Associate Programs Newsletter #112
I love success stories – and this week’s is a really good one. Jeff Ostroff, an electrical engineer, works only part-time – about 25 hours a week – on his Internet business, but he still manages to be a top-earning affiliate.
CONTENTS:
1. How Jeff Ostroff became a top-earning affiliate
2. Good software free and nearly free
3. Limited time offer on NextCard two-tier program
4. CJ raises its prices
5. CJ changes annoy affiliates
6. TickerTel pays residual revenue
7. One more bad contract
8. The magic formula for affiliate success
9. Choosing the correct keywords for a site
10. How to make them buy now
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1. How Jeff Ostroff became a top-earning affiliate
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Careful targeting, constant experimenting, and outspoken writing all combine to make Jeff Ostroff’s CarBuyingTips.com a success.
“We hate to see you scammed by the morally challenged,” he tells visitors to https://www.CarBuyingTips.com. “So enjoy our politically incorrect site that dealer lawyers tried to shut down.”
Jeff adds a lot of his own personality to CarBuyingTips.com – “the world’s most irreverent and useful free site for car buying, leasing, and avoiding dealer scams”.
On the main page he publishes angry e-mails he has received from car dealers, along with his scathing comments.
He warns people about a buy-the-warranty scam.”Many suckers fall for this . . . so stay sharp!” A window etching scam receives similar treatment: “Let’s analyze the stupidity factor.”
You can avoid such scams by reading his tips on getting a good car loan. The tips page nudges you in the direction of such companies as E-Loan, PeopleFirst or LendingTree.
Jeff’s websites are a little rough in parts – he is more of an engineer than a wordsmith – but the occasional typing error doesn’t stop Jeff from being among the top 10 affiliates in several programs.
In some, he’s the top affiliate.
The site is powered by affiliate programs, but Jeff does much more than merely link to the merchants. He publishes lots of plain-spoken advice, information on dealer costs, finance, leases, negotiating tips, and even a gallery of car crash photographs.
CarBuyingTips.com is only one of several sites which Jeff runs. He won’t say how much it earns in monthly commissions, but the figure has five digits.
Jeff, a 37-year-old electrical engineer at Motorola in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, says he began CarBuyingTips.com in 1997 as an extended warranty warning on the BridalTips.com site.
(If you’re thinking of buying a diamond ring, be sure to read his entertaining advice: https://www.bridaltips.com/diamond.htm.)
Jeff’s advice on CarBuyingTips is based on his own experiences and that of several friends and co-workers whom he interviewed.
“Now 50 people daily send me info on their experiences, and I’ve had input from other car salesmen, sales managers, former finance managers and authors. Every day we find out about new scams from the experiences that people e-mail us. With all our contacts within the largest car buying website companies, we have our pulse on the industry, and from our visitors, we have a pulse on the car buying marketplace.”
The site is aimed at US buyers but many of the sales tactics apply to Canada as well.
“I don’t know anything about other countries, so I don’t know how well it applies,” Jeff says. “But I have had people from Australia and a few other places tell me that they have used some of the concepts mentioned, mostly the haggling tips and dealer scams. The holdback and commission structures in America are unlike other countries’ so some of the info here may not be very useful in other countries.”
Jeff spends about three hours every night after work and at least 10 hours every weekend on CarBuyingTips.com, BridalTips.com, BabyResource.com, and other sites which his ConsumerNet Inc. is developing.
CarBuyingTips’s main page typically attracts about 4,000 page views a day.
To promote the site, he uses only targeted advertising.
“By targeted advertising, I mean advertise your site on similar themed sites, or target your audience,” he says. “For example, it would be stupid of me to advertise on Yahoo’s home page. Even though they get tons of traffic, a 0.25% return on my banner is not cost-effective. But if I put my banner on Yahoo’s automotive page, now I am targeting my audience much better. Now only people interested in car buying will see my banner, and I’ll get higher quality traffic.
“Pay-per-click search engines are another source, because you can control your exact position in the results page, and bid on hundreds of search terms as long as they are relevant to your site. So on GoTo.com, if someone types in “car buying” for a search, that is a very high quality targeted lead, and that is someone I want on my site. And I know they’ll click on my link because they are seeking out the data.”
Today, CarBuyingTips has the number one ranking on GoTo.com for the search term “car buying”. Jeff is paying 94 cents per click-through. Only someone who knows what he’s doing can afford to pay that much.
“In the past, we advertised our banner on a few small auto- related websites for a flat monthly fee and that too sent us good traffic. Now when we set up our affiliate program and pay 10 cents per click, we’ll most likely approve automotive, financial, and shopping sites only, as they will provide us with the best quality traffic. Targeting your traffic makes the most efficient use of your ad spending.”
As well, you have to play the search engines, Jeff says.
“We are also about to take out our first ad in ‘Car & Driver’ in the July 4 issue. Lotta guts for that play. We are taking a big chance.”
CarBuyingTips.com had a 10 cent pay-per-click program on ClickTrade, which was “the world’s biggest joke”, Jeff says.
“They had so much fraud there, we stopped the program. We found out that foreign sites were all cheaters, as were many sites on Tripod, Angelfire, Xoom, etc.”
So they decided to refuse to approve any site which did not have its own .com name.
“We find all the people who are freeloaders and not serious about setting up a real website and paying a hosting company $29 a month, were the biggest cheaters . . . We are now in talks with Commission Junction about a pay-per-click program and they seem to take fraud a lot more seriously, and have a team devoted to it. They have a $795 setup fee and take a commission. We’ll see how that works out.
“LinkShare never returned our phone calls, so they are out. Reporting.net wants $3,000 per month with a $5,000 setup, so they are just a bit out of our reach. Maybe if we were a major site with venture capital behind us.”
You have to choose affiliate programs which are targeted to your audience, Jeff says.
“In December, we put eToys on the front page of CarBuyingTips.com and sold not one toy, even though the front page gets 4,000 views per day. But on our other site ToyAvenue.com, we kicked ass, selling thousands of dollars worth. Target your audience properly – don’t just throw up any banner anywhere.
“Even in CarBuyingTips.com, we tend to keep the finance and credit report links on the finance page, and use that theory throughout the site in other chapters as well. For example, in the used car section, we mention CarFax reports, and sites online to list your used car. Those do really well there, because it is targeted to that portion of car buying.”
Jeff says his most successful programs are AutoWeb, Qspace credit reports (in number of sales, not in dollars), E-Loan (formerly Carfinance.com), AutoVantage and CarFax.
StoneAge, CarsDirect and LendingTree do well, too.
“Our favorite merchants are those who pay on time, pay monthly, and provide real-time or next day stats online. If we can’t access stats, we can’t improve our conversion ratios, which are our life blood.
“We are constantly analyzing the stats to improve the quality of the leads we send them, which in turn increases conversions, and gives us bigger checks. We also like the ones which give gifts to better performing affiliates.
“You name the program, we are either number one in the country, or in the top 5 or 10. In April, we won Carorder’s affiliate of the month and got $500 worth of GiftCertificates.com, which we used at SamGoody to buy DVDs and CDs. Some give bonuses, or T shirts. We love the little perks. To that end, we have been pleased with Autoweb, Carorder, StoneAge, all of whom have great online stats.”
LendingTree has stumbled a few times, sending checks up to a month late, but they do pay, and they have good stats on Reporting.net, Jeff says. Any affiliate program on Reporting.net has great stats. Etoys has been good too.
“We get a lot of questions from our readers that we forward to the affiliate companies and they do a great job of getting back to me.”
Of the affiliate networks, Jeff likes Reporting.net best [UPDATE: Reporting.net – BeFree – merged with Commission Junction], “but keep in mind they all suck”, he says.
“They all have hardware issues. They go down a lot on weekends, always when we need to go in and generate links. They just don’t get it: most webmasters do their work on the weekends as they have regular jobs. One day they’ll figure it out.”
However, Reporting.net works great when it’s up, and it updates its stats every day.
“Their link generation is the best, and I like the ‘Copy all’ button so you don’t accidentally miss some of the HTML code when you copy it, like you would on LinkShare. We use Reporting.net’s traffic reports every day and they are the best. We can go back for months, and it totals how much we have earned at the bottom.”
Jeff advises affiliates to try to combine banners with text links.
“Banners by themselves are not good as the average click-through right now is about 0.25%, or up to 5% on a targeted site. If you get only 100 hits per day on your site you might not get even one click-through on a banner. So use text links also. We like to incorporate a text link matter of factly into the articles, mentioning the companies in passing. For example, we might say:
“You can avoid all these car dealer loan scams by getting your financing online through honest sites like LendingTree and E-Loan.”
“In that above statement, I just advertised two sites. Now tell me, what person would not click on at least one of those two links? Especially after their brain subconciously remembers seeing the banners on one of our pages, so that we have built familiarity into the equation.”
Most affiliates don’t realize just how useful the online stats are, Jeff says.
“They should be working their site to send more and more traffic every day to their affiliate program advertisers. Put the most profitable ones in the areas where they will get the most exposure. You have to monitor the traffic, and the conversion rate (how many sales per how many click-throughs). If you can improve the quality of the leads you send them, sometimes just changing one sentence to make it more convincing will bump you up to the next level.”
Never be afraid to experiment to see what works, he says.
“Sometimes it takes a week or so for changes to have an effect. Mondays and Tuesdays are the busiest days on the Web, the weekends are the slowest. Whenever we make a change, we watch Tuesday morning really closely to analyze all the traffic to affiliate sites on Monday.
“We increase almost all our affiliate commissions every month. We first joined CarFax in mid-1998, and every single month since then, we have increased our commissions by experimenting.”
Jeff says he would not sign up to any affiliate program now that doesn’t have stats updated at least daily.
“We still have some programs without stats but they are grandfathered in – but no new ones. We still join a few programs which pay quarterly, but only if we see them as really lucrative. We don’t recommend small sites join quarterly programs, except Amazon is OK.
“Be wary of one thing about Amazon. They tout the hell out of paying you 15% commission on books that you recommend directly, but suspiciously many of those direct sales become indirect sales, that pay 5% instead. How does this happen? A weasel clause in their contract states this in a nutshell.
“Say you give a link to a Harry Potter book and visitors follow the link to Amazon. If they don’t put the book in the shopping cart right then and there, you don’t get 15%. If they go to another page and come back to the Harry Potter page, you don’t get the 15%. This is a scam in my opinion. On CarBuyingTips and BridalTips we send them nothing but ‘direct’ title clicks, yet 80% end up becoming 5% commission. Shame on them.”
JEFF’S WINNING WAYS:
These are the main factors which make Jeff a top affiliate:
He runs an interesting, useful, outspoken website.
He wins the trust of his visitors.
He selects programs which match the site’s theme.
He weaves affiliate links into text in appropriate places.
He buys only carefully targeted advertising.
He experiments constantly.
Jeff’s ConsumerNet sites include:
https://www.CarBuyingTips.com
https://www.ToyAvenue.com
https://www.BabyResource.com
https://www.AutoBuyingTips.com
https://www.DebtWizards.com
https://www.Flower-Shopper.com
https://www.BridalTips.com
https://www.ByTheBooks.com
You can join many of the affiliates programs which Jeff mentioned at Be Free. [Be Free eventually merged with Commission Junction.] [UPDATE: I interviewed Jeff again in 2011 – Affiliate Marketing Success Story.]
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2. Good software free and nearly free
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By Lou Salt
PublishersPipeline has a wide range of software titles to suit almost everyone and an unusual discounting feature that’s really pulling traffic.
Paul Jacobson of PublishersPipeline has been in the software publishing business all his working life. After successes in other businesses, Paul is now in the business of selling software.
His distinction – rebates. PublishersPipeline returns up to the total purchase price of the software it sells.
That means that some of the software is free after the rebate.
It’s offering McAfee Virus Scan at a $30 rebate, so you end up paying $4.99 for the software. TombRaider 3 is featured at $7.99 after rebate, saving you almost $40.
Does the rebate system work? “Yes,” says Paul. It’s bringing in a lot of traffic to his site, more than he ever thought would come.
Paul says he offers rebates because manufacturers want to increase sales without lowering their retail prices.
Affiliates are an important part of the business and they’re paid accordingly, with lifetime commissions of $1 to $5 per sale.
Each time they return and buy anything (including software which is free after rebate) you earn a commission. It doesn’t matter if they return through your link or not.
The company has a lot of repeat customers so you’re rewarded for your work forever. You can join the Tell-a-friend program if you don’t have a website, or the affiliate program if you do.
“…without a satisfied human community surrounding the website, I do not see how it could possibly succeed. That is the nature of business, in my opinion,” Paul says.
Because it sells games, utilities and learning tools, the affiliate program is suitable for a wide range of sites, and anyone qualifies for the rebates.
Earning commissions on cheap and free software looks like a good deal to me. You can check it out here…
[UPDATE: The affiliate program is now tracked by LinkShare.]
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3. Limited time offer on NextCard two-tier program
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The NextCard Visa affiliate program is popular with thousands of affiliates because you can earn a $20 commission without selling anything.
It doesn’t cost anything to join the program and it doesn’t cost anything to get the card.
The program recently went two-tier. Now you can sign up sub-associates and – for a limited time – you’ll earn $5 every time they sign up a new cardholder.
The $5 offer is open only until June 30.
Be quick for this one.
[UPDATE: NextCard eventually went broke.]=======================
4. CJ raises its prices
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Commission Junction is raising its prices for merchants.
From September 1, a merchant will pay a $795 initial fee, $595 annual renewal fee and a transaction fee of 25% of its commissions (up from 20%). Existing merchants won’t pay the $595 annual renewal until their existing contract expires.
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5. CJ changes annoy affiliates
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Commission Junction has scrapped its affiliate message board and made significant changes to the ways statistics are presented. Some affiliates don’t like the changes and think the stats are faulty.
Here are a few quotes from the Associate Programs Message Board:
Lew Zaharako:
“The stats that I need to do analysis are no longer available.
I can’t easily navigate any more and there is no affiliate
discussion board. None of the changes made will help anyone
make a buck . . . I have never known of a company that made
changes that were so obviously nonsense.
“. . . my concern is that CJ is becoming like LinkShare and
BeFree, which would be a disaster.”
Stefanie Puetz-Lehmann:
“After spending some more time with the new CJ statistics I
like them.”
Wayne Porter:
“I have been reviewing my CJ stats. As of today (June 6) I have
seen impressions drop by over 50% and click-throughs by 75%,
revenue and leads are about 25% of what I normally do . . .
Traffic to my sites has remained at the same level or better
. . . 5.0 is a significant step above the last interface in the
terms of power and ability to use Contextual Links. It also
sets them above Be Free and LinkExchange. Smartzones, Link
Lists, and Incontext are very cool! Try it.”
Anonymous:
“Hasn’t anyone noticed the ridiculously inefficient means of
having to click on each individual banner link for a merchant
just to see the banner? For example, Health4her has 74
banners/text links. With the previous system, you clicked ‘Get
Links’ and there they were, all in one list. Now you have to
click multiple times just to get to the merchant and then click
on each individual banner link to see one banner. I guess a
simple ‘View All’ didn’t seem necessary. So much for
efficiency. $40 million invested recently? I wonder what they
spent it on.”
SSanf:
“My CJ revenue dropped through the floor though my traffic went
up!?? I can’t get a list of pay-per-click programs now. This is
really upsetting to me. They should bring the boards back.”
Anonymous:
“Even more amazing is that according to this we’ve shown in
excess of 10 million impressions this month (1 week). Our site
only shows a total of just under 3 million page views per
month. Oh, and the balance at the top shows less than $400
earned. What a mess.”
Anonymous:
“. . . the changes made are better for the merchant, far worse
for the affiliate. What were they thinking?”
Todd Crawford of CJ (in a comprehensive reply to the criticism):
“I do welcome your feedback and will channel it into our
strategic planning and development.”
You can read the rest of the comments and have your say on the Associate Programs Message Board:
https://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php
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6. TickerTel pays residual revenue
==================================
TickerTel provides real-time quotes, portfolio tracking services, breaking financial news, analysis and recommendations and other investment information from any phone – any time, anywhere.
It pays affiliates a $5 customer acquisition fee plus 3 cents for every minute that customers use the service.
“For example, if 1,000 of the affiliate’s customers become regular users of the service, the affiliate will receive a first year initial payment of $5,000 and then approximately $21,500 from the 3 cent revenue share,” says Seth Nagdeman of TickerTel.
You can join at Be Free.
[UPDATE: Be Free merged with Commission Junction.]
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7. One more bad contract
========================
I’ve become so used to seeing bad contracts on the Internet, I’ve become a bit careless. I overlooked some ridiculous clauses in the 000Domains.com contract (or perhaps it has changed since I read it – I should have kept a copy).
A lawyer might argue that I’m taking the sentences out of context, so if you’re worried about whether you risk losing your domain name, I suggest you read the whole thing.
These sentences may make you think twice about giving the company your business:
4. You agree, during the period of this Agreement,
that we may: (1) revise the terms and conditions of
this Agreement.
15. You agree that we may, in our sole discretion,
delete or transfer your domain name at any time.
Alan Peters of 000Domains.com told one person who complained about the contract:
“We are a reseller of Tucows Inc. through their OpenSRS
program. Tucows is an ICANN accredited registrar and to my
knowledge is one of the top three of them. We are required by
Tucows to have the agreement you are reading posted at our web
site, as they are the actual registrar of the domain names
registered through us. We have no control on that agreement
. . . in about two months we have registered almost 25,000
domain names . . .”
000Domains.com offers a great service, very easy to use, especially after you’ve registered your first domain name.
Tucows has a good reputation. I don’t believe it would risk damaging that reputation by doing anything stupid. I’d feel much better, though, if the company rewrote that bad contract.
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8. The magic formula for affiliate success
==========================================
One Domain Name + One Product = Many Profits. That’s the magic formula for affiliate success, says Ryan Lee.
Here Ryan explains why:
[UPDATE: This old article has been deleted.]===========================================
9. Choosing the correct keywords for a site
===========================================
Sumantra Roy of 1stSearchRanking.com has written a very useful article, “Choosing the correct keywords for a site”.
“I know that most people find it difficult to figure out the keywords for which they should be optimizing their sites for the search engines, or, for that matter, bidding on the pay-per-click search engines,” Sumantra says.
His article discusses the Keyword Effectiveness Index, a simple mathematical formula he developed which helps in establishing the most effective keywords for a site.
This could save you a lot of time. Recommended reading.
[UPDATE: The keywords tool which Sumantra recommended wasn’t working today seems to have vanished. For detailed reviews of keyword research tools, see Jay Stockwell’s reviews at KeywordWorkshop.com.]============================
10. How to make them buy now
============================
Your customers need a bit of breathing space if you expect them to buy your products, says Patrick Anderson, author of “Right On The Money”.
It works OFF the Net, and also on it. Find out why:
All the best
Allan Gardyne
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