Editing Affiliate Marketing Offer Banners
June 18, 2012 Posted by Tyler CruzI’ve been having a decent amount of success with affiliate marketing lately.
In fact, just last week I published a post on how I had set a new personal affiliate marketing record by generating $4,070.00 in 1 Day.
Some of you requested that I publish some more posts on what I’ve been doing to turn my campaigns profitable, so yesterday I recorded a 36-minute screencast of myself using Photoshop to edit affiliate marketing banners. I went into PeerFly and took 2 banners from 2 different offers and made a banner from “scratch” from an offer that didn’t have any banners provided. With the rise of technology and the increasing demand for visually appealing content, it’s no wonder that more and more businesses are turning to 3D animation companies to help bring their ideas to life.
I am no Photoshop expert, and there is nothing in the half-hour screencast that is of advanced level or anything near it. I didn’t really create the screencast to teach you how to make a button in Photoshop as I did to try to underscore the importance of increasing your CTR.
While I use a variety of traffic sources and some of them don’t even utilize banner creative, such as direct linking with PPV, for example, the majority of traffic sources I use do utilize banners.
If your traffic source uses banners, then apart from your targeting, improving your banners’ CTR is usually the most important thing you can do to improve your campaign.
And how can you improve your CTR? By split-testing banner creative.
In some parts of the video it may seem like I go a bit overboard by how much attention to detail I get into, and you may wonder how such small changes could ever make a real difference in CTR – but trust me – you’ll be surprised in how the seemingly smallest changes can make or break a campaign. I’ve turned campaigns completely around simply by changing the border colour of banners.
Below is the screencast. I recommend viewing it in 720 HD and full screen so you can see the small details:
(Note: You may need to visit the post directly at TylerCruz.com if you’re reading this via e-mail or RSS in order to see it.)
The video can be a bit boring and slow at moments, but there are some real gems in there if you listen closely.
So get cracking on split testing those banners! Don’t be afraid to test 30, 40, or 50+ banners per campaign.
What you think about tool like crazyCTR? What free Photoshop program are you using? 🙂
I actually just started using CrazyCTR a few days ago. Will have a review of it up within 1-2 weeks.
What program do you use to track CTR and Conversions of banners?
Thanks!
Alex
Have a post coming up on that too 🙂
Here is a great resource for doing buttons. Pre set layer styles
http://www.dezinerfolio.com/2008/11/19/220-amazing-free-photoshop-layer-styles
Enjoy!
ALex
Thanks for this, been looking into advertising and affiliate links and the video was very helpful.
I am always telling my publishers to add animation to buttons on banners. A lot of advertisers skip this step, but it can dramatically increase your CTR. Thanks for the screencast! 🙂
I have to agree with you on this. It’s a small detail but with so much competition, every little drop can swing the tide in our favor.
-Jean
tyler: how do you do this? do you create custom sites or just direct link?
The main point of split testing your banners is to increase your CTR. It has some bearing on CR as well, but that’s what the lp is for. The banner image is to increase CTR and give you more volume and cheaper clicks.
thanks! btw, it seems most affiliate offers seem to be for junk like emails submits which will lead to spam.
are there any affiliate offers that actually add value to the user? i’m looking through some, and can’t really find any…
Sure… there are tons…. Dating, gaming, products (like As Seen on TV), etc.
And those submit offers are legit… they do give out the TV or whatever it is they’re promoting.. it’s just that you usually have to buy 3 items to get the prize.
And, you don’t have to use an affiliate network if you don’t like their offers. You could always promote anything with an affiliate program… such as any of the millions of items on Amazon, for exmaple.
thanks for your tips!
i think i’m going to try to go after the 25+ female demogrpahic in rich states with paid beauty products.
how do you get around facebook and direct linking? my links are being reported as spam!
Depends on your ad graphic, ad title, ad copy, and landing page.
landig page? i’m going to send them directly to the publisher’s landing page. no redirects.
The advertiser’s landing page (you’re the publisher). Does it violate the Facebook TOS? Does it geo-redirect non-US countries to a non-compliant landing page?
Nice tutorial, Photoshop is great like that. But I was also fortunate to learn it in school. To others it may seem daunting. I like how you broke it down so it was easy to understand.
Interesting video! The good thing with changing banner material is that usually the standard banners are so used and overly exposed to visitors over the internet that the CTR and acquisition rate get really low and make it hard to make any money from the campaign. But removing brand and making it look like a “new” product makes the world. I guess this also points at the fact that using “unique” offers would be the way to go and could probably make a HUGE difference if one could find that unique”custom” offer that still isn’t spread all-over the Internet. Finding unique exclusive offers perhaps is the easiest way to go for the big money?
Thanks for the video!
It stands to reason – The more shirts you order, the lower the price per shirt.
For instance, delight them by rolling twenty-five golf balls branded with their names as well as faces
all around their family room floor. To get the best effect, you
should wear a slightly loose Abercrombie & Fitch shirt.