Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

Yesterday was kind of uneventful.

I drove out to the Hoover Damn in the morning and went on a tour. On the way back I went to the sleeziest casinos in the middle of the Las Vegas desert that I could find.  Quick Tip: If you like cheap table games forget the strip and drive into the desert.  I was playing 25 cent table roulette at a casino called The Hacienda.  After 2 hours of play I still left a winner (only $2 though, not a great ROI).

Early registration for Affiliate Summit started.  I decided to get my pass early because last year the line for check in was like a mile long.  Early registration was SUPER organized and I got my pass and welcome package very quickly.  A nice little surprise was that when I opened the welcome package, they had a book in there and I’m actualy published in it.  When I have the book available, I’ll pimp the name and where you can buy it.

I spent the next couple of hours bumming around the Rio and running into people.

Next was Dinner with PPC Bully.  It was at Del Friscos.  Not the best steak i’ve ever had but decent.  The weird part was at the end when they took the bill and split it.  I’ve never been to a dinner at Summit that the company hosting the dinner didn’t pay.  Just kind of odd.

After dinner, I headed over to the Buy.at party at Rain.  Paul Okenfold was the DJ so there was huge lines to get in.  There didn’t appear to be a line to just get into the party and there were 100s of people swarming the place waiting to get in so we just left and skiped the party.

Next we headed back to the Rio and met up with some people at McFaddens.  The party was bumping and there were guys grinding on each other.   Sounds gay, and in fact it is, but it was funny.

Next, Ian Fernando, Jason & I went for a wild adventure through the seedier parts of Las Vegas.

Good Times & More To Come

Please Note: I do receive a Press Pass to Affiliate Summit which get’s me in for free however, all statements and thoughts are my own opinions.

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler

Affiliate Summit West 2010 Las Vegas edition is upon us.  I can assure you, that you won’t see that same coverage of ASW10 anywhere but AdHustler.com.  Each morning I will be writing about whatever happened the day before.  if there’s drama or hilarity…I will Find it.  Follow my ASW10 experience.  Stay tuned and tell your friends to keep an eye on this site.

Please Note: I do receive a Press Pass to Affiliate Summit which get’s me in for free however, all statements and thoughts are my own opinions.

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler

Affiliate Summit West 2010 is only a few days away.  I’m sure affiliate managers are practicing their game faces in front of the mirrors and getting their business cards prepared.  If you are going to tell me or any other affiliate that you have the best offers, the best tracking, the best payouts and the fastest payments in the industry, cancel your plane flight and go see a movie rather then hitting up Vegas.

• I’m not interested that you have the same damn offers as every other network.
• I can get weeklies anywhere I want so don’t bother using that as a selling point.
• If you run on DirectTrack and say you have the best tracking just STFU.
• I almost guarantee I can find a better payout somewhere else or direct.

I think I can speak for most affiliates with the above points.  We are sick and tired of hearing the same old crap.  As an affiliate if you hear this crap you should call the affiliate manager out on it.  Tell them straight up that your not interested so they know how badly they’ve failed at trying to sell you, while your still around to see the look on their face.

I’m not sure if I can speak for all affiliates here but this is what I’m interested in.  Tell me your UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION (UVP).  What are you or your company going to do THAT’S UNIQUE for me that either makes my life easier or makes me more money.

• Tell me what UNIQUE & CONVERTING offers you have.
• Do you offer creative services to affiliates?
• Do you have a compliance department that can check landing pages for legal compliance?
• Do you have publisher training?
• Do you have software to help the affiliate marketing process?

You get the point.  Tell me what you have that’s unique and offers true value.  Don’t waste my time with nonsense.

Please Note: I do receive a Press Pass to Affiliate Summit which get’s me in for free however, all statements and thoughts are my own opinions.

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler

This past weekend I was at a meetup and was talking to my friend Rob Adler about how I created this search engine optimized site, it’s getting traffic and yet i’m making NOTHING on it because no one is clicking the links.  After I explained to him how tha page was laid out he said it made no sense and asked me to pull up the page.  We did and discovered that all of the links were broken.  All 10,000+ of them.

Now, to give you guys a tip like, make sure your links work is pretty obvious and barely worth a blog post BUT MAKE SURE YOUR LINKS WORK! Often times we have so much going on that we forget the most simplest things and lose money because of it.  It took a second set of eyes to realize such an obvious problem (the good news is that the day after we diagnosed and fixed this, the site started making sales).

There are various tools out there that you can use to crawl your sites on a regular basis and make sure that your links are working properly.  One tool is called Xenu.  Since it’s free, it’s worth checking out.

Do you have any tools you can recommend to other AdHustler.com readers?  Sound off in the comments

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler

Often times the affiliate game is played like this:

1) The affiliate decides the niche or offer they want to promote
2) The affiliate finds relevant converting traffic for that offer
3) The affiliate profits

Although there are more steps involved like building a landing page, tweaking the campaign, getting rid of non converting traffic etc, that is how affiliate marketing works in its most simple form.  What if you turn the traditional way of thinking about setting up a campaign and turn it on it’s head.  I call this the “Offer Matching Method”.

Most affiliates have a favorite source of traffic.  Often times this source of traffic is easy to get ads approved to and converts well (otherwise it probably wouldn’t be their favorite).  Rather then picking an offer and finding a traffic source to match, PICK A TRAFFIC SOURCE AND FIND AN OFFER TO MATCH.

Let’s use this as an example.  You have a friend who owns a popular forum about music.  The site gets tons of traffic but he isn’t good at monetizing so he sells his banner spots off to you.  Rather then picking an offer that you think matches the demographic, like ringtones, you make 20 different banners for different offers and let the stats tell the story.  Which got the most clicks and then more importantly the best EPC/conversion rate.  It could very well be an offer that you don’t expect.  You then know the best niche for that traffic source.  You also may have found several niches that work well that you can rotate so you don’t burn out your audience.

Analyze the situation above.  You don’t need a friend with a music forum.  This can work with most traffic sources.  You can even pick a demographic on facebook and make like 100 different ads from various niches/offers and see which performs the best.  Yea, there is an initial outlay of money that you will probably lose BUT, winners can make up for that by many multiples over time.

Have you tried this?  Will you now?

Ad Hustler | Subscribe To Ad Hustler