One thing that I think gets overlooked on affiliate sites is the ability to change offers presented to the visitor over the course of a session - or even subsequent sessions. After a visitor has been presented with an offer a couple of times the chance to convert that particular offer drops considerably. The visitor obviously isn’t finding that offer attractive.
Rather that write that visitor off as one that isn’t going to generate revenue, you should consider changing the offer to try again during the same session. I currently do this on my leads sites but the origins go back to when I was selling products a few years ago. Back then I had noticed that most buyers had placed a product in their shopping cart within 3 page views of landing on the site. Those who hadn’t put anything in a shopping cart within that time frame probably weren’t going to end up buying anything. Now this isn’t a scientific conclusion and was probably based on the fact that I wasn’t a price leader in the market. It also might be affected by how informational your pages are. I would guess that the more informational your site the more pageviews you might get on average prior to a purchase.
But for me the three page view rule worked pretty well for my setup. My solution was to start offering a coupon or discount after 3 page views. Essentially I was trying to pick-up the price shoppers who might still be hanging around. I was also sure to make the discounts accessible from the beginning of the session, but it wouldn’t have been immediately obvious and thus most shoppers didn’t find the discount unless they were looking fairly hard. But once they had been on the site for awhile the discount would become more prominent in hopes I would have a better chance of converting these lingering visitors. There is no question that this technique increased my conversions.
Today, when most of my revenue is generated from lead generation, I still haven’t forgotten that lesson about changing offers. My sites are far more informational now and visitors will stay through more page views while being constantly exposed to offers in the niche. However, if they have viewed several pages, or even leave the site and later return, I am serving them different offers throughout the visits. Of course I start with my most profitable offers, but if they don’t seem inclined to click on an offer after 3-4 page views, I try a different one that might be of more interest.
This really isn’t difficult from the programming side and is something you should consider. Get some statistics from your site about your page view to lead conversion rate over the course of a user session. You will probably find that after several page views by a visitor your conversion rate falls. If that is the case, try something else to catch their attention.
I view it about the same as fishing. If you have cast your line into an area where you know there are fish but aren’t catching any, don’t sit there all day doing the same thing over and over. The fish obviously aren’t attracted to your bait. Change bait and you just might get a bite.
Like most of you, I spend the majority of my time finding ways to generate traffic through search engines. Lately I have been spending more and more time thinking further down the line about my ultimate goal. In the past my goal was always to have the top positions in search engines for my targeted niches. But I’m starting to think the goals should be a little higher.
When we fight for search engine or PPC positioning we are in direct competition with other sites and offers. It’s a constant battle against both the search engines and our competitors. But what if we actually had a brand that even our mothers knew to type-in to get what they wanted within our niche? Isn’t that the ultimate goal? Doesn’t that essentially eliminate most of our competition? Doesn’t it remove the control that search engine algorithms have over our destiny?
To me it is a no-brainer. While I will continue to fight the search engine wars in order to generate my day-to-day income, I am spending a lot of time learning about the economics of traditional advertising platforms such as radio, television and newspaper in order to attempt to ultimately create a brand that people will recognize and type-in. I’m not talking about a brand that the internet addicted among us will recognize. I’m talking about a brand that your mother will recognize. So far I have concluded that it is certainly possible if the economics of your niche are favorable.
Essentially there are two types of offline advertising for internet sites. 1. Advertising that attempt to create a brand so it will be in your conscious when you need that product, and 2. Advertising that is designed to elicit an immediate response by the consumer (visit my site shortly after seeing my ad). The work at home ads we see on infomercials where they are promoting a website like 36getrich.com are of the “direct response” variety. The good part about offline advertising is that it is actually possible to do both at the same time if you have the right product, message, and medium. With the right strategy you may be able to build your brand through repeated exposure while at the same time turning a profit through the direct response angle.
I’m not suggesting that tomorrow you should run out and spend a fortune to get visitors to type-in the domain of your free jokes site or anything. What I am suggesting is that you take a hard look at your various niches, become familiar with the economics and scalability of offline advertising, and at least consider setting a future goal of having a brand able domain that my mother will be inclined to type-in when she is looking for a product in your niche. Think about it.
If I have a pet peeve with affiliate managers it’s those who fail to acknowledge that a competing program might be better in some circumstance. I know that the AM’s job is to convince me to use their program, but when they lose credibility on one of their offers it tends to make me lose trust in their other ones.
This week I had an AM call me asking why I wasn’t using their offer in one of my niches. I started by telling him that my current program was paying me twice what the AM’s program pays. His response was to tell me that he’s positive that his converts better than any others in the market and that I would make up the lower payout per lead on a higher volume with their better converting offer. I then told him that I was using the exact same end merchant as their program but that I was direct with the merchant while they were apparently one or two layers further away. He then decided to try to convince me that his program has better creatives and would still result in higher payouts.
Attention affiliate managers… at this point in the above conversation, you have just lost all credibility with your affiliate for your entire network of offers. Now I’m going to be really skeptical about any other offers you may have that look promising. Stop while you are ahead - admit defeat - and live to fight another day.
I spent years living off of affiliate programs on CJ, Linkshare and other networks. In fact for a long time I didn’t know much else existed. I would get a feel for the types of offers in a niche, test some, and move horizontally across the network entering a wide range of niches. When some worked, I was content with my affiliate selection for that niche since I didn’t know better.
Today virtually all of my affiliate revenue comes from in-house programs in a limited number of niches. This change occurred when I started looking deeper and deeper for programs in my niches. Usually there are all kinds of in-house programs in virtually any niche that pay better, have better reporting, better communication, better integration, and quicker payment than the networks. Of course this isn’t news to most experienced affiliate marketers, but one that’s easy to fall victim to.
I still head straight to a network when I ‘m testing a niche. However if the test proves successful I then fully investigate all possible sources of affiliate programs within the niche before focusing on another one. If you are looking for ways to find these hidden programs, simply do a search for some of your target keywords, then start clicking on all of the affiliate sites in the PPC ads and determine who the affiliates are getting paid by. You will probably find a few that you didn’t know existed.
