Mr Green

Fact: Affiliate managers get picked on like a red-headed stepchild

I’m guilty of it sometimes. It’s always a one sided perspective about pesky affiliate managers. We also have our two cents on how they can do better and mark all their flaws. However there is no voice out there from an affiliate manager perspective. Most communities are run by affiliates, forums are run by affiliates, blogs are run affiliates, the works.

I’ve always wondered what affiliate managers thought of affiliates, so I decided Interviewed 4 different affiliate managers. I decided to keep them anonymous for health and security reasons. I replaced them with sketched Star Wars characters (I’m not really a fan, just thought the sketches were cool). They tried to be as honest as possible but some specific cases could not be mentioned because it would reveal certain people.

1) What is one of your major peeves about affiliates?

 Affiliates that utilize our network as leverage against other networks for higher payouts (ie: constantly raising payouts without running volume to leverage insanely high payouts from us or others)   – Mr Rabbit

 Sometimes I think they are lazy! If it take 5 minutes to make money – they’re in…. If it takes 5 days – they’re out!  – Miss Vader

 What bothers me more then anything is when I put a whole lot of time and effort into helping them be successful and then they don’t give the same loyalty back to try and make us successful as well. Non-team players.  – Mr Hood Rat

 Assuming they will get things for free even if they don’t even know you or work with you. Also sometimes my affiliates refrain from telling me what their threshold for success is….so it’s difficult to gauge a campaign for them.  – Miss Leah

 They request a bunch of offers, and then never run them.  – Mr Creepo

 I never like the mindset of asking “What is the hottest offer?” – There’s never ONE amazing deal, a lot of factors come into play so you shouldn’t be blinded by a single highest grossing deal or what 1 publisher is doing with.  – Mr Quarantine

Fact 1: Affiliates are selfish bastards, we expect free services without giving back.

2) I know managers have a big problem with a lack of loyalty from affiliates. What is your definition of a loyal affiliate?

 An affiliate who utilizes our team, techniques, guides and newsletters shared by us to grow with us and not others.  – Mr Rabbit

 Easy for me to answer. A loyal affiliate shares what they are into – not so I can steal their ideas, but so I can take it, let it marinate, then come back with an idea that day … or maybe 6 months from now that helps everyone make money. Also, they listen to my ideas and do the same thing in return
  – Miss Vader

 Same as before, I see my affiliates as part of our team and our company. I understand needing to be part of a lot of networks and wanting to make as much money as possible. But one thing that most affiliates don’t realize is that buck extra they maybe getting by going direct to the advertiser or another network might be costing them a lot.  – Mr Hood Rat

 An affiliate who doesn’t flake for a five cent bump at another network after you helped them build their campaign.  – Miss Leah

 A loyal affiliate is someone who will come to me and tell me that they got a higher offer from another network and allow me the chance to match it before they just switch their links out. A super loyal affiliate is one that finds an offer they like and asks me to get it so they can run it with me.  – Mr Creepo

 Loyal affiliates stomp on those who jump around network to network over pennies. You should always split test your deals to multiple networks, but know who to work with lastly.  – Mr Quarantine

Fact 2: A loyal affiliate will give their affiliate manager every chance to work with them. Not be a sly creep and be persuaded by a 5 cent payout bump.

3) What are affiliates losing out on for not being loyal? Can you give some examples on how you have helped loyal affiliates exclusively?

 Well, simply put – affiliates that stick around and remain constant volume DO get special payouts that ARE above anyone else within the network. Not only that, I will pass far more information from our internal campaigns to them directly. I don’t shower them with gifts or kayaks full of men, we give them more money and specific techniques / traffic sources / private offers to make them more money.
  – Mr Rabbit

 I have built pages for loyal affiliates, I have gotten some sick deals and given them EXCLUSIVELY to one publisher, because they are loyal. I have given huge budgets to one CAT, although other affs would like to get their paws on them, solely because of the “favorite factor” aka loyalty that has been proven over and over. And I have sent some personalized gifts that you just wouldn’t think of buying with Hydras gift card.   – Miss Vader

 Definitely! Your affiliate manager is the guy that gets to see the new deals first. A lot of times there is caps on new offers. Say a new game install or a new leadgen. They’re always the best right in the beginning and we always hand them on private to our best affiliates first. Another example would be we’re building a lot of internal offers right now that are in new markets that no one has ever run in much. Margins are amazing, growth potential is amazing, conversions are amazing and they’re only going to a handful of guys to run. Another example, is if you stay in this business long enough you’re going to move past just being an affiliate. It always happens. So when you get to wanting to be an advertiser or network you’re going to want some help. Maybe with credit terms, suggestions on where to sell data, how to get processing etc. I’m always more then happy to spend as much time as needed with personal introductions to all my vast array of resources for my loyal affiliates.
  – Mr Hood Rat

 We have a lot of campaigns on private that we bring on for one publisher specifically and we build out custom pages or creatives for them. We go to bat against advertisers who try to get out of paying for a certain subid’s traffic, and we take the hit if that doesn’t work out to still pay out to keep our loyal affiliates happy.  – Miss Leah

 If you are one of my loyal affiliates (only a handful truly are), I will drop whatever it is and take care of your issue right that minute. I will also go to bat much harder with accounting and management to get you better payment terms, and higher payouts. I know that a lot of AM’s will tell you that they are doing that for all of their affiliates, but they are lying. There is no reason to put in that kind of effort for somebody who finds you as replaceable as a few keystrokes.  – Mr Creepo

 If you show me exlusivity, you bet I’m going to bend over backwards to help you progress as an affiliate, beyond the norm. When an advertiser skips their bill, I always feel its our responsibility as a network to cover our affiliates 100%. We have standard monthly rewards program, but for affiliates who are at certain tiers in revenue, I make it an obligation to send them a gift of their choice even on lesser volume. I’m also providing cashflow by doing dailies or paying twice a week instead of weeklies. I keep in mind volume AND trust. I also have written guides on how to promote and where on certain niches. I share these with affiliates who have activity in their account here and keep communication open.
  – Mr Quarantine

Fact 3: If you’re a loyal affiliate you will can get a lot more than a kayak full of men and gift cards from Hydra.

4) Other than being loyal and running a ton of volume, what are some ways affiliates improve their relationships with affiliate managers?

 Shooting the shit I guess.  – Mr Rabbit

 I know my personal favs are the guys that tell me what’s going on out there. I love a little intel from my peeps, what’s cookin’ elsewhere. That makes me want to do the same for them when I can. Also, referrals. When a publisher is inclined to tell their friend / colleague about the stellar job I am doing means a lot and puts them on the “nice list” which means Christmas time all year long .  – Miss Vader

 Call me crazy, but a friendly heads up before you switch your links to another network. I’m all for split testing, but if there is anything I can do to keep your I would like a fighting chance to do so. Cookies and Starbucks cards are always a plus too!  – Miss Leah

 Talk to us. ping us. call us. send us an email. if i have 100 affiliates in my account, there are 80 of them that i will never, ever talk to besides the initial “welcome to the network” email.  – Mr Creepo

 Keep communication open and check in with your primary point of contact and see what they can do for you.  – Mr Quarantine

Fact 4: There is no such thing as a clingy affiliate. Holla at cha boy let them know what’s going on!

5) What is your worst experience with an affiliate?

 I can’t mention specifics but I’ve had a few affiliates knowingly send poor quality traffic to networks and burn the network, forcing them to pay them (often times finding loopholes in policy / restrictions). Basic abuse of trust.
  – Mr Rabbit

 One publisher blatantly disregarded a few FTC regs, and the restrictions, guidelines of one HUGE CAMPAIGN. I get it, it worked, he got paid. It was probably easy. The problem in that case and I am sure many like it, is that one person ruined it for the WHOLE bunch. Lost the deal. A huge huge deal. We feed lots of families and employ lots of people. So when one affiliate is a rat bastard, it affects lots of people.   – Miss Vader

 I had a Myspace spammer send some traffic to us and had to settle with Myspace that was fun.
  – Mr Hood Rat

 It all began the day I met Mr. Green…  – Miss Leah (Editors note: Miss Leah has recently been fired from her network because of certain false accusations)

 One guy lied about where his traffic was coming from, then getting all the leads charged back and ruining a relationship with an advertiser. Fun.   – Mr Creepo

 Running 10k+ to a biz opp (rebill). They lost one of their merchant accounts and had to shut us down and freeze some funds. It turned out to be a lot of fake orders from people who didn’t exist and could not be reached…  – Mr Quarantine

Fact 5: Affiliate managers have to put up with a ton of affiliate rat bastards.

I was a little sad I couldn’t dig up any good juice from my managers. For some reason they all seem to be kind and considerate of everyone they’ve worked with. Good figure!

So my question to you affiliates

…are you a rat bastard, promiscuous affiliate or a loyal affiliate? Personally I’m a promiscuous affiliate in going through a loyal rehab.

If you are a loyal affiliate what is your technique to fend off managers interested in your traffic?

Thanks to the affiliate managers who contributed to this posted, you know who you are! Your secrets are safe with me . Bring on the gifts and payout bumps.

——————-

I didn’t forget you special ADHD readers! Here’s your summary:

Managers do not want: Freeloaders. Rat Bastards. Lies.

Managers want: Loyal business partners. Good communicators.

Managers will reward loyal affiliates with: Private/Exclusive offers, internal campaign knowledge and practically build your campaigns.

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*Warning: This post is a long one, like world record long, like the amount of time it take for Facebook interns to respond to emails long. You might want to warm up some milk and bake some fresh cookies before stepping into the deep end.*

Last week while I was procrastinating, surfing the web for a new sensation, I came across a post “How to Become a Millionaire in Three Years“. My initial reaction was “Sigh…let’s see what this guy is trying to sell.” But I was pleasantly surprised by the content. “Good stuff” my brain said. Basically it’s a list of general sound advice on how to become wealthy. Three years is just a number thrown out there, but it’s certainly achievable.

Anywho, whilst reading the list, I kept matching a lot of these points with my success in affiliate marketing. You can call me DJ Cut N’ Paste, here’s my affiliate remix to “How to Become an A Million in Three Years”:

“1. Surround yourself with smart people – Smart people whom are successful usually get there by doing the same and have an innate desire to help those do the same.”

I have a list of successful affiliates on my AIM and Skype that I bounce ideas off all the time. I’ve even got a few small mastermind groups that I’m part of. Forums and conferences are a perfect place to start. I would have never been this successful without these groups.

“2. Say no way more than you say yes - I bet almost every web entrepreneur has encountered this: You demo your product / explain what you’re doing and someone suggests that you do “X feature/idea”. X is a really good idea and maybe even fits in with what you’re doing, but it would take you SO FAR off the path you’re on. If you implemented X it would take a ton of time and morph what you’re doing. It’s also really really hard to say no when it comes from someone well respected like a VC or famous entrepreneur. I mean how the fuck could they be wrong? Hell, they might even write me a check if I do what they say!!!!! Don’t fall for that trap. Instead write the feedback down somewhere as one single data point to consider amongst others. If that same piece of feedback keeps coming up AND it fits within the guidelines of your vision, then you should consider it more seriously. Weight suggestions from paying customers a bit more, since their vote is weighted by dollars.”

Oh I love my affiliate managers I really do. They tend to get the beating stick more then they deserve. They present us with so many great converting offers. But, learn to say no. I’ve struggled to say no for a while. I’m still learning now, but I know that Mr Money lives in Focusland.

“3. Get as many distribution channels as possible - In general online business there is some weird sense that if you build something they will just come. That a few “like”+retweet buttons and emails to editor@techcrunch.com will make your traffic explode + grow consistently. It fucking won’t. Get as many distribution channels as possible. Each one by itself may not be large, but if you have many it starts to add up. It also diversifies your risk. If you’re a 100% SEO play, you’re playing a dangerous dangerous game. You’re fully dependent upon someone else’s rules. If Google bans you, you will be done. You could easily replace the SEO example with: App store, facebook, etc.”

I’m a firm believer in mastering a source of traffic. HOWEVER, if you do have a campaign that is burning hot on your traffic source, then allow an exception to scale with other channels.

“4. Go with your gut and do not care about fameballing – Go with what your gut says, regardless of how it might look to the rest of the world. Too often we (I) get lost in caring about what people think. It usually leads to a wrong decision. Don’t worry about becoming internet famous or appearing on teh maj0r blogz. Fame is fleeting in the traditional sense. Become famous with your customers. They’re the ones that truly matter. What they think matters and they will ultimately put their money where their mouth is.”

The top gurus have got this down to a fine art. They don’t care about the affiliate horde or bloggers that bash them. They care about the people making them money, their customers.

“5. Be an unrelenting machine- Brick walls are there to show you how bad you want something. Commit to your goals and do not waver from them a one bit regardless of what else is there. I took this approach to losing weight and fitness.  I have not missed a single 5k run in over a year. It did not matter if I had not slept for two days, traveling across the country, or whatever else. If your goal is to become a millionaire, you need to be an unrelenting machine that does not let emotions make you give up / stop. You either get it done with 100% commitment or you don’t. Be a machine.”

I believe that if you want something, you need to have 100% commitment mentally, not just physically. What I mean by this is that you don’t need to work for two days at a time, or stop yourself from traveling across the country. Just set targets. Hit them, work smart, and don’t let anything veer you off course.

“6. If you do focus on a dollar amount, focus on the first $10,000 - This usually means you’ve found some repeatable process / minimal traction. ie- if you’re selling a $100 product, you’ve already encountered 100 people who have paid you. From here you can scale up. It’s also a lot easier to take in when you’re looking at numbers. Making 1 million seems hard, but making $10,000 doesn’t seem so hard, right?”

Enough said.

“7. Get out and be social - Even if you’re an introvert, being around people will give you energy. I’m at my worst when I’m isolated from people and at my best when I’ve at least spent some time with close friends (usually who I don’t know from business).”

I play football around seven times a week. I go out 3-4 times a week. If I stay inside for long periods, I go nuts and start becoming “busy” and unproductive. Going out and being social also gives you a good chance to give yourself perspective on your business.

“8. Make waves, don’t ride them - There was a famous talk Jawed Karim gave from youtube. He described the factors that made youtube take off in terms of secondary/enabling technologies. I think they included (1- broadband in the home 2- emergence of flash, so no codecs required 3- proliferation of digital cameras 4- cheap hosting 5- one click upload 6- ability to share embed). Find those small pieces and put them together to make the wave. That’s what youtube did imho. The other guys really just rode the wave they created (which is okay).”

Riding waves will allow you to be semi-comfortable, but pioneering campaigns is the way to hit the big time. I’ve written about this argument here.

“9. Market opportunity - A million dollars is not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly is a lot if the market opportunity is not large enough.  Spend time on offers that have been around for a while and that appeals to a broad demographic. Forget about offers with caps. With traffic sources don’t spend all your time and effort optimizing a small demographic that you can’t possibly scale. Even if you put Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as founders in a new venture with a total market size of 10 million, there is no way they could become too wealthy without completely changing the business (ie- failing).”

We are lucky with affiliate marketing that we can have our fingers in a lot of small cookie jars. However, it gets tedious and hard to manage. My advice…spend time in niches where if you hit it right, you can win big.

“10. Always keep your door/inbox open - You never know who is going to walk through your door + contact you. Serendipity is a beautiful thing. At one point Bill Gates was just a random college kid calling an Albuquerque computer company.”

We all get flooded with affiliate network offers and traffic opportunities, most absolute garbage. But there are always a few delicious crispy nuggets here and there that make skimming through the junk worth it.

“11. Give yourself every opportunity you can - I use this as a reason why starting a company in silicon valley when it comes to tech is a good idea. You can succeed anywhere in the world, but you certainly have a better chance in the valley. You should give yourself every opportunity possible, especially as an entrepreneur where every advantage counts.”

I live in a country where I only know two other affiliates who have been successful in this industry. I believe my path to success would have been easier if I was living  in San Fran or LA. This point I’ve failed at big time.

“12. Stick with it - Don’t give up too fast. Being broke and not making any money sucks + can often make you think nothing will ever work. Don’t quit when you’re down. If this was easy then everyone would be a millionaire and being a millionaire wouldn’t be anything special. Certainly learn from your mistakes + pivot, but don’t quit just because it didn’t work right away.”

Things were not easy for me at the start. I had a tough time making my way. Learn from every failure. Look at it as a positive step forward. People get into am with the idea of instant success. If it were easy, affiliates wouldn’t be around.

“13. Don’t Be Emotional – Emotions can let you make stupid decisions.  It can make you not walk away because you’re attached to something.  Most importantly it will lead to indecision and a loss of confidence.  Put your emotions into your product or save them for your lover, family, friends,etc.”

Have you ever burnt a ton of money on a test campaign because you got excited when one conversion came up very early on? Or tested a campaign so briefly, because you had little confidence in yourself that you could make it work? I used to be like that, but over time became very apathetic. To not be emotional is easier said than done, but it comes with experience. It definitely helps a lot to not let your judgment become clouded.

“14. Don’t Leave Things Up to Chance - People feel that things will just work out due to carpe diem.  They usually don’t  People can be unreliable, deals can fall through, and shit will always happen.  Prepare for multiple scenarios and contingencies.  You can mitigate this by working with smart AND reliable people.”

Work with solid offers, solid traffic sources, and solid affiliate networks. No point in doing anything risky, there are many great safe options around to pick from.

“15. Don’t Get Comfortable - You will probably get comfortable somewhere around 200k, maybe less or more, but it will certainly be before 1 million dollars.  If you get comfortable you start getting off balance and having the hunger to move forward.  Reward yourself a little bit, but live as frugally as possible.  I have friends who have made some okay money, but blow it all away on stupid shit because they got comfortable.”

This is a ‘that’s a bingo’! Another relevant point is that with your long term campaigns, it is close to impossible to have a fully optimized campaign…keep pushing yourself.

“16. Don’t Skimp on the Important Things - When it comes to things that need to be reliable such as infrastructure, delivery, or even your own personal tech equipment – don’t skimp out.  These are the tools that ensure reliability and your product being delivered.  You can skimp on the office space, the desks, coach airfare, budget motel in mountain view,etc.”

Invest in good web hosting, ad servers and tracking. Make sure you get the absolute best fit for your campaigns.  As soon as you have a dodgy web hosting provider, you add more guess work to your campaigns. Absolutely basic common sense.

“17. Keep The Momentum Going -  I’ve had projects where things were moving a million miles an hour, then BOOM, they just lost a lot of momentum.  That is the worst possible thing you can have happen.  Keep moving the ball everyday.”

We’ve all had campaigns where we’ve had this initial burst of enthusiasm, completed half the campaign, then just left it to rot because a hot new idea came up. Stick with an idea and run with it. Failure is better than no result at all.

Here are a couple of points I’ve written more focused at affiliate marketing.

• 18. NEVER Ask “Do You Think This Will Work?” – If you get an answer 90% of the time, it will be plucked out of thin air. Do you know who is the only person that knows the answer like that? The Mightly Super Captain Test-it.

• 19. There Is No Best Network – So you did well with one offer on a network and became emotionally attached. Don’t get blinded and only running offers on your ‘buddy buddy’ network.  Let ole pops tell you a wee story…last year I ran a test for offer X on my favoritest cutest network, “network X”. That test failed. “Woah is me!” I said. How could this be? I had experience with similar offers. It didn’t make sense to ole pops. So I tried running offer X on network Z. I jumped out of my slippers when I saw the ROI was 1:4. It ended up making mid $xx,xxx profit.

• 20 Learn How To Filter -I’ve written over 20,000 words on my blog.  Some of posts are even contradictions.  As soon as you start adding in other blogs and forums you will feel like you’re being pulled in a five million directions.  You then become indecisive.  Take in information, and then filter the good bits while synthesizing them to be a part of your overall plan.  What works for person A does not always work for person B.

Did I leave anything out?

———–

Summary for my A.D.H.D readers (15 words):

Focus.

Work hard.

Test.

Meet the right people.

Keep to large markets.

Don’t get lazy.

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I hope you all enjoyed my free affiliate marketing report that I sent out yesterday. It was an example of lame guru link-bait that you’ve seen before, providing the feeling of hope and excitement closely followed by disappointment. No, I did not make a free report or ebook. No, I’m not going to give you my campaigns. No, Christmas is not coming early.

Gurus…gurus…gurus. In every field there is a ton of “gurus”. Out of these, I would say 2% actually know what they’re talking about (are currently running relevant campaigns), while 98%  just know how to talk/write about vague but luring content.

For a very long time, I couldn’t help but get frustrated at people that sell guru products.  I kept seeing self-titled gurus giving out terrible advice, boasting about a one off success they had, but couldn’t practice what they preached. We’ve all seen the incredible number of programs set up to hook newbies with empty promises. Just put three cute words together and you too can be a guru e.g “Make Monies Magician”, “Cold Ca$h Coach” or “Sneaky Snuffer Samurai”.

It’s always rubbed me the wrong way, I’m unsure why but it has. I guess when I was a newbie one of my biggest problems was information overload. And when your getting feed absolute crap from all angles , you just can’t know where to start.

So why is there this mindset that you need buy into training materials to be successful with online marketing?

Frankly I do not know. The BEST information you can acquire is real testing data.

Story time!!! When I first started out with AM two years ago, I was in a brain crew with about 8 other newbie affiliates. The rules were that we had to spend $250 worth of Facebook/Yahoo coupons within a certain amount of time or we would get kicked out of the group.

Simple huh?

Well out of those 8, two didn’t make it to the second round. They had one thing in common. They were stuck reading and buying into a ton of information which in the end, paralyzed them for taking any action at all.

The 6 that were remaining, are all still successfully doing AM now. As cheesy as it is, I made all my passwords “justdoit” so that I’d always remind myself to take action, instead of getting caught searching for the “silver bullet” to make things work.

Ok Mr Green, I am really new to all this and I don’t have a cool brain crew like you did, who are the legit gurus?

There will be a new guru product coming out every week claiming to make you even more richer than the last. No one is going to spoon feed you from start to finish. So if you decide to buy some guru stuff look at as a supplement to your own testing. Do not come into the game with an open mind to “make money online” or you will get screwed left right out. For starters aim to be good at one traffic source. The keyword here is FOCUS.

In no particular order pick one of these traffic sources:

• Pay per click
• Plenty of Fish Ads
• Pay per view
• Facebook Ads

Erase the other three from your mind.

I mentioned that 98% of guru products are crap, but there is that 2% that can help you if you are starting out. Here are the gurus I recommend for you to follow, because I know they actually know what they are talking about.

You gurus can fight over who's who.

Pay per click – Amish Shah and Jay Styles (The first time I heard about these guys was when they blogged about a successful $500/day Adwords campaign. The next day I saw 10 duplicates of that campaign on Adwords. They are some of the only gurus that give out REAL gems)

Plenty of Fish – Christian Weselak (I threw up a little inside when I saw his sales video for his Plenty of Fish product. However, he ended up giving me a free look into his product and I was very pleasantly surprised. He has done a ton of volume on POF and openly shares non generic tips)

Pay per view – David Ford (He hates being called guru, which is a good sign)

Facebook – Jonathan Volk (All I can say is we don’t get along at all, and I’m still recommending his stuff)

If you decide to invest and money into guru products just be sure that the guru practice what he preaches. Do you really want to waste money on being taught by a hypocrite?

P.S. -  If this post has a bit of an angry tone, I blame it on my two favorite teams being knocked out of the World Cup in the first round.

P.P.S. – Nana Gilbert-Baffoe just informed me that he was the original guru. So if you aspire to become a guru I would hit him up.

P.P.P.S. – I want to know which guru came up with this “p.s” technique. Is it really necessary? Did someone split test sales letters with and without? Or was it just gurus being sheep?

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Ok guys I gotta make this quick.

Stop whatever you are doing…

So I’ve launched a few products in my time, and they have done great (sold out). But this one is a level beyond anything out there…

MrGreen.am/Make-Green-With-Mr-Green.pdf

I had my friend Francis Williams check out my report. Francis is a HUGE time marketer…pulls in enough for a small villa every month. He said “Lorenzo you’re going to kill me! The tactics you have in this report are my bread and butter.”

Haha there is nothing much more to say but that people are going to miss out BIG TIME if they don’t act on this.

Get my free report now:

MrGreen.am/Make-Green-With-Mr-Green.pdf

P.S. – My friend Craig Dawson has got an INSANE money making system that he will be releasing in 4 days, I’ll keep you informed!

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Mr Green: Last week Justin Barr introduced to me to David Ogilvy (not physically, just theoretically). I was like damn I gotta post on this guy, he’s amazing. However my friend Ewoww aka Boom Boom Pow from AKMG said I wasn’t allowed to. She said she was his number one fan and was coming up with the best write-up ever on him.  Usually I only except guest posts from angry Russians, but since Ewoww lived in Russia and is pretty surly pre-coffee,  I figured this topic was something not to be missed.

So here it is ladies and gentlemen. I present to you a literary masterpiece by Ewoww on the outstanding advertising visionary David Ogilvy.

If you don’t know about Ogilvy, watch this video to get some perspective on how ahead of his time he is. He filmed it in the early 70s.

“Direct response is my first love, and later it became my secret weapon.” ~ David Ogilvy

Ewoww: I was inspired to write this post after reading (albeit a little post facto) Shock Marketer’s blog. To Mr. Shock de la Rock, whoever you are, your blog is tip top.

A longtime ago and far far away, before there was Don Draper and Roger Sterling, there was David Ogilvy. Mr. Ogilvy was the King of Madison Avenue, and the man knew how to sell.

Before my life in affiliate marketing, Miss Ewoww worked at a direct response advertising agency working on DR TV shows, radio spots, print ads, catalogs, and a lot of direct mail. And we were all fanbois of David Ogilvy.

“In print advertising, you know that long copy sells more than short copy. You know, that headlines and copy about the product and its benefits sell more than cute headlines and poetic copy. You know it to a dollar… Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.”

Sound familiar? There are a LOT of old school marketing tricks from that golden era of advertising that should be brought back (and I mean besides the 3 martini lunch). It’s time to go back to our direct response roots (and no, I’m not referring to that “blonde” Hydra AM <cat sound!>).

You can build all the scrapers you want but if you don’t start figuring out why something is working, then you’ll always be a step behind the innovators, chasing the trends. As Father Flipside called it (although I do believe that grandfathered in from Mr. Affbuzz, who originally coined the term)  the “WickedFire mindset.”

For example, let’s talk segmentation and targeting my affilifriends. Know who your product is for, and I mean specifics. Certainly not for everyone, not for people trying to lose weight, not for women trying to lose weight, but possibly about for first-time moms trying to lose the baby weight but finding themselves with no free time and exhausted more than ever desperate for a quick fix to get their bodies back in pre-bambino shape.

Ogilvy was already hip to your so-called farticle.

“It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement, and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look and read. Therefore, study the graphics used by editors and imitate them. Study the graphics used in advertisements, and avoid them.”

What you call linkbait or subject lines, the Direct Response world calls teasers and headlines.

Some headlines tips from Mr. Ogilvy…

• 1. Try to put news in the headline. The words new and free are the most powerful words that can appear in the headline.
• 2.  There are several other words that are effective: How to, Suddenly, Now, Announcing, Improvement, etc.  Headlines can also include emotional words.
• 3.  Include a promise in the headlines, and longer headlines sell more than short headlines.  Make the consumer curious.
• 4. Do not try to write tricky headlines, be simple and to the point.
• 5. Do not use negatives in the headlines.

Some more words-o-wisdom from the King of Madison Avenue:

• “The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.”
• “A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.”
• “Long copy, long headlines, address people as individuals, use plain conversational language (Ewoww note: aka the flog) and write your copy in the form of a story.”

I leave you with this my affilifriends… If this video doesn’t stir you ever the slightest, then take a knee spaceman and move on. Affiliate marketing ain’t for you. Enjoy ripping landers and trying to fill the post-continuity void. Get back to me when you move back in with mom and pops.

And if it did, go pick up David’s classic handbook, “Ogilvy on Advertising.” You’ll be glad you did!

Mr Green: Amen to that!

P.S. Last month I saw for the first time the advertising campaign “The Most Interesting Man in the World” by Dos Equis Beer. I was like damn that is awesome! Once again Ogilvy had something to do with it. It was actually a knockoff of his famous ad campaign: The Man in the Hathaway Shirt. But that is a story for another post.

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