As of this morning, I received an email from the people at Affiliate Radar, announcing that Offer Vault is now free. Yeah, that's right. You can now cross-compare offers from multiple affiliate networks for free.

Here's the email they sent out:

Dear Scott Weaver,

After much heated debate between my partner, Raakesh, and I, we have
decided to allow free access to OfferVault.

In case you are not aware, OfferVault is a research tool for
affiliate marketers that contains a database of over 10,000 offers
from the top CPA and affiliate networks, updated daily.

You can sign-up at http://www.offervault.com

With this powerful tool you can:

Compare offers and payouts between networks

Research niches

Receive optional email alerts based on your own search criteria to
stay on top of new offers as they come out

Preview landing pages (this is huge!)

Quickly sign up for new networks

This tool was formerly available only as a component of our paid
membership site, Affiliate Radar. Now you have the opportunity to
access it free at www.offervault.com, so don't pass it up!

Get your free membership now at http://www.offervault.com

What does that mean for you? It means you no longer have to log into each different network to see where the highest payout is. What it also means is that yet again, I've increased your profit margin. But hey, that's what I'm here for.

Now you can see what networks are offering before you even bother signing up. Apparently, all that OfferVault is asking in return is that, much like on my blog, you sign up using their referral links to new networks you join.

Just this morning, I've found several higher paying offers than the ones I'm currently running and those are the default prices. Not even the negotiated prices.

If you're worried about a product monopoly (even though it's free), don't worry. I'm aware of another site that is whispered to have a similar product coming out soon.

For now, Offer Vault takes the cake as the cat's pajamas. Incidentally, if you want to go right to registration, click here.

You're welcome.

Your immediate thought might be that this is just creating competition for yourself and in a way, you're completely right. But the flip-side to that is if you successfully create a worthy opponent for yourself from someone you referred, you will earn around 2% for that person's sales whether they profit or not (as long as they stay on that network).

The idea is to refer someone to several big networks and hopefully create a few super affiliates. Just imagine if you referred one or two super affiliates who did $15k to $30k per day.

Now I was able to sit for a while with my phone today, so I was wondering just how much it would take to live comfortably off of other people's success based on a 2% referral base. Using $6,000.00 as a baseline for what most younger people would consider a good replacement for a job, you can divide that amount by .02 and you come up with $300,000.00 (per month).

While this might sound like a large number, it works out to around $9900/day in sales and depending on how many decent affiliates you refer, that's not completely impossible to do. I know I sound like a referral program in action, but if you were to refer just five decent affiliates within a year's time, they'd each have to do around $2000/day in sales for you to earn $72k/year without lifting a finger. Or ten affiliates doing $1000/day would suffice, or twenty doing $500/day ... you get the picture. Did I mention you get paid whether or not they profit? That's right, they lose money, you still make money.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a true auto-pilot income. You literally do not have to do anything but continue referring people (if you want) to increase your monthly income. Networks like Azoogle, Neverblue, Copeac, etc. will do direct deposit straight into your account, so you don't even have to deposit any checks.

Affiliate marketing itself still requires plenty of work and should be run like a business, if done properly. That means long hours and continuous monitoring and adjustment to keep it working right. While you might make a ton of money doing it, it's still a risky business that is definitely far from auto-pilot (other than the fact that your ads will run 24x7).

All I'm saying is-- what makes more sense in the long run? You working your ass off for a year to make $75k profit or you working your ass off for six months referring people to make $75k profit?

Bingo.

Incidentally, you can also view the Skype list, which as you might guess, lists all the affiliate managers who use Skype.

I've noticed a lot of people asking how to get ahold of someone at X company as they are trying to get approved. Well people, here's your chance.

1. Build Mailing Lists

   This is going to be the first tip because I don't think I've driven it home enough in my past posts. Seriously, if you aren't collecting emails any chance you get, you aren't trying. If you don't have a mailing list at least 5,000 opt-ins strong, try harder! Sure, it might cost more up front to generate it faster, but in the end, it's worth it. Just think, it's a list of targeted traffic that you've already paid for.Unlike PPC, which is one-click-one-time, you can keep sending your subscribers to "interesting" offers. Should you come out with a new landing page in any related area, you can always shoot all 5,000 of them an email letting them know. My question is: why would you NOT do this? Well, perhaps you aren't aware of how you might go about doing this. For starters, sign up with http://www.aweber.com and pay the measly $20/mo fee. After that, READ!

2. Use Landing Pages

   I'll keep this short. Here's my official statement: yes, use landing pages. Even if frames, redirects, what-have-you, are working for you, split test a decent landing page. You'll see, they are better by their very nature. It's got the pre-sell which you wrote, so you can give your personal testimony of the product (which should be real, by the way). On top of that, it's optimized for search engine traffic so it will start getting picked up by the search monsters of the internet: Google, Yahoo! and such, which brings me to my next tip.

3. Build Organic Traffic

   I swear, if it isn't the way of the now, it's the way of the future. Organic traffic is FREE, people. If you aren't quite sure what organic traffic is, I'll sum it up for you: it's free traffic from search engines (as described above). When you build landing pages and the like, they get indexed in search results. Those search results, the same ones you use to find out whether you're spelling stupid words like Focaccia right (thank you Google), will also send traffic to your very website.The trick is getting OTHER websites to link to your site. Well, the good news is, if your landing page is cool enough (has useful content), then just by sending a bunch of PPC traffic toward it for a long while, it will start to get indexed and you'll start seeing mystery sales more and more. Then, once you figure out you can buy links on popular websites of similar topic, you'll see your incoming traffic start to turn from a trickle into a steady stream. Go, do it. Do it now.

4. Embrace The Pyramid

   What was so bad about those stupid pyramid schemes back in the day? Well, high up front costs for no apparent reason, and not a lot of upward movement. Otherwise, they're just like any large corporation you see today, only they expect you to involve your friends and family.Well, I recommend that you keep your friends and family in the dark about what you do if you're an affiliate marketer. Besides the peace of mind it will bring, it makes you seem super cool -- like Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother (incidentally, read 5 tips on suiting up while keeping the temperature down here).

   Anyway, so all I'm saying is -- embrace the tiered system that most affiliate networks offer (Azoogle, Neverblue, Copeac, etc). All you do is give people (not family) referral links which are provided by said networks and once they are approved, you will make in the neighborhood of 2% of their sales for life on that network. Yeah, I know you thought it-- you get enough people under your belt and you've got the good life. Well, hey, keep that dream alive. But in the mean time, make an extra few hundred a month by getting your buddies to sign up and make some money of their own. Remember: even if they break even, you still spent nothing.

5. Network, network, network!

   In this business, you can become rich without knowing that many people, but it's so much easier to make money when you have connections. Use forums, blogs, conventions, etc. all to your advantage. Talk to people, make friends and you'll see opportunities start to open up that otherwise wouldn't have been there. Shoot, I didn't get started on my own. I had help from my friend Paul and then later on, my partner inspired the competitive bastard in me. Neither of those connections would have been made if I were sitting alone at my desk much in the fashion of a hermit crab. So go, be social and be rich!

So there you have them. Short, sweet and to the point. Hope you enjoyed.

Scott

In general, the formula I use for determining max bid is basically this:

((ecpc * (1 - bounce rate)) - 0.01)

So if your ecpc is $0.75 and your bounce rate is 40%, that means you really generate $0.45 ecpc. Subtract $0.01 from that ($0.44 ecpc) and you'll have a very safe maximum to set your keyword bids at.

Just so everything is clear for you, here are some definitions for the above terms:

ECPC (Estimated Cost Per Click) - This is the estimated dollar amount you receive per click. Essentially, it's [Revenue] / [Clicks]. Although it can seem tempting to just use this number when determining your max spend, it's dangerous as this number can often be wrong due to a high bounce rate.

Bounce Rate - Put simply, this is how many people visit your landing page but don't click on your affiliate links. In general, this probably doesn't apply to forwarded links or framed pages but it's still good to figure out. To figure out what your bounce rate is for a given landing page, just look at how many clicks you've paid for vs. how many your ad network (Azoogle, Neverblue, Copeac, etc.) tells you you've received. For example, if you're using AdWords and Azoogle together, AdWords might tell you you've paid for 100 clicks while Azoogle will tell you it's registered 60. If this is the case, your bounce rate would be 40%.

Of course, this isn't the only method to use when setting bid prices but it's what I use in general. I hope it helps.

Scott

Maximum Bid Calculator

eCPC:

Bounce Rate:
Max Bid: $0.00

Bounce Rate Calculator

PPC Clicks:
(how many clicks you paid for)
Network Clicks:
(how many clicks Azoogle, Neverblue, CJ, etc. show)

A common scenario with affiliate programs is early success, followed by a bust. There are always unpredictable scenarios that can occur, even though you have been participating successfully in an affiliate program for what seems like forever.

While there are a great deal of positives involved with running an affiliate business from the comfort of your own home, there can also be problems for someone who is less experienced. Luckily, this article will point you in the right direction to avoid such pitfalls.

Some of the most common problems with work from home affiliate programs include:

• Losses in search engine rankings due to changes in search engine logarithms, particularly that of Google
• Sudden changes in web trends cause your particular product to be unpopular, creating losses in revenues
• Your particular network suddenly busts, leaving you without a revenue stream
• Your affiliate program becomes associated with adware, becoming discredited

There are many ways to combat these kinds of situations, including frequently monitoring the Google Blog for any signs of an algorithm change, or keeping up to date with web-trends 24x7, or even creating your own affiliate network so you don’t have to worry about relying on a source of revenue from anyone else.

However, there is a much easier way to ensure that you have a constant source of revenue from your partners. The one way to do this is to diversify your programs. Although it takes more work to maintain this kind of “defensive diversification,” as it’s sometimes called, the result is the feeling that you are “investing safely” into your affiliate programs.

The golden rule of good affiliate marketing diversification is “safety in numbers.” Keeping this in mind, several ways to diversify include:

• Joining more than one network to avoid losses if your biggest working partner is suddenly lost (AzoogleAds, Neverblue, Commissin Junction, Copeac, Clickbank, etc.)
• Invest some money into running several affiliate sites at a time. Although the investment may seem like a large sum at first, it will pay off in the long-run if one of your sites is shut down or no longer becomes popular.
• Plan out your internet traffic so that you are not just relying on Google results, but possibly through viral marketing means, networks like Digg, delic.ious, reddit, and other link-related websites, and social networking websites. Don’t overdo the last two, though, because constantly posting similar content may reduce your credibility to these site audiences, who tend to be extremely cynical and skeptical.
• Learn to work with several coding languages like HTML, CSS, and possibly Javascript to make your sites varied and professional instead of relying on free, hacked-together templates, which can also ruin your credibility.
• Vary the industry groups you are affiliated with. If there is a legal clamp-down on digital music sharing, your site will be affected as people draw away from the issue. If you have sites on the Amazon rainforest and European chocolate, however, you will continue to draw traffic on those sites. Even better is if you can sense some trends ahead of time and build sites like “Alternatives to digital music sharing.” This will, of course, require some industry research.
• Broaden your scope on your websites. For example, if you have a website about “Music,” you can devote it to other topics if music sharing becomes taboo.

As with all business ventures, even though affiliate programs are a great way to work from home and may seem like an easy way to run a business, research and diligence is still required to keep them running well.