A good affiliate campaign includes three critical elements: traffic, landing page and a good converting product. Most of the affiliates are focusing about the traffic. Some understand the importance of the landing page and even less are trying to understand the benefit of the product vs. other competitors’ products.

In this post I would like to tell you about a real story: How a an affiliate marketer, my friend, left money on the table just because he was lazy to pay attention to the details.

I sat with my friend this week in a coffee shop. We do that from time to time, sharing with each other ideas. My friend showed me one of his new campaigns landing page that he has been working on in the last two months.

As a veteran affiliate, he did A/B testing with two versions of the landing page. He checked the effectiveness of his landing page in terms of click through – The percent of people who visit the merchant website via his website. But that’s the point where he stopped, because in his opinion the difference between the landing pages performance is negligible.
How negligible? 43% vs 37%

In this niche there is no doubt that 40% click through (CTR) rate is fairly acceptable and even a bit higher than the average. Probably this is why he was impassive about the A/B testing results, knowing that his campaign perfuming relatively well. That’s the problem with veteran and with newbie’s as well – we tend to forget where to put our effort in terms of time consuming.

Before you start struggle with your traffic make sure you did all in your power to improve your landing page performance (CTR). In this case the 6% difference worth more than $1,000 in net revenue per month!

But you will probably not get convinced, as my friend was not, until you will see the math behind it. So here we go:

The average daily clicks to his page is 600 (yep, it’s a small/mid campaign)
The conversion rate within the merchant website is 4%
The payout is $24

The gross sale for LP 1 is:
600 * 0.43 * 0.04 * 24 = $247.68

The gross sale for LP 2 is:
600 * 0.37 * 0.04 * 24 = $213.12

Since we are talking about the same traffic, with the same cost, the difference between these landing pages results is NET PROFIT.

So the total net profit will be
(247.68 – 213.12) * 30 = $1,036.8

With less than 5 minutes of work my friend will get an addition of ~$1,000 per month depends which landing page version he will choose.

Think that if you have 5-7 medium PPC campaign, 6% difference within your landing page can give you more than $5,000 per month.

More than that, to get the same addition net profit using the landing page with the low CTR you will need to raise your traffic by more than 16%!
(Assuming that the converting ratio will be kept for the new traffic as well)

Keep this in your mind next time you try to think how to increase your PPC campaigns performance.

It’s been more than a week since I came back from the affiliate summit in NY. I was late with this post mostly because of the fact that usually, the last two weeks of August I am busy with other things but work affairs. This August my friend got married and as every year we take the opportunity for a family vacation.

The affiliate summit in NY was great. Although the Hilton convention center is less preferred than the Rio convention center (Vegas), the atmosphere in NY is perfect for doing business.

So I found myself jumping from one cocktail party to another. From one sky-high roof to another British style designed club. More and more networks started to adopt the private cocktails parties rather than having loud crowded parties. Its great change because you get the chance to meet people in a more comfortable environment, cut the deals, and then having fun dancing with your colleagues (only women for me )

Affiliate Summit can take all of your strengths easily. There are lots of business opportunities around you, much more than you can squeeze into a whole day. With your body loaded with adrenalin you don’t feel the tiredness, but when it’s all over and everyone back in their homes you barely can walk one step further. You feel every muscle in your body. I myself spent my time catching some sleep for almost 24 hours straight!

If you are in the affiliate business, affiliate summit is a must event for you, BUT…must be ready for it.

I already booked my flight and hotel for affiliate summit west 2010 in Vegas. Until then I have lots of work – converting the business talk to action.

In October this year I also intend to attend at the A4U in London. It will be my first time there (A4U not London ). I hope to get some new point of view about the affiliate marketing industry from the European networks rather the American oriented affiliate networks.
I heard that some of the “American” affiliate networks also considering taking part on this event as well, so in any case boring it will not be

I just got back from my friend wedding. It was a great event with lots of friends, lots of free drinks and of course a great food.
Yifat, the bride, came up with a cool idea how to describe the situation.
I took a photo of it with my iphone so don’t expect for quality. The message is still clear

Mazal Tov Yifat and Andrey

It’s all over the web now – 100,000 users to get Google Wave this fall.

Make sure to sign up for Google wave. Increase your chances to get an invitation.
Why? Because it could be your next source of traffic!

I don’t know how many of you had the chance to watch the introduction video of Google Wave.
I strongly advise you to watch it. If you have a creative affiliate mind, I am sure you will know what to do with it. And if Google Wave will be a hit as some people predict, it could be your next source of traffic.

Try to think few steps ahead. Think what you could do with Twitter if you were the first to use their service.

Three weeks ago I had my first Google Slap.  I am doing PPC for many years now, and it’s the first time that I experience what so called the “Google Slap”.

For those of you who are not familiar with this term, Google Slap is a situation where for a specific domain (at least in my case) you stop getting any traffic from Google AdWords.

Since I am not familiar with this situation, at first it looks like that there was a problem with the AdWords billing. When you pay via invoice, potentially, there is the risk that Google will not record your payment on time. In that case they have the right to suspend your account. Few days after I spoke with one of the Google AdWords support team representative about it I’ve got an email from them saying that there is nothing wrong with my billing but Google decided that my website does not meet their guidelines and therefore the website got a low quality score.

To be honest I was surprised to get this email. From day one I kept the principle of doing things in the right way. I develop website with a clear added value to the visitor, using a unique content. I don’t use one page landing page just to send the user to the merchant website. But at the end of day, I’ve got my first Google Slap.

Obviously, it’s not a great feeling to get a Slap. You lose income, and you have no one to hear your complain. Google are kind of a giant that don’t care much that you paid them 15K a months for a single campaign. They have their own agenda and they will not reveal it to you, although they will direct you time after time to their guideline page.

However, I think there something that I can learn from this Slap.
I asked myself what’s the difference between this campaign and the other that did not get slapped. It’s a theory that you might want to check with your campaigns as well.
Please note that I am not sure how solid this theory is.

The campaigns that I’ve got slapped with belong to a very crowded niche. Lots of affiliates are sharing the same inventory to advertise their products. With the campaigns that I did not get a Slap (most of them), there is less competition on the inventory.

So they key might be the inventory popularity!

Google might not like the fact that too many affiliates sharing the same inventory. Experienced affiliate marketers know how to get more for less: raising the page quality score in order to get low bids, using the right ads to get a high CTR and also by that lower the bids.

It’s easy for Google to see which keywords are most wanted. And it’s easy for Google to slap those who make her less money. Google will not slap you if you are the only one who bid on a keyword. When Google don’t have alternative advertiser, Google will lose money!

Google never tell you why you’ve got a slap. Their guidelines don’t tell you much; especially if you followed their guidelines – they will keep redirect you to their guidelines instead specifically tell you the reason for the slap. It’s a convenience way to make sure they will get the best ROI for their inventory, keep doing business with you and yet stay away from the authorities who keep their eyes after their actions.

But you know; if you can’t fight it, join it.
Using Google AdWords I made lots of money. I believe that for any difficulty in life there is a solution that you can adopt. I know from my colleagues that every Google slap forced them to try harder. They all end with a higher income, comparing to the time before the slap.

Try to look for niches that the inventory is still not so crowded. You might find my theory good for your needs as well.