CPA Share

I’ve enjoyed this crazy industry for almost 5 years now. Things have changed, and changed again, and they continue to change on a day to day basis. It’s what keeps things interesting. This post is here to just go over several small, and large changes that I’ve witnessed first hand in the internet advertising industry over the last 4-5 years. It’s one hell of an industry, that’s for sure!
When I first got into the affiliate marketing game I learned my online fundamentals with various blackhat techniques. Back in the day spamming a social network was easy cash and nobody seemed to care, until users on sites started complaining to the sites, advertisers, and even CPA networks. I watched networks, and spammers face the wrath of fox and myspace and I got out of that game very quickly. Following this I had my first legitimate run at Affiliate Marketing, promoting ringtones on Google AdWords, MSN AdCenter, and Overture. When I started running these campaigns using the word “Free” in your advertisements (Example: Get Some Free Ringtones) was completely acceptable, even encouraged by some advertisers. Slowly that became “Illegal” and I watched people work there ways around these regulations using words like “Gratis” and “Complimentary” or “Get Your Bonus Ringtones.” Nobody seemed to have a problem with “Complimentary” for over a year. Time passed, now when we promote ringtones the pricing information is plastered all over the landing page, you cannot mention Free, Bonus, anything really regarding getting ringtones and a deal. The only real sales pitch is “Get Some Ringtones, They Are Cool.”

In the mobile world people continued to get more and more creative, I remember buying media promoting “Crush” and “IQ Tests” initially these offers only mentioned the $9.99 per month pricetag on the very bottom in the page in hard to read text. I don’t know the exact chain of events in the Quiz/Contest type mobile offers but now these offers display the pricetag on each and every page of the simple “quiz” as well as on the confirmation page (A user receives a text with a pin, they have to confirm it on the website) there is a huge check box requiring users who wish to subscribe to check which states they understand the charges. Surprisingly to this day at EWA we continue to subscribe thousands and thousands of people each day on those IQ offers.

Promoting Dating campaigns on Pay-Per-Click used to be the easy thing to do, it racked in a ton of cash for me.. I remember promoting Singlesnet, Fling, and tons of other sites using Chat Keywords . These advertisers wanted my traffic so badly, They continued to beg for it. Than one day singlesnet and true told me to Pull all of my chat traffic (which was all of my traffic). I remember for months getting hounded by Affiliate Managers about running dating traffic again, when it was virtually impossible for me to get any traffic on Non-Chat Keywords. Now Dating is thriving once again, and is one of the most consistent verticals out there. When I go Google “Dating Chat” I see no affiliate ads which in my eyes is a crazy loss of opportunity, too bad the advertisers hate it so much!

Im going to keep on going, discussing the changes of Rebills, Credit Reports, Debt Consolidation, and tons of other changes I’ve seen in this industry soon. There are simply too many topics, verticals, and changes that I’ve seen to discuss in one post!

I’m a speaker at Affiliate Convention, which is in Denver from June 17-20th. The topic that I’m speaking on is “Representing the Interests of Affiliates”, where I’ll cover the key issues that affiliates deal with and how to deal with them. As an affiliate, you’re probably a one man (or one woman) show, so how can you be a PPC expert, engineering guru, financial wizard, marketing genius, and professional network at the same time?.





If you’re a new affiliate, you have to decide what offers to promote, what affiliate networks to go with, whose blog to read, and so forth. There’s all sorts of software, ebooks, and other materials that self-proclaimed experts will peddle you.

Affiliates frequently ask me how I became a super affiliate at 15 years old, given that I’m not a programmer and have plenty of free time for hobbies and travel. At Affiliate Convention, I’m going to show you what it takes, and it’s probably not what you think. I’ve been where you are and I can show you the way out. Hint: it has more to do with your relationships and ability to execute than it does your programming expertise (you can hire that) or how many great ideas you have (if you implement none of them, so what).

I’ll give you just one tip of the dozen that I’ve prepared, as a teaser to my full presentation in 2 months– having real world clients through your own Internet marketing company gives you access to more data and insights that you’d ever get through your own campaigns, plus, you can use their budget to develop tools you can use on your own stuff. When you are the agency of record, you become the exclusive advertiser, no other affiliates get to compete with you! You don’t have to worry about others stealing your ads or bidding against you. You have full control over the landing pages and even negotiate the payout. And, you have greater consistency of earnings, since you own that relationship, instead of trying to beg for a nickel payout bump among the thousands of others doing so, too.

So come join me and 1,000 other affiliates in Denver in a couple months and we can all learn from each other. If you have any particular questions you’d like to have answered, just post them right here and I will do my best to respond to every one of them.

Hey Guys,
Around 2 months ago I bought like 5 .asia domains before the landrush meaning that if someone else has purchased the domain before the launch it goes into auction. The first domain auction I did not win was Visiting.Asia, I have given up. Another domain I am on the auction for is “vacation.asia” Which I bid around $250.00 for and was immediately outbid on, obviously.

After I got outbid I didn’t bother check the auction since I was bitter about it. I just logged in and check out this screen shot, Isn’t that ridiculous????!

I’m over bidding on these stupid landrush type deals.

Harrison

Hey Guys,
Last week I saw a contest post on mashable for the myspace development platform launch party in San Francisco tomorrow. I submitted my idea and from the moment I sent it off I had a feeling I was going to go to that party, because my idea rocks

I am really excited to finally use the infrastructure I have established to my advantage and make some pretty sick applications.

This Really Makes Me Happy Since It Truly Shows That Age Doesn’t Matter

I’ll take pics for you guys!

-harrison

WOW
Fox (newscorp) put a bid in to buy the Dow Jones reporting agency. The family that owns the DOW’s reporting agency (i know what I am saying is skewed because i don’t know the whole deal.) “The Bancrofts” are going to be meeting with Rupert Murdoch and his son to talk about a take over.

After newscorp buys takes over the DOW i wonder if they will put in a bid to buy the state of California or something wild (they could afford it). We’ll see

Back to creating a “Resume” for graphic class, AHHHHHHHHHHH
Harrison