Since you were so young when Bankaholic started, how difficult or intimidating was it working with your affiliate managers in the beginning? And how quickly did you get their attention?

I’ve had great experiences with all affiliate mangers. My first affiliate manager was Bill Gales Jr. at NCSReporting. I’ve met one of the founders of NCS, Scott Langdon, and he takes prides in building an affiliate network that puts great emphasis on customer service. If you feel intimidated by your affiliate manager, you should really get a new one!

I didn’t have any leverage in the beginning, but as the traffic ramped up, affiliate managers were much more willing to work with me to get higher CPAs.

I remember a couple times hearing you negotiate higher CPA’s with your affiliate managers. At what point did you realize you had a lot of power over negotiations, and did that come naturally to you or were negotiations ever trial and error?

I realized I had power over negotiations when rival affiliate networks started reaching out to me out of the blue, offering to beat my existing CPAs. This ultimately created ‘bidding wars’ where I would bounce back and forth between networks as they struggled to beat eachother’s CPAs. A tip for marketers is to keep your afflinks naked, so that affiliate managers can clearly see who you are running with.

In general, I don’t really stress much about CPAs. I rarely proactively ask for higher CPAs, I just let the bidding wars determine the final CPA. I focus more on tweaking conversion rates and driving traffic.

If you were to consult other affiliate marketers, what metrics would you tell them are most important to track to achieve success and why?

Organic Traffic – Self explanatory

Revenue Per Visitor – Segment your RPV by offer categories and plot your monthly RPVs. When you are running a big site with lots of different types of offers, you need to make sure all the gears are running smoothly. If you see a sudden dip, that will alert you that something has gone awry. Having an RPV will also help you set bids for your search marketing campaigns.

Profit Margin – If your margins are too high, you’re not reinvesting enough back into your operations. If you’re margins are too low… well, that’s a sign of trouble and you’ll need to fix the monetization side of your business.

Do you have any tips on negotiating deals with large corporations once your affiliate site has proven it can drive high quality traffic?

Working with corporations was EXTREMELY stressful. Anytime you do ANYTHING with a corporation, you will probably need to sign a contract. This means you need to hire a lawyer to make sure you’re not signing away your soul. At least five lawyers have at one point performed services for Bankaholic, and my overall legal expenses from running Bankaholic are north of six figures. Unfortunately, there’s no way around this. Lawyers are a necessary evil, although I’m thankful all the lawyers I’ve worked with so far have been great.

Now that the deal with Bankrate is sealed, what are your next plans?

I’m already looking for new projects to work on. For people like us who live, eat, and breathe Internet marketing, there is WAY too much opportunity out there to sit on the sidelines.

I’m watching domain auctions like TRAFFIC very carefully… I really want to buy a premium domain and build out a megasite. In times like this, premium domains are a good investment and a handy tax benefit (always amortize!). To some extent, I have some seller’s remorse because I’ve come to become emotionally attached to Bankaholic after working on it obsessively for so long, so I need to get started on something new to keep my brain occupied.

One thing I’m excited about is that a lot of powerful Internet entrepreneurs with insanely impressive track records have been reaching out to me to explore possible partnerships on future projects. Find me on LinkedIn if you want to connect and bounce ideas about all things Internet. Other than that… I’m looking to buy an Aston Martin once things get settled, definitely looking forward to that.

I know that you are a truly inspirational entrepreneur that represents the essence of what we in affiliate marketing seek to achieve. Do you have any final words of wisdom for those out there who are working in the affiliate space but haven’t gotten that first huge break?

Yeah, connecting with the right people in your vertical is really important. Becoming cool with powerful people leads to partnerships that can differentiate you from the crowd. Reach out and email EVERYONE related to your business: advertisers, investors, and even competitors. Some jerks will blow you off, but other that, there’s nothing to lose. And even though it’s inevitable, try your best not to step on other people’s toes as your grow your business. Don’t be shady, evil, or greedy. Karma has a way of finding it’s way back to you, and you never know what kind of obstacles you can overcome with others’ help.

So is there one way to create the ideal landing page, shopping cart, or checkout process for your site? No way. There are as many successful variable combinations as there are sites, which WD4ROI points out. Use of color, placement, word choice, and images can all affect how a user may or may not successfully navigate through your site to the shopping cart, and eventually, checkout. Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus provide suggestions that should be tested for improvement, as they cover the basics of why you should attempt to improve your conversion rates, as well as landing page, home page, category page, detail page, form, and checkout process optimization.

It only took me a handful of sit-down sessions to read through the book, it’s that intuitive of a read. But it’s great food for thought. Design plays such an important role in today’s online business. No longer can webmasters and project managers expect to build a site and have sales come pouring in just because the site is “there.” It affects the way we browse sites, fill out forms, purchase, and so forth. I mean, how many times have you been on a site and thought, Where the hell is the shopping cart?! Or, How do I get to the next page?? At that point, as a user, I usually “X out” and find another site to satisfy my ADD tendencies and impulsive online shopping habits.

I recommend checking out this book if you’re interested in increasing your site’s conversion rates (which means, all of you!). If you test something and it fails, the worst thing that can happen is you change it back to its original design. But if something works to your advantage, it could mean a significant increase in sales or leads, with little to no increase in marketing spend.

[Additional resources here.]

• The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Search Marketing Campaigns: A Teaser

David Rodnitzky of Search Marketing Standard Magazine outlines his introduction to this topic, which he will be expanding on in subsequent articles. Like the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, mastering these seven habits are essential for success, but not easily attained. I totally agree with his statement, “Paid search [marketing] is easy to do, but hard to do well.” For instance, anyone can sign up for Google AdWords, throw up some ad copy, pick a few keyword phrases, and bid $5.00 per keyword, right?

• How to Make a Million Dollar Website

Super affiliate Zac Johnson has given us a peek into how he earned nearly a million dollars over the span of only four months through one of his site projects. He was even gracious enough to let us in on some of his secrets. If you guys think it’s as easy as picking one product right off the bat and milking it forever, think again. Affiliate marketing takes risk, experimenting, thinking outside of the box, testing, and a lot of work to really make the big bucks. Hope to catch you at ASW, Zac!

• Surviving ASW, Las Vegas Sytle

Andrew Wee gives his Top 9 Tips on how to survive ASW next week. My personal favorite, “Get enough rest.” I don’t know I’ll achieve this one, seeing as how, well, we’re going to be in Las Vegas…the city that never sleeps. I added my two cents in his comments…noting ShoeMoney’s tip to stay at the conference hotel. Thanks, Andrew and Jeremy!

• How Many Things Can You Do at Once?!

Not only will there be a flurry of crazy activity going on in the expo hall and in sessions and during the mixers, but Converseon has thrown a scavenger hunt into the mix. It’s called “Where in the Summit is Converseon?” (A play on “Where in the world is Carmen San Diego,” for those of you who might remember that game!) It involves you, Flickr, Twitter, and your cell phone, and you can win one of five prize packages:

i. First prize: The Lifeform Ultimate High Back Executive Chair, valued at $2,695.00, from Converseon client RelaxTheBack.
ii. Second prize: The Spyke Spy Robot, valued at $369.00, and the VistaPix IS70 Digital Spotting Scope, valued at $479.00, from Converseon client Edmund Scientifics.
iii. Third prize: Two wine gift packs from Converseon client MyWinesDirect, the Best Cellers Cellars 2 Whites and 4 Reds pack valued at $99.95 and the Wine Gift Baskets-Vineyard Favorite Basket valued at $59.00
iv. Fourth prize: A 16-piece set of Gourmet Basics Red Berry tableware from Converseon client Mikasa, valued at $79.99.
v. Fifth prize: A Pan Tree, valued at $19.98, and a Can Dispenser Tote, valued at $9.98, from Converseon client GetOrganized.

I don’t know if I have the attention span to win but I can try! It would be pretty sweet though to win that chair from RelaxTheback.

• All Clicks Are Not Created Equal

Alan Rimm-Kaufman talks shop with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan about how the Rimm-Kaufman Group buys clicks for their clients. I won’t go into summarizing the interview and articles leading up to this discussion, you should just check them out for yourself. But I will say that I agree on the point that it’s not always best to stick to a hard dollar budget. If your campaigns are getting a 800% ROI why stop them?

You and your partners operate RedFly Marketing, which specializes in search engine marketing services. At what point did you decide to start your own company and how quickly did it take off?

Thanks for interviewing me Danielle. I think it should be the other way around! We actually started as a web design agency (which is still going) and an increasing number of our clients were looking for not just a great looking website, but a great looking website that could be found in the search engines. Organic SEO was something we were very good at. Getting our site to the number one organic spot for “web design” in our country specific results proved that. Offering it to clients as a service was a no brainer.

After a few years of design and SEO combined we were getting so many tender requests for SEO and PPC management that we decided to break up the marketing side of the company into a separate entity. RedFly Marketing was born. Word of mouth is such a powerful form of marketing that we needed to scale quickly while maintaining the focus on our current customers. It worked well and we now manage over one million Euros in advertising spend for our clients per month.

I found your blog through searching for PPC resources and it’s a great resource. When was it started, and how has blogging helped your company?

Social media is a very powerful tool. I knew that before I started blogging. I actually had a travel blog for years (and it’s still alive somewhere!) and knew the audience one could get publishing regular useful and interesting content. Business blogging is different. It’s all well and good telling your visitors that you know what you are talking about on your website, but blogging about case studies and providing helpful information to those that are not quite ready to become clients is a different story and shows you really know what you are talking about.

Our top five largest clients found out about us and signed on as a result of them searching for a solution to a problem they were having and us providing it for free on our blog. Our two biggest sources of new clients are now word of mouth and our blog.

Are there any black-hat SEO or PPC tactics that you’ve used in the past that you find humorous now and would like to share? Any significant ones that you’ve heard of that are humorous that are no longer used?

There is too much risk in using black hat techniques on client sites and accounts so it is a big no no. In fact, we agree to follow all search engine guidelines in our contracts. In the past, probably the closest thing to black hat (which is not black hat at all) was using the digitalpoint coop network. In it’s day, this produced some seriously fantastic results (think number one position for “cheap mortgages new york” or “myspace layouts” or “download ringtones” or “free ringtone”). We had those number one positions at one stage before the search engines caught on.

You recently attended PubCon in Las Vegas, and I know you said it was well worth the trip from Ireland. Can you share some insight on what you gained from the conference, and what others can gain from similar conferences?

I think the sessions at PubCon are very much for in-house SEOs and marketers as well as those that have been in the industry for a few months. The real value as I am sure you know comes from the contacts that you make and the networks you build for…various reasons. While it was a very long trip, the friendships made was completely worth it.

When you come from a country where the online marketing scene is extremely small, it is important to get to know on a personal level the big players and the bigger picture. It was fantastic to meet all the people I admire, who have taught me so much and who have literally got me where I am today. The value of the trip was one hundred times more than the cost. At least.

What is a big challenge that you face as an SEM consultant, and how you go about resolving it into something positive for your client?

Like any industry, there are quite a few. The first that springs to mind which I have a lot of experience with is client/potential client education. We receive a lot of tender requests and when we go to meet with the potential client, we find ourselves battling with the client (usually a larger organization) to convince them that they can benefit from online marketing. We no longer have time for this and now focus on tenders where the client is already aware of the benefit.

The biggest challenge however is actually finding people that that want to or can work in the industry. Because online marketing is not yet a full blown college degree, many people simply do not know that it is a career avenue they can pursue. Finding someone, especially in Ireland, that is passionate and knowledgeable about the industry is almost impossible. We are always on the lookout for new recruits. If you grow bored of SoCal, there’s always a place for you here!

What words of wisdom can you share with search engine marketers who are considering starting their own consulting business?

Always diversify you business by running your own affiliate campaigns, your own ecommerce store, your own content network. This way you have a vested interested in keeping up with trends in the industry and you are usually first to know when a major shift happens. It hits you straight in your own pocket and this keeps you on your toes. This also means you can adapt a client campaign before a client even knows there is anything wrong. I’d say about a 40-60 split is pretty good.

Make sure you know how to deal with customers. Make sure you can manage expectations properly. Customers are trusting you with their business. Treat it as your own. If you can, work on a performance basis. It keeps everyone happy.

Do not forget your legacy (read smaller) clients. They are the ones who got you where you are.

Thanks for the interview Danielle. If you or your readers have any questions, I will try to answer them as best I can and I don’t bite.

Feel free to leave comments and/or questions, or visit RedFly Marketing’s blog here.

Recommended RedFly Marketing Blog Reads:

• 10 Ways to Increase Your AdWords Quality Score
• Dynamic Keyword Insertion – The Ultimate Guide
• 10 SEO Tips Everyone Should Know
• Do You Make These 12 AdWords Mistakes?

PPC

What do you get when you combine two second tier search engines? A second tier PPC platform. Bet most of you didn’t even know Lycos was still around… The Ask Sponsored Listings pretty much suck but I suppose they bring in some traffic that sort of converts. I’ll wait a little while before I opt into testing any new system.

Google has completed their series on Content Network Tips. Google’s content network can be tricky, and operates completely differently than their search network. If you still have questions about the content network after reading their series of tips, you can always contact an AdWords representative for further clarification. You can read the articles here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

Bloggers In Vegas…Again

Many bloggers, internet entrepreneurs, and webmasters are meeting up this week for WebmasterWorld’s annual Pubcon conference in Las Vegas. Do I want to be there? Hell yea. But I can’t and that’s OK, I’ve been living vicariously through Nate Whitehill whose informed me he will not take any incriminating photos and subsequently he will not secretly show them to me after his return home

So who’s partying it up like a search engine rock star this week? Well, Nate of course, along with ShoeMoney, and the guys over at the Rubicon Project (who by the way rejected my application into their beta program). Nate apparently got a hold of a lot of convention crap, er, I mean, swag, and will be giving it away on his blog. Two of my co-workers are there, plus my buddy Dave Davis of RedFly Marketing. Oh how I wish I was there… It sounds like some serious partying, oh yea and networking, is going on.

And Aaron Wall gives us some feedback on his panel participation regarding the unjust fear of link buying. It’s a sensible read and I recommend you check it out.

Other Great Stuff

Jamie Harrop asks the question that crosses every bloggers mind: Should Bloggers Get Personal? Well, I think we all agree at the very least that it depends on the blogger. Chip in your two cents on the topic at his blog.

Steve Pavlina says we’re partially responsible for the consequences for the actions of our company (i.e. employer), even if we privately object to them, and that we are essentially all self-employed. And he’s right. I like the way he thinks.

Need a big ole list of social bookmarking sites? Well, Search Engine Journal has compiled a big ole list of 125 of them. How many on the list are you using?

Do you guys read MarketingSherpa? Well if you don’t, I recommend it — they publish some of the best email and online marketing tips and studies that I try to keep up on. Every once in awhile I run across something that jumps out at me and I think, I can relate to that! What I’m referring to specifically is their recent Landing Page data survey. 4,203 loyal MarketingSherpa readers answered the survey, which turned up some perplexing statistics from participants.

How many of you relate to these statistics, for one reason or another?

• 44% – Can’t measure landing page test results properly
• 35% – Use a single landing page for many traffic sources

Well the author of the post, Anne Holland, reassures us all that a lot of times, these results are not our fault! Read the blog post and let me know your reaction. I thought it was painfully humorous, and at the same time validating (i.e. she understands the agony of squandering traffic). I just want to hug Anne.

Happy Friday, everyone!

This first image represents the top 20 keyword phrases that kept users on my site the longest. There were a couple that made me laugh, including the “top 10 reasons im a taurus.” I’m assuming they mean something like “top 10 reasons I act like a Taurus,” since the only reason “im a taurus” is because I was born between April 20th and May 20th

You’ll also see the phrase “adopt dogs reason” which is a variation of “reasons to adopt a dog,” a phrase that appears in my longtails all the time. I participated in Problogger’s Top 5 Lists writing exercise and wrote the piece, “Top 5 Reasons to Adopt a Needy Pet.” Many people seem to be really looking for reasons they should adopt a pet instead of buying one from the pet store, which I’m very happy to know. If you’re looking into buying someone special a puppy or kitten this holiday season, please check out my article first!

Lastly, you’ll see the phrase “high landing page quality score.” Most likely the reader was checking out my tips on “How to Raise Your Google Landing Page Quality Score” (LPQS). Check that one out too if you like, if you’re interested. It’s my general guide on how you can possibly lower CPC through raising your LPQS, but as in life, nothing is guaranteed so best of luck in testing your campaigns.

In this second image, I’ve taken a screen shot of the top 20 phrases that resulted in the highest pages per visit in the last month. These users found my site for one particular reason and decided to stick around awhile!

The first one that caught my eye was “terrible golf swings,” which literally made me laugh out loud. It’s true though, my swing is pretty terrible.

I noticed that many users seemed to find my blog through searching for ClickRiver reviews and information. I’m currently ranked #1 for “clickriver text ads” so it’s not surprising there are many ClickRiver-related phrases in my traffic results. Since I also discuss AdWords a lot, there are also many AdWord-related phrases that show up too. It’s rewarding to know these readers have found other value in my site by finding me through PPC-related searches.

See the one that reads “google +medicine +cabinet”? This is referring to a Google search result returning the contents of my medicine cabinet. This is of course a make-believe scenario…for now.

Last but not least, it seems that some users found me while doing back link research for ShoeMoney, BlogWorld Expo, and Bankaholic. I’m not sure who was searching or why they were searching back links, but I’m glad to know my back links are showing up in the search results!

Let me know what the funniest or most intriguing longtail keywords are that appeared in your keyword data. You may find yourself learning more about your readers than you think!

It appears SEO related jobs are still the highest in demand of the three specialties, but Social Networking jobs are quickly catching up. You’ll see PPC jobs growing at a slower rate of increase, but increasing nonetheless.

It’s Not Too Late To Get “In”

Since the Internet is changing and growing at such a phenomenal rate, it’s not too late to investigate whether or not a career in an internet marketing related specialty is right for you. Even the most highly skilled internet marketers have to stay on their toes and continually learn and grow, since nothing on the Internet can remain static.

PPC

Pay-per-click advertising is much like regular business, only applied to online methods of marketing. The business has a budget, the business spends this budget optimally on advertising, tracks data and revenue, and bases its projected goals on its findings. If you are good at algebra, have a great attention to detail, and are very organized, then PPC may be a career you should check out.

SEO

While PPC and SEO (search engine optimization) both require testing and optimization, SEO is less focused on the “math” portion of the business, and is more concerned with the ranking of the business. SEO is more of a craft than an innate business skill. If you enjoy seeing your sites rise in the ranks, and if you like the challenge of getting traffic for “free” (although it’s definitely not free), and you like the game of SEO, then you may want to check this out as an optional path for yourself.

Social Networking

Jobs requiring social networking skills can range from being the person who goes out and performs word-of-mouth marketing, to the guy who builds the back-end of an up-and-coming social networking site. Knowing how people use the internet, respond to solicitations, and create relationships, etc, is a booming section of internet marketing. If you use Facebook, MySpace and/or any of the other big sites, you probably have a hunch as to how you could leverage their user base (behavioral tracking, data, etc).

Why Should I Start Now?

I think a majority of internet marketers are entrepreneurial in nature, and have a vision of owning their own profit-generating web sites and retiring well before their peers. It’s possible. It’s out there. You just have to want it bad enough. Learning about the possibilities of what you can learn now in internet marketing, while it’s still growing and booming, could lead to an independent career later on down the line.

Thanks go to Derek Semmler for sending me the code to retrieve last month’s top comment counts from my SQL database (rather than having to sit at my computer at 11:59pm and 59 seconds to take a screen shot!). Some of you may know that Derek and I also share the exact same blog birthday, so as of yesterday Derek’s blog also turned seven months. He’ll be posting this code later today so you all can grab it too. Happy blog birthday, Derek!

September Top Commentators

Jez — SiteLogic.co.uk
Jeff Kee — blog.JeffKee.com
Nick — RomanDock.com
Derrich — Derrich.com
David — MarketingDeviant.com

Thanks, guys, for your contributions!

Recommended Readings

• SlapShotSquad — a new hockey blog site created by my buds Ed Lau and Michael Kwan, in collaboration with Gary Jones (BlueFur) and Rainer Schmoll (Thinkreferrals Blog). Congrats on your new blog venture, guys!
• SEO for the New Google / Yahoo / MSN — Andrew Wee presents Wil Reynolds’ slides from the Affiliate Summit London. It’s a great visual of the evolution of search engine rankings, with marked-up images displaying how to futureproof your SEO strategy (PDF).
• Radiohead and the New Anti-Marketing Strategy — Maki takes an insightful look into Radiohead’s new marketing strategy, a great write-up for music lovers and internet marketers alike.
• Rubicon Project Reviewed — Jeremy “Shoemoney” takes a dive into the Rubicon Project beta system for publishers. If you own a web site, check out his post, he’s looking for inquiries to take to the Rubicon team.
• Blog Censorship — The question Jason proposes is, “Do you censor your blog?” Feel free to pipe in!
• Google on why ROI matters, and how to track it. Part 1. Part 2. And Part 3. Read them.
• Michael Gray aka GrayWolf calls out Matt Cutts — This is just for entertainment’s sake. Feel free to pick a side if you want.
• Comprehensive Guide to Hidden Text & Search Engines — Eric Enge writes a very extensive and informative guide on using hidden text. I’m not condoning how or when to use it, but it’s a very interesting analysis.
• Aaron Wall Interviews Eli of BlueHatSEO — A great read, although I wish Eli would’ve expanded further on a couple points. But check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Under debate by the IRTF is how the Internet’s backbone routers operate… Slowing routing table growth would provide other benefits to enterprise network operators… It would make it easier to split network traffic over multiple carriers in a process called multihoming… If the Routing Research Group is unsuccessful, the Internet’s backbone routers won’t crash, experts say. But they will become increasingly expensive to run.

Looks like network engineers have their plates full with this one. How they might successfully redesign the internet is far beyond my comprehension, but the article is a great read for anyone who doesn’t know much about the internet’s architecture.

With today’s exponential growth in social networking sites, user-generated content sites, and blogging, it seems there are immediate pressing concerns regarding this redesign. What is the value of this to you as a contributor, since running these backbone routers could increase in cost? What is the value of this to you as a casual surfer? Who should end up paying for the potential increased costs? In short, what’s the value of the internet to you?