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If you had a platinum or gold pass to ASW, you should have gotten an email already with login details for viewing the video of Nickycakes’ panel at Affiliate Summit West. If not, the audio has been posted on geekcast. Shawn Collins was nice enough to send Cakes a raw copy of the video of the session, but asked that it not be posted in its entirety. Maybe when he gets time, Nicky will chop it up and post some of the good parts. Anyway, you can listen to the entire thing here, although it may be hard to tell who’s who with just the audio. Enjoy anyway:
Nickycakes is finally back home after spending a week in Vegas for Leadscon followed by a week in southern cali.
Leadscon was held at the Mirage Hotel on March 4th and 5th. Nicky had never been to the Mirage so didn’t really know what to expect, especially for only $100 per night for a room. The hotel ended up being great. Having been forced into the Rio for Affiliate Summit, the Mirage was a welcome change for sure. Just walking in, there is an enormous saltwater fishtank behind the check-in counter. Huge like xbox. The rooms were really awesome, especially Nicky’s which had a brand new bathroom with jacuzzi bath and stuff as well as an amazing view of the Mirage pool below.
At night, it also had an amazing view of the hotels on the strip:
So yeah, much better than staying off the strip at Affiliate Summit.
Nickycakes arrived a few days early to enjoy the Vegas weather and other fine things the city has to offer. Okay, more like 4 days early, but who’s counting? The weather was great (compared to boston anyway) and a giant snowstorm hit the northeast a few hours after the flight got in the air. Nicky promptly gloated on twitter.
Days before the conference:
Well, as to be expected, these were mostly full of Nickycakes and his friends gambling a lot. The Cakes was introduced to and quickly fell in love with the game of craps, which is highly recommended to anyone looking for an exciting casino game that requires pretty much no thinking, moves really fast, and has pretty fair odds compared to most everything else on the casino floor (especially the fcking slots). Nicky also was able to catch a show called Le Reve which is indescribable. You really have to see it for yourself. Do yourself a favor and get tickets next time you’re in the city.
The first night, Nicky and friends also caught up with friend Chris Armstrong from Van Komen Media (the masterminds behind Ultra Lean Green Tea, for those who remember the offer, as well as many current offers). Chris invited Cakes and crew to come to Salt Lake City and catch a Jazz game…more on that later.
Conf Day 1:
Due mostly to jetlag, Nicky woke up at the crack of 8:30am and was able to make it downstairs in time for the Leadscon keynote. Ok, seriously, Nickycakes has been to some keynotes at conferences. They have ALL been AWFUL. Usually they are either an advertisement, like the stupid keynotes at PPC summit were advertisements, and Gary V at affiliate summit…good lord, just end yourself guy. But anyway, the keynote at leadscon was AWESOME. It was by Dan Ariely, a Behavioral Economist, and author of the bestselling book “Predictably Irrational.” The dude was the victim of an explosion at one point which left 70% of his body covered in 3rd degree burns. He spent like 3 years in the hospital recovering, which alone makes him a total badass. Dan went through so much pain during his treatment, especially from the retarded nurses yanking off bandages and whatnot, that he went on to study how to make painful treatments better. Since the nurses had always done things the way they had done them (ripping off bandages from burn victims as fast as possible instead of slowly and less painfully) they were set in their ways and wouldn’t accept (irrationally) the idea that there was a better way of doing things. After realizing this, Dan then branched out and applied what he had learned to other areas, especially behavioral economics.
The keynote went into tons of really brilliant ideas about how customers react to certain things, and ways to increase sales/leads/whatever by simply rewording or restructuring an offer. Why do some european countries have a 10% organ donor rate and others have a 99% rate? Because the drivers license forms for the 10% country are opt-in, and the 99% are opt-out. Most of his ideas stemmed from the idea that people hate having to make complicated decisions for themselves (by complicated, he means like…3 or more choices, or choices that have a large impact on their lives), and that they will do pretty much whatever is suggested to them. Really really interesting and relevant stuff, and made the conference worth every penny ($0 for nickycakes since they were nice enough to hook him up with a press pass, but would have been worth the full price anyway).
The exhibit hall, however, left much to be desired, from the shoes of an affiliate anyway. The conference was really not geared towards affilaites at all really, and it probably wasn’t intended to be. There were several affiliate networks in attendance, of course, and a lot of people there that Nickycakes knew, but if you’re looking for a wide variety of companies that would be beneficial to meet with as an affiliate, Affiliate Summit and Ad:Tech have the market cornered. It is, however, just the 2nd year of Leadscon, and they were able to pull in a registration of over 100o people, which seems like quite an accomplishment. The lunch they served in the exhibit hall was pretty good though, and Nicky was able to meet up with his friends Wes and Steven from Tracking202 as well as Jivan from Advaliant.
Night 1:
As mentioned earlier, Chris from VK invited Nicky and crew to Utah to come see a Jazz game. Not only invited, but booked the tickets and everything. Nicky and his boy hopped on a plane in the afternoon, took the hour flight to SLC, where Chris rolled up in the Range and drove to the game. Van Komen has a nice suite in the stadium, fully catered and everything. Dinner and a game were awesome. Got to see Yao Ming’s oafy ass get steamrolled by Utah. Good times. Here are a few pics:\
Cakes and John with some of the Jazz cheerleaders before the game:
Cakes in the VK Suite:
VK has a sick guest house…or mansion or whatever, the place is huge, and on the side of a mountain in Utah. An awesome place to spend the night for sure. It snowed overnight, and waking up the whole place was covered in an inch or two of snow. Really beautiful, even for someone who lives in new england and sees snow all over everything for like 8 months out of the year. Imagine waking up to this every day:
Anyway, Chris came and drove to the airport early morning for a quick flight back to Vegas for the rest of Leadscon.
Day 2:
Pretty much like day 1 except Nicky spent it all networking and hanging out with business friends.
Speaking of networking, let’s talk for a second about bluetooth guy. Bluetooth guy is not just one person, but several people, who always have their bluetooth headset in their ears. Don’t get it twisted, bluetooth headsets are great, especially while driving, or at home, in the office, whatever. But seriously, you don’t need to wear your bluetooth. The first “bluetooth guy” Nickycakes met was Jason H from Eclipse at ASW 08. That dude was all over the place all night at every party rockin a jawbone like it was princess cut ear bling. Hopefully he just forgot to take it out or something, but all night? Doubtful.
Ok, and then we have Geoff from Revstars. Nickycakes first ran into Geoff (not geoff from advaliant) on the Advaliant fishing trip at ASE in Boston. He wore a bluetooth headset the entire time..while fishing…on a boat. He did catch the first fish, though, so maybe it was good luck. Then at Ad:Tech NY he was spotted again walking around all day wearing the bluetooth. And once again at ASW, rocking the bluetooth. And whaddya know…leadscon…bluetooth. Here’s a pic:
When asked about it, he said it was cause he couldn’t hear his phone in his pocket, but seriously that’s what vibrate is for man! Geoff is a really cool guy though, and the revstars people were all keepin it real at Leadscon. They look like a pretty solid network. Just the bluetooth all the time makes you want to ::facepalm::.
There was also some good sushi to be had at Nobu that night.
Night 2:
There was a party at Pure nightclub in Caesars. The club was kinda cool, but, as expected, it was a total sausage fest. All 3 girls in the industry were there, each surrounded by about 20 nerds dancing to YMCA.
Conclusion:
Leadscon was fun. The keynote was amazing. The exhibit hall left much to be desired. The conference seemed like it didn’t have much to offer an individual affiliate. But overall well worth the trip. Would go again, and probably will. Thank you to Jay and crew for the pass. Nickycakes wishes he could have thanked you in person.
Nickycakes is going to check out Leadscon next week in Vegas, March 4-5, at the Mirage hotel and casino. The short description of the conference, from their website is “the pioneering conference and expo dedicated to increasing the effectiveness of those operating in the online lead generation industry.” In terms of number of attendees, compared to something like Affiliate Summit or Ad:tech, this show is smaller, but it seems to have a much more specific focus, and from the sound of things, there will be a lot of opportunities to meet the leaders of companies that do not advertise their products through affiliate networks. Basically a good opportunity to score private affiliate deals with companies you’d not normally be able to approach.
The price for attending seems a little steep, currently $795 per person. Leadscon was nice enough to hook Nickycakes readers up with a discount though, so use this link for $400 off. That includes breakfast, lunch, all the sessions that they have, exhibit hall, stuff like that, and a big party at Pure nightclub in Caesars Palace. The Mirage is on the vegas strip, so there are a bunch of other big hotels around if you’re interested in staying somewhere else, unlike affiliate summit that’s off the strip and you’re pretty much limited to 1 average and 2 crappy hotels to stay at.
So if you’re looking for a nice mini-vacation to vegas, and let’s face it, who isn’t, you might want to check it out. Usually at these conferences, Nickycakes makes some deal or gets some new info that much more than pays for whatever costs were involved with going, and it’s also a business expense.
What is a landing page? “Landing Page” can have many meanings, but in the Affiliate Marketing world (and for the sake of this tutorial) it generally means a webpage built between the advertisement and the merchant’s page. Rather than have an advertisement link directly to the merchant page, many people link to an intermediate page which has some kind of sales copy and/or other content, and a link to the merchant page. Here are some of the reasons people use a “landing page” rather than linking directly to the merchant page:
Merchant Request
For some offers, the merchant requests that affiliates do not link directly to their site. This may be because they don’t want to have their servers bogged down with a flood of traffic, or maybe they don’t want to be associated with some affilaites’ shady ad copy.
Google Quality Score
If you venture into advertising with Google Adwords, you will soon learn about Qualtiy Score, which is a score Google gives to the webpage you are advertising. This score is made up by a bunch of factors including the content on the page you are trying to advertise. Many merchant pages have crappy content and will get you a really crappy quality score in return if you link directly to them with a Google Adwords Search campaign, so creating an intermediate landing page that will give you a better QS may be beneficial. There is much more to the QS story, but those are the basics.
Improved Conversion Rates
Sometimes you may find that making an intermediate landing page with a good sales pitch will increase the overall conversion rate of your campaign compared to direct linking. Lets say that you direct link from the ad to the merchant page, and 1% of the people who click your ad end up signing up for whatever offer is on the merchant page. Then you add an intermediate landing page that really gives some good reasons why people should sign up, and although some people leave the intermediate landing page without ever going to the merchant page, the OVERALL percentage of people that click on your ad that end up signing up for the offer ends up increasing to 3%. Obviously the landing page is a huge improvement in that case.
Multiple Offers
Intermediate landing pages give you the option of advertising multiple affiliate offers on one page. Some people make review sites, for example, where they have “reviews” of 5 different similar products. Other people make pages that encourage the customer to go sign up for several offers. This has proven to really increase profits if done properly.
Making Your Landing Pages
Nickycakes is not a design genius. He’s made a few landing pages, but he is certainly no expert. If you want to make a landing page, you can either do it yourself, or pay someone to do it. There are plenty of starving designers out there who would be more than happy to whip up something for you for a fee. If you decide to make it yourself, but can’t seem to come up with any good ideas for what your landing page should look like, go google whatever product it is you want to promote, and check out the landing pages others have already made for that product in the adwords ads you see. Nickycakes does not advocate straight up copying the work of others, but you can’t copyright a style, so feel free to make something similar. Keep in mind, however, that the page you’re emulating may be the work of someone as inexperienced as you are so it may end up a case of the blind leading the blind. This is why you will need to frequently change your landing pages up in the future to try new things and improve conversions.
If you do decide to pay someone to make your LP’s for you, there are quite a few designers available. Don’t bother with worthless retard designers on digitalpoint or similar crappy forums. Wickedfire has some decent designers in the buy/sell forums. One Nickycakes has personally used for landing pages is Jesse from Landingpower, who does really good fast work for a decent price (he does ad banner design as well). Nicky requested that he whip up a simple free landing page for acai offers as an example for this post, which anyone can feel free to download and use here. If you like it, please consider hitting up landingpower for future design work.
Also worth mentioning, some affilaite networks have in-house designers and will whip you up a landing page if you request it. It’s worth a try =)
Preventing People From Stealing Your Landing Pages
Ok, here’s the deal. If you make a landing page, chances are someone will steal it. Yes, it sucks. No, there isn’t THAT much that you can do about it. Is it illegal for people to steal your landing page? If they jack it word for word, yes, technically you could probably waste a lot of time and money and not get a lot accomplished by trying to sue them or something. If they’ve changed the words around, then you probably couldn’t do much even if you wanted to. You cannot copyright a style, so if you come up with a unique way to promote something, don’t expect it to stay exclusive to you for very long. You can try to bitch to your affiliate network if the person who is copying you is running the same offer on the same network, but they’d be pretty stupid to do anything about it considering the person could just go run it on another network. It is a total bitch when someone steals your work, but at the end of the day, you can either get mad about it and waste a bunch of energy trying to dmca people and whine to your affiliate managers, or you can just get more of your own work done and stay ahead of the curve. Trust that option #2 is much more profitable.
There are a few tricky ways to protect your landing page, however, and if implemented properly, you will prevent the average retarded digital point copy-paster from jacking your hard work.
-html obfuscation:
This is an old and simple trick that has been used for a long time by many people for many reasons. Obfuscation is basically the process of making your html, javascript, whatever, as unreadable as possible so people have a bitch of a time editing it. It’s used quite often to hide email addresses from web bots, hiding links from google bots, hiding malicious exploit code in html pages, cookie stuffing, and generally preventing people from stealing your html. If you want to learn more about fun obfuscation, visit one of nickycakes’ all time favorite sites the Internation Obfuscated C Code Contest. If you’re just interested in making your html code unreadable, go look for one of the many html scrambling tools freely available on the net such as this one.
-cloaking
In an earlier post, nickycakes shared a piece of software he wrote (and his friend tobsn later optimized) which would redirect any nosy affilaites attempting to view your landing page to anywhere you wanted (such as a rickroll, or other more offensive site). Take a look at that post for more information. There are other ways to cloak, and since those methods may be a little too advanced for the average newb, they won’t be covered in this post.
-text to images
One of the biggest pains in the ass when making a landing page is finding a good template. These days, people have been taking free wordpress templates, hacking them up into a simple landing page and launching them. Then some jackass comes along and copies/pastes the source code, downloads all the related images, and launches their own identical landing page in a few minutes after changing the title, etc. Well, what if it were a complete bitch to change the title and text? After creating your landing page, you will probably have a header background image with text over top. Anyone could copy/paste the source code and just change that text. Not if you screenshot your page, open photoshop, cut out the header with the text as part of the image, and use THAT as your header graphic. This can be done with all your sidebar stuff as well to make it even more of a pain in the ass.
-hidden javascript
This one’s especially nasty. On all of Nickycakes’ landing pages, he hides a small javascript include somewhere on the page that grabs a piece of javascript from his server. The javascript it grabs is empty, but if anyone steals the landing page and doesn’t find it and remove it, nickycakes then has pretty much complete control over their page. He can then add a javascript redirect to that file after the copycat’s LP starts getting heavy traffic and just redirect all the visitors back to a nickycakes landing page until the retard figures it out and kicks himself for buying Nicky a new Breitling.
This is part 4 of Nickycakes’ affiliate newbie guide. Please go read the previous parts if you have not already.
Ok, so you have your tracking set up, you are approved at some affiliate networks, what do you do next? Well, now you have to pick what you want to advertise. Since, like Nickycakes, you probably have about 0 real world marketing experience, you probably have no idea what to do. And even if you DID have an idea what to promote, it would be wrong. That is why you really have only 2 options: asking someone, and trial and error. You will be using a combination of both.
When Nicky got started, he tried to promote a bunch of stuff that he thought would do well, and it all failed. Then he started randomly picking stuff that he never thought would ever do well in a million years, and guess what happened…he found some profitable campaigns.
Ask Someone
Go to your affiliate managers at all the networks you are signed up with and ask them to pick 1 offer for you that they think you could have the most succeses with. If they recommend one that has already been recommended to you by another AM, ask for another. Get a list of 3-5 and write them down. Affiliate managers are a great resource for this because they know exactly what is doing well for other people. They know what a lazy newbie like you can do well with, so just ask.
Pick a Few at Random
Pretty simple…go through the list of offers and literally pick a couple random ass ones. As mentioned earlier, you suck at marketing, so throwing a dart at a dartboard or banging your face forecefully against the keyboard will certainly provide better results than your best instincts.
Combining the two should give you like 5-7 offers to get started with. Make sure you write them down, along with the network that they’re on and what the payouts are, because that stuff is easy to lose track of.
This post is rather short, but it will probably take you a while to get done, so get started.
