Mobile Affiliate Marketing Basics

Mobile is now officially the most overhyped latest buzzword in the Affiliate Marketing world. There is quite a buzz going on over a few courses touting the riches that can be made with mobile marketing. If you have been sucked in by the hype, well one can understand as the numbers are quite compelling. -

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Mobile Marketing For Affiliates: 3 Rules of Engagement

Mobile advertising is taking off. Billions of ad impressions every month are generated on mobile apps, mobile landing pages and mobile pay per click. And until now, most affiliates in the US were locked out of this market, because all the major CPA based networks have been located in Europe and Asia. The market here in the US was not large enough to be able to scale to the numbers that larger brands can measure, but that is changing.

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With uBuildApp You Can Dominate iPhone Apps for Only $99

OK, so I am sitting with my 11 year old daughter last night, and she is showing me the 60 or so apps she has downloaded for free into her iTouch. Of course at 11 she is giving me “tude” about my even questioning her judgment on which apps she has. Unfortunately for her, I

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Mobile Affiliate Marketing Basics

Mobile Affiliate Marketing Basics

August 25, 2010No comments

Mobile is now officially the most overhyped latest buzzword in the Affiliate Marketing world. There is quite a buzz going on over a few courses touting the riches that can be made with mobile marketing. If you have been sucked in by the hype, well one can understand as the numbers are quite compelling.

- Right now only 20% of the US population (65.1 MM) carries a smartphone.  (according to Canalys: http://www.canalys.com/pr/2010/r2010033.html)
- In the next 18 to 24 months we will more than likely see smartphone usage will reach 40% market penetration. According to Gartner, that’s roughly 1.78 billion by 2013 users accessing the internet through their phone. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10434760-92.html)
- Carriers such as AT&T and T-Mobile want to sell more data plans, this is why they are pushing devices such as Droids and iPhones. That extra $30 a month over a feature phone subscription adds up to billions in additional profits. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/att-data-plan-caps-phone-_n_597285.html)

This all means there is going to be a huge explosion of people using the mobile internet and applications, as well as more sms messages and mobile email. For the affiliate marketer there is an opportunity to apply what you have learned from desktop marketing to capitalize on the mobile space. But you’ll have to adjust your thinking.

Mobile is a different environment.
Mobile phones are mini-computers, this is true, but they are used in very different ways than a laptop or a desktop computer. Mobile users are trying to answer a question that they have a need for an immediate answer, such as the weather or checking on a sports score or an address. The usage time is normally not as lengthy as normal computer use. Also, big surprise here, the screen is a lot smaller. And lastly, a majority of searches are of a locally based nature. Combining these elements, gives a marketer a very short window of attention from the viewer.

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Mobile Marketing For Affiliates: 3 Rules of Engagement

Mobile Marketing For Affiliates: 3 Rules of Engagement

July 01, 2010No comments

Mobile advertising is taking off. Billions of ad impressions every month are generated on mobile apps, mobile landing pages and mobile pay per click. And until now, most affiliates in the US were locked out of this market, because all the major CPA based networks have been located in Europe and Asia. The market here in the US was not large enough to be able to scale to the numbers that larger brands can measure, but that is changing.

The smartphone (iPhones, Droids, Blackberry’s , Windows 7 mobile devices, etc.) is now 20% of the mobile handset pie accounting for 45 million US users according to comScore, and in the next 24 months, that number is likely to reach 40 to 50% of the market in the US. There are 26 million iPhone and Android devices in use in the US alone, and 40.8 million worldwide, according to an AdMob Report.

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When Will Performance Marketing Grow Up?

When Will Performance Marketing Grow Up?

March 29, 2010No comments

Performance marketing is experiencing a growth spurt, but a few players would like to see it remain in diapers.  As with any industry, maturity takes discipline and a consortium of players to self regulate and set standards by which the industry can agree upon as rules of engagement.  This doesn’t mean to stifle innovation and creativity, but rather as a way to ensure that certain standards are agreed upon as a gateway to growth.

The recently updated FTC guidelines concerning online marketing campaigns are a good start to see where this industry is headed.  Campaigns, and more to the point, the advertisers’ themselves and the networks that run the offers that are compliant with the guidelines, have seen gains of 15% or more in conversions.  In addition, internet retailers have seen their customer service costs drop and their Transaction Processing partners steadily increase their credit processing limits.

Compliance is NOT a dirty word.  In fact it is actually saving the industry from having greater oversight and regulation from the US government.  As with any industry, automobiles, technology, pharmaceuticals, consumer & business services, consumer packaged goods and just about any vertical that does billions of dollars in revenue, they have pulled together to create industry groups that frequently release their own guidelines concerning how business in their industry should be conducted.  In the performance marketing industry it has been the Wild Wild West since the day DirectTrack was introduced into the market.

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The Insider Game – Building The Perfect CPA Campaign for Advertisers

March 15, 2010No comments
Jim Lillig's Insider Game CPA Advertiser Webinar

Click it for more...

Are you pissed? I am.

For the past several years, after I sold my shares in the company I started back in ’97, SK Intertainment (the owners of the wildy popular MrSkin.com) I looked around for the next hottest trend. And I thought I had found it in Performance Marketing. But alas, I was wrong.

I found that using the campaigns I found in Commission Junction and LinkShare totally unfocused and for the most part a waste of time. Why? Well, I can tell you it hinged on several key elements of the campaign sales funnels including:

  • Pages with phone numbers on them and no way to track sales through the phone
  • Pages with multiple links on them, which to me seemed like “holes in the bucket” that the traffic I was sending would just slip right through.
  • Sales funnels that did nothing to focus the end user on the goal of buying a product
  • And worst of all, crappy percentage based payouts

Then Jason Wolfe opened up DirectTrack and everyone with a decent offer and a list of affiliates (and there weren’t that many decent offers) became an instant mini-CJ. That was the beginning of CPA Networks as we know them today.

And now there are well over 300 Cost per Action networks that publishers have access to. Some are more of an agency/network model that provide services to Advertisers such as creative services, list management and media buying as well as finding high quality publishers to drive traffic to their offers. Others are mostly interested in cross-publishing (cross pubbing) campaigns from other networks. Both models are necessary for this space.

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With uBuildApp You Can Dominate iPhone Apps for Only $99

With uBuildApp You Can Dominate iPhone Apps for Only $99

February 24, 2010No comments

OK, so I am sitting with my 11 year old daughter last night, and she is showing me the 60 or so apps she has downloaded for free into her iTouch. Of course at 11 she is giving me “tude” about my even questioning her judgment on which apps she has.

Unfortunately for her, I found several apps she had no explanation of why they were on there.  Under much protest, we removed them and to her surprise she found out that her aging father might actually have a clue about this Internet and mobile thing.

But while I was looking at the plethora of junk she had accumulated, it occurred to me that almost any business can benefit from using this form of connecting with their clients. I know nothing groundbreaking there.  And then again, is it only for the 20% that download apps and only those who have iPhones.  But that universe is about to explode in June when Apple releases the iPhone from its ATT shackles.

According to Larry Dignan at ZDNet, Apple’s market share increase from 2008 to 2009 has almost doubled from 8.2% to 14.4%, respectively for worldwide smartphone sales by OS. This means they are expanding.  And as Android and

BlackBerry catch up, it seems the App Universe is not going to slow any time soon.

So this brings me to the point.  If you missed the initial boom on the Internet, you may have yourself a bona fide way to cash in now.  Here’s why:

  • There will always be more cellphones than computers. (86% of the US population own cellphones according to the FCC)
  • Free Internet access is becoming more available in more places, and the spectrum for data is expanding constantly (this is why Apple wants to play with more than ATT in the US).
  • Apps can (should) be a gateway to additional engagement with customers.
  • In the fragmented media world that we live in, marketers must be adapt to the “pull” mentality that consumers now apply to content.  This runs counter to the traditional “push” leverage that having limited channels available to consumers was able to foster.
  • 20% of smartphone users download apps via the mobile web at present, but this number is growing as consumers become more comfortable with their phones and more consumers upgrade to web enabled larger screen smartphones.
  • Payment methods tied to a “store” make small payments (under $10) a no brainer for engaged and interested end users.
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