Using an Ad Tracker is Key to the Affiliate Marketer

December 16, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Internet Marketing

Online Marketing Guru asked:


There’s a lot of money in affiliate marketing. This is true, however, only to those are seriously and zealously working on his affiliate program. Success in affiliate marketing varies in every individual affiliate and for the most part, it depends on his will and perseverance. No matter how good an affiliate program is, it will not prosper if the affiliate marketer does not pay the price of hard work. One must exert extra effort especially on the aspect of promotion. Nothing will happen if the links or banners would just lie idle in a web page, an affiliate must be able to convince the visitor to click it and proceed to the business site to buy the products. No click-throughs means no income for an affiliate marketer.

You can actually generate a full-time income by means of affiliate marketing and you can do it at home, and yes, even while you sleep. You must have a good web site to begin with. It must have good promotional and informative contents, pleasing design, inviting banner ads and all other important elements in an affiliate marketer’s web site. It would be great if you have exhausted other means of advertising such as newsletters, email marketing, message boards and ad listings such as Google AdWords. You just have to go online once in a while to check your site and update it and to watch over the development of your marketing program. Does this sound so easy?

It can be this easy if you have planned your affiliate program well and have taken all the steps towards success carefully and diligently. Now, there’s a tool you can use to help you go through the program with ease and confidence, the Ad Tracker. For many experienced and successful affiliate marketers, the Ad Tracker is a key to a successful affiliate marketing program.

What precisely is an ad tracker? It is a marketing tracking software or program that allows you to trace and take note of every click-through made by visitors of your site and by other customers who got your referral link. There are ad tracking service providers as well, so you will just have to pay them to do the tracking for you. With the ad tracker, you can keep an eye on the progress of your marketing campaigns even offline. This tool or program is especially helpful if you are engaged in several affiliate and pay-per-click programs and have placed ads in emails, pop-ups and pop-unders, message boards, auto responders, Ezines, forums, several web sites, surveys and various ad service providers.

Of course, you don’t want all your efforts to be put to waste so you want to make sure you are getting paid for your hard work. Likewise, you want to make sure every dollar or cent you disburse in your advertising campaigns is wisely spent. With the help of the ad tracker, you will know accurately how many and which of your links where clicked on, how many clicked on your links, how many of your emails were opened and how many of those who opened your email clicked through the business site and purchased a product, how many products were purchased, which of your banner ads or links brought the most leads and sales and many other pertinent facts and figures you need.

Sales records and all data stated are necessary in any business as this could determine if your affiliate program is still worth continuing. This would also help you determine which of your marketing strategies is most effective and which is most beneficial for each product or service you are promoting.

Every decision and plan you make must be well grounded on facts. That decision or plan of action may not be the best, but it is something not to regret about when you had valid reasons for coming up with such decision or plan. You cannot just decide to terminate your affiliate program, just because you don’t earn big in an instant.

If you are serious with affiliate marketing, again and again, keep in mind that your success lies mainly on promotion and your hard work. If you don’t seem lucky enough to convince many of your site users to buy the products, don’t be disheartened and jump into a conclusion that your affiliate program is a failure. If it works for others, it could work for you, too. Know whether your advertising techniques are effective or not, which works best for your program and which doesn’t. Get an ad tracker to help you know all these and you’d surely be on the right track towards success!



Offline Marketing Case Study Part 1:

November 30, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Marketing

Ben Bravery asked:


I don’t know about in other countries, but in New Zealand there is absolutely no one using offline advertising for affiliate programs. Not yet anyways. Do you see a goldmine like I do? Well even if you don’t, i bought two domains, kiwifling.com and amateurmatchz.com.

The first one, kiwifling.com redirects people to fling.com through my affiliate link without them knowing, and amateurmatchz redirects them to amateurmatch. Fling.com will pay me $35 – $55 depending on how many sales i get per day. I dont think i will break 9 sales per day with offline advertising, but if i do, well that would be amazing. The other site, amateur matches pays $3 per free sign up. Free sign ups always convert like a charm, so $3 per sign up is a far cry better than the over saturated adult affiliate network.

I bought those domains not for search engine purposes, im sure the domain names i chose are not searched as a whole that often, I bought them for advertising my affiliate link, to hide my referral id. When people see too much tinyurl or offto.net they think oh no someones redirecting me to some fake site… maybe credit card theft! This is actually very possible… it’s a big problem with affiliate marketing. Although if they try and reach the site again hopefully your cookie will still be there… You may want to ask your affiliate manager how long your cookies last. If you dont know what a cookie is:

Once you have bought your domain, set up forwarding to your referral link (i recommend
offto.net). You then have to advertise it. One way you could advertise your domain in the offline world is by getting some banner stickers and placing them on your bumper, imagine how many people are stuck behind you in traffic. You may as well monetize that traffic. You could also pay people per car they stick the banner on. Or… to avoid the possibility of people just sticking it on once and running with your money, you could offer a revshare program through i-dev affiliate. Im sure you could offer a share of profits to family members as well, this would be a great way of having some trusted affiliates of your own.

If you dont want to spend any money on buying stickers or what have you, you could just print off a banner you made in photoshop… or even word and laminate it, then superglue it to your car.

You could also put a sign at the end of your driveway, you would make one out of wood and some old real estate signs easily. I would advise you to put a laminated paper ad on the real estate sign. You could also call your local sign company and get them to make you some signs, but this could end up being really expensive.

You can also use flyers, go to carparks and put flyers on their cars… we dont care if it annoys people, we are here to make money ;)

Along with the flyer idea, you can place bumper stickers on their car as well… but with the superglue/laminate trick.. you might get a fine. The possibilities are endless, the bumper idea is my favourite because it is so autopilot.

You could place ads next to highways, motorways, or any other busy roads. Sure they might get taken down, but they might just stick longer than craigslist ads.

The above methods i mentioned above are good for getting a good amount of general traffic, you can take this whole thing one step furthur and place your ads near places that are related to your affiliate program.

For example: Im using Fling.com or Amateur Matches, so both of these ads would be perfectly set outside an adult store. It doesnt have to be right outside the shop, just close enough to it so you know that you are targeting said shops customers.

Even if you dont try and target your advertising, you should still get great conversions because people who see the link cant just click it… they have to bother to visit the site. And as for the dating affiliate programs, they will always be a goldmine, so many people are using these, even married people.

This is just the start of my case study into offline advertising, I hope to bring you all many insights into this fairly untouched affiliate market.

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