Monthly Archives: February 2012

It’s that time of the week for your knowledge batteries to be filled, but first here’s a couple of news items for you. In discussion with the owners we’ve decided to have a custom tracking system coded that will be an industry leader when complete. It’s going to take a lot of money and some time to fully develop but will be worth the wait once it’s fully operational. This probably won’t go into effect for another 4-6 months but wanted to keep you updated on our ever forward strides to make our systems the best in the industry.

I have been getting emails from more of you trying to get going, good on you for doing so KEEP IT UP. However, it’s not enough to just email some questions and gain new knowledge. You must act on that knowledge for you to see an impact on your bottom lines.

A big shout out to all of you who are actively referring friends/partners/etc to us we are working as quickly as possible to get them all active with us. Don’t forget if you know someone that is an active affiliate and is looking to split test networks have them get set up with us and experience the ACP difference.

Enough of the shameless promotions now on to the guide:

GUIDE:

This week we cover Chapter 4 of Influence: Social Proof. If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past 5 years then you know that big business and all info product gurus are all up on the social media bandwagon as the next big thing in marketing and where the future of marketing lies. Well, if you’re a business banking on your Facebook fanpage to save your marketing campaigns I hate to tell you you’re in for a big disappointment. A recent study showed, on average, only 1.2% of fans to a Facebook page even interact with the page after liking it, let alone actually purchase something from that particular company. What’s happened is, like lemmings, every business has drunk the same Coolaid saying that FanPages are the next big thing without actually doing any market testing first. In fact Facebook groups (if done correctly) will have a ton more interaction on them then Pages. This will segue nicely into our topic on social proof from the book Influence. If everyone’s doing it then it must be the right thing to do, right? WRONG! (At least sometimes).

Here’s my favorite quote from this chapter: “We view a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.” Meaning the more people are doing something a certain way, the more that certain way must be the correct way of doing that something.

How do we use this ingrained shortfall in human evolution to our marketing advantage? Well, there are a ton of ways, here’s a couple of ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

For a dating creative you can add the line, join the xxxxx thousands from (their: city) that have already joined. Remember if everyone’s doing it then I can be a success doing it too.

If you’re going to employ testimonials (which you should if it’s a landing page and legit) tailor them to your target audience. If you want to target stay at home moms use stay at home mom testimonials not guys or even couples. We relate better to people exactly like us, it makes us want to do what they do because we’re so much alike.

Using terms like: “Fastest-Growing” “Largest/Best-Selling”

Hope you enjoyed this little guide and will start implementing these strategies into your own campaigns this week. If you have any questions please feel free to hit me back on this email.

To your Piles O Cash Growing!

Jim

WOW!

That’s all I can say really, wow. This past week was the highest volume week in ACP since I’ve taking over the reins of management. For that, I thank you all who were a part of my record volume. Monday was another great day so let’s keep this momentum going into Spring and grow our private, close-knit community. ACP isn’t trying to be the biggest affiliate network, we’re trying to be the best. I don’t want a million affiliates because the level of service we can provide won’t be the same as it is now. But, we do have room to grow. If you know of any good & active affiliates wanting to join an affiliate community, not just a network, please get them to email me.

I’ll be doing my best to add some new offers for us this week as I know we lost a couple of past best performers due to normal business cycles with advertisers. If you discover any broken links on offers that my tech team may have missed please let me know and I’ll have it taken care of immediately.

If you ever want to go back and read through past Cash Pile Makers you can check them out on our blog:

affiliatecashpile.com/blog

Now, on to the guide:

GUIDE:

We continue our journey in becoming master manipulators. Sounds sinister doesn’t it? In reality all marketers are trying to manipulate people into doing what we want them to, some just do it more aggressively than others. The really good ones do it effortlessly.

Chapter 3 of Influence talks about Consistency and Commitment. Getting people to consistently commit to something simple first will make it much more likely they will comply with a more complex request. Don’t get too bent out of shape on the levels of complexity here. A simple request could be clicking a link and a complex request can be filling out your email address, doesn’t have to be super complicated.

According to Cialdini: “Once we have made a choice or take a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.”

Once we have committed to something our personal feelings about that subject will be influenced. Sign a petition to stop global warming and you may find yourself recycling more, taking more fuel efficient trips, or even becoming a weather activist. Small commitments can lead to much larger ones over very little time. We, as marketers, can use this to our advantage.

Let’s say we want to design an optin list around single people looking to date more. We can create a PPV campaign to get initial signups. Design your custom lander with a simple question (make it highly visual though) Do you want a date this Friday? Then have a simple Yes No buttons below. In either instance you can choose to have them go to either the same place or different based off of your answer. If it were my campaign I would send those that click No directly to a dating offer like Find Me Love. Conversions won’t be high since they said no, but you may get a few here and there.

Those who click Yes will get forwarded to my email optin page to put them on my list where I can email them various dating sites, workout /weight loss offers, etc.

Now, you may be wondering why I have them clicking the yes / no button first? That’s a small commitment they are making to my funnel. That simple gesture will yield a higher conversion percentage than if I just instantly sent them to my optin page.

Ever wonder why more and more optin offers have a few questions for them to answer prior to signing up? The advertisers have figured out that people will become more committed to the process if they get them to commit to small things first like clicking an answer button to some benign questions.

Now, I know you’re tendency is to copy and paste my example here directly with no twist on it. Don’t do it for two reasons. 1. If everyone did this same campaign on PPV networks its effectiveness would go down quickly and, more importantly, 2. You would rob yourself of the much needed practice of creatively thinking. You’ll learn so much more and become successful so much faster if you actively think, test, think, test along the way rather than copy, test.

I hope you enjoyed this and make sure to read up on Chapter 4 of Influence for next week. I invite you to respond to this email if we haven’t spoken much or if you have a comment on this newsletter.

To your Piles O Cash Growing!

Jim

If you’re new to ACP WELCOME! We brought you on board because we believe you can add to the great matrix of publishers we have on ACP. You will get more useful information from me on how to make it in any business as well as CPA than any other network. Not to mention THE best communication of any affiliate network on the planet. Don’t believe me? Ask, any of the affiliates who have contacted me and received a response in minutes NOT days.

If you helped contribute to last week’s fantastic volume, YOU DA BOMB! Keep up the good work. Stay in contact with me, let me know what’s working, what’s not, any things iffy with your campaigns and let me see if I can make your campaigns more profitable.

If you’re the kind of affiliate that just likes to sit on the sidelines and don’t run traffic with us, why are you here? I assume you want to make money, right? CPA is a not a spectator sport. You have to play to win. When I was a newbie affiliate I would bug the crap out of my AM until I finally decided to get off my ass and try the concepts. Don’t want to screw up? Then contact me, that’s why I’m here for. Don’t just sit there waiting for the next never-gonna-happen event to get started. Got $50 I can help you. Got $0 I can help you. Got $1 million, can I borrow some? LOL Bottom line, stop giving yourself excuses. There are a bunch of ways to skin this CPA cat and you need to pick one and get going.

Alright, I’ll get off my soapbox now and get onto this whole giver and taker motif I’ve got going on today:

GUIDE:

Continuing on from our lesson from last week, which was Chapter 1 of Influence. We will be diving into Chapter 2: Reciprocation (Hence the giver or taker).

Chapter 2 of Influence is all about the old give and take of reciprocation. We, as humans, have been hard wired with a sense of obligation to reciprocate a favor if given one first. These favors can take multiple forms. From something physical, like a free ebook, printed address labels or something temporary like a free trial, or something intangible like coming down off your first price we humans are obliged to comply out of the law of reciprocation. You see examples of these all throughout the internet. Ever try to click off an offer and get javascript popup that says Wait if you stay on here I’ll give you a discount? Ever seen an email submit offer?

These obligations are quite time sensitive so you need to take advantage of the opportunities you create straight away or they feeling of obligation will be gone.

Why do you think there are so many free trial offers out there? They are willing to lose a little on the front end so people feel obligated to purchase the trial and what is often the case with internet trials the consumer forgets about it being a trial and just lets the charge hit their credit card for a few months before figuring out they no longer want whatever it is they signed up for and cancel any future rebills.

How do we incorporate this into our CPA business? If you’re just looking for the quick buck then a lot of this reciprocation obligation stuff is already built into your offers. Look at any submit offer, “Fill out your email address and I’ll enter you in this fantastic gift card drawing.” They are offering a bribe for compliance.

Now, if you want a longer term business here’s what I suggest you do. It’s a little more money up front but well worth it in the end. Build your own optin list. Create your own Email submit offer, build up your email submits using either Twitter, Facebook, PPV. Do a double optin list. Why? Because there will be less reports of spam and people that are left will stay on your list longer. To design your campaign pick a niche first. Could be your niche is age based, or interest based, or vertical based. Some examples, age could be teenagers, retirees, soccer moms, etc. Interest based could be reading books, watching movies, whatever. Get them to optin to your list and then mail them a mixture of relevant offers and content they really want to read so they stay interested in your emails.

Alright, hopefully I’ve got your creative juices flowing. Go out there and ACT on what you’ve learned. Otherwise your pile O cash will be the same size next week as it is this week.

To your Piles O Cash Growing!

Jim

It’s that time of the week again. Before we get into the smack down of education this week I wanted to touch base on a few notes for ACP. Things have been going extremely well this New Year and wanted to thank each and every one of you who are actively driving traffic with us and communicating with me to make ACP the premier affiliate network available. I’ve spoken personally to quite a few of you now and can honestly say I’m honored to be the network manager of such a great group of publishers! For those of you who I haven’t spoken to yet personally don’t be shy. If you need help getting going hit me up and I’ll do my best. I can’t spoon feed you campaigns but I can guide in the right direction.

To keep the momentum going into 2012 I’m asking all of you who are active on ACP to NOT keep us a secret. Talk us up in your normal affiliate groups, forums, or wherever you hang out with likeminded individuals. I’m asking this because I need your help in keeping our community strong with the best affiliates available. If you refer someone over tell them to respond to their thank you for signing up email and have them let me know they’ve applied so I can expedite their application and give you proper credit (pay bumps) to you.

Alright, enough of the selfless promotion, on to the goods:

As promised from last week’s C.P.M. we are going to be diving into Robert Cialdini’s Influence 5th Edition. This week we’ll cover Chapter 1: Weapons of Influence. I sincerely hope you have purchased or downloaded your copy and are following along. There’s no possible way for me to cover every bit of the book in these newsletters and you owe it to yourself to pick this book up, make time to read it, so you can digest what I’m putting here.

1. Weapons of Influence

We as humans all of have blind mechanical actions ingrained into our psyches just like our animal counterparts. The difference lies in the fact that most animal “Click, Whirr” (you know what I’m talking about if you read the book) responses are ingrained in their instinctual DNA whereas human’s “Click, Whirr” actions are learned from our upbringing. These fixed-action patterns can be trigged often by a single feature. For birds, a certain color of feather can cause them to go territory protecting crazy. With humans we can get a much higher rate of compliance for a favor just by giving a reason why we need them to do it. For instance, people are more likely to comply with a line cutter simply if the line cutter provides a reason for cutting in line. Doesn’t even have to be a good reason, just add the word Because and compliance % skyrockets. Notice in the previous section where I asked you guys to send me referrals? Did you feel more compelled because I gave you a reason for giving me the referrals? That’s a natural response for the human race, if we are given a reason to do something we are often times more likely to comply then if we were simply asked to do something.

How does this relate to your ad copy? Think about it. Brainstorm how to add a reason behind your calls to action. You’ll see conversions increase. If at all possible use the word Because, since it has shown to be the most effective verbiage.

Some other automatic triggers for us is the stereotype expensive=good. If we don’t have a ton of background knowledge on a product or service then we default to the if it’s expensive it must be good mantra. Split test higher prices if you’re promoting a physical product to sell.

For you dating publishers, women always describe their physical attractiveness and men always describe their material wealth in personal ads. Ad copies designed to promote to men perform better with a hot girl and the copy talking about how many attractive women there are on the site and if you’re promoting to women describe how wealthy or financially secure the guys are on the dating site your promoting.

Why do humans need to use so many short cuts to make decisions for us on a daily basis? Because, we are exposed to entirely too much information in a given day and if we had to think, in detail, about every decision we’d never make it through a 24hr period.

One of these shortcuts is the “If an expert says it, then it must be true” mentalities. We put way too much faith in experts. But, if you can position yourself as an expert in your niche it will be an easy sell. Yes, there are ways to do this even if you’re just pushing CPA offers. Just sit down and have a good think on all the ways to play this strategy.

Another shortcut. The discount coupon. People LOVE coupons. Even if there is no real discount, volume will increase because of the “discounted” coupon.

The contrast principle: If a second item is fairly different from the first we will tend to see it as more different than it really is. Use this tactic for your review style landers. Brainstorm and share your own ideas to use this on the Facebook page.

That sums up Chapter 1. Again, this is not meant to flush out every single angle you can use these strategies on. It is intended to get you thinking of your own ideas and how to twist them for your own use. Next week we’ll cover Chapter 2, Reciprocation.

Feel free to hit me up and let me know what you think of the newsletter and input any advice or additions you’d like to see in future issues.

To your Piles O Cash!

Jim