Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

I was on Techcrunch last week and read an article about a startup called BO.LT – At first I thought it was just another URL shortener but it has a feature that may be a game changer for affiliate marketing.

You are able to give BO.LT a webpage.  It then makes a real-time mirror of the page and allows you to edit the page on the fly.  Imagine you see an affiliate offer that has a pretty decent offer page but you want to make a landing page with some more persuasive language on it.  Many affiliates already make landing pages that look similar to the offer page.  This would allow you to strip out all of the text and images you don’t like, add the text that you know will convert and then redirect them to the offer page.

It’s basically an on the fly landing page builder.  The only feedback that would make it better is if they would allow you to host the created landing page on your own domain.

Figured i’d share so you can check it out.  It’s currently a closed system that you need to apply to but I got in quickly.

Disclosure: Ad Hustler received ZERO compensation for this post.

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AIM Conversation:

Ad Hustler: hey {AM NAME} where in the system is {OFFER NAME} i dont see it and i may try something with it
Affiliate Manager: hey
Affiliate Manager: i have to get your own link set up for you
Affiliate Manager: what kind of traffic
Ad Hustler: thinkin of {TRAFFIC TYPE}
Ad Hustler: anyone doin well with that?
Affiliate Manager: ahh
Affiliate Manager: can’t run in {TRAFFIC TYPE}
Ad Hustler: ahh ok

Listen, if an offer doesn’t accept a certain traffic type, that’s cool, and I respect the advertisers wishes.  Doesn’t sales 101 say that you would suggest to me a similar offer that DOES accept my traffic type to try to get me to run SOMETHING with you?  I haven’t ran with this network since my old AM left so you would think they would try to get me to run again.  This was the end of the conversation.  Some affiliate managers take their affiliate relationships for granted and it can bite them in the ass.  Your job as an affiliate manager isn’t to just answer a simple question, it’s to try to solve the affiliates problem as best you can.  That’s what differentiates an average affiliate manager from a GREAT affiliate manager.

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I’ve owned a successful ecommerce site since before I even knew what affiliate marketing was.  One thing i’ve always done is offered extremely limited support.  My site has no phone number you can call and only a contact form.  The honest reason for this is that I never thought there was much of a need to deal with idiots asking idiotic questions on a daily basis.  It always seemed like it would be a waste of time since at one point I worked for an ecommerce site and answered the phone calls and saw first hand how idiotic they were.  Don’t get me wrong, we offer excellent service.  You get exactly what you order, delivered quickly and we accept all returns.  We under-promise and over-deliver on every order and that has lead to a very loyal customer base.

I was ordering something from another website and saw a live help popup.  It asked me if i had any questions and indeed I did so I typed my question and got live help.  I was impressed with the service and decided to look into the software that was hosting the live help popup.  It was a company called Olark.  I found it was really easy to install, full of features and cheap so a marketing test was born.  I decided to try this live help app on my ecommerce website.

To make sure things were handled appropriately, i dealt with all of the live help chats myself over the course of 3 days.  If anyone can sell someone something it’s me so I figured having myself handle the chat’s would give us the best chance of success (for a test, i’d never do it full time).

My Process:

1. Got an Olark account and installed the script (very easy)
2. I used a function called the “welcome assistant” which initiates a conversation with the website visitor after xx seconds.  I chose 60 seconds.
3. The “welcome assistant” would send out a random message from a bunch that I entered.  Example: Hi, this is {Name}.  Can I answer any questions or help you find anything?
4. If someone answered the “welcome assistant” i would get the message in my AIM client and chat there.

One of the things that is kind of cool about these chats is that you can actually see what the person is looking at.  Just like if you were a salesperson at a store and guide them towards the best product (or the most profitable).

My test results (this isn’t the most scientific of case studies):

Time: 3 Days (Approx 24 hours logged into live chat)
Chats: 16
Increase in Immediate Sales: 0

Observations:

• The vast majority of visitors have no interest in contact by the site, however, some obviously do.
• Most of the people who want to chat are tire kickers aka window shoppers.
• None of the people I spoke to actually bought.
• A few of the people I spoke to were super appreciative of the help I gave and told me they would only buy from us from now on – but they didn’t buy anything after our chat so either they are lying, or will be buying in the future (this is where tracking becomes difficult)
• People who initiate a chat seem to spend a LOT more time on the site then people who don’t.
• People want advice about what they should do or what they should buy.

Overall, i’d consider this test a fail for live chat.  Olark is a pretty sweet service though.  Maybe it would work better on a higher priced more complicated product or service.

I would like to try another case study in the future where I put the live help on an affiliate landing page and see how it increases conversions.

Have you tested live chat on a site you own?  If so, did it lift your conversions?

P.S. My Favorite Live Chat:

Website Visitor: do you ssuck dick
Me: Yes
Website Visitor: i love yo ass
Me: thanks it is pretty sweet
Website Visitor: i was just wondering since we have some cemminstree can i ha’ yo numba showty
Me: 867-5309

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Disclaimer: NO compensation was received for mentioning Olark in this post

Cars, Clothes, Money, Hoes…. That might be the mission statement for a lot of affiliate marketers out there.  I think that many affiliates overlook the friendships they’ve developed because of this industry.  More interestingly yet, I find that the affiliate marketing industry breaks down social groups and brings together weird mixes of people.

Case In Point:

There are probably tons of unlikely friendships within the affiliate marketing space but I always find it funny to observe Jason Rubacky & Eric Nagel.  Jason is a tattooed, crazy, hip-hop loving maniac who lives & breathes being ShareaSale’s well known affiliate manager.  Eric is more like that nerdy kid who loved computers in high school and got straight A’s in  every class.  Yet, these 2 guys are like peas in a pod and you see them hanging out at every affiliate conference.  I’m not knocking either one of them.  In fact, they are awesome people and i’m friends with both of them.  My point here is when did you ever see the tattooed maniac & the kid getting straight A’s hang out in high school?  You didn’t!

That’s the beautiful thing about this industry.  People don’t just judge each other based on appearance or lifestyle.  Their mutual interest and love of internet marketing bring them together.  I’m friends with tons of people who are nothing like me and at first glance I may not have thought i’d get along with.

Next time you are at an affiliate conference and you see some guy/girl who seems to be a loner, walk over and ask them to grab a bite to eat.  Maybe you’ll find a new friend who can also help you in your business.

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Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman is probably the best book on marketing and sales psychology that i’ve ever read.  When i heard that Whitman would be a keynote at Affiliate Summit West I was pretty psyched.  To be honest, i’m rarely up in time to make it to a keynote.  After long nights at Affiliate Summit it’s pretty hard to get up by 9am to see someone speak.  I set my alarm and made it in time to grab a front row seat to see the keynote.

Drew Eric Whitman is a fantastic and energetic speaker.  He keeps you engaged with him throughout his entire speech.  The guy knows how to brand himself.  He calls himself the Dr of Direct Response and comes out wearing a lab coat with his name embroidered on it which strangely increases his authority.  He does a great job getting his points across and I thoroughly enjoyed his session.  I was live twittering some of the points I took home from the session so here they are again:

• Show your product being USED in ads for greater response
• All caps slows readership By 11.8%
• Always put captions under pictures – they get 2-3x greater readership than body copy
• Times New Roman is the least preferred font online
• Sans serif printed body copy reduces ad readership by 53.5%
• Dont design with white text on a black background – it reduces readership up to 70%
• Direct peoples optical flows with arrows
• The shorter your return period the more returns you get
• In print: covers are the ONLY positions worth paying extra for
• Always sell benefits, not features. People don’t want drills, they want holes. They don’t want ovens, they want a hot meal.

There were a lot more great points but those were some that I remembered.

One of the purposes of writing this post was to give an alternate viewpoint for a lot of the people that think they won’t like the sessions at Affiliate Summit.  Yea, the sessions can be hit or miss.  I personally attended at least 1 session that I didn’t like at all but then I also attended this keynote which I thought was a huge value for anyone attending with a sessions pass.  My point here is don’t just follow the pack, take a look at who’s speaking at Affiliate Summit and see if it’s worth it to you before automatically dismissing a session pass just because people say it’s not worth it.

Did you see this keynote?  What did you think of it?

Disclosure: I attended Affiliate Summit West 2011 on a complimentary speaker/press pass.  No one asked me to write this post and all opinions are those of Ad Hustler.  No other compensation was received in exchange for writing this.

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