How To Increase Conversions By At Least Double-Digit Numbers

The following is a guest post by Max Vorobyov who is a conversion specialist. Max has worked with many CPA networks and their in-house traffic teams to help increase conversions on all in-house PPC, PPV and CPM Media Buys traffic. In this blog post, he shows comparative characteristics on how they managed to double the number of in-house sales by applying 3-level-deep conversion optimization strategies for three types of profitable traffic – PPC, PPV and CPM Media Buys. The three levels are – traffic sources’, creative and landing page optimization.

Each and every day countless millions of dollars, Euros and Pounds change hands in the online universe. Affiliate marketers is one of the largest forces that is responsible for a large chunk of the money being transferred every day between buyers and sellers.

However, not every affiliate marketer is a success. The purpose of this article is to help you become more successful. You will see how a CPA marketer optimizes (maximizes) conversions for different types of traffic. You see, good-old days when a marketer could’ve slap a page/web site together, send some traffic to it and 40 days later cash a check – are long gone now.

This article is not going to talk about SEO (search engine optimization). It will show you what other marketers are doing with traffic, creative and a landing page to literally make their fortunes.

Let’s see what could be done to minimize spend and maximize conversions on the first – traffic sources – level:

PPC: You only deal with one traffic source — a search engine that you buy clicks from. For the sake of giving a solid example let’s look in PPC’s purest form – search engine traffic only. The keywords you bid on are your traffic sources. Traffic source “red shoes” may or may not convert as well as “buy read shoes”. While optimizing a PPC campaign at the traffic source level – a CPA marketer will pause “bad” (non-converting) keywords and only leave those that convert.

PPV: The 800×600 pop-up ad is shown to visitors of a) specified web sites and/or b) specified keywords. Savvy affiliate marketer will watch his conversions like a hawk eventually disabling traffic sources that suck money out of his pocket and leave only those that put money in his pocket.

CPM Media Buys: Display advertising world with its wonders and mysteries. An affiliate marketer picks and chooses web sites (traffic sources) where his IAB standard size banners 300×250, 160×600 and 728×90 will be displayed. After gathering initial data, numbers will clearly show which individual sites (traffic sources) are producing and which aren’t. Sites where traffic doesn’t convert are disabled.

That was easy, wasn’t it? Now, let’s talk about optimizing the creative:

PPC: As we have agreed earlier we’d look at PPC traffic in its purest form – traffic from search engines. While there is a choice over text ads or display ads, search engines mostly display text ads. Smart PPC specialists split-test different ad copies and base their decisions – as to whether or not cut the ad off – on factors like CTR and Conversion Rate. Higher CTR means lover CPC but conversion is the king. Creative is optimized by split-testing of text ad elements such as headline and body copy. Best performing ads that get clicks and convert – stay. Least performing ads – get paused.

PPV: No easy answer because there is at least a dozen strategies affiliate marketers use to make money with PPV traffic. The way you optimize creative for PPV traffic depends on your business’ strategy. The 800×600 pop-up will open whatever page you direct it to. In some cases you may not need any creative optimization at all. Or, on the other hand, if an affiliate marketer is in list building or short-form lead generation – several custom 800×600 landers should be in rotation and constant testing.

CPM Media Buys: Creative optimization for CPM media buys is one step more advanced compared to the PPC example above. An affiliate marketer will need an AdServer. AdServer is a software application that delivers banner ads to the requesting web pages. It is used for displaying and tracking impressions of your banners. The rest of the optimization strategy is similar to PPC creative optimization. But, in CPM media buys case, marketer works with banners. The goal is to maximize CTR while maintaining profitable conversion rate. Banners with low CTR and low conversions get cut off. Banners that produce desired ROI get more impressions… New banners, based on the best converting design/message, should constantly be tested as well.

By now an affiliate marketer has only interested buyers coming from selected traffic sources clicking on the best performing creative.

The next big step is to improve landing page’s conversions:

PPC: Super-affiliates use tools like Google Website Optimizer, Vertster, Split Test Accelerator (to name a few) to increase the number of conversions that a landing page generates. Simple A/B split-tests or more advanced multivariate testing experiments identify the best converting combination of elements. Each and every element of a landing page like: headline, sub-head, product images’, call to action, background colors, audio/video – influence consumer’s decision to buy or not to buy the product. Each and every element is tested by super affiliates. “Killer landers” aren’t stumbled upon, they are engineered…

PPV: Once again – no easy answer. Some affiliate marketers are doing extremely well with direct linking landing pages supplied by the affiliate network. Others doing even better with custom host-and-post pages. Another group of affiliate marketers build huge lists or generate quite a bit leads using custom landers. I’d say the landing page optimization strategy for PPV traffic depends on the campaign’s as well as marketer’s personal goals.

CPM Media Buys: Multivariate testing script or software application absolutely must be used because A/B split testing is not enough. A couple of thousands of clicks will show what combination of elements work. I’ve seen a few landers where 80% of the content was loaded into the multivariate testing tool. It was basically a template full of JavaScript or PHP code where the new combination was showed and tracked every time.

See a more detailed example of how 3 levels of conversion optimization could be applied for the CPM media buys – read the special report with 59 screenshots spread over 25 easy-to-scan-through pages http://bit.ly/kOZYHO . No opt-in required.

Affiliate marketing is fun. It also requires a lot of work. However, the work you put in, the optimization you do can (and will) pay off many times over in the form of money, lifestyle and, most importantly, respect of other marketers.

Comments? Please enter them below.

Max Vorobyov

Better Internal Linking For More Free Traffic

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing two of my favorite guys when it comes to getting free traffic with SEO traffic. Jason Katzenback and Jason Potash have been building their online business over the last few years using free traffic from the search engines. They have created countless software and training programs to help people get more free traffic such as Portal Feeder, Web Mayheim, Traffic Kaboom, Comment Kahuna and now Auto Link Juicer.

You can watch the entire replay of the webinar below:

Here is the link to get Auto Link Juicer

I would love to get your feedback on this webinar in the comments section.

Gauher Chaudhry


When Internet Marketing Becomes Dangerous

Over the course of my Internet marketing journey the last decade, I have watched as many of my friends have had their families broken apart as a result of their online businesses.

It might be even happening to your own family right now without you even noticing.  Let me explain so you never allow this to happen to you.

Contrary to what you read with many sales letters, making money online is not easy.

In fact. many people who have finally achieved success online spent years struggling before they found an online strategy that worked.

But if you are currently spending countless hours every day trying to make money online, there can be an emotional and physical price to pay.

In the last three years, I have had three Internet marketing friends have their families torn apart because they didn’t see the tell-tale signs that their work on their Internet businesses were the reason.


Trying to make money online can be fun and challenging at the same time. But when it becomes an obsession, then you need to take two steps back to see how it is affecting the people around you.

I recently had a candid conversation with a friend who told me that one day his wife walked into his home office and told him she was unhappy with their lifestyle.

She wasn’t happy that he was at home making money online and these events seemed to have occurred when his online income started dropping.

By the time he realized that his time on the computer was pushing her away, it was to late. She had already made up her mind and wanted a divorce. Unfortunately, now he is left with mixed emotions and sadness that he won’t be with his children every single day.  I feel for him because he taught that he was doing what thought he needed to do to provide for his family.

The scary thing is that he didn’t even have a clue that she was unhappy and I think that this was due to a lack of communication.

I have also had friends who either quit or lost their jobs in the past tell me that this was a good thing because it would give them more time to work on their online businesses.  It almost always goes something like, “I have three months to make this online thing work because the money will run dry and my family will suffer.”  Wow, what a brilliant and exciting strategy.

They tell me to read the sales letters of all the major gurus who first hit rock-bottom (i.e. lying in a ditch with a whiskey bottle in their hand before that had their ah-ha moment and made millions online). Almost 95% of the time, this is not true and the copywriter is just trying to weave an inspirational story to get prospects to buy the product or service.

My advice to my friends who have very little money is always “Get A JOB!”  You will need the capital to funnel into your online business and stressing yourself out with dwindling savings will have a major impact on your marriage – guaranteed.

I remember spending some time at my father-in-law’s house and he had a plaque up on the wall that read “10 Rules To Success In Life.”

The very first rule stated, “Be careful who you marry because they will dictate 90% of your happiness and success.”

I look back at my last 12 years of marriage and believe that this is very true. If I hadn’t married my wife who is my very foundation and support for everything I do, I don’t know where I would be today.

She has supported me from day one and we are successful today, but not because of what I have done, but rather what we have done as a team.

There were times where she would take the kids out and many nights she watched a movie alone just to let me work. In fact, I used to spend 12-14 hours on the computer a day and she stood by me.

There were days that she did have her doubts about whether I would achieve success and whether all the hours on the computer were worth it, but she stuck through it with me.  But I also paid a price with my health as sitting on computer all day doesn’t do much for the body.

I tell many people today that you will struggle to make money online if you don’t have the “buy-in” of your spouse or immediate family.

Do you want to listen to constant negativity from people who don’t believe in your vision? Do you want to work in an atmosphere where people are waiting for you to fail so that they can say “I told you so…”.

Of course not and it becomes especially hurtful when it is your spouse who is saying these things.

But on the other hand, as a spouse of an Internet marketer, you don’t want to spend your life watching your spouse on the computer 10 hours a day.

You need to think about how your Internet marketing ambitions affect that people around you. At the end of the day, I believe that it is all about balance and communication.

Although my wife might not be actively involved in my business, I still make it a habit to tell her everyday what I am working on and what is going on in the Internet marketing scene.

Sometimes she thinks what I tell her is more interesting than a Hollywood flick… (i.e. “Honey, you won’t believe whose product launch just bombed…”).

I have now made it a habit to cut down my time on the computer and spend more time with my family. My children were even sending me subtle hints to get off the computer, which told me that I needed to pull back.

Sure my income has slightly dropped, but I don’t want to end up in the future having regrets.

I once went through one of Eben Pagan’s business trainings and he even said that the most important things that you can work on in life are making money, health and relationships.

Relationships are really the key to happiness and success. That is the relationships you have with business partners, customers, friends and most importantly, with your family.

Live for today because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

Comments?

Best wishes,

Gauher Chaudhry

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