Consumers really are a fickle bunch. Just when you think you've got them figured out, you find out you were wrong—and now you have to start testing the waters all over again to find a way to reach them. (Uh-hum...pardon me while I step up onto my soap box.)

What am I ranting about this time? Well, remember my post back in February about the importance of A/B testing as far as the success of particular ad campaigns is concerned? Well, I was pondering that issue further last Friday as coworker Cassie and I were examining recent A/B test results. Here at InsureMe, our PPC team often finds itself frustrated when something we tried last year—or even just a few months ago—worked well then but suddenly isn't working well now. This led me to do some research on what might cause previous test results to become invalid, so I thought I'd share. (Maybe this will help you avoid some frustration, too!)

I often find Dr. Ralph Wilson's Web Marketing Today a great resource in Web trends and analysis. His latest newsletter lists these causes for invalidation of test results over time, which totally make sense in my book:

• The constantly evolving market. What causes your product to sell today probably will not work tomorrow. New technologies, changing business models and introductory services appear every day that change consumer preferences.
• The improving intelligence of Internet users. As consumers get better and smarter at navigating the Web daily, this can have a huge effect on usability items such as buttons, forms and complex systems.
• The changing competitive landscape. As you change, so do your competitors—and not working constantly to keep up means losing money!
• The reality of seasonal effects. This point is felt heavily in the insurance industry, as we all experience every year when third quarter rolls around. It takes a lot of work to push past times of seasonally low traffic and find a unique message that works just right at those times. And when everyone is doing it at once, it can be more than a simple challenge.

This resource suggests testing and re-testing as often as every month or two to get valid test results. As you probably know, I recommend even more frequent testing. But by knowing what might cause your test results to vary so much in such a short timespan, you may be able to relax a little and avoid some of the frustration that goes along with A/B testing.

Whatever you do, keep testing and keep on digging...we're right in there with you! :)

Posted by Penny Hagerman at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alright, so I didn’t get canned…but I’m off on vacation to Italy for a couple of weeks (do you get it? The boot. Italy…..yeah), so from this coming Monday until the 16th of May we’re going to have a line up of guest bloggers from the InsureMe affiliate team. These lovely and talented bloggers are:

April Hartmeister – The InsureMe affiliate manger you all know and love. April will be popping in with some of her thoughts and insights on the affiliate world.

Brittany Heidtke – One of our esteemed paid search marketing coordinators…also, one half of the dynamic duo I refer to as the “Wonder Twins.” Brittany’s got a passion for paid search and a three-legged dog…what could be better than that?

Cassie Carson – The other half of the “Wonder Twins” and another passionate paid search marketing coordinator. When Cassie isn’t ruling Google and Yahoo! she’s busy lip synching to old Milli Vanilli tracks.

Penny Hagerman – As many of our long time readers know, Penny is a copywriter by trade but has become a paid search powerhouse over the last couple of years. Penny’s got the skillz when it comes to writing and testing to see what’s working in your PPC accounts.

So make sure you stop in often and leave some comment love…us bloggers love that type of thing.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, Chris asked:

Can you offer any advice on someone who can already build sites, including custom CMS etc...

But is finding it hard making the jump from normal site and link building to affiliate site / link building?

As I said I am a proficient web designer etc but for some reason feel completely unable to venture into affiliate marketing.

I think it is just a very daunting task, choosing a niche, finding and choosing an affiliate corp and deal that suits the site, then deciding on how to promote it, CPC vs Organic etc.

Sorry about the rant, any advice you can give would be amazing, cheers

Chris

Great question Chris…here’s my take:

If you already know how to build a good looking site, you are way ahead of a lot of affiliates. But taking that knowledge and turning it into affiliate success can be a challenge.

First off, let’s talk about finding a niche. While I’d love it if everyone who wanted to be an affiliate joined the InsureMe affiliate program and sent us traffic, I know this a) isn’t realistic and b) insurance isn’t for everyone. So with that said, and I know you have heard this before, but if you are looking for something to promote, find a product/service/topic you have some passion for (especially if you are just getting your feet wet in the business).

You might want to sit down and make a list of products/services/topics that excite you, and then start exploring the affiliate possibilities in these areas. A good place to look for partners would be Commission Junction – where you can sign up for a free account and start searching their lists of advertisers. Hopefully you can find some companies to work with there.

As far as promotion goes, as you mentioned there are a few routes to explore – organic, PPC and also social media. The product or service that you are promoting will help dictate where you want to focus your time. In general I would recommend:

PPC – For use in promoting popular products or heavily saturated markets that have large, web savvy companies competing in them. A well run PPC campaign can still generate profits in this type of market. PPC also can be effective in smaller markets as well. Actually, I recommend PPC for promoting pretty much anything.

Organic – Smaller niches where there aren’t a lot of good sites coming up in the results. It’s also good if you are planning on providing a number of resources/articles that meet the needs of a niche.

Social Media - Good route for niches that you are particularly passionate about. Also, there is a lot of potential in to use this method in localized offers and micro niches.

Overall, I’d say that the most successful affiliates look to succeed on multiple fronts – meaning they promote multiple products/services and try to use any effective promotional method they can find. With that said, when it comes to ranking organically, there are huge challenges for affiliate sites in highly competitive markets…so know that (unless you are an extremely talented SEO) ranking well for a term like “auto insurance” might be unattainable. Keep these realities in mind when you are planning out your promotional strategy – calculate your Return on Effort, work smart, and give it your all.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One of the big differences I’ve noticed between the most successful affiliates and the least successful ones is the ability to take the plunge and get working on a project. There are people in this world (myself included) who tend to over think a project to the point of paralysis…or worse…there are people who dream big but procrastinate until a prime opportunity has passed. The most successful affiliates, on the other hand, are never afraid to take the steps needed to get that next project up and running. I’m not saying that every project is successful, but at least they actually do what they are dreaming up – and if it fails, whatever, they learn a lesson and move on to the next project.

For a person thinking of getting into the affiliate business, I think one of the biggest first steps (and point of procrastination) is getting a web site up and running. I know that this can be a daunting task for most…what should the domain be? What will the site cost? How can I design a site when I’m not a designer?

In the spirit of helping affiliates answer these questions and get on track for success, I offer you these links to help you get started on your next (or first) affiliate project:

What this Going to Cost? – Find out from this video that affiliate guru Shawn Collins put together:

Buying a Domain – I recommend you use Go Daddy. Yeah, their commercials might be in poor taste, but they have great rates for buying domains. Use the promo code DIGG to get 10% off your domain purchase.

Hosting Your Site – We’ve had some good experiences with Site5. Also, I know Shawn mentions 1&1 Internet in his video.

Building a Site – As we’ve mentioned before, you don’t have to program a site from scratch. There is an awesome, free content management system called Website Baker that can give you an easy to use, reliable, and professional looking site in no time. We set our designers to work on creating a couple of templates for Websitebaker, and let me tell you, they look insanely good.

Hopefully these links will help motivate you take that first step and get your site up and running. And if anyone else can recommend a host, domainer or CMS, leave a comment and let us know!

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yeah, I know the blog has been a little heavy on the link related posts as of late, but I think we’re currently at a crossroads when it comes to linking. It seems that the Googlers realized that they’ve created a monster when it comes to the link industry, and the recent paid link controversy is a good indication that Google is getting a little frustrated with the linking practices of search marketers.

I’m not sure how many of our regular readers also read the SEOmoz blog, but I’m always impressed with the posts that Rand and his team produce. In a video post from last Thursday, Rand took the time to explain the difference between completely natural links, paid links, and baited links. If you’re getting a little lost on this whole linking thing, the video might be a good starting point for getting up to speed. So check out Everybody Wants to Rule the SERPs.

[Good News: If you’re getting sick and tired of the link thing, my apologies. On the bright side, after Friday I’ll be on vacation for a couple weeks and you’ll get a whole lot less linking posts – but you will get to hear from our fabulous guest bloggers!]

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think it is becoming pretty evident that if Google is allowed to purchase DoubleClick, Google will officially be #1 on online advertising for the foreseeable future.

This brings us to the interesting questions – who will be #2? More importantly, if you can’t beat Google, is it better to be #2 in search and have little else going for your, or is it better to be #3 in search and have a whole other business model to rely on. These questions lead me to the 37signals post “I'd rather be Microsoft than Yahoo.” If you are looking for some interesting perspective, check out the post and comments.

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Interesting…seems like this whole paid link debacle may be the straw that broke the camel’s back for many search marketers. I listened to the Strike Point podcast on the way into work this morning and it sounds like Dave Naylor, a well known and well funded SEO, is completely fed up with Google’s increasingly arrogant behavior. Also, on this week’s Daily Searchcast it sounded like Danny Sullivan wasn’t too big of a Google lover at this point either.

Thankfully, Danny took the time to write an explanation of why he thinks Google is overstepping their bounds with their new posture on paid links. Since Danny serves as a semi-independent and impartial voice for the search engines and search marketers, my hope is that his pleas for an end to the paid link witch hunt will be heard by the big G (fingers crossed).

Time will tell, but Danny’s full post is worth a read and certainly a step in the right direction.

Enjoy your weekend.

Posted by James Omdahl at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Note: I’m not a big fan of writing about the spam techniques that work on the search engines (search karma and all), but I’m going to bring this one up because a) I’ve heard Danny Sullivan mention this twice on the Daily Searchcast and b) because this type of spam is surprisingly blatant.]

This week’s hubbub about paid links reminded me about one of the most glaring examples of paid spam on the web. It isn’t text link advertisements or blog spam, it’s something even more obvious and controllable than that. I’m thinking about the Forbes.com web site, and the hundreds of spam web pages that are hosted on their domain. (Want an example? Here you go.)

About six months or so ago, I got a phone call for a sales person who was working on behalf of Forbes.com. The sales person was selling web pages on the Forbes.com site, hosted advertisements if you will, in which the purchaser could add their own links, banners and content if they would like. We declined the offer.

The cost was in the thousands, but the intent of the company selling the space was obvious – take a large, trusted domain like Forbes.com and have that domain host hundreds of doorway pages that lead to the sites of advertisers. I’m sure the logic was that the hosted pages would rank well for competitive terms and that the links on those pages would eventually pass some pretty good link juice – and quite truthfully, that logic seems to have paid off.

This is not a new tactic, I’ve seen people use off-topic doorway pages on popular domains in the past…and at times the tactic was very effective. But to me this is different because the site is so well known and trusted by the search engines (as it should be). Companies are free to do what they want with their domains, but you’d think a company like Forbes, with a strong reputation for authority on financial matters wouldn’t want that kind of garbage on their site. I mean, c’mon, if your going to allow people to host spam pages on your domain, at least make them create pages that don’t look like they were put together by someone who’s 5 pages into the HTML for Dummies book.

Am I out of line here? Should Forbes continue to sell hosted doorway pages or do you think this practice should stop? Does anyone but me even care? :)

End of rant.

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, it was a fun week with Ask pay-per-click, but all ridiculously bad things must come to an end. That’s right, after only one week with Ask’s PPC program, I have requested that my account be shut down and that what is left of my deposit be refunded.

Why?

Because after seven days of bidding on ask, we received 1,642 clicks and 6, yes S-I-X, conversions. For those of you who can’t do the math in your head (like me), that’s a whopping 0.365% conversion rate. And to put this in perspective, we expect at least a 20% - 30% conversion rate from our Google or Yahoo PPC accounts.

All I can say is I’m glad I wasn’t bidding the suggested $89 a click for my keywords.

Based on this experience, I’d say that if you are an affiliate in the insurance vertical, and you don’t like throwing money away, you might want to avoid Ask’s PPC program for the time being. I’m not sure where their traffic is coming from, but I don’t think it’s from Ask.com’s search engine.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

With Google buying DoubleClick, and DoubleClick owning Performics, I’m wondering what the future will be for Performics…and more importantly, if companies like ours should be opening a Performics account in anticipation of growth in the Performics affiliate base.

So my question to you, fair affiliates, do you have a Performics account? Do you enjoy working with Performics? Where does it rank as compared to other networks? Do you think a company like InsureMe is stupid not to open a Performics account?

All always, your input is appreciated…either here or in the comments section of BUMPzee.

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Happy Monday everyone…hope you all enjoyed the weekend. And what a weekend it has been in the world of SEO! I came in this morning and started seeing blog post after blog post talking about Matt Cutts’ announcement that Google’s spam team will be trying out some new tactics to fight against paid links, including allowing people to manually submit paid link sites and paid link buyers to Google’s spam squad.

Based on the blog posts I’ve seen on the topic, it looks like Matt’s comments have managed to tick off every single SEO on the planet. An unprecedented occurrence, since most SEOs treat Matt with a certain level of deference and respect (and maybe even a little fear?)

Since I’m coming in a little late on this story, I figured I’d point you to some of my favorite posts on this topic so you can enjoy the outrage as well. Here’s the list:

Hidden Links and How to Report Paid Links - Matt’s original posts

Google Wants to Tell You How to Run Your Website – from SEO Class

I am not a Link Communist Revisited: Perspectives on Buying Links – from Stuntdubl

Why Google Shouldn’t Penalize Us for Their Incompetence – from Sugarrae

Google Wants You to Disclose the Paid Links it Can’t Find – from Marketing Pilgrim

The Cleansing of The Links – from Eric Ward

Paid Links Under Scrutiny By Google Again – by Barry Schwartz

So there’s some light reading for your Monday. I’ll be interested if the search marketing community’s anger will get Google to back down on allowing people to report paid link buyers and sellers. We shall see…

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[This was inspired by an awesome post by our own Jeb Foster on the InsureMe Agent Blog. Make sure you read Is Hack Photography Killing Your Web Site?]

Ladies and gents, it’s time to be honest with ourselves. For too long we’ve been fooling ourselves, thinking we are doing the best we can with the resources we have. But it’s time to shake ourselves out of our delusional bubble and face the facts:

We are using terrible, cheap, pixilated, trashy images on our web sites - and it’s killing our conversions.

Now of course I’m generalizing here. I see many affiliate web sites that have very professional images on them – and for those of you who are, feel free to skip the rest of this post. But for those of you who are guilty of visual crimes against site uses, please read on…

By working with affiliates for almost the last four years I have seen many, many affiliate web sites that cheat themselves out of any chance for conversions by using bizarre, unprofessional, distorted images on their sites. Using poor quality images looks bad on any web site – but in the insurance space, where building trust is key, using poor images can be fatal to an affiliate site.

So what are affiliates doing with their images that is hurting them? Let’s look at some examples:

Resizing Images to the Point of Distortion

The most notorious image faux pas that I see on a daily basis is the resizing and distorting of images to fit them on a site. For an example of what I’m talking about, let’s look at what has to be the WORST banner ad InsureMe ever created…the notorious clown banner:

I love that thing. Ok, so besides the fact that 99.9% of people in this world would never click on that freaky looking banner, the banner itself is displaying correctly. The proportions are correct and the image comes through clearly. This is what banner images on your site should look like (that is, if you are still using banners – if you’re an InsureMe affiliate you should be using our quote boxes instead…hint, hint).

Now that we know what you should do, let’s look at what not to do. In order to get an image to fit where it shouldn’t, many affiliates change the proportions of their banners. Doing so with our happy clown banner makes it look something like this:

Doesn’t look too professional, does it?

My rule of thumb on this kind of stuff is if an image doesn’t fit in a space, either modify and crop it to fit (use a program like Photoshop) or find another image. Not being able to find an image that’s the right size is no excuse for having distorted images on your site.

Just Say No to Animated Gifs

Yes, I said it. And I’m sure someone, somewhere is going to get upset about it. But I’m telling you, animated gifs almost always make your site look amateurish…and amateurish sites don’t convert that well (especially when it comes to insurance).

I’ll admit that animated gifs can be fun, but please, save them for your MySpace page. Because this…

…makes me want to have a seizure, not buy insurance.

Image Overload

I have a theory that there is a percentage of the affiliate community who feel that the most efficient way to make money online is by offering everything from blenders to insurance quotes to underwear all on one web page. Sites like this are usually referred to as “online malls” and almost always consist of a web page with dozens of different banner images on them. While sites like this might work for some industries, trust-based industries (like insurance) don’t fare too well on these types of sites.

Just because you can add a new image or banner doesn’t mean you have to. Every image on your page should help tell a story and motivate your visitors to convert…by barraging visitors with images, you are just going to sidetrack and confuse them.

Stolen and Low Quality Images

Back in the day, stock photos were crazy expensive. Stock photo companies like Getty charged outlandish prices for the use of their images – and no affiliate in their right mind would pay for them. This usually led many affiliates to put low quality and/or stolen images on their web sites. The thing is, low quality images repel visitors, and stolen images are, well, stolen. And if you missed that day in kindergarten, stealing is bad.

Luckily the days of overpriced photo monopolies are over. Today, there are tons of affordable sites that can provide you with professional quality images for the price of a lunch at McDonalds. Check out sites like istockphoto.com and even flickr to find cheap or even free professional looking images that you can use on your next web site.

Here at InsureMe we have a subscription to Photos.com, which is a bit pricey at $700.00 a year, which gives us unlimited access and usage of about 325,000 professional quality photos. If you are looking to build a lot of sites in the next year, it might be worth the investment.

Time for an Extreme Image Makeover

So it’s gut check time my friend. Sit back, look at your web site, and be brutally honest with yourself. Are your images clear, professional, focused and appealing? If not, it might be time for an extreme image makeover. By spending a few bucks on professional quality stock photos you could not only make your site look a lot snazzier, but you could turn up your conversions and turn your site into a money making machine.

Posted by James Omdahl at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ok, so we didn’t spend a million bucks yesterday…but we very well could have. At least that’s what Ask is telling us. Let me explain…

In my continuous hunt to find a single second-tier search engine that can provide both quality traffic and conversions, I decided to open an Ask.com Sponsored Listings account yesterday. I must admit, every time I open one of these second-tier accounts, I’m discouraged by the knowledge that most likely the search engine will not have enough volume to make the account worthwhile.

So it came as a surprise that Ask not only has a lot of traffic, but has more traffic than both Google and Yahoo. Not only that, but the click cost on some of the insurance terms we’re using here at InsureMe are 8 to 10x that of those in Google and Yahoo. Based on Ask’s cost estimation tool, it looks like a person bidding in the #1 position for the term “car insurance” on Ask could expect to spend $1,061,800 per DAY. That’s 11,930 clicks at about $89.02 PER CLICK.

What? Don’t believe me? Well, here’s a screen shot straight from Ask’s cost estimation tool:

Amazing, eh?

Realistically, I’m guessing that this is a fluke in the Ask system. No one in their right mind would spend $89.02 for a click on a term like “car insurance” – and I have a hard time believing that Ask could deliver 11,930 (non-fraudulent) clicks per day.

Even if this is a fluke, how can Ask let their numbers be this far off of reality? I know most PPC cost estimation tools shouldn’t be trusted, but wouldn’t showing huge numbers like this to new/smaller advertisers scare them away? It just seems stupid to me.

Sometimes it’s like the second-tiers aren’t even trying to succeed – they’re just looking to churn customers until it is time for the next name change. It’s sad really.

Oh yeah, and if you were curious, day one with Ask was a total disappointment. We got over 50 clicks and ZERO conversions – on a site that should normally convert 20 something percent on PPC traffic.

I think I am going to start referring to these things as second-tear search engines…

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For better or for worse, Google has gotten more and more aggressive with deactivating keywords in affiliate marketers’ AdWords accounts. By doing so, they have caused a lot of headaches for affiliates and have managed to generate a lot more work for every AdWords advertiser. As I pointed out in the past, keeping up with Google’s quality score guidelines requires a good deal of work when it comes to the creation of focused landing pages. If you build an AdWords account around a web site with a lot of keyword focused, relevant landing pages, you should be able to avoid a good amount of quality score pain down the line.

But what if you’re one of the many affiliates who have already been slapped by big G and you have an AdWords account filled with inactive keywords with high minimum bids? How can you get your keywords back online and working?

Good questions, and luckily our fearless affiliate manager April Hartmeister came across a very instructive post on Reuben Yau’s blog called 5 Simple Steps to Reactivate Inactive Keywords in Google AdWords. Check out the post and use Reuben’s five step process to get your keywords back online.

One warning, to get things going you are going to have to do a bit of work and create focused landing pages. Consider yourself warned…

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

As we reported a little while back, our CFO Mike was seeing Google AdWords ads using the background color yellow, and not the usual blue. It turns out Mike is a trend setter (and Google usability tester). On the 5th, Google announced it is letting everyone into Mike’s yellow world by officially changing the background color of AdWords ads from blue to yellow. I would assume that the yellow increased the number of clicks to the sponsored listing…but Google hasn’t mentioned if that is the case or not.

Along with going yellow, Google also announced a change to how it registers top-of-page clicks on sponsored listing. In the past, a click was registered when someone clicked anywhere on your sponsored advertisement if it was listed at the top of the page. Now, clicks will only occur when someone clicks on the link on the top line of the ad.

I’m pretty happy to hear that Google has made this change, since it should reduce the number of accidental clicks on our ads. It also shows that Google is making an attempt to increase click quality for advertisers, which is never a bad thing.

Check out the official post at the AdWords blog.

Posted by James Omdahl at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow…quite a busy week for this blog. Thanks to everyone who joined in on the Commission Junction conversation here and on BUMPzee. I really learned a lot and I am looking at our CJ account in a much different way. Also, I did want to mention that I had a conference call with our CJ rep and her director this week, and they were both great. Big ups to Anna and Ann.

I’ve gotta admit, I have a case of the Fridays. And since I am having such a hard time finding something that is awesome to link to, I’ll instead give you an awesome video to watch. I found out about it through the SuperAff blog, and my world hasn’t been the same since…

Have a mini-mall kinda weekend everyone!

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Get rich quick sites. There are thousands of them out there. Thousands. And unfortunately, many new affiliates make the mistake of believing the hype and buying the latest and greatest CD, DVD, piece of software, or magic voodoo stick that will help them get rich in days with little to no effort. The problem is, get rich quick schemes usually only benefit the scammer hawking the goods, not the buyer.

So how can you avoid the scams? How do you know if what someone is selling is just a bunch of fluff or really is a valuable resource?

Aaron Wall of SEO Book decided to shares some of the questions you should be asking before you make a purchase of any online money-making product. If you are new to online marketing, I beg you to check out his post, Questioning the Legitimacy and Authenticity of Internet Marketing Advice and Sources. Take a minute to learn from Aaron’s years of industry experience. It could help you avoid being scammed by a scammy scammer.

[Bonus tip: This was brought up by Danny Sullivan on the Daily Searchcast - if you are on a web site that forces you to scroll forever to get to the bottom of the page, the odds are good that you are looking at a get rich quick scam site.]

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It looks like there is a new round of blog tag going around and I have been tagged by Leonard Chen (Sweet! I’ve never been tagged before – thanks Leonard!). When you get tagged you’re supposed to post five reasons why you blog, so that’s what I’m going to do – except since I got tagged for my work on the InsureMe Affiliate blog, I feel compelled to list the five reasons why InsureMe had decided to take the time (and incur the cost) of blogging for affiliates. Here we go:

1. To help affiliates succeed – You don’t have to operate an affiliate program for very long before you realize that there are a lot of people out there who want to be affiliates, but have no idea how succeed as affiliates. Since InsureMe does our own SEO and PPC work in-house, we feel that we have some expertise that, if shared, can help affiliates succeed. And more successful affiliates means more traffic for InsureMe…it’s the circle of life, etc.
2. To develop a lasting resource – We learned early on that one of the best things we can do when communicating with affiliates is to point them to a tool, resource or article that will help them improve their revenues or day-to-day experience. We also realized that keeping track of all of the great resources for affiliates on the web wasn’t easy to do. By blogging, we can keep a centralized, searchable log of our favorite resources – which makes referring resources to our affiliate partners much easier.
3. To get feedback – Blogging gives us the ability to interact with affiliate marketers in a public forum and on a broad basis. I find that our affiliate blog has opened up a new channel of communication and has gotten us involved in conversations that we would never have otherwise. We have learned a lot from the affiliate blogging community, and will continue to do so to make ourselves and our affiliate program better.
4. To show that we are human – Too many companies come off as, well, corporate. InsureMe is a company of 70 (or so) individuals, and we are proud of our individuality. By blogging, we can try to connect with people on more of a human level, put a face with our company name, and hopefully build visibility and trust.
5. To build relationships online and offline – We want to know more affiliates, and know the affiliates we already know better. If someone were to ask us what the most important part of having a successful affiliate program is, we would tell them that building strong relationships is the key. We do whatever we can to get to know our affiliates, and blogging allows us to meet new people (like all of the awesome people over at the BUMPzee community) and strengthen the bonds we have with our current affiliates.

So that’s the top five reasons why we’re blogging here at InsureMe. I’m not totally sure who all has been tagged at this point, so here’s my five (hopefully they haven’t been tagged yet):

1. John Hasson
2. Mark Lyne
3. Pranav Chavda
4. Quoteous
5. Chris Hooley

Posted by James Omdahl at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today I started working with InsureMe’s Commission Junction (CJ) advertiser account for pretty much the first time. Over my few years here at InsureMe I have been able to somehow avoid working on our CJ account, but the time has come for me to learn how to navigate the site and start handling our publisher relationships.

So far I have found the CJ process to be interesting, and once I got over being annoyed by the slowness of the CJ site, the process was pretty slick.

But with that said, Commission Junction has managed to build its business on a fundamental metric, which from both an advertiser and merchant point of view, is flawed. That metric is EPC, or earnings-per-click.

Flawed Logic

The premise behind EPC is a good one – publishers can easily identify the advertisers who will make them the most money by looking at their EPC number. The higher the EPC, the higher their earnings will be with the advertiser. This is solid logic, if all publishers were created equal…but they aren’t.

The truth is different publishers send different types of traffic in different ways. If a publisher sends traffic with low conversion, it doesn’t mean the traffic is bad, it just means that less of it converts. The traffic that does convert can be great traffic – and both publisher and advertiser can be happy with the traffic being sent. That is, until the advertiser starts to see a drop in their EPC…

How EPC Forces Advertisers to Drop Publishers

As I’ve said in the past, EPC commoditizes advertiser’s offers in the Commission Junction network. As advertisers, we know that the primary way our offer will attract new publishers is by having the best EPC in our vertical. This is especially true for a vertical like insurance, where coupons, sales, data feeds and the like don’t exist…so out-marketing our competitors with special features is not easy to do. This means advertisers like us have to aggressively monitor and work to improve our EPC to remain attractive to good publishers.

Unfortunately, working to improve our EPC means removing publishers (called “expiring” in CJ) who send too many clicks that don’t convert. Never mind if the publisher and the advertiser are profitable from the traffic that is converting – if the click-to-lead conversion is poor, we can’t afford to keep the publisher on our program. So we end up ending a good relationship so we can continue to attract new relationships…seems rather counterproductive, doesn’t it?

This Is a Huge Problem for CJ (Even if They Don’t Realize It)

The EPC issues is going to become more and more of a stumbling point for Commission Junction as larger advertisers start to get fed up with the CJ model and start building their own in-house affiliate programs.

After spending time with our CJ account today I can tell you that managing EPC is not fun, and I had to end relationships with a number of affiliates who could have been profitable for us, but had poor EPC. This is not only annoying for us as advertisers; it is also something that CJ should be concerned about. You see, when we expire relationships to protect our EPC, CJ stops making commissions on those relationships. I would not be surprised to hear that advertisers managing EPC through the expiration of publisher relationships costs CJ hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars a year. Yeah, most relationships that are ended are with small publishers, but thousands of potential transactions never happen because of relationships that end prematurely.

What’s even worse for CJ, if InsureMe is forced to expire a publisher because of poor EPC, that publisher may find and join our in-house affiliate program. So in the end, we are still getting the traffic, the affiliate is still getting paid, but now CJ isn’t making a dime.

Time for Something New

Overall, I think CJ’s intrinsic focus on EPC is a terrible thing for advertisers, publishers and CJ…but for some reason, CJ continues do develop a culture that focused on the management of EPC. I think this is an error, and I think CJ’s slow demise will continue if they don’t find a new way to quantify quality advertiser/publisher relationships.

What would that new metric be? I’m not sure to tell you the truth. But I do think that CJ’s insistence in blocking meaningful communication between advertisers and publishers would be something to reconsider. It could be possible that by opening communication between advertisers and publishers and publishers and other publishers could develop a CJ culture where the wisdom of crowds, not the wisdom of EPC, help make advertisers and publishers more successful. I know I would rather listen to a fellow publisher for advice than rely on EPC to tell me which program I join.

Anyway, that’s just how I’m feeling today. As publishers and advertisers on the CJ network, let me know your thoughts on EPC. Am I making too big of a deal about this? Is EPC an awesome thing for publishers, or does it frustrate you as well?

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)