TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur’s JourneyThe journal of a young web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

Merry Christmas from PeerFly

In my post from a few days ago, I wrote about the gift and cards I received from several ad and affiliate networks.

One of the affiliate networks missing in that post was PeerFly. I hadn’t received anything from them, nor did I really expect to, as they had already given me some pretty crazy stuff when I met up with them in Orlando, Florida a couple of months ago.

But after I published my previous post, Corey from PeerFly sent me a message on AIM asking "Hmm… you didn’t receive the gift we sent?".

Apparently, they did send me something, but it was just a little late in arriving here. That isn’t too surprising, considering that things can get held up in customs coming across the border, not to mention the crazy busy Christmas season.

But I picked it up yesterday, and here it is:

A big tin container with a silkscreened PeerFly logo on the lid…

As soon as I opened the lid, an overwhelming and wonderful sweet smell smacked me in the face.

Inside were a lot of sweets. Cookies, brownies, gourmet candies, and all sorts of good stuff.

I actually haven’t had any yet as I wanted to take photos and put this blog post up first, but I do eagerly await to try some of them. They look really good… as if from a small little bakery or homemade by some little old grandmother.

Thanks PeerFly!

I’ll be posting on the big gifts they got me in Orlando, Florida in an upcoming post. Sorry, I’m really late with that one, but it’ll be up soon, I promise!

Merry Christmas from the Affiliate Networks

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and there’s still the New Year celebrations to look forward to!

Every year at Christmas, I receive gifts and cards from some of the various advertising and affiliate networks that I do business with. It’s always nice to receive something, and it’s well worth any cost and/or effort on their end as it does remind the receiver that the company acknowledges you.

I’ve said this many times before, but receiving something physical, no matter how small, is a hundred times more meaningful and effective in this era of electronic mail and social networking.

For example, take this very blog post. I am going to be mentioning and linking to the 3 networks that sent me something for Christmas this year. How much does a card cost to buy, send out, and mail? $2-$3? Oftentimes, sending a simple gift can be far more effective than purchasing advertising.

Anyhow, below is my little collection from the networks for this Christmas:

From left to right:

AmpedMedia

AmpedMedia, a network which you guys should all know by now, sent me the nice gift basket. I guess they know I like to eat

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out my post I published some weeks back from when I met up with AmpedMedia in Florida. They never fail to impress me with their level of generosity. They definitely like to take care of their publishers.

If you’re looking for e-mail and zip submit offers, Amped has a ton of them.

BlamAds

BlamAds sent me the two cards in the middle. It was a bit strange the white one, only to receive another blue card from them a week later – but I think it’s because the network sent out the white one and then the blue one was from my account manager Jessel separately later on.

I haven’t really talked about BlamAds on my blog before, mainly because I haven’t really done anything with them yet.

BlamAds is a really interesting network though because they specialize in content-locking ads. Basically, these are ads that will lock out content you specify until the visitor does a particular action, usually completing an e-mail or zip submit.

I haven’t had the time to implement it yet, but I was thinking of adding these ads to the Name That Flick game on Movie-Vault.com, so that users could optionally get a hint each time they filled out an offer.

BlamAds also has a lot of incentive offers to choose from.

CasaleMedia

CasaleMedia is a CPM ad network in which you simply slap up their banners on your site and get paid based on the amount of your traffic (and niche of course).

They work similar to AdSense only they pay via CPM rather than CPC.

I’ve been using them for years, mainly on Movie-Vault.com. In fact, I received my first payment from them in June of 2006, so this is certainly a network that isn’t going to disappear anytime soon.

They offer a 70% payout and are awesome if you have a site with a lot of traffic that doesn’t really convert well to affiliate offers, and you want to simply get paid based on your traffic levels. Their pop-under rates are especially rewarding for this.

Thanks!

Thanks everyone, and once again I hope you all had a great Christmas and an equally good upcoming New Years.

Payday Loan Affiliate Program by LeadsMarket.com Review

The following is a paid review for TylerCruz.com written and reviewed by Michael Kwan. It is completely of Michael Kwan’s opinion and is not influenced by being paid. If you’re interested in having your site or product reviewed, please view my advertising page

The world of affiliate marketing is increasingly competitive, especially when it comes to some of the most popular and lucrative niches. Payday loans are one such example, because there is so much money at stake. And if you want to make money in this niche, there is a new player in the game that could put a lot of cash in your pocket.

Boasting that it offers the “best payday loan affiliate program,” LeadsMarket.com offers one of the largest marketplaces on the Internet to sell leads for payday loans. The buyers get their leads, the customers get their money quickly, and you earn a hefty commission.

Making Money By Offering Money

For the time being, LeadsMarket is focusing solely on its payday loan affiliate program, but there appear to be plans in the future for other verticals as well. If you take a look at the homepage, they are gearing up for offers in the flowers, mortgage, education, and dating industries.

Easily the most appealing feature that sets this affiliate program apart from the many other programs out there for payday loans is the commission rate. When it comes to the cash advances and payday loans, affiliates earn an impressive 90% revenue share. This means that LeadsMarket only takes a 10% cut. This is the revenue share you get right from the beginning without having to earn your way up to a higher tier.

Based on the Feedback of Real Affiliates

Rather than simply diving into things, the founders of LeadsMarket took their time to consult with thousands of affiliates to “understand what [the] best payday loan affiliate program should have.” From this, they developed ten guiding principles. For instance, they promise that each affiliate will be treated as a true long term business partner, that only exclusive direct offers will be promoted to affiliates, and that affiliates get the “lion’s share” of the “generous commission.”

The Dashboard

Powering the LeadsMarket engine is a proprietary technology called Optimo. This has a self-learning algorithm that is designed to optimize the distribution of leads and maximize revenue for affiliates.

Signing up for an affiliate account with LeadsMarket is very easy. There is just a single page form that asks for you name, address, phone number, and website URL, as well as the marketing methods you plan on using. You gain instant access to the dashboard, as shown above, but the account itself does not become active until it has been approved. In my experience, this happened within 24 hours.

As far as the affiliate dashboard itself, the layout is clear and easy to understand. The traffic report features front and center with basic metrics shown above it. There are pulldown menus to bring up other reports. Along the left side is information about your current balance and earnings, while up top is all the primary navigation.

You’ll also notice that every affiliate is assigned a personal account manager. This account manager can be contacted via email or telephone at any time. The “friendly affiliate concierge” brings a wealth of real experience him/herself and knows what it takes to succeed.

Creatives and Landing Pages

LeadsMarket is designed to give you as much flexibility as possible to promote the payday loans offer, as well as any other offers they may have in the future. This includes marketing via email, PPC, banners, mobile, pop-ups, and pop-unders. You can also promote via social networking and job listing sites, but you must first get the approval of your affiliate manager.

Digging into the creatives, LeadsMarket aims to provide as much support and updates as possible. This means you can send traffic directly to the websites via banners, for example, as well as integrate the form into your own website for greater optimization and control.

For instance, I can send visitors directly to a predesigned landing page and these leads could then be captured. You could easily embed these landing pages in iframes on your own custom URLs and domains so that you can hide your affiliate ID. There are also a range of text emails and banners of varying sizes, as seen above.

Reports and Payouts

Naturally, LeadsMarket is also set up to provide you with comprehensive reports and deep analytics. These reports are all provided with real-time data, allowing you to get information for specific date ranges and for specific domains.

This is relatively simple at the moment, because there is just the one affiliate offer on the table, but you will have the ability to crunch the report down based on campaigns when there are more. You can also group by date, offer, campaign, subID and domain.

The payout structure is fairly standard. LeadsMarket pays out on a net-30 schedule, meaning that you will receive your commission for the month of December around the end of January. You will need to reach a minimum of $100 in revenue to generate a payment. For now, it appears that payments are only available by check, wire transfer, and direct deposit, though the FAQ also mentions PayQuicker, Payoneer, and PayPal. Top affiliates can request a more frequent payment plan.

There is also mention of an affiliate referrals program where you earn a 3% bonus on all commissions generated by the affiliates that you refer, but the link in the dashboard for “refer a friend” simply directs me to the “create new campaign” page. Presumably, the referral program will be a new “offer” added at some point in the near future.

Conclusion

It is generally easier to sign up for a couple of affiliate networks and have access to the widest range of affiliate offers possible. However, this does not necessarily provide you with the most flexibility, the best affiliate support, or the most lucrative opportunities. And that’s why something more focused like the payday loan affiliate program from LeadsMarket might be a good fit as part of your overall Internet marketing portfolio.

The high level of support is welcome, the 90% revenue share is astounding, and the flexibility of promoting the offers is greatly appreciated. If you’re interested in getting into the payday loan and cash advance niche, this could be the way to go.

Affiliate Marketing Update: $1,276.50 Yesterday

I set yet another 2 new records with yesterday’s affiliate marketing performance, but I got tired of titling these posts as such.

Yesterday was good, setting 2 new personal affiliate marketing records of mine, but the bad news is that I didn’t set a new net profit record yesterday. In fact, my overall ROI dropped from the previous day’s considerably (by about 50%).

However, I can’t complain. I still made just shy of $500 net yesterday, and I can’t expect to set 3 new records every single day.

New Record #1: 642 Leads in 1 Day

To be honest, as time goes on and I begin to send in these amounts of traffic, this particular "record" diminishes in its appeal to me, and so I’m not sure how much longer I’ll continue to update when I break this particular record.

That being said, my campaigns brought in a total of 642 leads yesterday. That’s really a lot when you really think about it. If a company wants a lot of potential paying customers on a mailing list and you tell them that you can deliver 20,000 people a month, that is a really valuable source of new customers for the company.

New Record #2: $1,276.50 Gross in 1 Day

Okay, so the title of this post may be a little misleading… as my campaigns made a gross total of $1,276.50 yesterday, not net profit.

Nevertheless, it’s still a notable achievement, IMHO. It’s also more cash in my pocket.

I have a Visa that gives me 1% cash back on my purchases, and I spent $800 yesterday, which means that Visa gave me $8. It’s not much in comparison, but it’s nice to know that even if I broke even on my affiliate campaigns that I’d still get $240 a month from Visa.

Actually, scrap that. I just checked and it’s capped at $250 a year, which is stupid. Oh well.

Budgeting Mistake

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday.

I was analyzing, optimizing, and working on my campaigns yesterday morning which included adding more funds to my various traffic sources. Some of my traffic sources require that I prepay, as opposed to billing me for my traffic later, so I’m constantly having to refill them.

I knew, of course, that it’d be much more convenient to add a lot of funds so that I wouldn’t have to keep adding more daily, but I am also beginning to spend a fair bit each day ($800 yesterday) so it’s a little bit scary to deposit a lot of funds at once.

However, it is important that I make sure I have a healthy amount in. I thought I did yesterday morning when I deposited, but then after working I went out to badminton for a couple hours and then came home and ate while watching Super-8 (it’s so-so, BTW), and therefore didn’t check my campaign balances for around 5-6 hours.

When I did check one of my sources, I was surprised to discover that one of my campaign balances was completely empty! What sucked is that this was one of my winning campaigns, meaning that I was losing out on profit. I’m not sure how long it was empty for, probably only an hour or two, but it’s still a simple mistake that shouldn’t be made.

And then 15-20 minutes later I discovered that 2 campaigns on another of my other traffic sources were empty (or nearly empty, I forget to be honest) as well!

So, the lesson learned is to keep my balances well funded so that I can take advantage of as much traffic as I can get.

That being said, it isn’t fail-safe; there are the real dangers such as that a campaign could suddenly convert very poorly, offers could be paused or capped, hosting goes down, etc.

I think that in the long run, though, that it’s still better to keep a healthy amount of balance if you have winning campaigns.

What do you think?

Judgement Day Cometh

As mentioned in my previous posts, tomorrow is an extremely important and vital day for me.

It is the day when my affiliate manager will receive a report on my recent traffic and check its quality. If things look good, then it means I’ll be able to continue at my current (and growing) rate. Also, if things look good, I’ll likely be getting a bump of $0.25 but possibly even more.

With a $0.25 bump, I’m pretty confident that I could push $60,000 in January, which would make an absolute AWESOME start to the year.

So, please wish me luck. Tomorrow is seriously a very important day. It will either suck hardcore or be one of the most important days for me business-wise I’ve ever had.