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| Super affiliate marketing - the Vinny Lingham interview | ||||
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In this issue: 1. Super affiliate marketing - the Vinny Lingham interview 2. The watercooler: stories of note in the past week 3. World Usability Day - Roundtable Briefing (free download) 4. Internet Stats Compendium, November 2005 5. JOBS: Latest jobs (including 2 wonderful roles at E-consultancy!) 6. Top forum post: Software for managing multiple PPC campaigns 7. Top forum post: Ad Management Solution for Slovenia |
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| 1. Super affiliate marketing - the Vinny Lingham interview | ||||||
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Vinny Lingham is the Founder of incuBeta, a world leader in Affiliate Marketing & Paid Search employing over 40 talented technologists & search marketers, which also owns Clicks2Customers.com, a well recognized Super Affiliate. Vinny's blog is available at www.vinnylingham.com, and he is also a regular contributor to Revenews and is recognised as one of the best search marketers in the industry. 1. How did you become involved in the internet and when did you start out with affiliate marketing? I used to run a search marketing department for an online casino back in 2001, which at that point, represented one of the largest paid search budgets of all time. I left the company in 2003 to start my own search marketing business, focused on affiliate marketing, due to the availability of merchants via platforms like CJ. 2. What are the core benefits of being an affiliate? What do you like / dislike? Benefits: Higher Margins than agencies, more freedom to test different ideas and tactics without consulting with clients. Dislikes: Dodgy tactics employed by unscrupulous affiliate marketers sometimes casts a shadow over the industry. Cookie tracking is also a problem, given that 40% are removed on a monthly basis, we often don't get full credit for our work. 3. Which areas do you focus on? Which sectors are hot right now, and which have proved disappointing? Our portfolios are balanced across a wide range of goods and services in many countries, to ensure that we have stable income. What's hot? Telecommunications What's not? Financial Services 4. Are there sectors that are more evolved than others, when it comes to affiliate marketing, or is it all about the affiliate manager in any given organisation? I don't think that there are particular sectors that are more evolved, but that it really depends on the affiliate manager. In most cases the work of the affiliate manager is outsourced and in doing that a lot of the value is lost. We prefer dealing direct with the merchant or via the network. 5. So what are the traits of a good affiliate manager? 1. Works long hours and is available anytime. 2. Compensates for errors on their end. 3. Notifies of site upgrades or downtime. 4. Provides constant feedback, support and business intelligence. 5. Strives to understand your business and works with you in order to enhance it. 6. What makes a good network? Do you have any advice for retailers and other businesses looking to start out in affiliate marketing? What should they be on the lookout for? The same way that if you look for something on a marketplace, you go to eBay, because Commission Junction is probably the largest network out there, merchants should look to "sell themselves" on the CJ platform. We have integrated our systems with CJ so it's very easy for us to roll out campaigns for their merchants. The key to building a successful affiliate business is having access to the affiliates, not building the network yourself, so I would steer clear of smaller networks and look more closely at CJ or Tradedoubler.
7. How important is Google to affiliate marketing? Are you more focused on organic search or paid-search? Google is the backbone of affiliate marketing at the moment, but with MSN integrating search into Windows Vista, that may change. We are purely focused on paid search. 8. How do the various PPC networks compare? Do you have any insight into the types of people that use the various search engines, in terms of demographics / numbers / propensity to convert? This is a very broad question, but I'll try to answer it. Your 1st tier engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL are where the bulk of your traffic and conversions should come from. Demographic targeting is difficult to do at present, but MSN AdCenter will be offering a solution to that soon enough. Search is ubiquitous, so that means everyone uses it. The end goal will be targeting very relevant ads to the right people, once the search engines can provide the data behind their audience. 9. The trouble with being an affiliate is that you are reliant on a totally different website to convert visitors to customers. How can you influence this? Are you happy with working on a CPA basis? We are happy working on a CPA or Rev Share. We start off with a test campaign, typically $5,000 to $10,000 and if we get a return on it, we look to invest more in marketing that site. We monitor campaigns in real time. Assuming that the conversions stay the same or improve, we increase the budget, but if it drops, we will drop the campaign inevitably. You can influence this by being proactive, and building technology to monitor and control your PPC campaign investment (I call them investments, because they are like an investment). 10. Any tips and tricks you can share with other affiliates? Subscribe to blogs, journals and other sources of affiliate news and keep up to date daily, there are opportunities arising every day. The moment you see an opportunity, go for it - but if you're not looking you won't find it. My blog's RSS feed is located at www.vinnylingham.com/atom.xml and I post news there daily, as well as links to other well respected blogs. Affiliate marketing is simply taking the risk to employ a marketing tactic for a company, that they either can't, won't or don't know how to do. Risk + Action = Reward / Success Rate 11. How much of the UK industry do you represent? How long has it taken you to become a 'super affiliate'? We estimate that we control up to 5% of the online affiliate marketing in the UK, based on the revenues that we generate for merchants. It has taken us over 2 years to reach this status, with a lot of blood, sweat, tears, money and technology. 12. What are your thoughts on the future of cookies / tracking? I'm not worried about the future, I'm worried about the present. We estimate that if the cookie problem is not solved, many affiliates will move more and more toward building their own websites, where they will own the customer, but rely on third parties to deliver the product, virtually. Affiliates will essentially become merchants over time. 13. Which emerging internet technologies and applications are you most excited about? I'm pretty excited about Videocasting, from a personal/end user perspective. From a business perspective, I think that we haven't even begun to explore the possibilities that are available for affiliate marketers through the use of APIs and the development of end user tools and services, which earn revenues via affiliate marketing relationships. Vinny was interviewed by Chris Lake, editor. |
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| 2. The watercooler: stories of note in the past week | ||||||
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Google shares soar through the $400 mark (SF Chronicle) MPs launch UK DRM inquiry (The Register) Wanadoo 'UK's number one' VoIP outfit, says Wanadoo (The Register) Online shoppers feeling safer (Scotsman) In-game ads become a reality with The Matrix (GameSpot) Bulldog targets SMEs (The Times) UK 'Most Wanted' domain name nicked (Boost Marketing) |
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| 3. World Usability Day - Roundtable Briefing (free download) | ||||||
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Download our free 6 page briefing that summarises the discussion points from the World Usability Day (3rd Nov 2005) roundtable, organised by the Usability Professionals’ Association, and hosted and chaired by E-consultancy.
View White Paper / Report » |
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| 4. Internet Stats Compendium, November 2005 | ||||||
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Our updated Internet Statistics Compendium is packed with all the latest research data, covering everything from cookie-blocking to conversion rates, and from brand metrics to broadband penetration. Updates include new data on email marketing, SEO (PPC and pay-per-call).
View White Paper / Report » |
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| 6. Top forum post: Software for managing multiple PPC campaigns | ||||||
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What tools are available to monitor and manage PPC campaigns across the major networks such as Google, Overture and Miva? Are there free admin tools or do you need to pay? This thread has some very useful suggestions...
View Forum Message » |
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| 7. Top forum post: Ad Management Solution for Slovenia | ||||||
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Tomaz Leskovsek, CEO of Mobinia in Slovenia, is after a recommendation for an ad management solution (licensed software) to run across a 100 publisher ad network - any thoughts?
View Forum Message » |
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