Affiliate Project X Experiment

Back in December 2006, I started my Affiliate Project X Experiment.

The idea of the experiment was to use the Leech Tactic from the manual to sell Affiliate Project X.

At the time, I had already been using the tactic to successfully sell other products as an affiliate. It was, and remains some of the easiest money I have ever made. One campaign in particular makes over $400 a month on less than $25 ad spend and has been live for 4 months without me ever touching it again.

That?s my highest ROI campaign using the Leech. I also have dozens of others going that are making between 200-600% ROI.

All that to establish that the Leech if one heck of a profitable affiliate method.

The entry barrier is ridiculously low and it just becomes a question of repeating the formula as often as you want. I?ve only had one losing campaign out of nearly 20 and that was for lack of a decent bonus to offer.

I did have 2 campaigns that barely broke even though, and those are my Affiliate Project X Review and my Adwords Miracle Review.

The real goal of my experiment was to jump into the shark infested waters of selling Affiliate Project X to PPC traffic using the Leech method. I knew it was going to be all out war but I wanted the challenge and jumped in.

The results were interesting to say the least and some strong conclusions can be had from these findings.

The Ad:

Here is the ad I finally settled on, after heavy testing:

Affiliate Project X Scam Request FREE Missing Section See Results in this FREE Report NetFrontierMarketing.com/APX

This was the runner up:

Affiliate Project X Scam 6 Figure Income Exposed Read This FREE Report First NetFrontierMarketing.com/APX

Click through rate for the first ad was near 4% with a bid of $1 and 2.74% for the second with the same bid.

I tried other ads too but the keyword title plus the word Scam seemed to be the hardest hitting and the CTR proved it. For the rest of the ad, the repetition of the word FREE certainly helped and the promise of results combined with the involvement of customers ?requesting? the missing section is what seems to have created the winner.

I can only speculate though since the ?why? will always be a bit mysterious. I can?t ask people why they clicked on my ad and even then, they probably wouldn?t know the real reason themselves.

My Affiliate X Review:

I?m afraid I didn?t do a great job here, and with the infinite wisdom that hindsight affords, I can pinpoint my mistakes.

I could sit here and call myself dumb, but let me explain the shortcomings of the review.

First off, I wrote 3 templates of reviews as the bonus. One of them was generic and required a little more work from the customer and 2 were very exact and only required some copying and pasting. One of these converts like magic and the other doesn?t convert well at all.

My Affiliate Project X review was done on the template that doesn?t convert. Of course I didn?t know that at the time and I kept the same review up for testing purposes.

This is the title of the review:

?Affiliate Project X- Affiliate Secrets Exposed? ? The Special Report You Need to Read Before You Even Think of Investing in Affiliate Project X?

Good, but not good enough.

On most products, this would do fairly well, but promoting Affiliate Project X to non-list traffic that hasn?t been pre-warmed is a ?high-stakes Royal Rumble, winner takes all, no prisoners cage match affiliate smackdown.? Whew. Ya, it really is that competitive.

My intro was also a bit weak. The body section is a bit long for my tastes and the transition to bonus isn?t hard hitting enough. Plus the page is too ?salesy.?

This would have been a better title:

?Affiliate Project X is a Rip-Off. Experienced PPC Affiliate Spills the Beans and Holds Nothing Back in This Disturbing Report??

With this level of competition, you need to go all out and spit on the product right off the bat. Ptooey! You?re also promising intrigue and real info? Curiosity makes it so the reader must continue.

I?ve written some high converting sales copy before and in fact been paid to do it, but this was amongst my first ?affiliate pre-sells? and the dynamics are very different from a regular straightforward sales piece.

I learned a lot and I could probably double the conversion rate of this piece by re-writing it now? Let?s continue.

The other problems I faced while Promoting APX:

Low Traffic:

I expected to be able to spend hundreds of dollars fast so I could either really burn myself or make some cash. I was wrong. Over the last three months, there was an average of less than 40 searches per day on the brand name.

That?s a lot by ebook title standards, but less than I expected for such an explosive product.

Insane Competition:

For the past 3 months, there have been more ads showing up on the Google search network than there are searches for the term in a day. Even in the top spot, at 10% CTR, you are getting a handful of visitors a day. Not enough to do real damage unless you are converting sales like crazy.

It also makes the process of testing and tweaking rather slow and arduous since you need a week?s worth of data to have semi-reliable numbers.

False Competition:

This is the danger with a product like Affiliate Project X. The book sold extremely well and pushes its own affiliate program hard while providing some darn good tactics to do so.

That means hundreds of eager competitors with the right tools to take a stab at it. Not good.

90% of these people never make one sale pushing the product but they inflate the bid prices way higher than would normally be the case for a product with this many searches, and a commission that was under $50 for most of the campaign.

Not only is there more competition than there should be, higher bid prices than a more natural market would dictate, the promotion also falls smack in the middle of marketer territory.

There are a hundred or more people with ads around the product. Most of them aren?t converting at all. What are they doing? They?re clicking on the top ads to try and figure out who is converting and why.

That means a lot of clicks from people that already own the product and are only spying on your sales funnel. This will always happen in any market worth its salt, but when promoting a product about affiliate marketing that has an army of said affiliates behind it, it can get out of control.

Conclusion:

After having several people ask me about the results of the experiment, I decided to bring it to a close today.

I broke even. I swam with the sharks and the barracudas. I learned a lot from which I profited immediately by applying it to other campaigns.

It was all very worth it, in my humble opinion.

Here are my final conclusions:

? Copywriting remains the king of the jungle
? Your bonus needs to impress
? Stay away from promoting affiliate marketing ebooks that have a highly trained army of affiliates fighting for scraps. (do it at the launch, that?s a free lunch, but draw out once the feeding frenzy is over)
? Venture out of the over fished internet marketing waters. It?s a tough market with lots of competition from savvy advertisers. There are some easy cherries to pick just waiting to be harvested.
? A specific landing page strategy should be used. A story for another day: this post is already 4 pages long.

Alex Goad writes a regularly updated blog at Net Frontier Marketing where you can also find more information on Black Hat SEO.

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Affiliate Ads - How to Add Them to Your Website

Adding affiliate ads to your existing website is easy. But to be effective and increase your income, you must choose the right ones, and place them on your webpages in ways that work.

An affiliate is someone who hosts ads for a company in exchange for a commission of the sales. Each company sets their own commission percentage. And they will wait until you've accumulated a certain amount of cash before paying you.

There are 3 steps to getting affiliate ads onto your web pages.

1. Finding a company, product, or service.

2. Applying for affiliate status with that company.

3. Placing their ads on your pages.

Finding Your Affiliate

Start by going to the sites of companies whose products or services relate directly to your readers' interests and needs. Then check their home page to see if they offer an affiliate program. If they do, you'll see a tab, usually on the bottom of the page in small letters, that says Become an Affiliate. They might also use the term Associate.

When you click on the site's affiliate tab, you will be taken either to the company's application page or to an affiliate clearinghouse. For example, Amazon handles its own affiliates, whereas Sephora or Macy's will re-direct you to their clearinghouse, also known as a marketing network site.

An easier way to find a company to represent is to go directly to one of the marketing network sites, and apply there. Some popular networks are Clickbank, CommissionJunction, AffiliateShop, PayDotCom and Linkshare. The advantage? More choices. And it's fun to browse through all the companies, evaluate the styles and artwork of their ad links, and compare benefits. Often a company will have special promotions that you can pass on to your readers. 1800Flowers recently had a special on roses. If you were their affiliate, you could promote that special on your site to get more sales.

Applying for affiliate status is easy. Whether you go to a single company or apply through a network site, simply click where indicated. You will be taken to an introductory page, where you will fill out a form describing your website.

Some companies will take a few days to review your application, and some approve you immediately.

If you get rejected, simply choose another company and move on. Don't take it personally! For the most part, you are reviewed, accepted, or declined by a software program. Some companies simply want affiliates with a certain volume of traffic.

Once you're accepted by a company, you will have access to ads to place on your website. Each ad will contain your affiliate identification. You don't have to worry about being paid. The company or network does it for you. You will have a password to get to your account page, and you'll be able to check it as often as you like to see how your ad is doing.

Choosing an Ad Link

Ad link sizes, shapes, and formats vary widely. Choose from text only, small or large buttons, horizontal and vertical banners, and even flash animations. Some are colorful, some blink like slideshows, some are elegant, some are interactive. Find the ad links that blend with your site's look and feel. And make sure they support the content on your web page.

Amazon lets you set up your own link, and even build a bookstore that you title yourself. Other companies' ad links take readers to a landing page where they can get more information about the product. Gaiam, a lifestyle product company, occasionally offers links in the form of movies!

Placing the Ad Link on your Site

1) Once you've chosen a link, you'll see a small window with HTML. Highlight it and copy it to your clipboard.

2) Now go into your own site, and paste the code into the appropriate page. Often you can do this through your HTML, or by using a module plug-in. Check with Website-DoItYourself if you need help with this step.

3) Pull up your website's page view and see what the ad looks like. Is it where you want it? Is there enough space between the ad and your content? Does it enhance the reader's experience? Is it easy to see?

4) Choose an ad style that blends in with your content. Some experts say that a banner across the top of your page is effective, and others say an ad in the middle of the content works well. You want your readers to see it, but you don't want to annoy them. A huge, flashing button in the middle of your page is probably going to be offensive. But the same button might look good on the top right, with content text wrapped to its left. Don't be afraid to experiment.

Tracking your Progress

Your affiliate or network will have many ways for you to keep track of your ads. Don't be intimidated if you've never done this before. They all have excellent instructions, and responsive help desks.

As the days go by, note which ads - and which placements - are bringing in income for you. Get rid of the ads that don't get hits. In this way you can fine-tune your ads and bring in more income.

With affiliate ads, as opposed to, say, Google Adsense, income depends on your readers actually purchasing the product. Clicking on the ad is not enough. So you want to make your ad links context sensitive. And you want to offer your readers products and services that will enhance their lives.

There is no limit to how many companies or products you can represent as an affiliate. Just as you try different ad link styles and page placements, you will also want to try different companies. It costs nothing to become an affiliate, but don't take the process lightly. Do a lot of testing. With Adsense, you never ever want to click on your own ads. That's a law of the universe. But with affiliate ads, it's okay to click on the links to test them. If your performance is not what the company wants, they may place you in a lower commission category.

So enjoy the process, but choose your programs carefully. Once you're an affiliate, give it all you've got!

Suzann Kale is a technical writer and copy editor. She helps edit http://www.website-doityourself.com/ and has written many articles for science-oriented sites and hard copy magazines. She also runs a site on cosmetics and animal protection.

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