Strategic Marketing At Warp Speed

Here’s some BIG news! As of a little over a week ago, Tracking202 has been acquired by Bloosky, another company within our space.

You can read more about it on the tracking202/prosper202 blog: http://prosper.tracking202.com/blog/

Congrats to Wes, Steven, and all the guys at T202!

This is a guest post by Ad Hustler

Not long ago “Traditional Advertising Agencies” ruled the advertising landscape. Companies would hire these traditional agencies as their “agencies of record” and the agency would put together their media plans, do their creative work and negotiate their media buys. Advertising agencies would do all of this for a 15% commission of the monthly media buys. To give you insight as to how traditional advertising agencies make money here is a little tidbit of info.

Most traditional media sources have 2 prices. The net price and the gross price. Traditional media is supposed to give advertising agencies the net price and advertisers asking for pricing directly from the media source are supposed to be given the gross price. The difference between net and gross pricing is 15% and that is the agency profit margin.

The problem with this model is that the ad agency and the advertiser do not have their interests aligned. In order for the agency to make more profit, they have to push more advertising on their client. They have to encourage the client to spend more whether or not that advertising is actually effective. If they don’t encourage their client to spend more money, they aren’t acting in their own self interest as an ad agency.

Affiliate Networks & Affiliate marketers already see the future. The reason that the model works so well and is so efficient is that everyone’s interests are aligned.

Advertisers make more money when Affiliate Networks make more money.
Affiliate Networks make more money when Affiliates make more money.
Affiliates make more money when everyone else makes more money.

No 1 party makes more money without all of the others benefiting as well. The model works because interests are aligned.

Posted today on the FTC website:
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm

If you know anything about the Acai Berry or the Google Bizops going around then you will know that most of the landing pages that affiliates are creating have several testimonials included.  Here are some exerpts from the new amendment to these rules.  These were last updated in 1980!

Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.

Also this:

both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement – or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers.

Do we have to state that we get a commission per sale of a product?  This can be very interesting.  Will we now hear Oprah say “Acai Berry X paid me $1 Million to tell you their product ROCKS!” ???

I don’t know about you… But in my spare time I like to see what other people are talking about.  I like to read blogs and forums and find out what the “buzz” is in the Internet/Affiliate Marketing community.

Affbuzz.com was created by Justin Barr of San Francisco, CA. A few days ago I asked Justin why he created the site and this was his reply: “CAUSE I’M GOOD LIKE THAT!”… No I’m just kidding I never asked him that.  But I must say… I wish I was the one who thought it up.

Affbuzz is where I can go in the morning for 15 minutes to see what everyone else in the IM/AM blogosphere is talking about.  I can immediately see which posts are new so that definitely saves me some time. I can also see what the buzz is in certain forums.  The best thing is… I can do it all without opening up 100 different windows.

If you have a blog that you would like to see on affbuzz.com don’t be afraid to let Justin know.  Infact… I’ll help you out. Click Here and make a suggestion to Justin.

Here is my own little suggestion for Justin (Lets see if he takes this and runs with it or runs the other direction).  Set up CATEGORIES!.  Tabs at the top of the page that people can click to see just forums, PPC blogs, SEO blogs, Justings “Fav” blogs, Corporate blogs (CPA Networks and Search Networks).  Just a suggestion.  Might make my morning go a little quicker.

Justin you out did yourself on this one.  Excellent job and keep up the good work!

That’s right… Effective June 4th Google will no longer be protecting trademark terms. That means you can now bid on your favorite music artists, celebrities, and brands. This is HUGE if you run polls or even competing company offers. Here are my three favorite picks from the list of over 150 countries that Google will no longer investigate.

• United States (US)
• United Kingdom (UK)
• Canada

BAM That’s money right there. Unfortunately my #1 country isn’t on the list.

Click here to see Googles official list!

Click here for the article in Search Engine Journal!

Get those campaigns ready. It’s going to be a dirty fight to take over some of those trademarked terms!

You will need to remember to look at the original TOS for the offers that you are running.  Some offers make their own rules and you will still need to follow their rules on bidding on trademarked terms.

If you are out the the CPA sphere then this really won’t matter to you. Recently (yesterday March 2nd) C2M announced some major updates to the way that they will be running their business. Because of this, I was flooded with questions from about 20 different C2M pubs and other bloggers. Why they sent me their questions is beyond me. Maybe it is because Ruck and I are good friends. Anyways, here are my thoughts on the situation.

GOOD FOR C2M. That’s business people… Get over it.

If you haven’t heard about the announcement you can see it on C2M’s forum by Clicking Here. One of the biggest complaints and concerns that people are having is in regards to the now 2% referral commission.

Previously C2M had 5% referral commission. By lowering this commission they have added a rewards program. Now this rewards program only gives back 1% of what the pub makes. So lets do the math (cause some people don’t know how to do this properly). 1% commission goes back to pub if bench marks are met. 2% goes to referrer. That leave 2% (or a little more) going into C2M.

Now, this I’m okay with. And let me tell you why. I would venture to say I am C2Ms biggest referrer. I have around 200 people signed up under me. January was a HUGE month with everyone pushing Acai Berry and starting up those Grant offers. So was I sad when C2M made this announcement? No… not really. Infact I was happy for them. You guys have to remember, this is a business. We are all here to run a business. If you base your income off of one source then you are going to be sorry when that source dries up.

CashTactics is proud to hold a drawing on behalf of Direct Agents for not 1 but 2 FREE Affiliate Summit West Silver Passes to the conference event taking place on January 11-13, 2009. If I was to talk about one of the biggest turning points in my business, the first thing I would think of is the contacts I’ve made and the networking I’ve done. Making friends within the industry you are trying to build a business within is a very vital aspect in becoming successful and you should start immediately, it will put you way ahead of the learning curve! If you would like the exciting chance to win one of the FREE passes, please read ALL the details that are written below.

First, let me briefly talk about the company that is providing the 2 Free ASW passes. To be completely honest with you, I’ve never personally used them, at least yet. Their name is Direct Agents, they have been in operation for over 5 strong years and are continuing to grow rapidly. Just this year they doubled their office and client base, which says a lot! What I’ve noticed about Direct Agents, are the many exclusive offers they carry and each person I’ve talked to whether on the phone or through the internet has had an amazing attitude and focus heavily on one on one interaction with publishers, that’s a HUGE help especially for new affiliates. The biggest thing that has impressed me with them has been their selfless generosity, they didn’t ask me to write this, I actually offered because a company with characteristics like this is who you want to work with. Just an insider tip, some of their hottest offers right now is DirecTV, Fandango and USO. Each of these offers are goldmines!