plumbers or lawyers or affiliate marketers have been through this same process. Go to the trouble to create a website, open a google account and then have nothing happen and conclude that internet marketing does not work.

Internet marketing does work and those plumbers and lawyers should not be discouraged because Google has a screwed up ad system that they themselves dont understand. I sent a concise description of the problem to Google support thinking maybe I fell through some crack - the response I got back was - SURPRISE a canned response to a question I did not ask which told me to go to a page that was full of useless and vague information - fortune cookies are more specific.

I have done some searches and looked at some forums, and this seems to be a fairly common occurrence. I am having a hard time understanding how a company basically refuses to accept advertisers money?

Once again I know I can get it fixed because of my other activities but should I have to spend millions to get it fixed? How many profitable campaigns to Google and advertisers never get any traction? How much revenue is Google leaving on the table a few hundred dollars a month at a time?

I am very frequently asked “what is the best niche for a newbie?” or “What is the best niche to expand to once I have had some success?” or even “What is the next hot niche?”

I feel like I have been writing about this almost since the start, but it seems people just seem to miss it or I am getting senile.

The best niche is one that no one else is in and there are literally thousands of them left.

If you start by looking on CJ or ShareaSale then that is better than looking on a CPA network where apparently there are only like 5 verticals - credit, diet, dating, auto, and zip submits… (or so it seems). Even better would be to go the local flea market or hobbyist convention and see what people there are talking about or selling - maybe even check out the obscure listings in Ebay - look around for the booths or listings with people at them (or bids) - is it gumballs or bowling shoes or designer picture frames who cares as long as it does not scream affiliate marketing…

If you can do a search and find 2 or 3 paid ads, none of which are affiliate links now you may have found your niche. It means there is enough online interest in the product for people to be doing business, but not so much that CPC is bid up to unprofitable levels. Find a local company that can provide the product cheaply - or maybe you are aggressive and go straight to a national distributor and arrange a drop ship arrangement or even start as an affiliate of an existing business (after you explain what that is to the 45 year old guy running the company).

Retail markups are typically fairly large and in a less competitive space you dont have to give away all that much to be a good price, plus the inefficiencies of your competitors when it comes to internet marketing mean that even though you might not have the best prices you will still outmarket them if you have half a clue, because most of them arent even aware there are clues to be had.

Once a decent product with decent search volume is located, immediately begin seeking out the best domain name possible don’t buy TheBest-Niche_website.biz when you can be Niche.com for a few thousand dollars. The domain name lends instant credibility and allows you to be more professional than the guys you compete with.

It is my opinion that you can almost certainly learn 85% as much about the niche as those who have been doing it for decades in a matter of months while at the same time out marketing these Niche specialists by a huge margin. You will understand technology and the importance of tracking analytics and testing (if not please unsubscribe from my blog), understand Google and Yahoo and MSN plus have heard of Facebook and MySpace. You will understand Ebay and possible Amazons marketplace. You will have a clue on how to best collect and use email, plus maybe have some insight into the idea of coupon codes and Free Shipping or design of web pages or any of a dozen other things that increase sales. In no time at all you should own that niche and be the major player, with no competition.

Face it, almost no one reading this blog has a shot at starting a mortgage lead company or building a competitor to proflowers or cars.com making tens of millions a year. Just because you cannot own a $100 million dollar niche does not mean you cannot own a $5 million one… or even own several of them.

Bottom line, if you are looking for your path to fame and fortune through internet marketing and are starting on a CPA network you have probably already lost the game.

Read a great blog post from someone named PunditX that I found following one of my backlinks.

It was about how he made $95k in 2 months marketing a product all of us are aware of but few probably
knew it had an affiliate program - Adsense.

His post spells out just what he did and it seems perfectly reasonable to me. I can think of a dozen or more ways to market the product beyond what he did.

The ’secret’ to his success is that he did not assume “oh that must be saturated” or “that will not work”. he went out and made it work.

He even states he tested 35 different landing pages - which is probably a huge driver in his success. Not being lazy is a critical component to affiliate marketing success.

Too many in affiliate marketing assume that they have to follow the crowd or that their AM knows whats best - the entire time I was focused on affiliate marketing I never had an AM I spoke with regularly. There are some awesome deals on CJ noone has ever heard of and most of the CPA networks are in business for themselves first.

I know a guy who markets $.05 clicks to small niches that then turn into Ebay sales. I know another guy killing it in the Wal-mart affiliate program marketing just a few select products via PPC. There are a million things that are not dating or ringtones or <flavor of the month> that are both sustainable and scalable and that do not require super technical skills.

The best advice I can give anyone wanting to get into this space is to get outside the zone of the affiliate blogging ‘experts’ and start thinking for yourself. If you never read another blog post about affiliate marketing, you will probably be better off than if you read the top 50 affiliate bloggers religiously. The honest truth is that most affiliate blogs are full of junk and one hit wonders.

It is Father’s Day weekend and as part of my gift, my kids and I went to see KungFu Panda. Pretty funny movie that I enjoyed and so did my kids.

Like many of the kids movies, this one had a pretty simple moral underlying the humor. That moral was basically that “there is no secret ingredient”.

Again and again in life, I have seen people who are on the outside of an industry trying to get inside looking for the secret to how to do something.

Affiliate/Internet marketing is no different. Read on boards or blogs and it seems that most people are looking for the secret of how to make money out of nothing with no effort.

The truth of life and internet marketing is that there are rarely secret ingredients. The people who succeed do so as a result of hard work, perseverance, intelligence and a little bit of luck - not because they have some secret keyword list or way to scam Google or that hidden niche that noone knows about.

Totally off post topic - so if you are not fascinated by this election cycle then just move on…

I am sitting here watching the CNN countdown of delegates needed by Obama to ‘clinch’ the Democratic nomination. According to the home of the voice of Darth Vader he just need 6 more right now.

I cannot help but think, and find it strange that not one talking head is saying this, but a Super Delegate is totally uncommitted and can change their vote at any time up until it is placed at the convention - several have changed their minds already, mostly moving from Clinton to Obama.

If Obama did something enormously stupid in the next few weeks or months, or some past event was to come to light before the convention, then these delegates can and almost certainly would change their votes.

This is not the case for the Republicans, because McCain has won a majority of obligated votes that must vote for him on the first ballet, thus wrapping the Republican nomination up regardless of what might happen in the interim.

Now I am not a Constitutional Scholar or anything like that, but what if Al Gore was to tell Larry King he regrets not campaigning for the Democratic nomination and would accept it enthusiastically if offered to him at the Democratic Convention in Denver.

The way I see that playing out is that more than enough of the non-committed delegates are probably sick of both candidates, see Gore as a person who could actually win with dramatic coat tails and that would unite the party - which is very much fragmented currently.

So on the first vote, Obama and Clinton both fall short of a majority and Gore gets a few hundred or so votes. My understanding is that the committed delegates are now free to vote for whomever they want, meaning that Gore, Edwards or lots of others could actually end up the nominee in what would almost certainly be the cure for low convention ratings.

Please dont read me wrong, an Al Gore fanboy I am not. I am however a huge fan of televised train wrecks and the last 4 months has been regularly scheduled Tuesday night train wrecks for the Democratic party. No wonder American Idol ratings were down.  If only Sanjaya had run for president, CNN might have had even better ratings.

Am I totally wrong here or is this nomination process very much not over? Sure, this is very unlikely to happen, but it can? right?