Episode 9: CPA Networks, Email Marketing, Arbitrage and PPC (about 22 mins / 22 mb’s)

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Show Notes

- Zac Johnson’s PPC Posts
- CPA Networks
- Finding Them
- Joining Them
- Getting to Know Them
- Don’t Judge Book by Its Cover
- How to Pick Ads
- Shopping Around
- ClickZ on CPA Networks
- Great Place to Find CPA Networks: DigitalMoses Confidential

Music by Daveski

Image courtesy (of course) of the great Hugh McLeod

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Site owners and merchants should be concerned when duplicate content starts to negatively affect site rankings. 

The AMWSO blog has a great post outlining the issues and possible fixes for duplicate content in the context of affiliate marketing…

Many merchants who run affiliate programs make available content for their affiliates to use on affiliate sites. A common question / concern asked of AMWSO is if this content is being distributed to all affiliates, and multiple affiliates are using the content, will this incur a search engine penalty?  It’s a question asked of us both from the merchant perspective, as they redistribute content on their own pages, and also from the affiliate perspective, since the affiliates want to use that content.

Affiliate Marketing Blog by AMWSO: Duplicate Content Search Engine Penalties and Affiliate Marketing - Affiliate Marketing Blog

Google raises the bar for access to its AdSense API.

What does this mean for other "small time" publishers (developers) on other platforms?

"Google has raised the required minimum traffic limit for publishers who wish to use its AdSense API to 100,000 page views per day. The AdSense API was introduced in March as a way for sites with user generated content to share advertising revenue with their members.

Slashdot | Google Quietly Closes AdSense API to Small Sites

Google’s Adsense referral program has been hit or miss for publishers and affiliates since it’s launch.  Digital Inspiration gives a few pointers that might help you to make it a viable part of your monthly income…

Unlike the regular Adsense ads (CPC or CPM)where Google automatically picks relevant ads based on the content, Adsense Referrals (CPA) require some effort on the part of Adsense publishers because they have to manually select products from the vast Adsense inventory that is changing almost everyday. How do you find the Adsense Referral Ads that are likely to become popular among your visitors ?

Adsense Referrals - How to Pick Relevant Products That Convert at Digital Inspiration - Software Reviews, Internet and Technology Guide

Call me crazy, but I love PayPal affiliate payments.  Shawn Collins reports that Yahoo is now offering PayPal as a form of payment as well.

I’m guessing Google won’t do the same :) 

The Yahoo! Publisher Network now offers the option to receive commissions via PayPal.

This payment option requires a minimum earning of only $50, instead of $100, so affiliates don?t have to wait as long for their paydays.

Yahoo! Offers PayPal for Commissions at Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

Widgets are the new black in the affiliate networks space because of their ease of use, flexibility and server side advantages of not having to rely on content publishers to update creatives.  Fraser has a nice write up on Affiliate Window’s beta test of its widget platform…

Affiliate Window are beta testing a nice little tool to create widgets which are very easy to include on your site. I think this is the start of easy to use solutions that have come from the time and energy Affiliate Window have invested in standardising all their merchant data feeds.

Affiliate Window Widgets - Fraser?s Affiliate Marketing Blog

Interesting debate on a few forums dedicated to search and all things Google about the possibility of Google doing away with PageRank or at least eliminating it from the toolbar. Loren Baker has a nice post on the issue:  

There is currently a debate going on right now about Google removing the PageRank score from the Google Toolbar.

Why?

• Toolbar PageRank numbers can be 3 months out of date or more.
• Some ?PR Updates? have been buggy enough to seriously misrepresent a page?s real PR.
• Matt Cutts has blogged that PR Updates are considered pretty much a non-event around Google.
• PageRank has started a flawed econonmy of link building and trading in an effort to raise or distribute these scores.

Goodbye Google PageRank?

“Actual CPC” is being replaced by “Maximum CPC”.  Think that’s just semantics? Then read the whole piece from Andy Beal: 

Tonight the Inside AdWords blog announced that Google is going to change the ad placement algorithm, replacing actual CPC as a factor with maximum CPC.

How does this affect advertisers?

Google Just Keeps Getting Richer ? New Change to AdWords Announced

Brian Caldwell just post a tweet that he noticed a new kink in AdSense. Has anyone else seen this in the wild? 

mySkitch + Skitch = fast and fun screen capture and image sharing.

Carsten Cumbrowski has the best run down and explanation of Google’s new Pay Per Action platform.  He’s thrown in some nice data, comparison reviews, and historical analysis…

Google announced today via a press release that they expand the Google Pay-Per-Action beta program to include beta testers around the world. As of today are willing advertisers and publishers outside the United States able to participate and apply for a beta account.

Worldwide Expansion of Google Pay-Per-Action (CPA) Beta

If you thought Twitter’s 140 characters were tough parameters for getting your point across, have fun with Yahoo’s new 70 character restrictions!

If you use YSM, make sure to login and change your copy (or you’re copy will be snipped short!).

Starting today, Yahoo Search Marketing is limiting the amount of copy characters in their ad descriptions from 190 characters to 70 characters.

Yahoo Search Marketing Shortens Descriptions

Ah, Google.  I was one of the Americans weeping this morning that Kirsty references in this post…

There’s much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the American side of the pond this morning as several horrified Adwords advertisers wake up to discover they’ve been hit with a huge hike in their minimum bids. I’m not sure as yet if the UK has been similarly affected, cos noboby there has got up yet! *Update* - Yep the UK is affected too! Check out the A4UForum thread on this.

There’s a couple of threads running over at DigitalPoint and WebMasterWorld with the usual (understandable) emotional outpourings that accompany Google’s decisions of an affiliate-crushing nature.

I don’t have a great deal invested in minimum bids on my target keywords, but the money I had been spending to drive traffic had been paying off quite nicely.  I’m not sure that will be the case after today.  Definitely follow along as we figure this out.

Do you have any tips for dealing with the changes?

New Google Landing Page Algo Change - AffiliateStuff.co.uk

Carsten Cumbrowski has put together a very in depth post on PopShops, widgets and sites like Synthasite on his ReveNews blog:

PopShops is a tool that offers easy to generate mini shops and widgets for your site, feed or blog. PopShop lists over 800 merchants with over eight million products across the three leading affiliate networks CJ, LinkShare and ShareASale (more will follow). It also supports some in-house programs.

Definitely worth a read if you’d like to figure out how to monetize widgets in your affiliate program!

Reign of the Widget - Carsten Cumbrowski on ReveNews