Today, I noticed that a couple of my campaigns weren’t performing like they should be. When I further investigated, I found out that my links that led to certain offers, were in fact leading to Fling.com…Yes, my traffic was being sent to more or less a porn site. This pisses me off for a few reasons:

1. I lose money because I pay for clicks that aren’t going where they should. I also lose money waiting for them to fix the problem so that I can resume advertising.

2. Affiliate Networks need to be more secure than this. It really reflects poorly on Azoogle Ads that this happened.

3. I want to be able to trust affiliate networks that I work with and things like this don’t help me be able to have trust in them. I’ve often had days where I thought affiliate networks weren’t properly recording sales. Now I have to worry about links being redirected to porn sites???

I emailed me affiliate manager about this so I’ll keep everyone posted (and by everyone, I still mean like…5 people).

**Update: My Azoogle Ads Network Manager told me that the advertiser had pulled my offer because of the the type of traffic I was sending. Needless to say, it still doesn’t add up. First, the traffic I’m sending is very targetted traffic that converts. Secondly, if they discontinued the offer for me, why was my offer redirecting to Fling.com???

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Ready to learn some more about landing page optimization? Well, in this part of my series I’m going to discuss the fundamentals of both A/B Split Testing and Multivariate Testing. It’s important to understand what each test type accomplishes, what their advantages are, and when to use one over the other. First, I’ll start by providing definitions for both types of testing.

Testing Definitions

A/B Split Testing - the process of testing two unique landing page layouts (Landing Page A and B).

Multivariate Testing - the process of testing different element combinations (header text, sub header text, etc.) for a particular landing page.

Advantages of A/B Split Testing

A/B Split Testing is great for:

1. Learning what landing page templates convert the best for a certain product offering. By template I mean, the order you display content. With A/B Split Testing you can test multiple types of layouts and see which one converts the best.

2. Initial optimization testing. Let me explain. Every play 20 questions? If you have, you probably know that if you want to win, you start with broad questions and you work your way to asking more specific questions as you get answers. The same process applies to landing page testing. A/B Split testing is like asking the broad questions. You’re trying to get a ballpark idea of what landing page style converts the best. Then once you have that answer, you start asking more specific questions such as, “What elements can I tweak to eek out an extra percent or two?”

Advantages of Multivariate Testing

Multivariate Testing is great for:

1. Improving conversions on a solid landing page template. Like I just mentioned with the 20 questions analogy, once you’ve done A/B split testing to see which template converts the best, you can plug and play different elements to see which element combinations will help you eek out a few more conversion percentage points.

2. Finding out which elements you should focus on improving. When you perform a test, Google Website Optimizer informs you which elements have the biggest impact on conversions. Usually the answer is the header text and hero image (product image). But, sometimes it’s the bullet point list above the fold, or the header graphic. Once you find out what has the biggest effect on conversions, hone in on testing that particular element more in a future test.

Step-by-Step Routine for Split Testing

If your experienced with PPC marketing and you’re in a hurry to start making money with a campaign, you can probably get away with going straight to Multivariate testing. But, if this does not describe you, you’re best off starting broad and honing in on what works. To do this, follow this order:

1. Do an A/B Split Test
2. Take your winning landing page and do another A/B Split Test with a new unique landing page
3. Take the winner of your second A/B Split Test and do a Multivariate Test by testing multiple page elements. (In my next part I’ll be discussing which elements to test)
4. Take the winning combination and perform another Multivariate Test focusing on the elements that have the largest impact for conversions.
5. Rinse, Wash, and Repeat testing key elements.

This optimization strategy will help you maximize your ROI for your campaign. In my next installment of this series, I’ll discuss which landing page elements to test. Stay tuned!

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A lot of affiliate marketing just comes down to numbers. What’s your advertisement’s or article’s click through rate? What’s your landing page’s click through rate? What’s your conversion ratio? And because a lot of affiliate marketing ends up becoming a numbers game, you have to do everything you can to make those numbers favor you. This involves optimizing every part of your campaign, especially your landing page.

One of the best ways to optimize your landing page is by using Google Optimizer. Google Optimizer allows you to do both A/B Split Testing and Multivariance Testing. I’ll cover those more in Part II, but for now let’s take a look at how Google Optimizer works.

Google Optimizer works by taking different versions of a landing page you give it, and testing your different versions for you to see which one performs the best. What I love about Google Optimizer is how clear cut the results are. You might not believe it, but using Google Optimizer can help you easily increase your landing page conversions by 50%! You don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at a screenshot from Google Optimizer that portrays the results of a multivariance test for a landing page of a new campaign.

So, what you’re looking at is the conversion performance of 12 different landing page combinations. Like I said, this is a new campaign, and your optimization results will always be the most dramatic in the beginning. But as you’ll notice, Combination #2 beats my Original version by 14 percentage points, which boosts my conversion rate by almost 50%. Not too shabby for an hour worth of work, which is the time it took to create multiple versions of landing page elements, and setup the Google Optimizer test.

You don’t have to be running an active campaign to use Google Optimizer, but you do have to have a Google Adwords account. Additionally, with Google Optimizer you can create as many conversion tests as you want.

In my next part in this series, I’ll cover A/B Split Testing versus Multivariate Testing, and when you should and shouldn’t use these methods.

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In my opinion, before you can succeed as an Affiliate Marketer, you have to realize why other affiliates fail. Affiliate marketing isn’t an easy game. However, when I started affiliate marketing, I thought it was. My first PPC campaign consisted of marketing an unlimited Anime download website with 1 keyword. Yes, that’s right, I started to try to build my affiliate empire off of 1 keyword. Needless to say, my campaign was a failure, and I learned a few lessons from it. One of those lessons, was that affiliate marketing isn’t easy, and that’s the first reason I’ll cover on why most affiliates fail.

1. Affiliates Expect Affiliate Marketing to be Easy

I can’t blame affiliates for having this preconceived notion when entering the affiliate marketing arena. Almost every affiliate marketing ebook sold these days pitches the idea that you can make millions with some simple marketing system. The truth is, there is no easy way to make millions with affiliate marketing, and when new affiliates figure this out, most of them give up because they are too lazy to put in the time necessary to build up an affiliate business.

2. Affiliates Don’t Educate Themselves

I myself was guilty of this one when starting out. When I started trying to be successful with affiliate marketing, I didn’t even know what article, bum, and email marketing were. Was this important for me to know since I was engaging in ppc marketing? Of course! It’s good to know what all methods available for a couple reasons:

1. You might be interested in one method over another.
2. You might be more successful with one method over another.

Additionally, taking time to educate yourself before you engage in affiliate marketing will save you months of extra work (as you’ll learn ways to do tasks at a fraction of time) and thousands of dollars that you would have spent trying to teach yourself how to be successful at affiliate market on your own.

3. Affiliates are Lazy

This kind of ties in with the first reason. However, even if you believe that affiliate marketing isn’t easy, you aren’t in any better position to make money than someone who does think it’s easy. I’d say an affiliate that thinks affiliate marketing is easy, but has a strong work discipline, will dominate an affiliate who thinks affiliate marketing is hard, but is lazy.

The bottom line is, unless you have the money to outsource the work, you are going to have to put in the time…alot of time initially. The problem is, even if you are lazy and have the money to outsource the work, since you’re lazy you probably haven’t taken the time to learn how to properly do things, and thus you can’t direct people to do things the way they need to be done in order to be successful.

3. Affiliates are Interrupt Driven

Now, I’m not saying all affiliates struggle with this, usually just the ones that fail ;). With any business you start and try to grow, you have to stay focused. Staying focused can be a real challenge for some. Some people can’t focus on just executing one marketing method and sticking with it long enough to see results. They switch from one technique to another and never stay focused enough long enough on one method to see success. If this is you, you got to cut that crap out! You have to try one method and work, work, work at it until you master it. Don’t try something for 3 days and then quit. This leads me to my next reason.

4. Affiliates aren’t Patient

It takes time to see results…time to see improvement in your affiliate marketing abilities. Most affiliates are too impatient to see themselves to success. Tried 3 ppc campaigns and given up? Wrote 30 articles and had so little success that you threw in the towel? If so, you failed because you weren’t patient enough to educate yourself on how to be successful and/or because you didn’t give yourself enough time to succeed. If it takes you only 2 months to master ppc marketing, then you either had someone training you one-on-one or you’re a genius. Educating yourself takes time. Mastering required skill sets of affiliate marketing takes even more time. Be patient!

5. Affiliates are Risk Averse

If you are truly going to end up being a super affiliate making millions of dollars, you have to be risk neutral, and sometimes risk seeking. You can easily apply this to ppc marketing. When I start a campaign, I’m willing to lose up to a couple thousand dollars in order to collect the data I need to optimize that campaign that I think will make me tens of thousands of dollars. In other words, I’m willing to take the risk that the campaign might not pan out in profitability and lose a couple thousand with the expectation that it will make me a lot of money in the long run.

You can get by being risk averse and risk neutral in affiliate marketing, but you won’t ever be making millions of dollars by doing so. Whether you are dropping a couple grand to have articles written by a ghost writer or dropping a couple grand to optimize a ppc campaign, risk is a part of the game, just make sure you do a good job of assessing your risk!

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I have a philosophy, and that is, if you’re going to have your own business, make sure you follow two guidelines:

1. Do something you love
2. Do something you excel at

Both of these guidelines can be applied to affiliate marketing as well.  Since affiliate marketing encompasses many methods of marketing (ppc marketing, article marketing, bum marketing, etc.), you have the flexibility to not only choose a marketing method you enjoy doing, but one that you excel at.

Each marketing method requires a different skill set and a different knowledge base.  So you have to find which one is the best fit for you.  I personally prefer ppc marketing over other methods even though I actively engage in article and email marketing.  The main reason that I prefer ppc marketing is that although I’m good at it, I don’t love writing, which is the main building block for article and email marketing.

But, with ppc marketing, I can study campaign statistics for hours, because I really enjoy analyzing stats.  Additionally, I’m a graphic designer, and I have fun building websites, which is exactly what you have to do when building a ppc campaign.  So, it’s no surprise that I focus more time and energy on ppc marketing than I do on the other two.

Have you found your way in Affiliate Marketing?  If you haven’t discovered what your path is, that’s something you’ll want, and have to figure out.

Finding your way as an affiliate marketer is the first step in forming the rock that you’ll build your affiliate marketing business on.  Don’t stop trying different affiliate marketing techniques, methods, strategies until you find your way.

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