The Woman Who Paid Me $1 Million In Affiliate Revenue Teaches You About Affiliate Programs. – With Lisa Riolo
on May 29, 2009 - 11:59 AM PSTBack when I ran Bradford & Reed, Commission Junction, a leading affiliate network, put me on their homepage and talked me up as the guy they paid $1 million in annual commissions. Then Lisa Riolo, who was in charge of bringing in revenue at CJ, invited me to Commission Junction University to teach how I did it.
Today, Lisa came to Mixergy to teach you how affiliate programs can help grow your company.
The FULL program
Video EXCERPTS on Affiliate Marketing
About Lisa Riolo
Lisa Riolo is a marketing and business consultant. She used to be the SVP Business Development at Commission Junction.
Affiliate marketing basics
Definition: You probably know this already, but in case you don’t, according to Wikipedia, “Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.”
More coverage: We talked about affiliate marketing on Mixergy with Jeremy “Shoemoney” Shoemaker, who taught some of his tricks, and with Josh Mullineaux, who created a theme to help generate affiliate revenue.
Excerpts from this program: Tips on affiliate marketing
The new affiliate arbitrage opportunities
Andrew’s note: Lisa talked about how affiliates are starting to buy ads offline to send clicks to online affiliate programs. She said it’s similar to the way affiliates used to buy ads on Google and send the traffic to affiliate programs where they could earn more money.
Lisa’s example: There’s a company called Bargain Networks here in the Santa Barbara area. Bargain Networks for years ran ads about products that were related to listings for really inexpensive automobiles. They tested it all over, and they found out that in some of the rural or smaller communities, [classified ads were lucrative]. That’s where people were consuming their media, so they were running inexpensive classified ads for auto sales. They were making money on those products on a referral basis.
How super-affiliates have unfair earned advantages
Andrew’s note: I suggested to Lisa that super-affiliates have an unfair advantage over the little guys because the affiliate networks tip them off to what’s working for other affiliates. She conceded that there’s some advantage, but called it “earned.”
Lisa said: [Super-affiliates who have] been successful, I do believe, are going to get information about what’s trending, what starting to take off, what’s the best opportunity and what seems to be really hot right now.
I do believe that that known, successful affiliates who have relationships with account managers or folks within the networks, are going to get more more information about how to continue to drive successes.
How an ugly page with misspellings can be lucrative
Andrew’s note: This section came from our conversation about testing.
Lisa’s example: I did a little bit of consulting work with Eben Pagan, who some people know as David DeAngelo. It was for landing pages and he was actually the merchant in this example. But I looked at these landing pages and I am like, “This is horrendous. This is just the worst looking landing page I have ever seen. You have got misspellings on here.” I was like, “This is crap!”
He was said, “Yeah OK. Every single person who ever comes from the Internet marketing space comes in and tells me the exact same thing.” He says, “But you know what? I have years, and years, and years of testing and I am telling you right now that this is the highest converting page.”
And he says, “And it knocks the socks off of the beautiful, awesome, creative, high-level marketing, branding approach.”
And I really got a huge lesson in that.
How affiliates should ask for higher commissions
Lisa said: I would phrase the question, “what do I need to do to make more more money.” I wouldn’t ask a merchant, “can I get an increased commission?” Ask, “What can I do to earn a higher payout?”
And really build that relationship. They may ask you to do some things like they may say, “I want you to hit a certain volume.”
How smaller affiliates can earn more
Lisa said: There are a ton of guys out there that drive massive volume, but when advertisers start really investigating the quality of those customers or those leads they’ll learn that it’s pretty low quality.
[If you're small, but you have quality traffic, you] can turn around as an affiliate, come back to that advertiser and say “Hey, I’m really high quality. I don’t have the volume but I’m not giving you that headache of fraud, and I would love to make more money. Let’s test and see how good the lifetime value of my results are.”
The full program includes
• The advantages that bigger affiliates get and how you can get them too.
• The new arbitrage opportunities you can use to buy off-line ads from dying newspapers and earn revenue from online affiliates.
• When you should go around affiliate networks and when you should absolutely not go around them.
Suggested comments
• Was it helpful to hear me talk about my experiences with affiliate networks? Should I do more of that?
• I have other interviews schedule on affiliate marketing. What more do you want to learn?
• What can YOU teach Mixergy readers about affiliate programs?
View Comments to “The Woman Who Paid Me $1 Million In Affiliate Revenue Teaches You About Affiliate Programs. – With Lisa Riolo”
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May 29th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Is there an audio-only link available? I love to listen to these on my commute.
Thanks!
May 29th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Yeah can you add just one full version in mp3 instead of 5 short clips on youtube? hanks
May 29th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
fantastic interview
May 29th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Thank Jim. I forgot to create it. Thanks to you, it's up there now!
May 29th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Thanks Scott!
Unlike social networks, affiliate programs will never be on the cover of
Wired magazine or BusinessWeek. They're not sexy enough. But they're
profitable, and they're worth learning about.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Sorry about that Steve. I meant to add it. Not sure why I forgot to make the
MP3. It's up there now!
I prefer MP3's too.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Andrew,
Another Fabulous Interview!
May 30th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Forgive me for asking this, but is it really possible to create a legacy business with affiliate marketing? Am I wrong in assuming that affiliate marketing is more of a 'quick buck' industry?
May 30th, 2009 at 4:10 am
Great interview as ever. I have forwarded link to the 4 colleagues I think its most relevant to. That stat 50% of all affilliate income is arbitrage got me. That is f**** nuts. Maybe I should do some arbitrage on mixergy? Buy ad space on your site, and put adverts for a Killer Affilliate Secrets ebook or something. :)
May 31st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Thanks Adam.
I know we talked about having me make videos from these interviews for your
site, but it's taking me a long time to simply edit them for my site. I'm
sorry I haven't been able to make any for YE. I love your work. And I hope I
can get caught up faster so I can contribute more to the site.
Thanks again for this note.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I was surprised it was so high too. Though I've heard that arbitrage is so
competitive that for some, there's no profit at all. They just do it to
accumulate miles on their credit cards.
I like your Mixergy arbitrage idea. (Though I don't accept ads on the site.
;-)
May 31st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Good question. I think affiliate marketing seems to be associated with the
“quick buck” approach, but it's just a form of advertising. It can be used
well by sold companies like Amazon, or it could be used by the flim-flam
guys who'll show you how to be rich tomorrow.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Andrew,
No problem! The timing may work out quite well as we are working diligently on our much anticipated re-launch of YoungEntrepreneur.com with several new tools, solutions, articles, videos and support in the new release of the site this Summer!
I will keep in touch and look forward to working with you on possibly integrating some of the videos.
Adam T.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:08 am
That just gave the best idea for my site… Thanks Andrew and Lisa!
From what I understand, the trick is to be creative with affiliate marketing (both on the publisher's side and on the merchant's).
I sure hope that it keeps shifting its image to a more honest and genuine business opportunity. I think it's a great way to work. Plus, I'm really getting sick of the “get rich in 30 seconds doing nothing” guys.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Great interview bud. Perfect for the morning run. The offline ad buys idea is crucial, definitely going to look into it this week.
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:53 am
I am not done listening to this audio yet (these days, I hate days with no traffic problems because I cannot hear these interviews in all..ha ha!) Anyway, so far I was kind of surprise (not completely) by the “ugly page with misspellings can be lucrative” item. I will be interested about people thought on why “crappy” pages would make more money? my thought (probably naive) is that people react to those pages because they appear more “real” than a fancy looking, clean page (more genuine is my guess) Still, logically people, would look for a reputable web site before reaching for their wallet. Since people are making $$$ with these affiliate networks, my guess is that i am wrong about my logic…
Great interview!
Mo
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:57 am
It is totally true that affiliate programs are not very sexy and doesn´t get much press but I think it is a great marketing technique to grow your business. I’ve been testing a Pixelnews affiliate program using Post Affiliate Pro and it is quite tough to get the first few affiliates and also gets a lot of time, but I’m sure it is worth to do it.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
@lisariolo Been too long. Good seeing you on Mixergy. Liked hearing you talk about “value” in content
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:22 pm
AWESOME INTERVIEW! Every interview I say to myself – this is the best one! I love your site seriously!
When are you going to post the archive of the web-site reviews you did?
June 4th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
The business owners that approach affiliate marketing with long term objectives do (typically) build solid, sustainable profits. I think the reason for the “quick buck” perception is that there are plenty of Internet Marketers hyping their own “Business in a Box” get-rich-quick-through-affiliate-marketing products.
I know of many business owners with 5-10 year old businesses where the revenue being generated comes primarily from performance-based advertising.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I came up with the same explanation about why the less polished pages performed better than the more professional version. I think the product itself, the copy, and the presentation all factor into what is deemed credible/genuine.
I think if you're about to purchase an item like, say, a diamond ring–the crappy page wouldn't fly. I think conversions would go down. That said: I have learned to trust the test results over my belief every time. :)
June 4th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
It's been WAY too long. Great to find you hear on Mixergy!
June 5th, 2009 at 1:48 am
Thank you Lisa for your answer. I like the example of the diamond ring sale. I think it may have to do with the risk level. Buying an e-book let say $20 is not the same thing as buying a $1000's ring. Still I saw a very compelling landing page selling “how to be first class copywriter” and the DVD's were a $1000…
In any event, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us. I appreciate it very much.
Mo.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Another great discussion! A couple of questions that I'd like to ask are:
1) What range of payment is typically made for a referal that actaully makes a purchase? How much does it vary? Is it typically correlated with the price of the product that's purchased or is it a relatively flat rate?
2) If you have a site with alot of traffic that you could direct towards a merchant site, what are the pros and cons of directing potential customers to the merchant site where a % will purchase there and you generate commission vs. becoming an authorised reseller of that product, purchasing at wholesale prices and getting the revenue yourselves… even if the merchant / product owner is actually doing the fulfillment for you.
June 17th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
great interview…lots of useful tip, thanks
June 19th, 2009 at 7:06 am
I recently heard in the PPC Coach tutorial that Google seach network doesn't like email or ZIP submit…. is this true? If it is true, I presume this relates solely for affiliate links and not sites that capture email addresses to sell their own product (i.e. Christian Carter/ David D etc.)?
July 1st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
That was a great video with lots of important information. I learned a lot. Thanks to both of you for putting that together.
July 8th, 2009 at 5:23 am
[...] From Lisa Riolo’s interview with Eben Pagan at http://mixergy.com/the-woman-who-paid-me-1-million-in-affiliate-revenue-teaches-you-about-affiliate-... [...]
January 24th, 2010 at 8:25 am
nice
January 24th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
nice
May 12th, 2010 at 5:39 am
Thank you for sharing such valueable information with the rest of us and if you want some more information about affiliate networks, you can read something about cpa programs if you feel the need. Enjoy and have a nice day!!
May 12th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Thank you for sharing such valueable information with the rest of us and if you want some more information about affiliate networks, you can read something about cpa programs if you feel the need. Enjoy and have a nice day!!