affiliate programs

2017-10-242017-10-24

Affiliate Manager Tips

Do you remember this famous meme: “Being a good affiliate manager is as easy as riding a bicycle. Except the bicycle is on fire, you are on fire, everything is on fire because you are in hell.” Joking? No joking. Being a good affiliate manager is a real vocation. You need to be very flexible and carry out the responsibilities of advertising, marketing, PR and support managers altogether. This kind of profession requires the ongoing development and betterment from a person. You always need to look for new opportunities to time your affiliate program to perfection, learn new methods of promoting goods or services, attract new affiliates into the program and support existing ones. Cut a long story short, affiliate manager is a jack-of-all-trades.

If you are a newcomer in this profession, you might be interested in some tips from real professionals in the sphere. Dmitrii Zotov, co-founder of Affise Performance Marketing Software has decided to find out the answers on top requested questions from 3 affiliate managers from ones of the best affiliate networks.

What personal characteristics a good affiliate manager should possess?
Tanya, Zorka.Network: It goes without saying that affiliate manager is a good starting point for those who want to work in affiliate marketing. But you should also be prepared, that during your long way in the sphere you will need to learn the information that does not exist in books and implement this knowledge in working process. I do not even mention that you will be working overtime communicating with your affiliates even on your weekends. Affiliate marketing is the industry that never sleeps.

Olga, Leadbit: A good affiliate manager should be very stress-resistant, tactful and diplomatic. This type of job requires a lot of patience and good communication skills. You will be working with absolutely different people starting from talented in digital marketing students to highly professional publishers with 20+ years experience. Sometimes you will have to answer the same questions hundreds of times a day. So being patient is simply a must.

Ofer Katz, Affiliate-mob: First of all, a good affiliate manager should be a performance-oriented person, who is aimed at achieving high results in anything they do. Every day they take responsibilities to decide what would be better for a particular affiliate program, which affiliates to involve in there, and so many more questions. Thus, being able to make decisions and be responsible for them on behalf of the network is crucial. And surely, possessing some basic technical skills would be a huge plus. Otherwise, you will have to learn all these during the work.

How do you recruit affiliates into your program and how do you notice a real potential in an affiliate?

Tanya, Zorka.Network: Usually affiliates come to our network having fulfilled the application form at our website. Thanks to our long-term experience we managed to work out a really good number of questions for affiliates. It doesn’t require much time from an affiliate as well as allow us to see his or her potential. If a candidate has 2-3-year experience, mentions their strong points in verticals and GEOs and drives traffic from high-quality sources – this is, for sure, our guy. Even if a person has absolutely no practical experience in digital marketing, but is prepared theoretically and has a strong desire to develop these skills – welcome to our affiliate network! We are always ready to accompany affiliates on their way to success and discover a new “star” in any newcomer.

Olga, Leadbit: Actually, we are open to all the affiliates that have a desire to try their forces in promoting offers in Europe, Asia or LATAM. All they need is some basic knowledge about digital marketing, and we will teach them about the details. Then, we assess the quality of traffic they are driving. If everything is ok, we will do our best to provide them with all they need to increase their volumes. We have a lot of cases when beginners turned into top publishers.

Ofer, Affiliate-Mob: If you want to attract best affiliates to your program, you should stand out from your competitors first. In this case, you won’t need to look for publishers, they will be reaching you out themselves. Usually, it takes 5 minutes for an experienced affiliate manager to figure out whether an affiliate has potential or not. If a person keeps to the point, shows the desire to work and learn, this is a potentially good publisher. In the end, only the time will show.

How to build up such kind of relations with your affiliates when you help them increase their volumes and profit?

Tanya, Zorka.Network: The key is that you have to think how to earn WITH your affiliates rather than how to earn ON them. That is why you need to become a friend to your affiliates and help them to grow within the industry. As an affiliate manager you are aware of all the affiliate program peculiarities. You are contacting with an account manager and know the details about the offer from an advertiser. So you are such a great source of information for your affiliate. Thus, communicate with your affiliates, learn what are their strong points. And together you will find the way to increase their as well as your own profit.

Olga, Leadbit: First of all, you should build as friendly relations as possible so that your affiliates can tell you what they need to perform better and increase their volumes. Very often, attending key events in affiliate marketing industry, you meet your affiliates personally and get to know them better. So my advice is: use this opportunity to establish good relations with existing as well as with new affiliates.

Ofer, Affiliate-mob: Good relations are always built on the truth and mutual trust. Keep talking to your affiliates, be fair with them, tell them the truth even if it doesn’t sound good. These are so simple things, but they work really good.

Your top 3 tips for affiliate managers

Olga, Leadbit: All the publishers are like children, so you need to look after them and care about them. Besides, the better you build the relations between you and your affiliate, the more efficient this cooperation will work.

Ofer, Affiliate-Mob: Always tell the truth to your affiliates, be as responsible as you can, and try to know your affiliates better – and the success will not be long in coming.

Tanya, Zorka.Network: Be a friend to your affiliates, try to give them most of your efforts, knowledge and care, and don’t forget to keep smiling!

2012-03-09

When Affiliates Think Like Advertisers More Money is Made

The most successful affiliates think like an advertiser. An affiliate is, in pure terms, an extension of an advertisers marketing arm. That is, the affiliate is supposed to promote the advertisers product in a way that is consistent with the advertisers marketing plan.

But what happens in reality for the majority of affiliates is something far different. I am often asked the silver bullet question from affiliates: “How do I make money with your campaigns?” While this is possibly the most subjective question one can ask, I always answer it in the same manner. I ask them simply, “does the traffic you are generating now, have a connection with the products and services you are selling?”

This simple question stuns some affiliates while others “think” they are fulfilling the essence of the statement. Most of the time, an affiliate is simply posting up banners and text links on their site or in a media outlet hoping that the advertiser’s message connects with an audience.

What separates super-affiliates from the pack is the simple realization that a visitor to a web page is not there by chance. No one randomly clicks on links (unless they are 11) and no one buys anything unless there is a need. And that is where the difference between super-affiliates and everyone else happens.

What is the need of the end user? Super-affiliates create websites, social media pages, blogs and other forward facing properties that supply answers for needs. This leads to a deeper engagement of the visitor and conversely, more success as an affiliate.

Super-affiliates understand that to be successful you have to focus on the needs of the visitor and then fulfill those needs with relevant programs. In many cases, this means going beyond just placing a banner or a text link on their sites. It means that they invest themselves into thinking about the message that the advertiser’s campaign conveys to the end user and then capitalize on this by surrounding the campaign with content that supports the end user’s decision to purchase.

When an affiliate thinks like an advertiser they see the world differently.

They don’t join a million networks looking for the one that will give them the silver bullet offer that will trump all others.
They don’t simply place a link and forget it.
They don’t take the easy way out, because they know that a little hard work up front will pay off in the end.
They don’t make excuses.

What they DO is….

Create properties that give the end user value.
Create content that is consistent with the advertiser’s goals and messaging.
Develop user mailing or SMS lists that they can count on as an asset.
Extend the brand into niches where advertisers normally would not play or do not have the resources to attack.

The last point is the nugget that will breed success. Advertisers need affiliates to extend their message to fragmented audiences. Advertiser’s create affiliate programs in the hopes that affiliates will extend their brand message into deeper and deeper pockets of traffic. Most of which is too granular for an advertiser’s marketing and advertising budgets to get reach to. But by employing affiliates, they can get the reach to these disparate audiences. That’s what most advertisers think they are doing when they open their business to affiliates.

It is the 1% of affiliates that understand this and take action to seek out those niche audiences and then dominate them for a product or class of products and services. The affiliate that understands this is usually the one who is bringing home the largest commission checks.

2011-09-162011-09-21

Pave Way To Monetize Blogs

This article is the last one of a 3-part series in which bloggers participated in a revealing survey — sharing their experiences, joys, and disappointments with different facets of the performance marketing industry — as it pertains to how they monetize blogs.

In this third article we will hear recommendations for industry improvements that will help those new to affiliate marketing as well as any who struggle to make it work for them.

Rumbles

The recent earthquake that rocked the Eastern Seaboard had been in the making since the formation of the Appalahian Mountains millions of years earlier. To our utter shock, and without any warning, it proved how small events compounded over time can have cataclysmic outcomes of Richter-scale proportions. I was in New York at the time; the 2011 Affiliate Summit East concluded it 3-day conference just days before the earthquake rumbled through New York.

Natural events have a way of portending and mirroring our realities. The question on the minds of online business owners and business bloggers is how to successfully use affiliate marketing and performance marketing networks to monetize blog content. Will the industry fix the 7 fissures now present before the tremors erupt and explode?

Loudly Voicing State of Industry

Affiliate marketing is on the rise — Adam Riemer

Adam Riemer, speaking in his recap of the Affiliate Summit East 2011 Recap says affiliate marketing is on the rise. While affiliate marketing might be on the rise, and new players are storming the scene, one consistent rumble — becoming as loud as geological plates crashing together — is publishers’ voices making known the state of industry according to their experiences, perceptions, and realities.

Since this series began, blogger T.T. Mitchell has written a series of articles laying naked his affiliate dealings and Pace Lattin (editor here at PMI) has created a popular CPA review section.

Recommended Improvements

According to small business bloggers who attempt to monetize blog content, there are numerous areas of the performance marketing industry that could stand to be improved.

Believe it or not, the average small business person will forgive shortcomings in services and products. Why? Because they recognize the facts. They know they could be growing pains, represent the need for industry oversight, or smack of poor management. They understand that each of these scenarios is usually fixable with a little bit of chewing gum and elbow grease, or at least by having a hearing ear and a seeing eye . . .

While they are too busy with their own enterprises to dig into (and fix) the woes of affiliate marketing conglomerates and performance marketing networks, they did take the time to offer suggestions for improvement to those who have a hearing ear and a seeing eye.

Aside from a recommendation that the amount of affiliate commissions be increased, these are the top seven areas suggested for improvement. Addressing these areas will contribute to success for bloggers monetizing blog content.

quality control
internationalization
usability and the underlying technology
ethics, greed, unfair competition, and fraud prevention
education
customer service
communication

Improve The Quality

I can only assume they don’t check the products they authorize to be sold through their networks. Some of them are pretty bad and not worth promoting. — Adrienne Smith of AdrienneSmith.net

Remember the signature question asked by infamous former New York Mayor, Ed Koch? “How am I doing?” It wasn’t just a catchy phrase, it was an invitation for on-the-spot evaluation and the performance marketing industry could well apply it to both advertisers within the network as well as their own internal systems.

The outcry can be heard far and wide concerning ClickBank’s need to take a much deeper look at the products being put forth for general consumption. Business blogger Adrienne Smith, along with many others, places quality of products high on the list of recommended improvements. From suitability of products for their readers, customers, and visitors to the quality of the information provided to share with their audiences, bloggers declare this area one that needs focused attention.

The larger networks appear more interested in graphics than descriptive words so even the creatives have come under scrutiny. Bloggers seeking to monetize their content want a larger variety in banner sizes, and better designs (starting with less flash and more color choices). Further improvements that encompass interactive media and follow-on materials would be a welcome enhancement.

ClickBank might be on the hot seat, but they are not alone. The quality of products promoted within any performance marketing network must be taken seriously or they will die a slow death, no longer appearing in the pages where bloggers monetize blog content.

Improve Global Appeal

Paypal banned countries and tons of bloggers had big problems to collect their incomes. — Foodie Blogger, Gera of SweetsFoods

A number of bloggers say the networks should pay more attention to their dealings in countries outside their home area. Two things that rise to the surface in the international legs of programs are the need to improve access to certain types of products and the critical need to improve the number of options available to pay affiliates their commissions.

With respect to the latter issue, international bloggers cited problems with getting paid when networks sole-source PayPal services, especially since the number of countries it operates in has been dwindling over the last few years. Similarly, issues arise when the only options for payment are either bank check or direct deposit.

Improvements could be had in these two areas by making a more even selection of products available internationally, and researching – then implementing – payment solutions like Payoneer, which can integrate a network’s payment processing system with a solution that gives international publishers easy access to their commissions.

Improve Usability of Technology

Usability is key. The more improvements they can make in the area of making it easier to use their platforms the more money everyone will make. Gail Gardner, GrowMap

The underlying technology of any major system is in place to enhance efficiency and place relevant tools in the hands of those that need them most. Right?

Before attempting to create an educational component to show publishers and advertisers how to use the technology to meet their goals, the components of the technology should be solid, sensible, and simple. Right?

In simple terms, in order for small business bloggers owners to monetize their blog content, the tools must be easy to use. Unquestionably, bloggers cited this area for improvement. Apparently numerous advertisers could benefit from improvements in the underlying technology, too.

Here are some specific areas of improvement that would greatly benefit publishers:

control panel and account management
reports, charts, graphs
facilitate and archive communications
selecting and creating links for creatives
accurate click tracking, leads, and sales
access to help at the point help is needed

Able to withstand intentional malice, the underlying technology should further be bullet-proof, earthquake strong, withstanding many of the fissures that fuel the rumbles heard in earlier parts of this series.

Where Are We Headed?

Will the industry fix the fissures now present before the tremors erupt and explode?

Although we drilled down to get a clearer understanding of some of the recommended improvements, the others still bear deeper discussion.

Wouldn’t you say issues such as these can only be addressed by the industry policing itself, raising levels of standards, and adopting a caring attitude towards the publishers? That would at least be a beginning.

Thanks for reading. Add your voice to the discussion in the comments below.

Survey: Do Bloggers Monetize Content is still open. Share your experiences. Take this 5-minute, multiple choice survey.

Other Article in the Series

Read Part 1, Established Methods to Monetize Blogs.

Read Part 2: Survey: How Bloggers Monetize Blog Content.

2011-08-162011-09-16

Survey: How Bloggers Monetize Blog Content

A recent survey asked small business owners — who are also bloggers — how they use affiliate marketing and performance marketing networks to monetize blog content.

In the introductory part of this series I shared some general observations of the survey responses that provided a snapshot of thinking and experiences from bloggers’ perspectives about the overall state of the performance marketing industry. Surprisingly, a high percentage of the bloggers who took the time to answer this survey are also small business owners with wide ranging experience across different industries.

They are social media savvy, early adopters of emerging technologies, and influential across all segments of the blogosphere. While the sampling was small, this audience was international, spanning at least four of our seven continents. With the exception of a very few, none would call themselves “affiliate marketers.”

Survey Responses

Now let’s take a closer look at the two important questions asked in the survey and the bloggers’ responses about how they use affiliate and performance marketing to monetize blog content.

Best thing about performance marketing networks, PPC, and CPA networks?
Worst thing about performance marketing networks, PPC, and CPA networks?

Best Features

Best ~ Worst ~ Further Reading ~ Thanks

The best thing [about performance marketing networks, PPC networks, CPA networks] is the opportunity to make money without having to have a product. — “Mitch” Mitchell, T.T. Mitchell Consulting

Quicker Than Creating A Product

The general consensus is that affiliate marketing and performance-based marketing provides an easy way to make money without having to spend your own time and money to create a product. Overwhelmingly, the bloggers participating in the survey used the larger affiliate networks from which to select products that complemented their niches and appealed to their readership.

The main appeal to bloggers for this type of monetization strategy was getting paid for every sale.

Getting Paid For Every Action

For those preferring CPA (click-per-action) or PPC (pay-per-click) networks, the “sale” is the culmination of “the action” at the end of which is a commission. Using these networks, bloggers agree you can quickly and easily generate an income. In theory, there are no ceilings or caps. In their own words:

The best thing about PPC networks is that you get paid for every click.
As for CPA, the best thing is that you can get paid quite well for referring people who complete a sale.
The traffic [can] make at least two hundred a month from AdSense alone.
PPC marketing is excellent for start-up businesses that need to have income generated fast and have not yet established themselves in the free search engines.
Some PPC and CPA networks also have dedicated affiliate managers to help with any promotions.

Control and Choices

Supplemental to the allure of easily earning an income is the attraction of having choices. Those choices include having control of the advertisers you work with and deciding for yourself who gets what space on your blog. Of course, that control can be somewhat erroded by the insistence of some CPA networks that their ads sit in the choicest spaces, above the fold. But, for the most part, these choices remain in the hands of the blog owners.

Small business, especially an online business blogger with global reach, can earn revenue in a variety of ways according — no matter what his niche. Networks with a worldwide presence give bloggers in remote, obscure locales the same opportunity as those operating in major cities. Thus, if they desire to use any of these blog monetizing strategies, they too have choices.

Worst Features

Best ~ Worst ~ Further Reading ~ Thanks

Heck, is it my fault they can’t produce a page that converts prospects into sales? — Peter Pelliccia, WassUp Blog

Whenever there is a “best dressed list” not far behind is a “worst dressed list.” The same holds true for our subject at hand. While the good things about the industry give them a means to monetize blog content, business bloggers also had much to say about the worst performing aspects of affiliate and performance-based marketing networks. They spoke about payments, creatives (banners and ads), niche relevance, ethics, and customer service.

Further down you will see some suggestions for improvements in a much longer checklist; for now, these are the absolute worst offenders.

Payment Levels and Threshholds

The worst thing about PPC is the amount you get paid is pitiful. The worst thing about CPA is getting nothing at all for sending all those people to their landing pages. Heck is it my fault they can’t produce a page that converts prospects into sales?
Sometimes the weasels don’t pay you, then won’t respond to your email.
My personal gripe is Google’s $100 payout minimum. I never collected. I’m stuck at $74.00.

Customer Service

The top pet peeve of a disproportionate number of bloggers was either the total lack of customer service or the glaring disregard for the customer. Respondents cited instances in which advertising networks don’t have contact phone numbers, pass the buck, give them the run-around, and blatantly treat them badly.

Such obvious inattentiveness to basic tenets of responsive customer service was considered almost unforgiveable.

Creative Control

The worst thing about these networks is the three-way tension between network, publisher and vendor. — Mitchell Allen

Creatives are advertisments, banners created by the advertisers for your use on your sites. They come in a variety of sizes and oftentimes you get text versions, too. Using some magical formula and a bit of conversion wizardry, advertisers have decided that the sizes that convert best have nothing to do with my sidebar, or your’s either.

While you might have a choice of where you will place them, Mitchell Allen of Morpho Designs points out how you, as a publisher, “have no control over the creatives.” I understand what he means. As an example, I prefer 250×250 size banners because they fit perfectly in the space allotted by my WordPress theme for the sidebar. Unfortunately, if I want that size banner for most of the advertiser programs I work with, I’ll have to create it myself.

Niche Relevance

Either the super-networks are niche-challenged or they are so large small business owners and bloggers cannot find the products and services they want to promote to their website audiences. The search engines on these networks could use some algorhythm changes to make results more relevant.

Networks like ClickBank and Share-A-Sale mainly focus on ebooks, software, themes, and services. To ClickBank’s credit, it offers thousands of information products covering a broad market, so if you need information products, you’re covered. Or, if your audience includes business owners seeking software solutions or SaaS services, Share-A-Sale represents a large volume of advertisers who might have what they need.

As challenging as it can be to find quality products relevant to your customers, readers, and target market, affiliate marketer Ron Cripps highlights a hurdle that is specific to CPA marketing:

CPA Networks can encourage you to promote products and services that are not related to your niche as each month you receive a list of products to promote from your affiliate manager. — Ron Cripps, Affiliate X Files

What’s next in the worst dressed category?

Ethics, Standards, Corruption

Almost unanimously, those survey respondents who spoke on the issue agreed that ethics and standards were at issue. Bloggers like Gera (@sweetsfoods) are certain that a lack of “filters to sort out real proposals and scams” is the first place many networks fall short. Along the same lines, another business consultant alluded to the proliferation of offers that “mislead unsuspecting consumers.”

While the actual misdeeds are not so much the fault of the advertising networks and agencies that provide the means for bloggers to present these offers to their readers, the oversight certainly falls squarely upon their shoulders. (I’ve never seen a mechanism that asks for any feedback from a consumer who purchases or particpates in an offer managed by an advertising network.)

Many of the networks are riddled with crooks on both sides of the fence. — Gail Gardner, GrowMap.com

Strong opinions were expressed about the ethics, standards, and levels of corruption perceived to be in operation within the performance marketing industry. Listen in . . .

Many of the networks are riddled with crooks on both sides of the fence. There are affiliate marketers who use cookie-stuffing and toolbars to generate commissions for sales they did nothing to generate who steal from both the sellers and other affiliates.
There are offers being made that mislead unsuspecting consumers.
Networks without any type of filters to sort out real proposals and scams.
The corruption with the adware, theft and ripping off legit Affiliates and websites. Some of the network’s parent companies have begun buying Affiliate sites, including ones with adware. Not only are they competing with us, but certain applications have the ability to overwrite our cookies and steal our commissions.
You also sometimes don’t get paid if the merchant decides not to pay; there is no control if you will be kept in a program or removed. If you are removed you may end up having to change out thousands of links.

I mentioned in the first article of the series how one of my accounts was closed because the network decided my level of sales — on their behalf — was not up to snuff. That annoyed me to no end, but it was hardly as grievous as some of the situations reported by bloggers like Mitchell who had accounts closed and were never paid their earnings. This situation prompted him to blog about it, in Finish Line Steals My Money Then Cancels My Account.

Final Thoughts

The best and the worst, from bloggers’ perspectives, give us some food for thought. The good things are very good indeed. The not-so-good? It would be fair to say that every issue highlighted today can be satisfactorily addressed. Coming up in Part 3 are some suggestions for improvements in the affiliate marketing and performance marketing industry. And,we’ll see what bloggers had to say about which types of programs work best to monetize blog content.

If you missed Part 1: Established Methods to Monetize Blogs, you still have time to catch up before the next article!

Take the Survey

Are you a small business owner or blogger? Take the survey (it’s anonymous). Our collective voices could be the catalyst that effects a change for everyone’s betterment – especially the ability to earn a decent income from our blog content.

Please share your thoughts in the comment area below. Thanks for reading.

Special Thanks

Special thanks go out to the many bloggers who participated in the survey.

Peter Pelliccia, Small Business Owner “Blogging for fame and fortune”
Twitter: @AussieSire

Mitch Mitchell, Business Management Consultant, Writer
Twitter: @Mitch_M

Gera, Blogging Strategies
Twitter: @sweetsfoods

Mitchell Allen, Software Developer, Writer,
Twitter: @AnkleBuster

Gail Gardner, Small Business Social Media Marketing Advisor
Twitter: @GrowMap

Adam Riemer, Affiliate Management company, Washington DC Marketing Firm
Twitter: @RollerBlader

Alicia Jay, Transcription, Proofreading, Typing Services
Twitter: @TranscripESvcs

Ron Cripps, Affiliate Marketing
Twitter: @affiliatexfiles

Adrienne Smith, Achieve Success Online
Twitter: @AdrienneSmith40

And many, many thanks to all of our other small business blogging friends!

Take the Survey. Are you a small business owner or blogger? Take the survey (it’s anonymous). Our collective voices could be the catalyst that effects a change for everyone’s betterment.

Other Articles in this Series

Read Part 1, Established Methods to Monetize Blogs.

Read Part 3: Improvements Pave the Way to Monetize Blogs.

2011-08-112011-10-03

Established Methods to Monetize Blogs

Now you can hear the perspective of bloggers who monetize blog content using one or more performance marketing techniques, advertising networks, and affiliate programs. This is Part 1 of the survey results. Although informal, the survey gleanings are telling.

Never mind the ebooks and so-called special reports — these are the real inside scoops!

The Performance Marketing Challenge

Performance marketing has been a hit-or-miss affair for me. One of the big advertising networks even shut down my account because I had not made enough sales to warrant them being bothered. According to the literature and website marketing mantras, such networks exist to enable big companies to make more money by extending their virtual arms into the realm of a small army of publishers. On the flip side, the networks exist in order to help small publishers increase their income from websites, blogs, and other contacts with their readers and customers.

To my way of thinking, when the publishers actually make sales should not be a concern, since they only pay for performance. I’ve made a few dollars here and there. In some cases the challenges have outweighed the change but I haven’t abandoned the notion of making money through the performance marketing industry. It remains a part of my content monetizing mix.

Bloggers Survey

I realized I’d never asked the bloggers I read, follow, tweet, and chat with how they use affiliate marketing in the overall scheme of monetizing their blog content. I’ve certainly noticed Google Adsense advertisements on some of them, sought out those who display Amazon products, and recognized offers for web hosting and other services. While I could just speak from my own perspective, my curiosity grew and grew the more I thought about writing an article here at Performance Insider. I became convinced that other bloggers and affiliate marketers wanted to know the experiences of their peers as much as I did.

The Real Inside Scoops

To this end, today you have Part 1 of the results of an informal survey I conducted via email, Skype, and text documents of some of the most influential bloggers, Twitter users, social media mavens, and Google+ early adopters setting pen to digital paper right now. For good measure, also included are a smattering of long-time affiliate marketing experts who have worked within the performance marketing industry in one capacity or another.

The overall gist of the survey concerns how bloggers are using performance marketing — including PPC and CPA — to monetize blog content and how the industry can better serve them. The survey responses will be presented in three parts.

Are Bloggers Really Affiliate Marketers?

A number of the bloggers who were asked to take the questionnaire declined because they didn’t use any performance marketing activities to monetize content on their blogs. Interestingly, many of those who declined confessed they didn’t understand what performance marketing entailed. Others were in fact using a performance marketing advertising network but didn’t realize it was considered part of the performance marketing industry.

General Observations

The bloggers who participated in the survey represented a diverse group in their knowledge base, length of time on the scene, earnings, and experiences. Some bloggers were new to the industry, some reported not having good results after only a short while, some were somewhat indifferent to the entire industry and process. After reading the responses, these are my general observations. While there are not any real numbers attached, they provide a snapshot of thinking and experiences from bloggers’ perspectives about the overall state of the performance marketing industry. Keep in mind, these are not the results of a widely dispersed survey.

Over half of the respondents were small business owners, many with offline businesses
More men than women appear to use performance marketing methods
Newer bloggers seemed less certain as to what avenues are considered performance marketing
Ability to earn some income seemed to outweigh the negatives
Most bloggers think improvements are needed in more than one area
About half cited an experience that either negatively impacts or somewhat hampers ability to earn
A small percentage had some experience with a diverse marketing mix, including PPC activites and monetizing with CPA networks
Some bloggers indicated they were simultaneously using at least two of the larger affiliate networks
A percentage indicated the need for better creatives and variety in creatives as a factor of improvement
Several indicated corruption (or at least some dishonesty) was a part of the industry

Next Up . . .

Next up is a closer look at the first four questions asked in the survey and the bloggers’ responses about how they use performance marketing to monetize blog content. Thanks in advance to all those who took the time to share opinions and suggestions, and to industry giants like Adam Riemer and Ron Cripps, who provided a primer on getting started with CPA marketing.

Stay on the lookout for PART 2 – Survey: How Bloggers Monetize Blog Content coming in the next few days. UPDATE: Part 2 is now available.

*Image courtesy of Wordle.

Survey is Still Open. Please add your perspective and experiences. Take this short, multiple choice survey.

Other Articles in this Series

Read Part 2: Survey: How Bloggers Monetize Blog Content.

Read Part 3: Improvements Pave the Way to Monetize Blogs.