If you’ve ever been an affiliate I can guarantee you’ve said to yourself “SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS OFFER!” It usually comes after trying a whole bunch of different ways to promote an offer that you were convinced were going to work but didn’t. So what’s wrong with the offer? Is it tracking? Is it being scrubbed or shaved? Is there something less sinister going on?
It’s a hard question to answer. The first step an affiliate usually takes is to contact their dumbass affiliate manager and ask them “What’s wrong with this offer?” More likely then not the affiliate manager will say something to the effect of “Looks ok across the board.” Gee that was a lot of help! It puts the burden back on you and makes you feel like a retard because if everyone else is converting the offer, why can’t I?
Now, I’m not saying your not a retard, because you very well may be. All I know is that I’m not. This lead me to a little strategy for proving to myself, that it’s not me, it’s the offer, and having some evidence to back it up.
If you’re in this prediciment you are already throwing away money because your running traffic (paid presumably) to an offer that isn’t converting. If you are ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED it should be, heres what you do: RIP THE LEAD GEN PAGE AND COLLECT THE LEADS YOURSELF!
If you have any knowledge of creating a landing page, this is dead simple.
1) Take a screenshot of the advertisers landing page.
2) pop a form on it that looks like the advertisers original form.
3) Turn your traffic on and collect any leads that come through.
4) Compare conversions against the stats you have collected on the affiliate network.
This provides you with unbiased information about how the offer is performing. If you had a 1% conversion rate on the affiliate network, and a 15% conversion rate when you collected the leads yourself, you know something is wrong with the offer. You can do a few things with this information. You can provide it to the affiliate network so they have some information to back up your claims that the offer is fishy. The affiliate network, may or may not care. It depends on who youre dealing with. If you can’t get an amicable resolution or answer as to why the difference in conversion rates you can collect the information yourself and monetize it privately (Of course without infringing on the original advertisers copyrights).
Stop wondering why your offer isn’t converting, and start adding this method to your testing aresnal.
(Disclaimer: This Works On Lead Generation Offers Only, Not Sales Based, Although With A Lot More Work It Could Be Used For Sales Based As Well)
Hehe it’s pretty obvious now I’ve read it but I’ve never really though about doing it. Nice one 😉
@Xentech – Don’t feel bad, It took me quite a long time to come up with the super obvious as well. I guarantee you that as of now AT LEAST 90% of affiliates don’t try this.
Awesome post.
Interesting idea, but may as well go the route of just creating your own similar product and collecting the leads yourself from the start.
From what I’ve heard, it wouldn’t actually take too much capital, to say, start your own acai offer. And if it works out well for you, put that shiat up on some networks and get other affiliates to push it for you. Cha ching $$
Justin Dupre
Deeboo.com << Internet Marketing/Webmaster Community
@Justin – Good point and trust me, Ive thought of this, BUT, you cant monetize all sorts of traffic too easily without the right connections/starting a full fledged business. SOme you can, some you can’t.
Hustler, Another great post. This place is starting to me one of my favorite blogs for ACTUAL info about Affiliate marketing. Seems like the bigger other blogs get, like NCakers or UberAff, the less they post about actual Aff marketing tactics.
Can you elaborate on “monetize privately”? Short of creating your own product are there other ways to do this? Say collecting the leads yourself and then selling them off, sort of like it seems people used to do a lot of for Mortgage leads back in the boom days…
@DH – When we say monetize privately it can really mean anything but here’s a few ways that data can be monetized privately (it all depends on the offer of course)
1) Sell the data to companies who need it.
2) Use the data to build double opt in email lists. You can then monetize the lists over time.
3) Create your own very similar product and use that for monetization.
Depending on the offer there could be some really creative ways to make a buck without actually pushing your traffic into the merchant (who if your using this testing method, may have been ripping you off.)
Thanks a lot, Hustler, for this post. I’d been having doubts about a campaign I was running for a toolbar download. For three months I’ve been given the runaround and then I came across your post.
I immediately put up the identical LP on my server and let people download the exe (same exe) from my site.
Before this test, the Aff network reports gave about 8% conversion for my traffic.
After the test? 75-80%
Approx aff comm not credited to me over the past three months? 10 grand.
I just got started in Aff marketing about 4 months back so this is big shocker. And that’s an understatement.
I’ve confronted the network. Let’s see what they have to say about this. This issue may not get resolved but at least I’ve got my confidence back.
Thanks, again. I’m a subscriber from today.
@Solomon – Whoa, crazy story. This method totally redeems your confidence because it presents you with the TRUTH. I hope you win your fight.
This is something every affiliate should be doing but I would venture to say less than 2% actually are. Just like split testing anything else, this sort of testing will only lead to higher ROI even on campaigns that are already generating revenue. Now for when you feel like an advertiser/network is screwing you, this data is pure gold.
Gotta give Wayne credit, we pretty much came up with the idea together.
[…] in February I wrote a post about one of my testing methods to see if I’m being scrubbed, shaved or the like. This is another testing method I use in […]
[…] then decided to use the You Can’t Hustle A Hustler – Testing Method. I ripped the advertisers landing page and recreated the offer on a domain that I own and am in […]