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POSTED ON December 21st, 2007 BY cygnus |
You may have clicked here expecting to see a list of programs we’ve worked with and terminated relationships with; well, it’d be easy to say anything from Linkshare or CJ, but that’d be far too easy and not entirely true since there are a few gems on both of those networks… plus you should really just figure that shit out on your own. No, I’m going to instead give you a list of the types of programs that absolutely piss me off. If you run an affiliate program or are thinking of starting one, you don’t want to make this list because you’ll lose out on ton of super affiliate business. For an example let’s use finger sandwiches as the product in each sucky affiliate program type (I’m sick of widgets and am hungry).
“Back Off I’m Starving!”
Please Test Us, We Pay 50% Less and Will Keep Spamming You Even After We Fail You
Some affiliate managers might as well be pushing bulk e-mail sends with the amount of spam they send; most potential affiliates need to be shown a program once or twice before a decision to test is made - if I’m getting $5 per finger sandwich sale at a good conversion rate, why would I even consider $2.50?
I see this mistake more with new affiliate programs that are misguided by thinking that an affiliate should be honored by such a proposal to make less money. What’s even worse is when the said affiliate gives the program a proverbial bone by running it for a little while, sees that the offer converts even less than expected, drops the program, and then continues to get nasty spam about how sorry he’ll be by not using the program anymore. I soooo want to name names here, but won’t.
The onus of research doesn’t just fall to affiliates; it falls to affiliate management too. Want to know how much you should pay and what kind of conversion rate is acceptable? Join some competitive programs, run them, and then tweak your own program to beat them. Otherwise, don’t waste my time, and certainly don’t make sales letter threats, because you absolutely kill any chance of a repeat test in the future.
Our Technology Changes Weekly
I’m all for the progression of technology as it pertains to improving efficiencies and overall profitability, but change for change’s sake drives me batty. Let’s say my programming team takes the time to create a lead system to feed you qualified finger sandwich purchasers using your query string post. That’s a quick thing to do, but if we have to implement that on a bunch of sites, it gets more time consuming given our penchant for testing and not botching the user experience. Want to change to a XML post two weeks later? Fine, that’s a better method anyhow, but still annoying. Switching to a web service two weeks after that? Getting on my terms a bit. Moving over to an off-the-shelf solution two weeks later? I just dropped you.
I’m Scared of Decisions, Run It By Legal
Some industries are so heavily regulated that some amount of legal intervention is necessary to keep the riff-raff out. However, it becomes evident when legal runs the marketing department. How does this work?
Aff Manager: Here’s the copy to use.
Cygnus: We like to write our own stuff, incorporating the key elements provided.
Aff Manager: No, it has to be word for word.
Cygnus: Um, then you’re not going to get anything that ranks; you’ve got 100s affiliates using the same crap copy.
Aff Manager: This is what legal has approved. Also, you can’t use the product name anywhere on your site and are required to provide exactly how you intend to market us.
Cygnus: Wow, so it sounds like you guys don’t like getting sales from affiliates.
Aff Manager: Isn’t there anything you can do?
Cygnus: Nothing that your legal would probably approve of.
Threaten To Sue, Oh Wait, It’s You!
This has happened more than once, where we agree to build out some white label sites specific to the various finger sandwiches a program offers. A few weeks go by and then we get a cease and desist for using their images without prior authorization or something along those lines. Simply by clicking the provided links a less litigious affiliate manager might have seen that the link was for her affiliate program, or heck, checking the URL list we provided to her a few weeks prior.
The couple instances where we acted against our best judgement and ran a program for the “I’m scared of decisions, run it by legal” types, this has been the outcome. Unreal that it occurs, and more unreal that they even bother to try making money online.
Flexible Payments Available: Every Other Month
Know why I hate the phrase “the check is in the mail?” It’s because we normally have direct deposit or wire transfers setup. The only thing worse than not being paid on the agreed upon payment schedule is not getting paid at all, and this is usually a precursor to just that. Back when CJ was synonymous with affiliate marketing it was an extremely frustrating experience making a finger sandwich sale on Jan 2, only to get paid for that sale on Feb 20th, unless the advertiser took the extra month option to scrutinize sales, making the payment occur on March 20th.
Needless to say, my favorite programs don’t just offer to pay weekly, but actually DO pay weekly… there have only been a couple of instances where we stuck with an affiliate program long term when a payment was skipped, and even then it was because we were notified in advance of some unforeseen financial hardships.
Butterfingers The Pixel Dropper
I’m not about to open up the can of worms that is how to best determine if a finger sandwich sale should be attributed to me, another affiliate, or the main vendor. Rather, I want to point something out that makes me angrier than a newly awakened fasting bear in the middle of a salmon shortage… drop a tracking pixel and you’re done, simple as that. Once an affiliate is comfortable with the volume of finger sandwich sales that is likely to occur on a daily basis, logging in to some tracking system to see that you have 0 sales because someone changed something is absolutely infuriating. Some programs will go so far as to not provide make good payments because they simply have no way of knowing how much you “really” did; I usually update their company names into Pud’s deadpool as I swap out to a competing offer.
So do you want to run an affiliate program that doesn’t suck?
- Research how much you should offer targeted affiliated based on your conversions, when compared to your competition’s payouts and conversions.
- Pick a stable technology for your systems integration and stick with it.
- Let affiliates choose how to market for you, limiting them only when absolutely necessary.
- Pay on-time, pay often.
- Never, ever miss a sale for any reason whatsoever. If something goes down, trip over yourself to keep that affiliate happy.
There are a lot of other things affiliate managers should do to be successful, but like stock picking, keeping it simple is often key… mind the basics and the rest will fall into place.
Cygnus
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POSTED ON October 26th, 2007 BY blumey |
So as the least technical-minded out of our happy little Heretix family, sometimes I have a problem communicating with the others when it comes to site functionality, PHP scripting, or really just about anything that isn’t graphic design related. When it is graphic related, however, I feel more at home. Visual communication is my turf, my passion, my area of expertise - or so I thought.
We have this great little website that has tons of content and gets lots of long-tail search phrases; in fact, just about 77.6% of total traffic comes to the site through an interior page (as opposed to the index). Realizing this, we launched an initiative to better monetize the interior pages since they were content rich but call-to-action wanting. I designed two CTA pieces that were flashy, Web 2.0-ish, and overall just a joy to look at (in my opinion.) MisterE, a coder by training and a Windows Paint enthusiast, said my CTA pieces wouldn’t convert and submitted two of his own - needless to say they were crude and an eyesore. To make things interesting, we had another one of our staff designers put out two more pieces, so there were eight ads total (I cheated and added two more, which brought me to a total of four.) Here’s an example of what they looked like (obviously the names, types of products, colors, etc. have been changed to protect the identity of the website):
Blumey’s Series
Design Notes:
Colorful graphics, bold colors, new-wave design techniques & features. Content covers a variety of topics ranging from savings to ease of use. Four CTAs of this type were produced.
MisterE’s Series
Design Notes:
No graphics, color palette deviates from site norm, makes use of commonly understood visual cues (e.g. obvious hyperlinks). Content emphasizes savings only. Two CTAs of this type were produced.
Additional Series
Design Notes:
Color scheme deviates from site norm, no industry-specific graphics used, and shapes feel out of place when compared to other on-page artifacts. Content emphasizes ease of use. Two CTAs of this type were produced.
The Rules of the Call-To-Action Game
A rotating script was placed in the middle of a content page for the top 40 most viewed article pages (we used the Adman WordPress plugin, which was a lifesaver!) The script would display each of the ads equally, and each ad was given its own sub-tracking ID to log total clicks, total sales, and overall conversion rate. This test ran for just under three weeks until we felt we had enough data to make a decision.
The Breakdown: Which CTA was the Most Effective?
Here is a breakdown of each ad’s conversion rate:
- Blumey01 - 4.4%
- Blumey02 - 2.1%
- Blumey03 - 18.8%
- Blumey04 - 21.4%
- MisterE05 - 36.0%
- MisterE06 - 50.9%
- Guest07 - 29.2%
- Guest08 - 12.5%
As you can see, I got my ass handed to me by a guy armed only with MS Paint and my staff graphic designer. While I do and will continue to maintain that they were in co-hoots somehow, the data doesn’t lie - fancy, graphic intensive calls to action may look nice, but they simply don’t get the job done.
Wrap Up: 7 Things I Learned About CTAs that Increase Conversion Rates
Number 1: Never overestimate your ability to know what will make a visitor jump.
Let’s put jokes about MS Paint vs. Photoshop aside for a second… this entire experience has really thrown my personal sense of design into question. I design sites / elements / ads everyday, but what I design is art, not calls to action. My sites may flow and be visually pleasing, but do they sell the product? This is an important question to ask yourself every time you’re about to greenlight a piece!
Number 2: Use shapes / colors / elements that deviate from the template as much as possible.
It will always be an artist’s inclination to produce creative that facilitates the flow of a web page, but therein lays the problem - you don’t want the page to flow at all, you want it to stop completely! A call to action must stick out so much that a visitor’s tendency to scan is broken, thus forcing them to focus on your message and process it accordingly. Shapes & colors that differ from their surroundings are a powerful way to do this (but you’ll have to bite your lip when you put it together!) If you’re in a design studio I would recommend having a colleague handle the CTAs for you (their style will likely be a lot different than your own); if you’re a single designer you might try designing CTAs that flow for a different site, then posting them on the site you were working on originally (this trick is one I use often!)
Number 3: Tout the positive experiences of other consumers, facts, figures, savings, etc., but keep it brief.
Having a graphic that sticks out will capture your visitor’s attention, but after that you’ve got to make your message pop. People are social creatures, so reassuring them with customer testimonials, the number of clients served, how much they can save, and so on can really make a difference. As my study showed, the CTAs with completely different looks and strong messages (xxx number of clients served was the favorite) perform the best.
Number 4: Use visual cues that everyone can understand.
This is especially important if you have a website that might attract the full gamut of web users, particularly the young vs. the old. Less sophisticated users may not understand anything but a good ol’ fashioned neon blue hyperlink, but then again so does everyone else. Using a universal symbol of linkage may look God-awful, but it sure does get the job done!
Number 5: Tacky works.
It pains me to say this, but tacky works. If you visit any news sites you’ve likely seen the dancing Frankenstein, break-dancing alien, or any number of oh-so-embarrassing yet insanely profitable ads served up by LowerMyBills.com. The fact that you can readily recall the exact ads I’m talking about is further proof - tacky is the wave of the CTA future. (Yuck.)
Number 6: Agitation is the key.
Put it all together and what do you get? Crazy shapes, wacky colors, references to 1998 web standards - so in short, agitation is key. You want your piece to jump off the screen and smack your visitor around a little; during that time they’ll check out your message and apply for your product. If you consider yourself a pretty good designer, you’ll know that you’ve created a great call to action if you body physically rejects you from FTP’ing the file to your website.
Number 7: Test and test, then test some more.
Had this little bet not been thrown out there, the website in question would be stuck with a series of ads that would have had a cumulative conversion rate of 11.7%. This means the additional 32% boost we got from trying out different ads never would have been realized, and that hurts your bottom line. Test your ads; test your coworkers’ ads; then test more ads after that! Every website is different and will have its own special needs, so keep testing ads until you can’t possibly boost your conversion rate a single point higher.
Additional Call-To-Action Resources:
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Blumey
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POSTED ON September 14th, 2007 BY cygnus |
Disclaimer: This is for educational purposes only; attempts at facial hair hijacking can result in unintended consequences, such as pizza face or handlebar mustache syndrome, which can only be resolved by selling said ill-gotten facial hair on ebay.
I know what you’re thinking, how could I hijack a beard of someone so well-respected and well-liked in the community as Rand from SEOmoz? I was young, and I needed the money… and I was sort of bored… and possibly intoxicated.
History aside, this article should serve as a tutorial on how to protect you from possible beard hijacks, proxy-based mustache attacks, and soul-crushing soul-patch theft. The best way to instruct you on how not to get your hair yanked is to take you inside the mind of a beardjacker…
Step 1. Identify your target. A quick image search on any engine can provide a lengthy list of possible victims, or you could just go here and try to take down a heavy hitter. In this particular case, we’ve settled on our buddy Rand.
Step 2. Probe for vulnerabilities. Not unlike hanging out at a sorority’s initiation party, or a wedding of career-driven single 30 somethings, probing for vulnerabilities is an easy way to determine if you have what it takes to take down the limping gazelle. In this particular case, it doesn’t look like Rand is properly protecting his mug. How do we know? We aren’t being redirected to “beard.randfishkin” when heading straight for “emptyface.randfishkin”. Furthermore, a slight error on his facial sub_domain setup is creating a mirror of emptyface no matter what we type in, whether it be “beardofzeus.randfishkin” or “beardedclam.randfishkin”. To keep this from happening to you, always make sure to choose the facial setup you want to be associated with and 301 redirect everything else via IIS or .htaccess. A few lines of code and some aftershave would have prevented me from going any further.
Click thumbnails for a slideshow.
Step 3. Attack. I don’t want to explain exactly how the 302 attack is going to take place, but let’s just say it involves a healthy amount of a link concoction known as propecia affiliate spam, hair clippers, chloroform and some time.
Step 4. Look at the results. Aren’t they beautiful? Here’s just before we started our 302 beard hijack. Here is shortly after Google mistakenly gave me Rand’s beard.
Click thumbnails for a slideshow.
Step 5. Check on your hijack victim.
Click thumbnails for a slideshow.
As you can see, the beard is much fuller and thicker on me than it was on Rand, due to what I can only attribute to superior facial authority. One by one his whiskers were whisked away, leaving a face only a mother and MysteryGuest could love.
Since this was meant to only be educational, I have since taken down the 302 beard hijack and I’m happy to report that Rand’s condition is much improved:
Cygnus
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POSTED ON September 5th, 2007 BY cygnus |
Firstly, thank you for all the kind words. Did we expect people to want the images on actual posters, t-shirts, mouse pads, rub on tattoos, coffee mugs, and personally signed edible underwear? It crossed our minds. Then it crossed our minds that diet Dr. Pepper really does taste more like regular Dr. Pepper. With that revelation we took a short break from actual work to goof off and give you something else to chuckle at.
What is blogging?
Mainstream marketing bloggers have about as many original thoughts as a beauty queen from South Carolina, but write as though they invented the wheel, microwave, and pet rock over the course of a weekend.
What is spam?
Is that site ranking above you really spam? If it is relevant to the end user, then it’s simply a site ranking above you. Either learn and adapt or pick a different vocation. Every well placed magazine ad, television commercial, radio spot, and sky-written message would otherwise also have to be classified as spam, and they aren’t even as targeted!
What are forums?
When every other thread has some dude named Parkeet typing in all bold letters about how a search engine banned him despite placing a dictionary’s worth of words into his meta keywords, how much do you really expect to get out of the experience? Take off another point when the same guy then claims to have intimate knowledge surrounding the solution to your thematic collision issue.
What is a guru?
Come, sit at my feet to worship, and bring money. Seriously, if you really believe that the secrets to success are even secrets at all, then you don’t understand how adaptive and personalized success can be. Find a mentor, find some peers, but stay the hell away from gurus trying to sell a newsletter with access to “secret tools that the search engines don’t want you to know about.”
What is SEO?
This three letter word somehow became dirtier than most four letter words, and lacks the positive connotation of being related to bodily functions. All this despite being essential for just about any site wanting some sort of search related presence. Thankfully, 3 out of 5 rocket scientists prefer FrontPage.
Cygnus
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POSTED ON July 12th, 2007 BY cygnus |
Welcome to Digital Heretix, the brainchild blog brought to you by a group of irreverent online marketers and the letter C… which is also for cookie. To kick things off, we wanted to look at a couple of terms from the online marketer’s lexicon of uselessness and show in poster format what those terms really mean. This post in particular with deal with the first five of these terms:
What is white hat?
A white hat will tell you that everything must be done by the book, that rules were meant to be followed, that content is king…and as you may have guessed, they areeither poor liars or simply poor.
* If you’re a search engine employee reading this blog, we’re so white hat that um…we tell people not to link to us and if they have to link to us to nofollow tags it because it might mess up the pretty SERPs. We’re so white that we glow in the dark; it’s either that or we haven’t seen the sun in a decade.
What is black hat?
For a good time, chat up a black hat. These guys know how to get rankings, albeit for only about 10 minutes. Technically, black hat means operating outside of the prevailing business logic by gently exploiting logical flaws, but for some reason it has taken on the meaning over the years of mass-produced junk content that is banned nearly as fast as it is created, all whilst wearing dark colored clothing and talking about taking on the man.
What is social media?
Enjoy puppet shows? Visit a social media site. The most entertaining aspect of supposed democracies is the lack of equal representation. Oh, and the encryption key is {censored}
What is link-building?
Enjoy being an attention whore? Like telling people the virtues of linking to your 90 character multi-hyphenated domain name, which is relevant to everyone from stamp collectors to forex and pharma?
What is affiliate marketing?
Speaking of whores…psst, wanna buy a watch? Have I got a deal for you!
Cygnus
