Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

What What? A video of Doug E Fresh’s performance at Affiliate Ball at Affiliate Summit last week made it on TMZ?

Link to TMZ

If you weren’t at Affiliate Ball you missed a killer party!

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• Parties where there is a chick hanging from the ceiling pouring drinks are awkward.
• Kim Ann Curtin (You’ve Probably Read Her Articles HERE) did an interesting session on “UnNetworking.”  I liked her interactive format and I liked that she breaks the mold over what most people do in their sessions.
• I like being able to hook people up who can help each other, and NO, not so I can take a piece of the action like many of the scumbags i’ve met in this industry.  Pay it forward baby.
• It almost seems like some of the affiliate networks are leaning towards BEING the “Super Affiliate” rather then trying to recruit/service tons of new affiliates.
• I always like when a company “get’s it.”  There has been this law firm at the last few Affiliate Summits called Ifrah Law.  They had a big ad outside their booth that said “1 weird old tip to shrink your legal liability….” with a parody of the famous weight loss ad that it’s obviously based off of.  I’m sure that it’s rare that you are going to find a law firm or any company for that matter that actually GETS IT.  Seems like these guys (and gals) do.
• Brian Hawkins should start his own ecommerce business for unusual pants.
• I like hanging out with both CPA & CPS affiliates for different reasons.
• It doesn’t seem promising when a website spent time trying to get me to run their offer and then when I go to the offer the domain is expired.
• There was a gang of like 50 old people walking around the expo floor who were obviously sold some bizopp that takes them to Affiliate Summit.  I followed them around a bit to hear what was going on and feel kind of bad for them because I doubt many of them will ever make any money with this.  “What’s HTML?  Do you build websites?  I have $10 to spend.”
• Shawn Collins and Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit are some of the most giving, generous & genuine people in the industry and i’m proud to be a part of their show.

Any observations about Affiliate Summit?  Comment!

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• Tons of what I would consider large well known affiliates are completely gone from this industry.
• Almost no one turned out for what I would consider one of the most important sessions of this whole conference “Testimonials in Social Media” yet no one misses a party.
• “You are legally responsible for not just what you SAY in an ad but what the consumer takes away from that ad” ~Jeff Greenbaum
• “A review is not necessarily an endorsement – it’s the relationship between the review and the advertiser that makes it an endorsement” ~Jeff Greenbaum
• Typical results are what must be marketed not only the best of the best results.
• People think “White Boarding” is code for smoking pot.
• Multiple female affiliate managers have told me that they have been severely sexually harassed at networks.  Kind of pathetic if you ask me.
• Sometimes you can’t judge someone or something right off the bat – I was about to blow someone off when they were pitching me and then realized what they were pitching had more value then i thought.
• Affiliate Summit attendance is up year over year despite the economy.
• I see bad things coming for a couple of affiliate networks…
• Keep your friends close and your enemies closer

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As usual I will be providing coverage of Affiliate Summit East NYC 2011 right here on AdHustler.com.  If you’ve ever seen me do this before you’ll know my style is not traditional.  I will simply post my observations and any nuggets of information I deam worthy to share.  If you run into me, you may become an observation so beware!

On a side note I will be speaking on a panel about “How To Pitch Your Company At Affiliate Summit” TODAY at 10AM.  This is a weird topic and i’m going to be making stuff up off the top of my head so be sure to check it out.

Who’s going to be at Affiliate Summit?  Be sure to say hi.  See you there!

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I’ve been designing a lot of lead generation offers for various types of businesses lately. Designing a lead gen offer isn’t as easy as it sounds. A lot of the time it’s the OFFER part which get’s complicated. I do a lot of lead generation for complex sales. By complex sales I mean expensive items like cars, homes, medical procedures etc.. Sales that don’t take place over the internet with a credit card or with an instant decision. The problem that comes with creating an offer is HOW are we going to convert a potential prospect into a lead?

Let’s take for example an expensive motorcycle. Let’s name this motorcycle the “Hustler 1.” The Hustler 1 costs $22,432. Its an awesome bike. It’s not unique though, all of the motorsports shops sell the Hustler 1 for just about the same price. If there is a price difference your talking about $100 difference, nothing major. So how do we generate a lead on an expensive ass item with no real unique properties. Not only is the bike not unique, neither are the businesses selling them. They all have the same value propositions.

The reality here is that you have 2 major strategies to sell this sucker:

1) The Straight Up Info Sell: You design a landing page that has all of the information about the bike including the price and really anything that the prospect would want to know about buying it. You include a contact form and phone number and hope the price is competitive enough to generate a lead.  If you actually DO have a killer price compared to the competition, this tends to do well.

2) Withhold Information Sell: You design a landing page that withholds information that the potential buyer really wants to know. For instance a statement like “Ride the Hustler 1 For As Low As $149/month.” Although the bike is still $22,432 maybe a prospect will look at the $149/month and say, “Hey I can afford that, whats the details about this deal?” – Once they are thinking about affordable payments they aren’t worrying as much about the actual price.  Then maybe they fill out the form or make a phone call inquiring about this deal.

Both ways are perfectly legitimate ways of generating a lead or making a complex sale. They are just totally different strategies.

Here’s where the conflict of interest comes in:

• You as the lead seller or internet marketer usually want to get paid for your services (a lead) – The more leads you generate the more monies you make.

• The seller of the item wants to sell their items – The more items they sell the more they can spend on coke & prostitutes.

• You have a vested interest in seeing the seller succeed because the more items they sell the more leads they buy (sometimes, not always).

• The seller of the items has no vested interest in seeing you succeed because quite frankly they don’t really care about you.

So which style of landing page is better?

With the direct “Straight Up Info Sell” often times you WILL sell product.  Since the page is kind of a salesman in itself, it relies very little on the business selling the products to “make the sale.”  A lot of the time once someone turns into a lead off of this style of landing page, the sale is already made because the person has all of the information (or most of it) to make a decision.  This is good for the business, not so good for you as the lead generator.  The reason it’s not as good for you is that there are a lot less leads generated but the quality tends to be a lot higher.  Less tire kickers, more buyers.

With the “Withhold Information Sell” you can generate a lot more leads.  You’ve peaked people’s interest and now they become a lead. to get more information  Personally if it were my product being sold, i’d probably want a landing page that was more this style.  Although the quality of the leads will be a little lower at least you get the OPPORTUNITY to work these leads into a sale instead of never making any contact at all.  The unfortunate thing is most businesses (especially on a local level) have a hard time selling.

As the lead seller you can make money either way.  You can charge less per lead for a higher quantity of leads or more per lead for a lower quantity of leads.

I hope this opened some peoples eyes about how to generate leads for a complex sale.  Any questions?

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